The Green Mile - Response (10/31/16)

Directions: As we begin to immerse ourselves in magical realism, I am going to be asking you to write a series of responses that will eventually lead to the story you write for this genre. I want you to choose one of the following prompts and construct a response (it does not have to be a five paragraph essay) that will answer the question thoroughly using examples from the film and little research on your part. You will be taking your Coming of Age piece and adding a layer on that character that allows him/her to live in a world populated with the conventions of magical realism. The Green Mile was the first example. This week, we will be focusing on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" and how it relates to the film Groundhog Day. The next piece will be about "the labyrinth of self." Your response is due in Googledocs on Wednesday, 11/2/16.

1)Someone who maintains a set of beliefs and is murdered because of them is called a martyr. In your opinion, is John Coffey a martyr? Give three main points that show he is or is not.

2)Through the film, Paul Edgecombe is portrayed as a fairly religious man. Cite at least three examples in the film where you could argue that religion or morality affected his decision-making process, and what the outcome was each time.

3)Mr. Jingles, the mouse, could be said to represent freedom (being the only thing or person that could come and go as he pleased). Give at least three reasons why you believe Delacroix and the others so readily accepted his presence.

4)''The Green Mile'' involves assorted acts of cruelty and one lurid, extended electrocution scene that makes the horrors of the death penalty grotesquely clear, but much of it is very gentle. The mystical healing of Edgecomb's bladder trouble brings on some funny moments with Bonnie Hunt, who does a charming turn as his wife. Coffey's peculiar innocence is also given a lot of screen time. The way in which this huge black man, who calls the guards Boss, is given a magical capacity for self-sacrifice has its inadvertently racist overtones as well as its Christlike ones. But as Mr. Duncan plays him, Coffey is too flabbergasting a figure to be easily pigeonholed anyhow." (Maslin, New York Times)

Is Stephen King for or against the death penalty? From what you saw in the film, discuss instances that clearly prove your point.

5)Paul Edgecombe changes over the course of the story. What changes can your see? Explain the changes and what causes them.

The Green Mile & Magical Realism (Journal #12, Marking Period 1)

Once again, the gritty realism of life and its horrors run up against a set of circumstances that inspire wonder, fear, hope...even magic.

In the 20th century, writers who picked up the mantle of magical realism addressed a completely different set of societal ills. Issues of race, poverty and segregation became the focus for African-American writers like Toni Morrison. Stories like "The Beloved" and "Song of Solomon" dealt with the issues faced during the national shame of slavery and how those freed from bondage attempted to find their place in a post-slavery society.

When Stephen King published "The Green Mile", he focused his work on the capricious nature of the death-penalty - particularly, in the southern United States.

The Green Mile is about a man named Paul Edgecomb. He is a slightly cynical veteran prison guard on Death row in the 1930's. His faith, and sanity, deteriorated by watching men live and die, Edgecomb is about to have a complete turn around in attitude. Enter John Coffey (for all you fans of religious symbolism 101 - initials JC), He's eight feet tall. He has hands the size of waffle irons. He's been accused of the murder of two children... and he's afraid to sleep in a cell without a night-light. And Edgecomb, as well as the other prison guards - Brutus, a sympathetic guard, and Percy, a stuck up, perverse, and violent person, are in for a strange experience that involves intelligent mice, brutal executions, and the revelation about Coffey's innocence and his true identity.

Before all that, it's just another normal day on the Green Mile for prison guard Paul Edgecomb - a man suffering with horrible kidney-stones. That is until huge John Coffey "helps". Unlike the hulking brute that Coffey looks like, he is in fact much more than the meets the eye. Whilst watching over Coffey, Edgecomb learns that there is more to Coffey than can any one man could possibly discover in a lifetime of searching.


In the film clips that you are going to see, take note of the instances of magical realism used to tell the story.


In your journals, discuss the following:

1) What are some of the physical traits of the characters that make them seem ordinary?

2) Discuss how the film's setting (death row) adds contrast to the magic that occurs on The Green Mile.

3) John Coffey's name is an overt religious symbol. Are there any other religious symbols present in the clips we viewed? If so, what are they and what religious beliefs do they represent?

4) What themes are being developed in the thread of the film clips we viewed in class?

5) What are the similarities between "The Green Mile" and the other excerpts we have read regarding magical realism?

Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis: Excerpt 2 (10/24/16)

Reminder:

Please read the following excerpt from "The Metamorphosis."
Next week, we are going to read two more excerpts from the book.
You will be tested on the material and what we covered in class.


