Blog 13

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston. Poe was the son of the English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe,an actor from Baltimore. His mother died in Richmond on December 8, 1811, and Edgar was taken into the family of John Allan, a member of the firm of Ellis and Allan, tobacco-merchants. He died on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. He was best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre; Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre.
One of his stories that I choose is Berenice, it is a short horror story and was published in 1835. The approach I will use is Psychoanalytic Criticism. The psychoanalytic criticism argues that that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author and that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche. Psychoanalytic criticism can focus on the author, the characters, the audience and the text. In the story Berenice, the focus is more on the characters as the theory is used to analyze Berenice and Egoeus and the psychological theory became a tool to explain their behavior and motivations. The theory helps to make the story more realistic as the characters are analyzed so closely.
The theme of the story is horror and the beginning of the story helps set the tone. The story begins with the narrator’s complaint that “Misery is manifold.” He wallows in his self-pity, extrapolating that man’s fate is to always find what is to be an agony and to find pleasure in what might have been. He tells us that his first name is Egoeus and declines to tell us what his family name is. He suggests that his family is a prominent family and describes the richness of their family home, in particular the library. He lives in the mansion of his ancestors, apparently as their heir.He lives in a mansion hung with tapestries and paintings. Egaeus was born in the library of the mansion and his mother died there. He grew up with his cousin Berenice in the mansion.She was agile, beautiful, graceful and overflowing with energy. Egoeus describes that how Berenice carefree existence was overtaken by a fatal disease which disturbed her own identity as a person and the recovery was abrupt and the disease left her subject to a form of epilepsy, which usually concluded with a deep trance that mimicked death. Meanwhile, Egoeus experiences a rapid progression in his own illness, which takes the form of obsessive monomania. This monomania allowed him to have excessive concentration on one small object or detail for vast amounts of time. This illness made him a day dreamer. Egoeus tells that he never loved his wife when she was young and beautiful as he used to see her as an object to analyze and not to love. He never loved her but blames on that moment when he decided to marry her because he knew that she had loved him from a long time. Egoeus after sometime started obsessing and dreaming about Berenice teeth which were long and narrow and incredibly white. The teeth were the only thing which used to stand out after her illness as she had now become pale and her hair became yellow. He realizes that the only way he can gain peace is to possess the teeth and this obsession blocks all the other thoughts in his mind and soon teeth became the essence of his life. He becomes so obsessed with the teeth that he sat in the library for two days and not knowing what is happening outside.
The story takes a turn when Egoeus hears moanings of sorrow and pain and gets to know that his wife has died because of an epileptic fit early in the morning and in the evening the preparations for the burial were completed. After sometime he goes back to his library but now he is terrified as he hears the shriek of a female voice and recalls that he has completed something but does not remember what it was. He notices a small box on the table which resembles the one doctors carried. A servant arrives and tries to explain the situation to Egoeus. He tells Egoeus of wild cries during the night that roused the household. The members of the household discover the violated grave of Berenice and Berenice herself alive but disfigured. He indicates Egoeus to examine the state of his own clothes, which were covered with blood and dirt and points out to Egoeus the dirt covered spade leaning against the wall. Then Egoeus screams and grabs the box and tries to open it but it falls to the floor and breaks open. When it falls open, dental tools and thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances scattered all around the floor.
The story has many symbols in it and one of the symbols is the shadow. According to dictionary of symbolism, shadows are identified with a person’s soul and are considered dark entities with a nature all of their own .They are the unconscious layers of the personality that are integrated into the structures of the experienced world. In the story narrator tells that Berenice is so happy, careless and energetic that she does not even care of the shadows in her path.
Egoeus after developing an illness started fixating objects obsessively and one of the objects he fixated was door. It is a symbol which according to dictionary of symbolism signifies a passage from one place to another. Another thing which he started fixating was the perfumes of the flower as he used to dream about the flowers the whole day. A flower according to dictionary of symbolism signifies beauty and symbols of young life.
In the story teeth are considered as an object of admiration and Egoeus is obsessed by the teeth of his wife as they are the only thing left that is still adorable after her illness. According to dictionary of symbolism teeth can be linked to age and help determine the age.

