milque·toast
[milk-tohst] Show IPA
noun ( sometimes initial capital letter )
a very timid, unassertive, spineless person, especially one who is easily dominated or intimidated: a
milquetoast who's afraid to ask for a raise.
A Raisin in the Sun
Mr. Linder—milquetoast?? Or the Devil?????
Making a pack with the devil—Dr. Faust (Goethe)
New version—resist temptation
How to make the connections??? Language of reading/grammar of literature (patterns/conventions;
codes/rules) comparison to painting—illusion of depth—not all feel necessary
Large set of conventions from which to draw
How do you learn to recognize??? PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE
ASK QUESTIONS Whom does this character resemble? Where have I seen this before? Etc.
MEMORY
SYMBOL
PROFESSIONAL READERS FROM THE NOVICES
PATTERN
--THREE ITEMS SEPARATE
A quest or not
When is a trip to the story a quest? Knight dangerous road a Holy Grail a dragon (or two) evil knight
a princess
A knight named Reuban a road through the Badlands a Holy Grail (Davy) a dragon (Andreeson) an evil
knight (Jape) a princess (Sara)
Real reason—Self-knowledge—Cryingof Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtqt0bXb4Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k_TNk2mtTA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pswect7Bf_c
Oedipa Maas, the young wife of a man named Mucho, lives in Kinneret, California. One day, she receives
a letter from a law firm telling her that her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, has died and named her the
executor of his estate. Oedipa resolves to faithfully execute her duty, and she travels to San Narciso
(Pierce's hometown) where she meets the lawyer, Metzger, assigned to help her, with whom she
spontaneously begins an affair.
As they go about sorting through Pierce's tangled financial affairs, Oedipa takes note of the fact that
Pierce owned an extensive stamp collection. One night, Oedipa and Metzger go to a bar called The
Scope, where they meet Mike Fallopian, a member of a right-wing fanatical organization called the Peter
Pinguid Society. In the bathroom of the bar, Oedipa sees a symbol that she later learns is supposed to
represent a muted post horn. Written below the symbol are the acronym W.A.S.T.E. and the name
"Kirby." Oedipa makes a note of all this info before returning to chat with Mike at the bar.
Oedipa and Metzger take a trip one day to Fangoso Lagoons, an area in which Pierce owned a
substantial amount of land. There, they meet a man named Manny di Presso, a lawyer who is suing the
Inverarity estate on behalf of his client, who recovered and sold human bones to Inverarity but did not
receive proper payment. Pierce wanted the bones to make charcoal for cigarette filters. A member of The
Paranoids, a hippie band that follows Oedipa around, points out that Manny's story is similar to that of
the 17th-century play The Courier's Tragedy. Oedipa and Metzger decide to see a production of the play
nearby. The play mentions the word "Tristero," a word that fascinates Oedipa because of its placement
within the play. She goes backstage to speak with the director, Randolph Driblette, who tells her to stop
overanalyzing the play. She resolves to call him back later.
After rereading Pierce's will later on, Oedipa goes to a stockholders' meeting for the Yoyodyne company,
a firm owned in part by Inverarity. After taking a brief tour, she stumbles into the office of Stanley
Koteks, who is drawing the muted post horn symbol on his pad of paper. He tells her about a scientist
named John Nefastis who has built a type of Mexwell's Demon, or a physically impossible machine that
allows for perpetual motion by violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Koteks encourages Oedipa
to meet with Nefastis.
Wanting to learn more about The Courier's Tragedy, Oedipa gets an anthology of Jacobean revenge
plays. She notices that the paperback copy has no mention of the Tristero, however, which puzzles her.
She decides to go to Berkeley to meet with the publisher. In the meantime, she stops by an elderly care
home that Pierce had owned, where she meets an old man with a ring depicting the muted post horn.
She also hires a philatelist (stamp expert) named Genghis Cohen to go through Pierce's stamp collection.
After doing so, Genghis tells her that some of Pierce's stamps have a muted post horn in their
watermark. Oedipa begins to realize that she is uncovering a large mystery.
Oedipa goes to Berkeley to meet with John Nefastis, who shows her his perpetual motion machine. It can
only be operated by people with special mental capabilities allowing them to communicate with the
machine, and he tells Oedipa that she has no such mental skills. He then propositions her, causing her to
run out screaming. Oedipa then begins a very, very long night of wandering around aimlessly all over the
Bay area. She encounters the muted post horn symbol almost everywhere, leading her to believe that she
may be hallucinating. Just before dawn, however, she encounters an old man who hands her a letter and
asks her to deliver it via W.A.S.T.E. under the freeway. After helping the man to his room, Oedipa finds a
W.A.S.T.E. facility under the freeway, drops in the letter and waits for the delivery man, whom she
follows to Oakland and back to Berkeley after he picks up the letters and delivers them. Oedipa returns to
her home in Kinneret to see her doctor, who begins shooting at her as she pulls up. He has gone crazy,
obsessed with the idea that Israelis are coming to kill him because he assisted the Nazis in World War II.