Just as he was thinking all this over at top speed, without being able to decide to get out of bed--the alarm clock had just struck a quarter to seven--he heard a cautious knocking at the door next to the head of his bed. "Gregor," someone called--it was his mother--"it's a quarter to seven. Didn't you want to catch the train?" What a soft voice! Gregor was shocked to hear his own voice answering, unmistakably his own voice, true, but in which, as if from below, an insistent distressed chirping intruded, which left the clarity of his words intact only for a moment really, before so badly garbling them as they carried that no one could be sure if he had heard right. Gregor had wanted to answer in detail and to explain everything, but, given the circumstances, confined himself to saying, "Yes, yes, thanks, Mother, I'm just getting up." The wooden door must have prevented the change in Gregor's voice from being noticed outside, because his mother was satisfied with this explanation and shuffled off. But their little exchange had made the rest of the family aware that, contrary to expectations, Gregor was still in the house, and already his father was knocking on one of the side doors, feebly but with his fist. "Gregor, Gregor," he called, "what's going on?" And after a little while he called again in a deeper, warning voice, "Gregor! Gregor!" At the other side door, however, his sister moaned gently, "Gregor? Is something the matter with you? Do you want anything?" Toward both sides Gregor answered: "I'm all ready," and made an effort, by meticulous pronunciation and by inserting long pauses between individual words, to eliminate everything from his voice that might betray him. His father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered, "Gregor, open up, I'm pleading with you." But Gregor had absolutely no intention of opening the door and complimented himself instead on the precaution he had adopted from his business trips, of locking all the doors during the night even at home.

First of all he wanted to get up quietly, without any excitement; get dressed; and, the main thing, have breakfast, and only then think about what to do next, for he saw clearly that in bed he would never think things through to a rational conclusion. He remembered how even in the past he had often felt some kind of slight pain, possibly caused by lying in an uncomfortable position, which, when he got up, turned out to be purely imaginary, and he was eager to see how today's fantasy would gradually fade away. That the change in his voice was nothing more than the first sign of a bad cold, an occupational ailment of the traveling salesman, he had no doubt in the least.

It was very easy to throw off the cover; all he had to do was puff himself up a little, and it fell off by itself. But after this, things got difficult, especially since he was so unusually broad. He would have needed hands and arms to lift himself up, but instead of that he had only his numerous little legs, which were in every different kind of perpetual motion and which, besides, he could not control. If he wanted to bend one, the first thing that happened was that it stretched itself out;* and if he finally succeeded in getting this leg to do what he wanted, all the others in the meantime, as if set free, began to work in the most intensely painful agitation. "Just don't stay in bed being useless," Gregor said to himself.

First he tried to get out of bed with the lower part of his body, but this lower part--which by the way he had not seen yet and which he could not form a clear picture of--proved too difficult to budge; it was taking so long; and when finally, almost out of his mind, he lunged forward with all his force, without caring, he had picked the wrong direction and slammed himself violently against the lower bedpost, and the searing pain he felt taught him that exactly the lower part of his body was, for the moment anyway, the most sensitive.

He therefore tried to get the upper part of his body out of bed first and warily turned his head toward the edge of the bed. This worked easily, and in spite of its width and weight, the mass of his body finally followed, slowly, the movement of his head. But when at last he stuck his head over the edge of the bed into the air, he got too scared to continue any further, since if he finally let himself fall in this position, it would be a miracle if he didn't injure his head. And just now he had better not for the life of him lose consciousness; he would rather stay in bed.

But when, once again, after the same exertion, he lay in his original position, sighing, and again watched his little legs struggling, if possible more fiercely, with each other and saw no way of bringing peace and order into this mindless motion, he again told himself that it was impossible for him to stay in bed and that the most rational thing was to make any sacrifice for even the smallest hope of freeing himself from the bed. But at the same time he did not forget to remind himself occasionally that thinking things over calmly--indeed, as calmly as possible--was much better than jumping to desperate decisions. At such moments he fixed his eyes as sharply as possible on the window, but unfortunately there was little confidence and cheer to be gotten from the view of the morning fog, which shrouded even the other side of the narrow street. "Seven o'clock already," he said to himself as the alarm clock struck again, "seven o'clock already and still such a fog." And for a little while he lay quietly, breathing shallowly, as if expecting, perhaps, from the complete silence the return of things to the way they really and naturally were.

But then he said to himself, "Before it strikes a quarter past seven, I must be completely out of bed without fail. Anyway, by that time someone from the firm will be here to find out where I am, since the office opens before seven." And now he started rocking the complete length of his body out of the bed with a smooth rhythm. If he let himself topple out of bed in this way, his head, which on falling he planned to lift up sharply, would presumably remain unharmed. His back seemed to be hard; nothing was likely to happen to it when it fell onto the carpet. His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked.

When Gregor's body already projected halfway out of bed--the new method was more of a game than a struggle, he only had to keep on rocking and jerking himself along--he thought how simple everything would be if he could get some help. Two strong persons--he thought of his father and the maid--would have been completely sufficient; they would only have had to shove their arms under his arched back, in this way scoop him off the bed, bend down with their burden, and then just be careful and patient while he managed to swing himself down onto the floor, where his little legs would hopefully acquire some purpose. Well, leaving out the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call for help? In spite of all his miseries, he could not repress a smile at this thought.

