Monstro is everything I love to read. First, it’s a short story, which in my opinion are the most fun stories to read. However, the short story is able to incorporate social commentary and is intellectually stimulating as it connects multiple disciplines, which create a dynamic and complex picture of our gruesome present.
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After 2 shifts I was feeling sick as a dog, an Aztek dog, a Mexican hairless ixquintle raised for food on the outskirts of the kapital in acres of kennels… which can make the little dogs nervous, so before they kill them to fry or boil… you might see the emaciated perritos staring at you with their eyes that like to pop out, trembling and shaking (168) Hermann Minkowski, who became a teacher of Albert Einstein, theorized what we call space-time. In this theory, space and time are connected to create a relationship between movement through space and the experience of time. Einstein later expanded on this theory saying motions through space affect the passage of time since the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. If you’re moving, time is running more slowly, for example.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz is a tremendous novel that has been widely received as a beautiful work of art. Outside of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz’s full body of work vocalizes a powerful commentary in postmodern culture. Through themes of rewriting and writing history, pop culture, fantasy and science fiction, amongst others, Díaz creates a conversation about politics, which penetrates the personal spheres of the characters in the novel. Because of this, I wonder how modern art, Oscar Wao included, operates within politics and the cultural industries. As our society has moved into the digital age, we tend to look at culture through icons and symbols, which has started to replace the written word. But how then is history understood in the postmodern frame of time and culture and how does that understanding reflect changes in culture and politics? Why does Oscar Wao read so well under a postmodern audience?
That night Beli drifted on a vast ocean of loneliness, buffeted by squalls of despair, and during one of her intermittent sleeps she dreamt that she had truly and permanently died and she and her child shared a coffin and when she finally awoke for good, night had broken and out in the street a grade of grief unlike any she’d encountered before was being uncoiled, a cacophony of wails that seemed to have torn free from the cracked soul of humanity itself. Like a funeral song for the entire planet. No Particular Way But Our Own: An Essay Proposal On Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House10/9/2017 Werewolves, vampires, ghosts, aliens. These are all beings that are found in horror stories. But why? What do they all have in common? They are hybrids. Werewolves and vampires are both sub-humans. They have human characteristics, but don’t act like humans. Ghosts and aliens aren’t really humans either, but they act with autonomy and show emotion, meaning this still carry human characteristics. In his essay, “Monster Culture, (Seven Theses)” Jeffrey Jerome Cohen writes, “And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions” (6). Because these characters are not confined to a specific category, they are terrifying and defy laws of nature. This is seen in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House as the distinctions between the parent and the child become harder to distinguish, meaning rather than being the parent or the child, someone can become the parent and the child. Being both/and at the same time creates a dynamic shift in the organization of the home, uprooting our perception of morality and individuality.
Toni Morrison’s writing is musical in style and prose. The way she writes doesn’t read like a traditional novel, instead Morrison will implement examples of poetry or musical themes. Although this style writing can function as an aesthetic, I would argue this writing dives deeper as it reflects an oral history that is seen in black history, jazz and blues.
When reading stories of ghosts, hauntings, and monsters, we often focus on these non-human entities as they are exactly that, non-human. Although these entities incite fear, the are also entertaining. As readers, we like to entertain the thought of “what if.” Jeffrey Jerome Cohen talks about our interest in these beings in his essay, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Cohen explores the idea that these monsters slip into different desires and forms of deviant behavior. The monster then controls our morals and therefore also hierarchies and and populations. He also argues, these monsters challenge categories that we have previously organized. Specifically the difference between human and not human. Although the differentiation is important, it’s easy to forget the role “the human” in these stories, however, they can sometimes reflect a lot more than the monsters can because sometimes the human really isn't as "human" as we perceive.
In two major pieces, we have seen a striking relationship between the house and the home. In both Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House two female leads experience the isolation and desolation that emanate from their relationships to their houses. In The Turn of the Screw and in The Haunting of Hill House both of the main female characters, the governess and Eleanor, find both security and alarm from their relationship inside the house that they travel to. Both characters question their mental health and therefore their own innocence and independence. What we find in these houses is a complicated relationship between family and individuality as these women operate inside a home, but yet simultaneously seem homeless.
How do we deal with questions that don’t have answers? Or questions we don’t know how to find the answers to? How many scary movies have you watched where a character has said, "It's behind me... isn't it?" When we come face to face with uncertainty, we tense up and become anxious because when we reach a situation that is unpredictable, we imagine the worst outcomes because we are naturally defensive. The inability to predict is born from this fear, and from that, the fear of change. When we are in-able to predict change we loose our sense of reality. We know that in the morning the sun will rise and in the evening the sun will set. But if we had no knowledge of this, it would be terrifying to not know the sun was going to rise again. Routines are safe for us and when safety is displaced our knowledge becomes limited.
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AuthorNatasha Dodge |