After he is arrested, Oedipa sees her husband, Mucho, and spends some time with him, although she
quickly sees that he has become addicted to LSD, making it difficult to communicate effectively.
Increasingly alone, Oedipa seeks out Emory Bortz, an English professor at San Narciso College who has
extensive knowledge of Jacobean revenge plays. With his help, she pieces together the history of the
Tristero, which dates back to mid-16th-century Europe. She learns that Driblette has died, which means
she will never know why he included the lines about the Tristero in his production of The Courier's
Tragedy (these lines are not ordinarily included in the play). Oedipa begins to give up as she realizes that
she is very lonely and has no real friends. She visits Mike Fallopian again, who suggests that the whole
Tristero mystery may be nothing more than a huge, complex joke played on her by Pierce. Oedipa will not
accept this possibility but realizes that every route leading to the Tristero also leads to the Inverarity
Estate. Meanwhile, Genghis Cohen helps her piece together some mysteries about Pierce's stamp
collection, which is to be auctioned off by a local dealer as Lot 49. Genghis has heard that a secretive
bidder will attend the auction to bid on Lot 49, but he will not reveal himself beforehand. Oedipa goes to
the auction, excited to find out who the bidder is, thinking that he may know the key to the Tristero. The
novel ends as Oedipa sits in the room waiting for the crying of Lot 49, when she will discover the identity
of the mystery bidder.
Overall Analysis
The Crying of Lot 49 was written in the 1960s, one of the most politically and socially turbulent decades
in U.S. history. The decade saw the rise of the drug culture, the Vietnam War, the rock revolution, as well
as the birth of numerous social welfare programs after the Democrats swept Congress in the 1964
elections. This was also the decade of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King's
assassination, Civil Rights, and, to some extent, women's rights. The novel taps into this explosion of
cultural occurrences, depicting a dramatically fragmented society. The Crying of Lot 49 contains a
pervasive sense of cultural chaos; indeed, the book draws on all areas of culture and society, including
many of those mentioned above. In the end, the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas, finds herself alone
and alienated from that society, having lost touch with the life she used to lead before she began her
attempt to uncover the mystery of the Tristero. The drug culture plays a big part in this sense of isolation.
The world around Oedipa seems to be a world perpetually on drugs, manic and full of conspiracies and
illusions. And though that world is exciting and new, it is also dangerous: drugs contribute to the
destruction of Oedipa's marriage, and drugs cause Hilarius to go insane. Oedipa hallucinates so often
that she seems to be constantly high, and ultimately, this brings her nothing but a sense of chaotic
alienation.
Many of the problems with chaos found in the novel are tied in to the idea of communication. The major
symbol of order in the novel, Maxwell's Demon, cannot be operated because it requires a certain
unattainable level of communication. Letters in the novel, which should be clear and direct forms of
stable communication, are ultimately meaningless. The novel also contains a mail-delivery group that
requires its members to mail a letter once a week even if they have nothing to say. Indeed, the letter
Oedipa receives in chapter one may itself be meaningless, since it is the first step in what may be nothing
more than a big joke played on Oedipa. The religious moment Oedipa experiences in chapter two seems
for a moment to promise the possibility of some kind of communication being communicated, but the
process breaks down. Religion, language, science, all of the purveyors of communication, and through
that communication a sense of wholeness, do not correctly function in the novel.
Related to the theme of the problem of communication is the novel's representation of the way in which
people impose interpretation on the meaningless. It is very telling that Oedipa wants to turn the mystery
of the Tristero into a "constellation," which is not really an example of true order. Solar systems are
simply mankind's way of imposing an artificial but pleasing order on the randomness of outer space. It is,
furthermore, an imposition of a two-dimensional structure onto a three-dimensional reality. Oedipa's
quest to construct a constellation seems to indicate that she is only looking for a superficial system.
Indeed, she never succeeds in figuring out the meaning behind the Tristero, and, further, the novel ends
with the very strong likelihood that the mystery may hold no mystery at all. And just as she is unable to
piece together the puzzle of the Tristero, she is similarly unable to refashion her life after it begins to fall
apart. Even the United States government, which tries to impose an order on the world of mail delivery,
cannot prevent side groups from springing up to undermine its work.