He was already so far along that when he rocked more strongly he could hardly keep his balance, and very soon he would have to commit himself, because in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven--when the doorbell rang. "It's someone from the firm," he said to himself and almost froze, while his little legs only danced more quickly. For a moment everything remained quiet. "They're not going to answer," Gregor said to himself, captivated by some senseless hope. But then, of course, the maid went to the door as usual with her firm stride and opened up. Gregor only had to hear the visitor's first word of greeting to know who it was--the office manager himself. Why was only Gregor condemned to work for a firm where at the slightest omission they immediately suspected the worst? Were all employees louts without exception, wasn't there a single loyal, dedicated worker among them who, when he had not fully utilized a few hours of the morning for the firm, was driven half-mad by pangs of conscience and was actually unable to get out of bed? Really, wouldn't it have been enough to send one of the apprentices to find out--if this prying were absolutely necessary--did the manager himself have to come, and did the whole innocent family have to be shown in this way that the investigation of this suspicious affair could be entrusted only to the intellect of the manager? And more as a result of the excitement produced in Gregor by these thoughts than as a result of any real decision, he swung himself out of bed with all his might. There was a loud thump, but it was not a real crash. The fall was broken a little by the carpet, and Gregor's back was more elastic than he had thought, which explained the not very noticeable muffled sound. Only he had not held his head carefully enough and hit it; he turned it and rubbed it on the carpet in anger and pain.

Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis: Excerpt 1 (10/20/16)

It's time to get back to making magic - back into the maze of magical-realism.

"The Metamorphosis"is a great example of writing that could fall into the category of magical realism for its stark portrayal of one man's "transformation" into a bug...specifically, a cockroach.

His characters' lonely search for the meaning of individual existence in a meaningless or indifferent world reflects Kafka's existentialist views of life. People who are not dependent on older belief systems or institutions have freedom that also brings anxiety and guilt with the responsibility for constructing the meaning of one's own existence. Kafka had no association with Surrealist writers or artists, who saw hidden miracles of existence behind everyday reality. Kafka's works are sometimes called surreal because of his blend of matter-of-fact everyday reality and dream or nightmare images, but his vision of the ordinary person's impossible struggles to control life is quite different from the views of the Surrealists who came after him. Like absurdist writers of the mid-twentieth century, Kafka depicted irrational, anguished people in nightmarish situations, unable to form significant relationships with(in) their environment. Later in the twentieth century, the development of magic realism might also be compared with Kafka's writing, as fantastic events are depicted as if they are a part of everyday reality.

EXCERPT
CHAPTER 1

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.

"What's happened to me?" he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human room, only a little on the small side, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was all spread out--Samsa was a traveling salesman--hung the picture which he had recently cut out of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared.

Gregor's eyes then turned to the window, and the overcast weather--he could hear raindrops hitting against the metal window ledge--completely depressed him. "How about going back to sleep for a few minutes and forgetting all this nonsense," he thought, but that was completely impracticable, since he was used to sleeping on his right side and in his present state could not get into that position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his right side, he always rocked onto his back again. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so as not to have to see his squirming legs, and stopped only when he began to feel a slight, dull pain in his side, which he had never felt before.

"Oh God," he thought, "what a grueling job I've picked! Day in, day out--on the road. The upset of doing business is much worse than the actual business in the home office, and, besides, I've got the torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate. To the devil with it all!" He felt a slight itching up on top of his belly; shoved himself slowly on his back closer to the bedpost, so as to be able to lift his head better; found the itchy spot, studded with small white dots which he had no idea what to make of; and wanted to touch the spot with one of his legs but immediately pulled it back, for the contact sent a cold shiver through him.

He slid back again into his original position. "This getting up so early," he thought, "makes anyone a complete idiot. Human beings have to have their sleep. Other traveling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I go back to the hotel before lunch to write up the business I've done, these gentlemen are just having breakfast. That's all I'd have to try with my boss; I'd be fired on the spot. Anyway, who knows if that wouldn't be a very good thing for me. If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I would have quit long ago, I would have marched up to the boss and spoken my piece from the bottom of my heart. He would have fallen off the desk! It is funny, too, the way he sits on the desk and talks down from the heights to the employees, especially when they have to come right up close on account of the boss's being hard of hearing. Well, I haven't given up hope completely; once I've gotten the money together to pay off my parents' debt to him--that will probably take another five or six years--I'm going to do it without fail. Then I'm going to make the big break. But for the time being I'd better get up, since my train leaves at five."