Works Cited
Berenice.Wikipedia.Web.24May2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenice_(short_story)
Biederman,Hans. Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them. New York: Meridian, 1994.Web.24May2010.
http://www.umich.edu/~umfandsf/symbolismproject/symbolism.html/
http://poestories.com/read/berenice
http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/psychcrit.html

Blog 12

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston. Poe was the son of the English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe,Jr.,an actor from Baltimore. His mother died in Richmond on December 8, 1811, and Edgar was taken into the family of John Allan, a member of the firm of Ellis and Allan, tobacco-merchants. He died on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. He was best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre; Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre.
One of his stories that I choose is Berenice, it is a short horror story and was published in 1835. The approach I will use is Psychoanalytic Criticism. The psychoanalytic criticism argues that that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author and that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche. Psychoanalytic criticism can focus on the author, the characters, the audience and the text. In the story Berenice, the focus is more on the characters as the theory is used to analyze Berenice and Egoeus and the psychological theory became a tool to explain their behavior and motivations. The theory helps to make the story more realistic as the characters are analyzed so closely.The story has many symbols in it and one of the symbols is the teeth in the story the teeth are considered as an object of admiration and Egoeus is obsessed by the teeth of his wife. The story begins with the narrator’s complaint that “Misery is manifold.” He wallows in his self-pity, extrapolating that man’s fate is to always find ‘what is’ to be an agony and to find pleasure in what ‘might have been.’ He tells us that his first name is Egoeus and declines to tell us what his family name is. He suggests that his family is a prominent family and describes the richness of their family home, in particular the library. He lives in the mansion of his ancestors, apparently as their heir. He marries his cousin, Berenice, who grew up with him in the mansion. He lives in a mansion hung with tapestries and paintings. Egaeus was born in the library of the mansion and his mother died there. He grew up with his cousin Berenice who was agile, graceful and overflowing with energy.

Blog11

For this blog I choose a short horror story Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe.It was first published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835.The story is about a man named
Egaeus who is preparing to marry his cousin Berenice. He has a tendency to fall into periods of intense focus during which he seems to separate himself from the outside world. Berenice begins to deteriorate from an unnamed disease until the only part of her remaining healthy is her teeth, which Egaeus begins to obsess over. Berenice dies and Egaeus continues to contemplate her teeth. Deep in thought, he is interrupted by a servant who tells him Berenice's grave has been disturbed. Covered in blood, Egaeus sees beside him several dentistry tools — and a box containing 32 white teeth.Some of the themes applied by Poe in this story are mental illness,being burried alive and death of a beautiful woman.

http://poestories.com/read/berenice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenice_(short_story)

Blog 10: Reflection

In the past few weeks we have been learning about Monomyth or The Hero's Quest by Joseph Campbell.Reading about Monomyth on wikipedia, watching Joseph Campbell's interview and then watching a film Spirited Away in class has made me realise that all films and stories have the Hero's Quest in them.Hero's Quest was something new for me and after discussing about it in the class I got a understanding of it.We were suppose to choose a film of our choice and I choose Final Fantasy:The Spirits Within and had to identify and incorporate the things learned in the class and this helped me to get a better understanding of the hero's journey as I could easily identify the various elements in the film.Learning about the hero's quest has made me more interested in watching films because earlier I never paid attention to it but now I can easily identify the different elements of hero's quest in it.This helps to understand a story better and also makes a person interested in it.Mostly all films have Hero's quest in them and it shows how an ordinary person has to go through different kinds of tasks and in the end becomes a hero and gains knowledge from it.