There are two concepts underlying all this: puns and science. The novel is full of puns and language
games of all sorts. For instance, the odd names of the novel's characters are a type of play on different
words and their symbolic baggage. Another example is the concept of the word "lot" in the title, which
actually occurs several times in the book but does not relate to anything in the story until the last few
pages. Also, we see that Mucho's radio station spells "fuck" when read in reverse, forming another little
language game that does not have necessarily any inherent meaning but does indicate an interest in
manipulating language for intellectual enjoyment. Language is the means through which the story is
communicated, and Pynchon has chosen to use a language full of jokes, puns, and satires. Science seems
to stand in opposition to the chaos of language that all of Pynchon's manipulation suggests. Science is
ordered and coherent and offers a body of definite knowledge that all can study. And yet, even the
coherence of science is undermined in the existence of Maxwell's Demon and the figure of Dr. Hilarius.
Though pure science may offer coherence, the uses to which that science is put, the interpretations
imposed on that science, can scatter that coherence to the wind.
More than anything else, The Crying of Lot 49 appears to be about cultural chaos and communication as
seen through the eyes of a young woman who finds herself in a hallucinogenic world disintegrating
around her.
Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion Chapter Two
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


More often than not, eating isn’t just eating
Whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion
Eating is such a personal thing to us, we don’t enjoy sharing the experience with people
we don’t like
Eating forms a bond between people
Eating is a boring subject, so why include it if not necessary?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbH96NJ_VIQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tezjznL9NzM
Plot
The story begins with a silent film sequence during which the good Squire Allworthy (George
Devine) returns home after a lengthy stay in London and discovers a baby in his bed. Thinking
that his barber, Mr. Partridge (Jack MacGowran), and one of his servants, Jenny Jones (Joyce
Redman), have "birthed" the infant out of lust, the squire banishes them and chooses to raise
little Tom Jones as if he were his own son.
Tom (Albert Finney) grows up to be a lively young man whose good looks and kind heart make
him very popular with the opposite sex. However, he truly loves only one woman, the gentle
Sophie Western (Susannah York), who returns his passion. Sadly, Tom is stigmatized as a
"bastard" and cannot wed a young lady of her high station. Sophie, too, must hide her feelings
while her aunt (Edith Evans) and her father, Squire Western (Hugh Griffith) try to coerce her to
marry a more suitable man - a man whom she hates.
This young man is Blifil (David Warner, in his film debut), the son of the Squire's widowed
sister Bridget (Rachel Kempson). Although he is of legitimate birth, he is an ill-natured fellow
with plenty of hypocritical 'virtue' but none of Tom's warmth, honesty, or high spirits. When
Bridget dies unexpectedly, Blifil intercepts a letter which his mother intended for her brother's
eyes only. What this letter contains is not revealed until the end of the movie; however, after his
mother's funeral, Blifil and his two tutors, Mr. Thwackum (Peter Bull) and Mr. Square (John
Moffatt), join forces to convince the squire that Tom is a villain. Allworthy gives Tom a small
cash legacy and sorrowfully sends him out into the world to seek his fortune.
In his road-traveling odyssey, Tom is knocked unconscious while defending the good name of
his beloved Sophie and robbed of his legacy. He also flees from a jealous Irishman who falsely
accuses him of having an affair with his wife, engages in deadly swordfights, meets his alleged
father and his alleged mother, a certain Mrs. Waters, whom he saves from an evil Redcoat
Officer, and later beds the same Mrs. Waters. In a celebrated scene, Tom and Mrs. Waters sit
opposite each other in the dining room of the Upton Inn, wordlessly consuming an enormous
meal while gazing lustfully at each other.
Meanwhile, Sophie runs away from home soon after Tom's banishment to escape the attentions
of the loathed Blifil. After narrowly missing each other at the Upton Inn, Tom and Sophie arrive
separately in London. There, Tom attracts the attention of Lady Bellaston (Joan Greenwood), a
promiscuous noblewoman over 40 years of age. She is rich, beautiful, and completely amoral,
though it is worth noting that Tom goes to her bed willingly and is generously rewarded for his
services. Eventually, Tom ends up at Tyburn Gaol, facing a boisterous hanging crowd after two
blackguardly agents of Blifil frame him for robbery and attempted murder. Allworthy learns the
contents of the mysterious letter: Tom is not Jenny Jones's child, but Bridget's illegitimate son
and Allworthy's nephew. Furthermore, since Blifil knew this, concealed it, and tried to destroy
his half-brother, he is now in disgrace and disinherited. Allworthy uses this knowledge to get
Tom a pardon, but Tom has already been conveyed to the gallows; his hanging is begun, but is
interrupted by Squire Western, who cuts him down and takes him to Sophie. Tom now has
permission to court Sophie, and all ends well with Tom embracing Sophie with Squire Western's
blessing.
“Cathedral”
The narrator says that his wife’s blind friend, whose wife has just died, is going to spend the
night at their house. He says that he isn’t happy about this visitor and the man’s blindness
unsettles him. He explains that his wife met the blind man ten years ago when she worked for
him as a reader to the blind in Seattle. He says that on the last day of her job there, the blind man
touched her face and she wrote a poem about the experience. The narrator then describes his
wife’s past. She married her childhood sweetheart and became an officer’s wife. Unhappy with
her life, she tried to commit suicide one night by swallowing pills, but she survived. She and the
blind man kept in touch by sending audiotapes back and forth to each other throughout her
marriage, and she told everything to the blind man on tapes.
The narrator says that his wife once asked him to listen to one of the blind man’s tapes. They
started to listen but were interrupted before the narrator could hear anything about himself. The
narrator suggests taking the blind man bowling. His wife reminds him that the blind man’s wife,
Beulah, just died and says that if he loves her, he’ll welcome the blind man into their home. The
narrator asks whether Beulah was “Negro,” and his wife asks him whether he’s drunk. She then
tells him more about Beulah. Beulah became the blind man’s reader after the narrator’s wife
stopped working for him, and they eventually got married. After eight years, however, Beulah
died from cancer. The narrator thinks how awful it must have been for Beulah to know that her
husband could never look at her. He speculates that she could have worn whatever she wanted.
The narrator’s wife goes to pick up the blind man at the train station as the narrator waits at the
house. When they arrive, he watches his wife laughing and talking with the blind man as she
leads him by the arm to the house. The narrator is shocked to see that the blind man has a full
beard. The wife introduces the narrator to the blind man, whose name is Robert. They all sit in
the living room. The narrator asks what side of the train he sat on, and Robert says he sat on the
right and that he hadn’t been on a train for years. The narrator says his wife looks at him but
doesn’t seem to like what she sees.
The narrator says he’s never known a blind person. He describes what Robert looks like and
what he’s wearing. Robert doesn’t wear dark glasses, which the narrator finds strange. He wishes
Robert would wear them because his eyes look weird and turn in strange directions. He pours
scotch for all three of them, and they talk about Robert’s trip.
Robert smokes several cigarettes. The narrator says he didn’t think blind people could smoke.
They sit down for dinner and eat ravenously, not speaking, eating so much that they are dazed.
After dinner, they go back to the living room to drink more. The wife and Robert talk about
things that have happened to them in the past ten years, while the narrator occasionally tries to
join in. He learns that Robert and Beulah had run an Amway distributorship and that Robert is a
ham radio operator. When Robert asks the narrator questions, he makes only short responses.
The narrator then turns on the television, irritating his wife.
The wife goes upstairs to change clothes and is gone a long time. The narrator offers Robert
some pot, and they smoke a joint. The wife joins them when she comes back. She says she’s
going to just sit with them on the couch with her eyes closed, but she immediately falls asleep.
The narrator changes the channel and asks Robert if he wants to go to bed. Robert says he’ll stay
up with the narrator so that they can talk some more. The narrator says he likes the company and
that he and his wife never go to bed at the same time.
There is a program about the Middle Ages on television. Nothing else is on, but Robert says he
likes learning things. When the TV narrator doesn’t describe what’s happening, the narrator tries
to explain to Robert what’s going on. The TV narrator begins talking about cathedrals, showing
different ones in different countries. The narrator asks Robert whether he has any idea what a
cathedral looks like. Robert says he doesn’t and asks the narrator to describe one. The narrator
tries, but he knows he doesn’t do a very good job. Robert asks him if he’s religious, and the
narrator says he doesn’t believe in anything. He says he can’t describe a cathedral because
cathedrals are meaningless for him.
Robert asks the narrator to find a piece of paper and pen. Then he and the narrator sit around the
coffee table, and Robert tells the narrator to draw a cathedral. He puts his hand over the
narrator’s hand, following the movement of the pen. The narrator draws and draws, getting
wrapped up in what he’s doing. His wife wakes up and asks what’s going on, and Robert
answers that they’re drawing a cathedral. The wife doesn’t understand.
Robert tells the narrator to close his eyes and keep drawing, and the narrator does so. Soon
Robert tells him to open his eyes and see what he’s drawn, but the narrator doesn’t open them.
He knows he’s in his own home, but he feels like he’s nowhere. With his eyes still closed, he
says the drawing is “really something.”

Eating can easily show discontent between the members eating. For example, two people
are sitting down to eat when a third one joins. The first gets up because they don’t want
to share something that personal with another person they dislike
“The Dead”
The story centres on Gabriel Conroy on the night of the Morkan sisters' annual dance and dinner
in the first week of January 1904, perhaps the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6). Typical of the
stories in Dubliners, "The Dead" develops toward a moment of painful selfawareness; Joyce described this as an epiphany. The narrative generally concentrates on
Gabriel's insecurities, his social awkwardness, and the defensive way he copes with his
discomfort. The story culminates at the point when Gabriel discovers that, through years of
marriage, there was much he never knew of his wife's past.
Upon arriving at the party with his wife, Gabriel makes a joke that is not funny about the maid's
marriage prospects; and he fidgets, adjusts his clothing, and offers her money as a holiday
present. Not long after that, he gets flustered again when his wife pokes fun at him over a
conversation they had earlier, in which he had forced her to wear galoshes for the bad weather.
With such episodes, Gabriel is depicted as particularly pathetic. Similarly, Gabriel is unsure
about quoting a poem from the poet Robert Browning when he is giving his dinner address, as he
is afraid to be seen as pretentious. But, at the same time, Gabriel considers himself above the
others when he speculates that his audience would not understand the words he uses.
Later, when giving the traditional holiday toast, Gabriel overcompensates for some of his earlier
statements to his evening dancing partner Miss Ivors, an Irish nationalist. His talk relies heavily
on conventions; and he praises the virtues of the Irish people and idealizes the past in a way that
feels contrived and disingenuous, especially considering what the past will mean to him once he
hears his wife's story. In fact he hurts Miss Ivors by mistake so much that she rushes away even
before dinner is served.
As Gabriel is preparing to leave the party, he sees a woman absorbed in thought, standing at the
top of the staircase. He stares at her for a moment before he recognizes her as his wife. He then
envisages her as though she were the model in a painting that he would call "Distant Music". Her
distracted and wistful mood arouses sexual interest in him. He tries indirectly to confront her
about it after the party, in the hotel room he has reserved for them; but he finds her unresponsive.
Trying to make ironic, half-suggestive comments, Gabriel learns that she was feeling nostalgic
after having heard Mr. D'Arcy singing The Lass of Aughrim at the party.
Upon being pressed further, Gretta says that the song reminds her of the time when she was a girl
in Galway and in love with a boy named Michael Furey. At the time, Gretta was being kept at
her grandmother's home before she was to be sent off to a convent in Dublin. Michael was
terribly sick and unable to see her. Despite being bedridden, when it came time for her to leave
Galway, Michael travelled through the rain to Gretta's window; and, although he was able to
speak with her again, he died within the week.
The remainder of the text delves further into Gabriel's thoughts after he hears this story,
exploring his shifting views on himself, his wife, the past, the living and the dead. It is
ambiguous whether the epiphany is just an artistic and emotional moment or is meant to set the
reader pondering whether Gabriel will ever manage to escape his smallness and insecurity

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
Details in the description make us feel as if we actually are there enjoying the meal and
experiencing the tension just as the characters are
Just as we share a meal, we all share the fact that we will all die at some point
We are basically all the same, we live and we die
Anything besides that are just minor details
Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires Chapter Three

Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)- weird attractiveness to the count and a beautiful, “pure”
woman.
 Vampire stories… and older figure representing corrupt, outworn values; a young, preferably
virginal female; a stripping away of her youth, energy, virtue; a continuance of the life force of
the old male; the death or destruction of the young woman.
 “We might conclude that [vampire stories] has something to do with sex.”
The scary parts aren’t just meant to scare people. They represent something bigger than that.
Ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts and vampires.

Ghosts
o A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)- Marley isn’t just there to scare Scrooge, his
really there as an ethics lesson.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyle and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)- about the dual
nature of humans.

“Daisy Miller” by Henry James (1878)
o A vampire story without any vampires.
o Winterbourne- cold and death
o Daisy- spring and renewal of life
o Winterbourne is an older man who Daisy is attracted to. Daisy is young and free. She
ends up dying from malaria that she caught on her midnight trip to the Colosseum to
see Winterbourne.
Innocent Eréndira by Gabriel García Márquez- about a girl whose grandma puts her out for
prostitution.
Victorians were masters of sublimation.
*Vampirism is about placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another.
*As long as people act toward their fellow in exploitative and selfish ways, the vampire will be with
us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Miller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_and_Sad_Tale_of_Innocent_Er%C3%A9ndira_and_Her
_Heartless_Grandmother
summaries of the titles mentioned
Chapter 5: Now Where Have I Seen Her Before?
“There’s no such thing as a wholly original work of literature” (29)
Foster says that there is only one story and that stories grow out of other stories. Each piece of
literature is influenced by a work or works that came before it. He also says that there is dialogue
between old and new works, called intertextuality. He says that this brings greater understanding to
literature and enhances the meaning of the work.
Foster uses Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato:
This complex novel is set during the Vietnam War and is told from the point of view of the protagonist,
Paul Berlin. The story traces the events that ensue after Cacciato, a member of Berlin's squad, decides to
go AWOL by walking from Vietnam to France, through Asia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_After_Cacciato
In the novel, the characters fall through a hole in the ground and into the Vietcong tunnels. One of the
characters then says that the way to get out is to fall back up. This is a blatant reference to Alice in
Wonderland. The tunnels are a sort of Wonderland in themselves.
In the novel, Paul Berlin’s love interest is Sarkin Aung Wan. Foster tells us that she is a modified version
of Sacajawea. She helps a group of white men find food and shelter and helps them go west, much like
Sacajawea did.
THERE’S ONLY ONE STORY. The influence isn’t always obvious, but there’s something in each work that
reminds you of a different work, whether it be by content or general shape of the novel.
Sometimes the influence is obvious. T. Coraghessan Boyle wrote a reworking og Nikolai Gogol’s The
Overcoat and titled it The Overcoat II.
Foster says the important part of recognizing things from other works in a piece we’re reading is that we
draw parallels between the two works.
Foster is saying that new pieces of literature always have allusions to other works or are based off of the
same ideas. He says that with time and experience even beginning readers will eventually be able to see
these and understand the broader context of the work.
Chapter Seven: …or the Bible
 Many writers, poets, playwrights, etc. were at least somewhat familiar with the Bible, even if
they were not religious at all
 Like Shakespeare, many stories in the Bible are still relevant today, and that’s why there are so
many biblical references in literature
East of Eden - http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/eastofeden/context.html
-Based on the biblical stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. John Steinbeck also explores
good and evil in human life in this novel.
Beloved - http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/beloved/
-Four horsemen who come after Sethe are a reference to one description of the Apocalypse in the
Book of Revelation. Also, the infant’s death allows the other children to live in freedom, and this is
similar to the death of Christ.
Why I Live at the P.O. - http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/why-i-live-at-the-po/
-The narrator is in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister who has returned home after leaving
under suspicious circumstances. The narrator is angry because she has to cook two chickens just
because her sister is home. She is envious because of they way her sister has been welcomed home
and how her sins were forgiven. Sounds just like The Prodigal Son.
Instead of turning to the bible for plot or theme, writer will also look to the bible for titles.
-East of Eden
-Paradise Lost
-Tongues of Flame
Ch. 9: “It’s Greek to Me”
-Myth is a body of story that matters.
-Flying Africans (Ebos Landing): Spring of 1803, a group of Igbo slaves being transported to America rise
up in rebellion and take the ship.
-“One of the only contemporary written accounts of the event was by Roswell King, a white
overseer on the nearby plantation of Pierce Butler. King recounted that as soon as the Igbo landed on St.
Simons Island, they "took to the swamp"—committing suicide by walking into Dunbar Creek.”
-“An older African American man by the name of Wallace Quarterman was asked if he had heard
the story of Ebos landing. Quarterman replied: Ain't you heard about them? Well, at that time Mr. Blue
he was the overseer and . . . Mr. Blue he go down one morning with a long whip for to whip them good.
. . . Anyway, he whipped them good and they got together. . . and then . . . rose up in the sky and turned
themselves into buzzards and flew right back to Africa. . . . Everybody knows about them.”
-http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2895
-“If a town in the center of Michigan, a fair distance from anything that can be called Aegean or Ionian
(although it’s not very far from the town of Ionia), can be named Ithaca, it suggests that Greek myth
has had pretty good staying power.”
-Fall of Icarus: “Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son.
Daedalus tried his wings first, but before taking off from the island, warned his son not to fly too close to
the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. Overcome by the giddiness that flying
lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which
melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he
was only flapping his bare arms, and so Icarus fell into the sea….”
-Landscape with Fall of Icarus (painting):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bruegel,_Pieter_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_icarus_-_hi_res.jpg
-Musee des Beaux Arts:
http://poetrypages.lemon8.nl/life/musee/museebeauxarts.htm
-Landscape with Fall of Icarus (poem):
http://www.english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/williams.html
-Classical myth can open up subject matter for other works.
-Omeros (in local dialect, Homer): One of the initial challenges in reading Omeros is the complexity of its
multi-layered plot. The meaning of the epic builds on events that are straightforward within themselves
(simple fishermen Achille and Hector fight over Helen, a woman they both desire). Walcott expands
these basic facts so that Helen comes to personify an island nation historically coveted by European
powers. While his narrative does move toward an end, Walcott is essentially interested in the journey
itself. As a matter of fact, the nearer he comes to the final resolution, the more he focuses on the act of
writing. Given his conscious emphasis on the text of the poem as one of his subjects, his epic becomes
self-reflexive. Omeros is a story of homecoming comprised of seven books recounting a circular journey
that ends where it begins. Books one and two introduce St. Lucia, key sets of characters and initiate the
basic conflicts. Books three, four and five retrace the triangular trade route that once linked Europe,
Africa and the Americas. Books six and seven return to St. Lucia where the wandering author and his
uprooted countrymen are eventually reconciled to their Creole identity.