And he looked over at the alarm clock, which was ticking on the chest of drawers. "God Almighty!" he thought. It was six-thirty, the hands were quietly moving forward, it was actually past the half-hour, it was already nearly a quarter to. Could it be that the alarm hadn't gone off? You could see from the bed that it was set correctly for four o'clock; it certainly had gone off, too. Yes, but was it possible to sleep quietly through a ringing that made the furniture shake? Well, he certainly hadn't slept quietly, but probably all the more soundly for that. But what should he do now? The next train left at seven o'clock; to make it, he would have to hurry like a madman, and the line of samples wasn't packed yet, and he himself didn't feel especially fresh and ready to march around. And even if he did make the train, he could not avoid getting it from the boss, because the messenger boy had been waiting at the five-o'clock train and would have long ago reported his not showing up. He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone. What if he were to say he was sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious because during his five years with the firm Gregor had not been sick even once. The boss would be sure to come with the health-insurance doctor, blame his parents for their lazy son, and cut off all excuses by quoting the health-insurance doctor, for whom the world consisted of people who were completely healthy but afraid to work. And, besides, in this case would he be so very wrong? In fact, Gregor felt fine, with the exception of his drowsiness, which was really unnecessary after sleeping so late, and he even had a ravenous appetite.

The Green Mile (Journal #11, Marking Period 1)

By now, you should see that a thread weaves its way through the stories we have read dealing with magical realism. In the last century, American authors have attempted to tackle the genre using modern examples of oppression and social injustice. Marquez and Kafka represented artistic points-of-view that were unique to the trials of their background. Marquez's fiction was born from the oppressive living conditions of a turbulent political backdrop that had people fearing for their lives in the light of day. Kafka's writing talked about the modern frustrations of living in a society where people are dehumanized as they work for a governmental system that takes everything and gives nothing in return.

It seemed that no matter where you lived, you merely traded one set of problems for another. The societal ill that ties these two authors together is the notion that people are trapped hopelessly in a world where they are oppressed. The magic they create is their only window out of reality.

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" features a character who is supposed to be heaven's chosen. In the body of the story, an angel falls to Earth and is subsequently abused - treated like a sideshow attraction, held prisoner before being blamed for failing to do what angels are "supposed to do".

Again, the common thread through all of this is the idea that the characters are mired in hopeless living situations that they must somehow endure. The fantasy world they create and inhabit offers them their only hope.

As American writers dealt with the societal issues of racism, slavery, segregation and poverty - they also began constructing elaborate myths that blended fantasy and reality to foster the idea that their subjects could only hope to endure by having magical/supernatural powers/abilities that would help them transcend the situations that bound them in helpless despair.

Which brings us to our current example....

One of the trademarks of Stephen King's writing is the moral earnestness with which he approaches a wide range of social issues. The Green Mile is, however, the most overtly didactic of his works. Its purpose is to kindle the reader's outrage at the inhumanity and capriciousness of the death penalty. Victims of the death penalty are, King suggests, overwhelmingly, the poor, social or racial minorities, or the mentally impaired. The three men executed during the course of the novel are a Native American, a lowlife French Canadian, and a man whose guilt is questionable. In contrast, "the President," a well-connected white man who had killed his father, stays on E Block only briefly before his sentence is commuted to life in prison.


Please read the following excerpt for Friday's class and answer the following questions in your journals. Be prepared.

1) What are the societal ills King introduces to instill a sense of injustice in the reader?

2) What examples of the afterlife are mentioned in this piece?

3) How are these mention(s) uniquely American?

4) How do these experiences mirror that of the characters in some of the other examples of magical realism we have read?

Chapter One

This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was there, too, of course.

The inmates made jokes about the chair the way people always make jokes about things that frighten them but can't be gotten away from. They called it Old Sparky, or the Big Juicy. They made cracks about the Power bill, and how Warden Moores would cook his Thanksgiving dinner that fall, with his wife, Melinda, too sick to cook.

But for the ones who actually had to sit down in that chair, the humor went out of the situation in a hurry I presided over seventy-eight executions during my time at Cold Mountain (that's one figure I've never been confused about; I'll remember it on my deathbed), and I think that, for most of those men, the truth of what was happening to them finally hit all the way home when their ankles were being damped to the stout oak of "Old Sparky's" legs. The realization came then (you would see it rising in their eyes, a kind of cold dismay) that their, own legs had finished their careers. The blood still ran in them, the muscles were still strong, but they were finished, all the same; they were never going to walk another country mile or dance with a girl at a barn-raising. Old Sparky's clients came to a knowledge of their deaths from the ankles up. There was a black silk bag that went over their heads after they had finished their rambling and mostly disjointed last remarks. It was supposed to be for them, but I always thought it was really for us, to keep us from seeing the awful tide of dismay in their eyes as they realized they were going to die with their knees bent.

There was no death row at Cold Mountain, only E Block, set apart from the other four and about a quarter their size, brick instead of wood, with a horrible bare metal roof that glared in the summer sun like a delirious eyeball. Six cells inside, three on each side of a wide center aisle, each almost twice as big as the cells in the other four blocks. Singles, too. Great accommodations for a prison (especially in the thirties), but the inmates would have traded for cells in any of the other four. Believe me, they would have traded.

There was never a time during my years as block superintendent when all six cells were occupied at one time -- thank God for small favors. Four was the most, mixed black and white (at Cold Mountain, there was no segregation among the walking dead), and that was a little piece of hell. One was a woman, Beverly McCall. She was black as the ace of spades and as beautiful as the sin you never had nerve enough to commit. She put up with six years of her husband beating her, but wouldn't put up with his creeping around for a single day. On the evening after she found out he was cheating, she stood waiting for the unfortunate Lester McCall, known to his pals (and, presumably, to his extremely short-term mistress) as Cutter, at the top of the stairs leading to the apartment over his barber shop. She waited until he got his overcoat half off, then dropped his cheating guts onto his tu-tone shoes. Used one of Cutter's own razors to do it. Two nights before she was due to sit in Old Sparky, she called me to her cell and said she had been visited by her African spirit-father in a dream. He told her to discard her slave-name and to die under her free name, Matuomi. That was her request, that her deathwarrant should be read under the name of Beverly Matuomi. I guess her spirit-father didn't give her any first name, or one she could make out, anyhow. I said yes, okay, fine. One thing those years serving as the bull-goose screw taught me was never to refuse the condemned unless I absolutely had to. In the case of Beverly Matuomi, it made no difference, anyway. The governor called the next day around three in the afternoon, commuting her sentence to life in the Grassy Valley Penal Facility for Women -- all penal and no penis, we used to say back then. I was glad to see Bev's round ass going left instead of right when she got to the duty desk, let me tell you.

Thirty-five years or so later -- had to be at least thirty-five -- I saw that name on the obituary page of the paper, under a picture of a skinny-faced black lady with a cloud of white hair and glasses with rhinestones at the comers. It was Beverly. She'd spent the last ten years of her life a free woman, the obituary said, and had rescued the small-town library of Raines Falls pretty much single-handed. She had also taught Sunday school and had been much loved in that little backwater. LIBRARIAN DIES OF HEART FAILURE, the headline said, and below that, in smaller type, almost as an afterthought: Served Over Two Decades in Prison for Murder. Only the eyes, wide and blazing behind the glasses with the rhinestones at the comers, were the same. They were the eyes of a woman who even at seventy-whatever would not hesitate to pluck a safety razor from its blue jar of disinfectant, if the urge seemed pressing. You know murderers, even if they finish up as old lady librarians in dozey little towns. At least you do if you've spent as much time minding murderers as I did. There was only one time I ever had a question about the nature of my job. That, I reckon, is why I'm writing this.

The wide corridor up the center of E Block was floored with linoleum the color of tired old limes, and so what was called the Last Mile at other prisons was called the Green Mile at Cold Mountain. It ran, I guess, sixty long paces from south to north, bottom to top. At the bottom was the restraint room. At the top end was a T-junction. A left turn meant life -- if you called what went on in the sunbaked exercise yard life, and many did; many lived it for years, with no apparent ill effects. Thieves and arsonists and sex criminals, all talking their talk and walking their walk and making their little deals.

A right turn, though -- that was different. First you went into my office (where the carpet was also green, a thing I kept meaning to change and not getting around to), and crossed in front of my desk, which was flanked by the American flag on the left and the state flag on the right. On the far side were two doors. One led into the small W.C. that I and the E Block guards (sometimes even Warden Moores) used; the other opened on a kind of storage shed. This was where you ended up when you walked the Green Mile.



It was a small door -- I had to duck my head when I went through, and John Coffey actually had to sit and scoot. You came out on a little landing, then went down three cement steps to a board floor. It was a miserable room without heat and with a metal roof, just like the one on the block to which it was an adjunct. It was cold enough in there to see your breath during the winter, and stifling in the summer. At the execution of Elmer Manfred -- in July or August of '30, that one was, I believe -- we had nine witnesses pass out.

On the left side of the storage shed -- again -- there was life. Tools (all locked down in frames crisscrossed with chains, as if they were carbine rifles instead of spades and pickaxes), dry goods, sacks of seeds for spring planting in the prison gardens, boxes of toilet paper, pallets cross-loaded with blanks for the prison plate-shop...even bags of lime for marking out the baseball diamond and the football gridiron -- the cons played in what was known as The Pasture, and fall afternoons were greatly looked forward to at Cold Mountain.

On the right -- once again -- death. Old Sparky his ownself, sitting up on a plank platform at the southeast comer of the storeroom, stout oak legs, broad oak arms that had absorbed the terrorized sweat of scores of men in the last few minutes of their lives, and the metal cap, usually hung jauntily on the back of the chair, like some robot kid's beanie in a Buck Rogers comic-strip. A cord ran from it and through a gasket-circled hole in the cinderblock wall behind the chair. Off to one side was a galvanized tin bucket. If you looked inside it, you would see a circle of sponge, cut just right to fit the metal cap. Before executions, it was soaked in brine to better conduct the charge of direct-current electricity that ran through the wire, through the sponge, and into the condemned man's brain.

Copyright © 1996 by Stephen King

The Coming of Age Story (10/11/16)

In today's class, I want to begin working on The Coming of Age piece.

Your story must include the following:

The story must feature a character at a crossroads in his/her life. The story must include the idea that the character is facing some great change and must make some major decision about the road ahead. Somewhere in the story, you must include the phrase "a moment of failure" that leads to some decision that the character makes about his/her path. This is going to set us up nicely for what comes next in Magical Realism. This is the root of the idea that the genre is the language of the oppressed. As a society, we are slowly losing our identity. There are many factors that are slowly contributing to this erosion. It could also be argued that as one facade begins to erode, something more substantial is beginning to blossom and take shape. This could also be said about the character in you Coming of Age piece.

For many of you, this is a time of reckoning as you begin to take of where you have been...and where are you going.

See what I did there?

In today's class, you are going to workshop your piece with one partner. At the end of class, you are going to present your ideas as we begin the writing process. The rough draft of this piece will be due on Monday, 10/17/16.

Groundhog Day and The Labyrinth of Self (Journal #10, Marking Period 1)

We are a few months shy of Groundhog Day. However, I thought we could spend some time writing about the myth of the story and how it relates to magical realism.

In the film, Bill Murray plays a lost character -- an arrogant journalist stuck in a repetitive time labyrinth he can't hope to escape unless he solves the emotional puzzle within himself.

The story is a blend of fantasy and reality that supposes we can believe the idea that a man can be trapped in a time-loop until he figures out what is wrong with him. This alone is the fantastic element that the viewer is asked to "buy" in order to make the story work.

In one scene, which turns out to be central to the movie's theme, he expresses his despair to two working class drinking buddies in a local bar.

One of his two inebriated companions then points to a beer glass and sums up the way he is responding to his situation: "You know, some guys would look at this glass and they would say, you know, 'that glass is half empty'. Other guys'd say 'that glass is half full'. I bet you is (or I peg you as) a 'the glass is half empty' kind of guy. Am I right?"

The story is basically about a man who sees the assignment of covering Groundhog Day, in a small western Pennsylvania town, as beneath him. As he lives the same day, over and over, he finally finds meaning in something he used to view as frivolous.

Now, he sees the glass as half full, and the day as a form of freedom. As he expresses it in a corny TV speech about the weather that he gives for the camera, at the umpteenth ceremony he has covered of the coming out of the groundhog:

"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the of warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."

In other words, having accepted the conditions of life and learned the pleasures afforded by human companionship, he is no longer like all those people who fear life's travails, and try to use the weather forecast, by human or groundhog, to control events. He accepts "winter" as an opportunity.

We are going to be watching a piece of this film and discussing it from a few different angles.

Before that...

Today's creative writing assignment is a journal assignment that will be worth 20 points. However, it should be longer than a few lines. Don't go cheap on this one. Really invest yourself in it. In this entry, write about a mortal character who must navigate the trials of a supernatural experience, but must look inward for his/her own escape.

Begin your story with the line: "A minute of failure..."

Often in magical realism, the answers lie within...

You may begin writing now...

The Myth of Sisyphus (Journal #9, Marking Period 1)

We have discussed, many times, how stories borrow a great deal from myths, folklore, and other cultures.

It seems like nothing really new has been written, for quite some time.

When dealing with magical-realism, you are dealing with a complex tapestry of cultures and their myths. More than this, you are finding that when people migrate around the globe they are taking their myths with them, and those myths get dissolved into other cultures. In this way, myths tend to morph and turn into something that only loosely resembles their original form.

The Myth of Sisyphus is one such myth. Camus' piece is a meditation about a man whom the gods had condemned to ceaselessly rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than this futile and hopeless labor.



(Ooops...wrong Homer)



(That's more like it...)

It is also based on Homer's story of a man who was supposedly the wisest and most prudent of all mortals. So much for that...



This myth is echoed in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis". In this story, Kafka takes a man and turns him into a bug in a commentary about the monotony and drudgery of a life that seems to rob a man of his humanity.



A more modern telling of this story blends Camus and Kafka into a comic story that is steeped in philosophy. "Groundhog Day" is only a comedy on the surface. The real truth is that it is a complex study about a man whose neverending task is to find meaning in a life that he finds to be dull - literally robbing him of the chance to escape the same day for a seeming eternity.