Blog 9: Hero's Quest and Film

Final Fantasy:The Spirits Within is a Japanese-American computer animated science fiction film directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. The film was released on July 11,2001 by Columbia Pictures.Hironobu Sakaguchi is a Japanese game designer, director, and producer who is widely known as the creator of the Final Fantasy series. He took the leap from games to film when he made his debut as film director in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, an animated motion picture based on his world-famous Final Fantasy series. The movie is based on year 2065 and the Earth is under seige as the meteor has crashed onto the planet, unleashing millions of alien creatures known as Phantoms which roam on the planet.These creatures are threatening and are extinguishing the life on earth and has driven surviving humanity into barrier cities that are built to protect the inhabitants of Earth. But the few cities around the globe are in decline and time is running out.The story follows Doctor Aki Ross and Doctor Sid in their efforts to free Earth from the deadly race Phantoms. They must compete against General Hein, who wishes to attack the aliens with the Zeus space cannon to end the conflict.
Monomyth which is also referred to as The Hero's journey is classified into three sections which are Departure, Initiation and Return. Departure deals with the separation of the hero before the adventure, Initiation deals with the adventures in the journey and Return deals with the knowledge and freedom acquired from the journey.
The departure deals with living a normal life and then receiving a call from the unknown world. The hero Dr. Aki Ross was infected by a phantom during one of her experiments and after that she used to get a dream in which there are only phantoms on Earth everywhere. She wanted to save Earth from the phantoms.Through Monomyth we know that the supernatural aid is the mentor or the one who guides through the journey and becomes known. In the movie Dr. Aki does not refuses the call and therefore Dr. Sid is her protecting figure who helps her to uncover a means of defeating the phantoms by gathering the eight spirits that can stop the effect of phantoms.Having responded to his call and following what he says,Dr. Aki finds all the forces at her side and mother nature also supports her in the task. The crossing of the first threshold means crossing the field of adventure and entering into an unknown world. Dr.Aki starts her journey by having five spirits and then going in search of the remaining three spirits where she is encountered by the phantoms. The belly of the whale means the final separation from the known world and going to the unknown world.Dr. Aki enters the crater to find the last spirit which is the eight spirit.
The Initiation deals with the start of the journey and the adventures in it. The stage road of trials means to go through tests, ordeals to begin the transformation.Dr. Aki had to go through a lot of tests and tasks to collect the three remainig spirits so that she could save the Earth and ascend the phantoms back into the space. The first test she had to pass was to collect the sixth spirit which was a plant and there she was cornered by phantoms but with the help of Captain Gray Edward and his three soldiers, she was able to bring the sixth spirit to Dr. Sid. The second test was to bring the seventh spirit were again she was attacked by the phantoms but was able to get the spirit which was in a dead soldier's plasma container with the help of Captain Gray Edward. The third test she had to pass was to bring the eighth spirit and combine it with others and she successfully passes this test also.The next step of a hero's journey is atonement with the father, in this stage the person confronts and is initiated by the ultimate power.Here Dr. Aki considers Dr. Sid is the voice who will help her lead in the correct path and to achieve the tasks.The stage apotheosis means when someone dies a physical death or dies to the self to live in spirit,this is a period of rest,peace and fulfillment before the hero begins his return. In the movie this stage can be seen when Dr. Aki and Captain Gray go into the crater and when the vehicle is destroyed, Gray sacrifices his own life to distribute Aki's wave, using his body to transmit it directly to the Phantom world spirit. The Phantoms transform into bright, floating orbs which return to space. The last stage of the Initiation is the ultimate boon which means achievement of the goal of the journey.This stage is seen in the movie when Dr. Aki is successful in finding the eighth spirit and combing all of them together.
The last section Return deals with the knowledge and freedom acquired from the journey.The magic flight is the shielded vehicle that takes Dr. Aki and Captain Gray into the crater and guards them from the phantoms.The next stage is crossing of the return threshold which means returning of the hero to the known world with the experiences and knowledge learned through the journey. Dr. Aki learns about the phantoms by having dreams about them after she gets infected by them. She succeeds in combining all the eight spirits together and saves Earth by ascending phantoms back into the space. After sending the phantoms back to the space and seeing a newly liberated world, Dr. Aki becomes the master of two world as she became successful by saving Earth.
There are alot of symbols in this movie which makes it more interesting and fascinating.The first symbol is Earth which signifies nourishment, foundation of life,fertility,infinite creativity and longevity but in the movie Earth is shown where there is no life.The next symbol is the Spirit which means a supernatural being or essence which is bodiless but can become visible. The movie talks about the spirit of Earth and the spirit of phantoms. Another symbol is phantom which means an object of continual dread and in the movie it is destroying the human life. There are some archetypes in the movie too like father which is seen in Dr. Sid's character because of the way he protects and defends Dr. Aki. General Hein played a role of wise man and villian who wants to tackle the phantoms by his own way and not agreeing with Dr.Sid and Dr. Aki. Captain Gray plays the role of a true friend as he helps Dr. Aki to get the three remaining spirits and wants to save her from death.
The story tells us that every human being has to go through different kind of things in the world and if one has the will, dedication and power and the right guidance then, one can achieve whatever he wants. As in the movie Dr. Aki had the dedication and will to find all the eight spirits and then to combine them so that she could save Earth and send phantoms back to the space and she could do all this because of the right guidance of Dr. Sid.

Works Cited
Final Fantasy:The Spirit Within.Wikipedia.Web.30April2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy:_Spirits_Within
Julien, Nadia.The Mammoth Dictionary of Symbols: Understanding the Hidden Language of Symbols. New York: Carol and Graf Publishers, Inc., 1996.Web.30April2010.
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online.30April2010.http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Monomyth. Wikipedia. Web. 30April2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth