Questions about "Icelander"

The biggest question about Icelander for me was, does Dustin Long even know who the villain of his own story is? I've read the whole thing and he kind of leaves the whole situation a mystery. I guess he probably has his own idea in his mind, but I think it was open for interpretation. The most obvious choice (if we trust Our Heroine) is that Surt was the villain. He could have been disguised as any of the characters. I noticed that the narrator from Wible & Pacheco's sections was neither Wible nor Pacheco. He/she talks about "we," yet also refers to both Wible and Pacheco by their names so I got the feeling that the narrator for these sections was another person tagging along with W&P, whose presence we weren't necessarily aware of. This could have been any of the other characters, or it could have been Surt.
Surt would be considered the villain from the point of view of the Bean family. However, to the people of Vanatru, the Beans and Shirley MacGuffin could have been considered the true villains. They put Vanatru on the map, exposing it to outside influence, tourism, unwanted attention, etc. I can see why the people of Vanatru (ie. Gerd) would think of the Beans and Shirley as the villains. This idea also coincides with the opposing viewpoints the text offers us. We have the text (which is mainly Our Heroine's narration), and we have the footnotes which were written by the "editor." This editor could be from Vanatru and therefore his point of view on the whole issue would naturally be much different than Our Heroine's.
I think Long meant for his readers to doubt the truthfulness of all these different accounts (from Our Heroine to W&P, to the editor, to Dustin Long himself). All could be liars trying to persuade the readers to see their point of view. In answer to my question, I don't think there is one true villain; it depends on whose point of view you are looking at the situation from, just like any situation in life.

A Mundane Event From My Childhood...

This is not neccessarily a one-time event from my childhood, like those we read about in the short stories. This was a nightly occurence in my life from about ages 3 to 10. As I was tucked into bed every night by my father, I had the chance to have him all to myself for the first time all day. He worked hard in a mostly bare cubicle in an office full of other equally boring cubicles in York, Pennsylvania from nine to five. After we'd eat a family dinner and my mom would give my little sister and I a bath, it was time for bed already. Since our mother had been with us mostly all day long, the "tucking in" was reserved for my dad. First, he would read to both my sister and I until she fell asleep (she was always able to fall asleep at practically any given time whereas I have always been a night-owl), and then he would be left to talk to me until I was tired enough for bed. In my room in the dark, he'd sit beside me as I laid in bed all tucked in. We'd chatter about my day and any qualms I had about a friend, an enemy, or a teacher. I'd ask him all kinds of questions about the world, as children do. When he'd say "Ok well, you need to go to sleep now, kiddo. Guten nacht!" I'd exclaim, "Not yet! I'm not tired! Let's play a game." Surprisingly, he'd always agree to play one of our games. The only game I remember specifically is "The Fruit Game", where I would think of a fruit and he'd have to guess it. I usually chose kumkwat or made up a fruit that I knew he'd never guess because it didn't exist. If he did happen to guess the fruit, I'd make him think of a fruit and I'd guess his. This would go on for a few rounds until my dad would, rightfully so, get annoyed and tell me I really needed to go to sleep. The point is that I never wanted those nighttime talks with my father to end and I never wanted him to leave. Through this bedtime ritual, my father became the person I spilled my guts to every night. He knew every little detail about my day by the time he'd leave my room. He was also my protector. Before he'd leave me for the night, he would stand by my bedroom door and say, "All you bad dreams and monsters, I demand that you go away now and leave my daughter alone!" And for the most part, it worked. After this was said, he'd tell me that he loved me and walk out into the bright light of the hallway, closing my door except for a tiny crack to let some light in. Sleep rarely ever came to me for quite a while after he'd leave (I have always had sleeping problems and achieving sleep usually required hours of reflection, talking to stuffed animals, listening to my reggae lullabies tape, writing in a Goosebumps journal, and looking out the window at the deserted streets below). Regardless, this was always my favorite part of the day. When I finally slept, I felt completely safe. I didn't have to worry that there were monsters under the bed because my dad had demanded that they go back from whence they came. I didn't have to worry about a mishap at school because my dad had just told me everything would be okay. I no longer tell my father every detail about my life. And I never really reflected on exactly what time in my life this changed, but I'm guessing around age 12 or 13. All the authority and space that my father had once filled in my life began to be filled by my friends, or by pressure to fit in, or by boys that I wanted to impress. I do still wish that only a word from my father would send the harsh realities of this world back to whatever monstrous place they came from. Regardless, this seemingly mundane nightly ritual from my childhood has been one of the most important factors in shaping the person I am today. My father became my best friend and forever protector, I believe, through this nightly occurence of putting up with my antics and being truly interested in my childish thoughts and questions. He continues to be the first to know about my happiness and sorrows, though now our talks are long-distance. And every once in a while, my sister and I jokingly ask him to play the "Fruit Game." It is our little way of saying, "Don't ever leave, who else in this world could chase my monsters away?"