There is something to be said here for the oppression each character feels that is either self-imposed, or resulting from a reaction to his environment.

Either way, each story has to do with a character who is made to suffer (metaphorically, or otherwise) because he is not satisfied with his station in life.

In your journals, I would like you do to some investigating today.
Can you summarize the story of Sisyphus and tell me how it relates to magical-realism?
Is the story itself a good example of magical-realism?
If not, what essential elements of magical-realism does "The Myth of Sisyphus" lend to other examples of the genre?

Elements of a “Coming of Age” Story (Journal #8, Marking Period 1)

The coming-of-age story will typically trace the protagonist’s growth from a self-absorbed, immature individual into an expansive, mature human being concerned with the welfare of others, and his/her place in the world scheme. Identify the following elements in your character’s story/ your “coming of age” tale for your chosen character:

Character’s growth process begins when he or she is faced with loss or discovery.

Character loses innocence and struggles with the knowledge that the world is a complex and sometimes dangerous place.

Character’s growth is characterized by clashes between personal desires and the “rules” or “social order” of adult society. Character tries to establish his own “rules” as he attempts to become an active participant in the world.

Character finds his or her place in adult society. Is it a good fit? (It may not always be a comfortable or successful fit.)

Additional characteristics of coming-of-age stories. Some may not apply.
Trial, initiation, rites of passage, and/or ritual.
Testing boundaries and limits.
Epiphanies (sudden realizations of truth about self/world)
Loss of innocence.
Journey (literal or symbolic)
Conflict: Internal (confused emotions), desiring simplicity of childhood and excitement of adulthood, etc.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (10/5/16)

“Only three things have ever astonished me: a dream within a dream, voices in an empty room, and fire the colour of ice.” – Silvina Ocampo, from a letter to A.M.

Why are those things astonishing?

Realism describes “reality” as we know it. But reality can be magical.

For example, in the fall, when you walk down the road, the sun is shining and the trees are bright with colors, what colors?

How would you describe an amazingly beautiful fall-colored tree?

That’s the magic part of life, of what we call reality.

What are other examples of amazing but real situations? Famous Colombian author, Gabriel García Márquez said that Magic Realism was actually closer to describing life than Realism, because life is so unexpected, and surprising, all the time!

Read this passage from one of Márquez’ most famous books called “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

Notice where the writer surprises you.

They insisted so much that José Arcadio Buendia paid the thirty
reales and led them into the center of the tent, where there was a
giant with a hairy torso and a shaved head, with a copper ring in
his nose and a heavy iron chain on his ankle, watching over a
pirate chest. When it was opened by the giant, the chest gave off
a glacial exhalation. Inside there was only an enormous,
transparent block with infinite internal needles in which the light
of the sunset was broken up into colored stars. Disconcerted,
knowing that the children were waiting for an immediate
explanation, José Arcadio Buendia ventured a murmur:
“It’s the largest diamond in the world.”
“No,” the gypsy countered, “It’s…”

What is it?

One notable feature of Magic Realism is the very detailed description. It’s the way we know it’s real, we recognize the object as something familiar, but the writer has put it down in such a way that it becomes new to us again.

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale For Children (10/5/16)

The questions associated with this selection are at the bottom of the story. You must read this story for Friday, 10/7/16 and answer the questions in Googledocs by 10/7/16.

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale For Children
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn't get up, impeded by his enormous wings. (A)

Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on the sick child, and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with a mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away and sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake.

"He's an angel," she told them. "He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down."

On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo's house. Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a spiritual conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff's club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas. But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal. (B)

Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o'clock, alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers less frivolous than those at dawn had already arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning the captive's future. The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others of sterner mind felt that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud in order to implant the earth a race of winged wise men who could take charge of the universe. (C) But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust woodcutter. Standing by the wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door so that he could take a close look at that pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the fascinated chickens. He was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him. (D) Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. (E) The he came out of the chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if wings were not the essential element in determining the different between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the latter would write his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict from the highest courts.



His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after a few hours the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the mob that was about to knock the house down. (F) Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel. (G)

The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst of that shipwreck disorder that made the earth tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week they had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the horizon.



The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire. At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom of the wise neighbor woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he turned down the papal lunches that the pentinents brought him, and they never found out whether it was because he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the end ate nothing but eggplant mush. (H) His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem to be of this world. (I) Although many thought that his reaction had not been one of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity was not that of a her taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.



Father Gonzaga held back the crowd's frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting the arrival of a final judgment on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out in the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn't just a Norwegian with wings. Those meager letters might have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not put and end to the priest's tribulations.