-Virgil has his character Aeneas do everything Achilles did because Homer has already defined what it
means to be a hero.
-Parallels of myths may be flipped around for irony.
-Ulysses: http://rosenbach.org/ulysses-plot-summary
-O Brother, Where Art Though?:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXmeBUZtdI8&feature=related
- http://www.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu-1102021/content_86647934596?sb=1
-Greek and Roman myths are referenced and paralleled in countless novels, movies, etc.
-“There is no form of dysfunctional family or no personal disintegration of character for which there is
not a Greek or Roman model.”
-And because writers and readers share knowledge of a portion of mythology, when writers use it, we
readers recognize it.
-That recognition makes our experience of literature richer, deeper, more meaningful, so that our own
modern stories also matter, also share in the power of myth.
Chapter 13
It’s All Political
HATES
The author says he hates “political” writing, it doesn’t travel well, age well, seems preachy, 1-D,
simplistic, and dull.
The kind of “political writing he is referring to is a work whose primary intent is to influence the
body politic
LOVES
He then goes on to say that he loves “political” writing. It seems like he is sending us mixed
messages, but he is trying to say that there are different kinds.
He likes political “writing that engages the realities of its world…human problems… social and
political… that addresses… the wrongs of those in power.” Not the kind he mentions previously.
Story References:
A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens
Scrooge’s avoidance of the destitute, would rather they die and they “best hurry up”
Thomas Malthus – Helping the poor would only make them dependent and increase the number
of impoverished
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
This story follows and contrasts the romantic relationships of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and
Ursula. Ursula is a teacher, Gudrun an artist. They refuse to behave, submit to convention, act in
a way that conforms to expectations, even expectations of other “nonconformists”
Setting a radical individualism in conflict with established institutions
The Masque of the Red Death (1842) by Edgar Allen Poe
A disease known as the Red Death plagues the fictional country where this tale is set, and it
causes its victims to die quickly and gruesomely. Even though this disease is spreading
rampantly, the prince, Prospero, feels happy and hopeful. He decides to lock the gates of his
palace in order to fend off the plague, ignoring the illness ravaging the land. After several
months, he throws a fancy masquerade ball. For this celebration, he decorates the rooms of his
house in single colors. The easternmost room is decorated in blue, with blue stained-glass
windows. The next room is purple with the same stained-glass window pattern. The rooms
continue westward, according to this design, in the following color arrangement: green, orange,
white, and violet. The seventh room is black, with red windows. Also in this room stands an
ebony clock. When the clock rings each hour, its sound is so loud and distracting that everyone
stops talking and the orchestra stops playing. When the clock is not sounding, though, the rooms
are so beautiful and strange that they seem to be filled with dreams, swirling among the revelers.
Most guests, however, avoid the final, black-and-red room because it contains both the clock and
an ominous ambience. At midnight, a new guest appears, dressed more ghoulishly than his
counterparts. His mask looks like the face of a corpse, his garments resemble a funeral shroud,
and his face reveals spots of blood suggesting that he is a victim of the Red Death. Prospero
becomes angry that someone with so little humor and levity would join his party. The other
guests, however, are so afraid of this masked man that they fail to prevent him from walking
through each room. Prospero finally catches up to the new guest in the black-and-red room. As
soon as he confronts the figure, Prospero dies. When other party-goers enter the room to attack
the cloaked man, they find that there is nobody beneath the costume. Everyone then dies, for the
Red Death has infiltrated the castle. “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death” have at last
triumphed.
http://books.google.com/books?id=zcmiOCJZYkkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+masque+of+t
he+red+death&source=bl&ots=uyhP4DmteT&sig=cOkYn5SsHYXHlRXsa8fEy9ELL8Q&hl=en
&sa=X&ei=vn5jULTJsXRyQGeg4CwDw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=the%20masque%20of%20the%2
0red%20death&f=false
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a “dull, dark, and soundless day.” This
house—the estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher—is gloomy and mysterious. The
narrator observes that the house seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from
the decaying trees and murky ponds around it. He notes that although the house is decaying in
places—individual stones are disintegrating, for example—the structure itself is fairly solid.
There is only a small crack from the roof to the ground in the front of the building. He has come
to the house because his friend Roderick sent him a letter earnestly requesting his company.
Roderick wrote that he was feeling physically and emotionally ill, so the narrator is rushing to
his assistance. The narrator mentions that the Usher family, though an ancient clan, has never
flourished. Only one member of the Usher family has survived from generation to generation,
thereby forming a direct line of descent without any outside branches. The Usher family has
become so identified with its estate that the peasantry confuses the inhabitants with their home.
The narrator finds the inside of the house just as spooky as the outside. He makes his way
through the long passages to the room where Roderick is waiting. He notes that Roderick is paler
and less energetic than he once was. Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves and
fear and that his senses are heightened. The narrator also notes that Roderick seems afraid of his
own house. Roderick’s sister, Madeline, has taken ill with a mysterious sickness—perhaps
catalepsy, the loss of control of one’s limbs—that the doctors cannot reverse. The narrator
spends several days trying to cheer up Roderick. He listens to Roderick play the guitar and make
up words for his songs, and he reads him stories, but he cannot lift Roderick’s spirit. Soon,
Roderick posits his theory that the house itself is unhealthy, just as the narrator supposes at the
beginning of the story.
His sister, Madeline soon dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in the tombs below
the house. He wants to keep her in the house because he fears that the doctors might dig up her
body for scientific examination, since her disease was so strange to them. The narrator helps
Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after
death. The narrator also realizes suddenly that Roderick and Madeline were twins. Over the next
few days, Roderick becomes even more uneasy. One night, the narrator cannot sleep either.
Roderick knocks on his door, apparently hysterical. He leads the narrator to the window, from
which they see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house. The narrator tells Roderick that the
gas is a natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon. The narrator decides to read to Roderick
in order to pass the night away. He reads “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning, a medieval
romance. As he reads, he hears noises that correspond to the descriptions in the story. At first, he
ignores these sounds as the vagaries of his imagination. Soon, however, they become more
distinct and he can no longer ignore them. He also notices that Roderick has slumped over in his
chair and is muttering to himself. The narrator approaches Roderick and listens to what he is
saying. Roderick reveals that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and believes that they
have buried Madeline alive and that she is trying to escape. He yells that she is standing behind
the door. The wind blows open the door and confirms Roderick’s fears: Madeline stands in white
robes bloodied from her struggle. She attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of
fear. The narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the
frame and crumbles to the ground.
In both of Edgar Allan Poe’s mentioned stories, he “offers criticism of the European class
system, which priveledges the unworthy and the unhealthy, where the entire atmosphere is
corrupt and decaying, where the results are madness and death.” (112)
“Rip Van Winkle”
Politics before and after the American Revolution
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Is every literary work political?
Some say that works either address part of the social problem, or part of the solution
WORKS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS POLITICAL IN SOME WAY
Milieu – n. surroundings, especially of a cultural, political, or social nature
How To Read Literature Like A Professor
Chapter 16 – It’s All About Sex (135-142)
Do English professors have dirty minds or is it society?
They can recognize sexual intentions of writers.
Freud found it and showed the world
Sex doesn’t have to look like sex, things can stand for sex – virtually anything
Grail Legends are the first example in Western Culture (136)
It’s all about FERTILITY!
The Maltese Falcon (1941) – curtains closing for sex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqBhOmsPzRo - (2:30) mute
One of the sexiest shots of that time was waves breaking on the beach
They were necessary under the Hayes Code from 1935-1965
Move it on Over by Hank Williams – pretty obvious
“She’s changed the lock on my front door
My door key don't fit no more”
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen are two sisters living in the Midlands of England in the 1910s.
Ursula is a teacher, Gudrun an artist. They meet two men who live nearby, school inspector
Rupert Birkin and coal-mine heir Gerald Crich. The four become friends. Ursula and Birkin
become involved, and Gudrun eventually begins a love affair with Gerald.
All four are deeply concerned with questions of society, politics, and the relationship
between men and women. At a party at Gerald's estate, Gerald's sister Diana drowns.
Gudrun becomes the teacher and mentor of his youngest sister. Soon Gerald's coal-mineowning father dies as well, after a long illness. After the funeral, Gerald goes to Gudrun's
house and spends the night with her, while her parents are asleep in another room.
Birkin asks Ursula to marry him, and she agrees. Gerald and Gudrun's relationship,
however, becomes stormy. The four vacation in the Alps. Gudrun begins an intense
friendship with Loerke, a physically puny but emotionally commanding artist from Dresden.
Gerald, enraged by Loerke and most of all by Gudrun's verbal abuse and rejection of his
manhood, and driven by the internal violence of his own self, tries to strangle Gudrun.
Before he has killed her, however, he realizes that this is not what he wants--he leaves
Gudrun and Loerke and on his skis climbs ever upward on the mountains, eventually
slipping into a snow valley where he falls asleep, a frozen sleep from which he never
awakens.
The impact on Birkin of Gerald's death is profound; the novel ends a few weeks after
Gerald's death, with Birkin trying to explain to Ursula that he needs Gerald as he needs her-her for the perfect relationship with a woman, and Gerald for the perfect relationship with a
man.
Can symbolize homosexuality as well
Wrestling scene between male characters – not openly homosexual, but shown through scene
Most people don’t want to see the sexual innuendo in literature and film
Sex is also coded because it is more intense and works at multiple levels
Used to protect children reading