It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town the traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The admission to see her was not only less than the admission to see the angel, but people were permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden. What was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere affliction with which she recounted the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had sneaked out of her parents' house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in tow and through the crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider. Her only nourishment came from the meatballs that charitable souls chose to toss into her mouth. A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain mental disorder, like the blind man who didn't recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn't get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. (J) Those consolation miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the angel's reputation when the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely. That was how Father Gonzaga was cured forever of his insomnia and Pelayo's courtyard went back to being as empty as during the time it had rained for three days and crabs walked through the bedrooms.

The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn't get in during the winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn't get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren close to town and have up his job as a bailiff for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk, the kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times. The chicken coop was the only thing that didn't receive any attention. If they washed it down with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one. At first, when the child learned to walk, they were careful that he not get too close to the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell, and before they child got his second teeth he'd gone inside the chicken coop to play, where the wires were falling apart. The angel was no less standoffish with him than with the other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who had no illusions. They both came down with the chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who took care of the child couldn't resist the temptation to listen to the angel's heart, and he found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn't understand why other men didn't have them too.



When the child began school it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. They would drive him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen. He seemed to be in so many places at the same time that they grew to think that he'd be duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels. He could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. All he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Pelayo threw a blanket over him and extended him the charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only then did they notice that he had a temperature at night, and was delirious with the tongue twisters of an old Norwegian. That was one of the few times they became alarmed, for they thought he was going to die and not even the wise neighbor woman had been able to tell them what to do with dead angels.

And yet he not only survived his worst winter, but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He remained motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him, and at the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which looked more like another misfortune of decreptitude. But he must have known the reason for those changes, for he was quite careful that no one should notice them, that no one should hear the sea chanteys that he sometimes sang under the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened a furrow in the vegetable patch and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light and couldn't get a grip on the air. But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.

Questions for reading:

1. (corresponds to "A") What elements of magical realism do you find in this piece of the text?

2. (corresponds to "B") How does this description make you feel about the angel? How does the writer evoke this response?

3. (corresponds to "C") What do these details reveal about the expectations of angels?

4. (corresponds to "D") What is the effect of this image of the winged man in the chicken coop?

5. (E) What senses are appealed to in this description of the angel? What details that are not normally linked are placed together in these images?

6. (F) What is ironic about this scene?

7. (G) What do you think of Elisanda's decision?

8. (H) What elements of magical realism do you find here?

9. (I) What can you conclude about the angel's disposition?

10. (J) What is unusual about these miracles?

Gabriel García Márquez and Magical Realism (10/5/16)

Like many contemporary South American writers, Marquez writes a kind of fiction called magic realism. This style of writing is characterized by elements of fantasy (often borrowed from mythology) that are casually inserted into earthy, realistic settings. The magic realists often suspend the laws of nature. When using this bizarre mixture of the commonplace and the outlandish, the magic realists can force us to think about our fixed notions of "reality" and "normality". This blurring of fantasy is often an important part of the themes, or main ideas about life, that the magic realists want to convey.

As you read this story, notice the way he tosses together the offbeat, the commonplace, and the sublime into the strange mix known as magic realism. Notice, too, his unusual, even startling combination of images, and be aware of the things they help you to see. Try to decide why some of the images seem funny, some sad, and some - appropriately enough - magical.

Magical Realism (10/5/16)

The term "magical realism" was first introduced by Franz Roh, a German art critic, who considered magical realism an art category. To him, it was a way of representing and responding to reality and pictorially depicting the enigmas of reality. It is characterized by an aesthetic style in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even "normal" setting. It has been widely used in relation to literature, art, and film.

In order to understand the basis for this type of fiction, you need to understand the culture that inspired it. In Márquez's work, he is informed by the history and culture of the numerous Indian tribes that settled Colombia. Because of this, the artwork produced in that country was heavily informed by culture and beliefs that include folklore, nature worship and mysticism.

For these reasons, magical realism expands the categories of "the real" so as to encompass myth, magic and other extraordinary phenomena in nature or experience which European realism excluded.

The next short story you write will have several components. You will be expanding on the traditional elements of fiction to include a type of fiction that has become very popular in the 1920s.

You will also be offering critical analysis of this story and other works that included in this genre. Your work in this unit will also include some research into the cultures that inspired this group of artists. So, there will be several deadlines.

To begin, we will be reading a piece of fiction by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez entitled "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale For Children". In the story, an angel falls to the Earth because of a violent rainstorm. When the angel is found by Pelayo and Elisenda, they are shocked to see an angel, and yet they never question its existence. The reality of the situation is never mistrusted; however, the angel itself is an astounding manifestation.


(The Chilean Miners)

Their interaction with this angel produces an ending that poses some difficult questions concerning fate and the nature of loss. It seems ironic that I chose this work a few years after 33 men were pulled from a hole in the earth.

Think about how a magical-realist might tell that story.