Another vocab word...

Finally, I can use my second vocab word! Dustin Long is very good at using this tactic: synaesthesia. It means "a sensation that normally occurs in one sense modality occurs when another modality is stimulated." Or, in other words, stimulating more than one sense at a time, in our case through literature. A wonderful example comes from Dustin Long's novel Icelander: "She smelled smoke before she saw it, a buttery blend, brimming visibly, volubly, from Mr. Wible's short and wide pipe" (28). This sentence gives an image of the smoke brimming, while also giving us a sense of its smell, taste, and smooth texture. And that is the beauty of synaesthesia.

Romance vs. Tragedy

In class we discussed the many ways in which Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife could be read as either a tragedy or a romance. Personally, I don't think you can separate the two. Romance, in the Disney form of the word, implies love, passion, and a happily-ever-after. But we, characters of the real world, know this to be false. Love and romance are often quite tragic. After all, we come from a society where over half of marriages end in divorce, children grow up in broken homes, and people are surprised to meet someone whose parents are still married. If you've ever loved and lost, you know love can be a tragedy. Therefore, I don't know what to classify this book as. It seems more like a tragedy to me due to the overwhelming themes of death and loss. Of course, I didn't view the end of the novel as a tragic case. I thought it was bittersweet the way Henry died but lived through time travel to meet up with his daughter at times and even got to see Clare grow old. Many argued that Clare's "waiting around for Henry all her life" is tragic, but I think she was quite lucky to have known her love ever since she was six. The letter Henry left her did make me cry, but it was a way of letting her know she should move on and he'd always be there. The way she never moved on from Henry was also bittersweet, and I don't think it was tragic because she was so used to waiting for Henry that it probably came as completely natural for her. Having said this, I just call The Time Traveler's Wife a "tear-jerker," because that could suggest either romance or tragedy. Either way, I like books that can make me cry.

Time Traveling

I've given this quite some thought since we've discussed time traveling in class. There are so many different times I wish I could travel back to in my life. For instance, I'd love to go back and see myself as a young child and observe how I viewed the world. I think I had it all figured out back then. Of course, It'd always be interesting to go back to when I was about sixteen and had just moved accross the country in the middle of high school. This was one of the hardest times in my life, because 16-year-olds over-dramaztize everything. If I could see my future self back then, I wouldn't look much different at all, but I'd know that everything was going to be fine no matter how much I hated the world. Also, for my present self, it would be fun to experience that emotionally charged couple years again. I think I could only handle a couple days of it at the most, though.

One of the times that I really wish I could relive (if time travel was a bit different than in The Time Traveler's Wife) was when my family and I lived in Germany and my parents would take us sightseeing all over Europe. I was only about 3 or 4, and my sister was a baby. I would have loved to remember all this and actually have known the significance of the sights or been able to appreciate kissing the Blarney Stone and riding a gondola up the Alps. If I could time travel back to this period in time, I wouldn't do it like Henry did, where he found himself naked in a time where he aldready existed. I'd hopefully be able to just be a 20-year old inside a 4-year old's body. Then I could just pretend to say cute little things about airplanes flying by, but really be soaking in the experiences. It would also be an extra perk to go back to a time when my sister couldn't talk yet.

Extremely Confused and Incredibly Far Away

I do not remember 9/11/01 very well with the exception of the first couple hours of my day. I was curling my hair, getting ready for another day of 8th grade. My mother came downstairs and told me to come up to her room and watch the news with her. She told me the World Trade Center got hit by an airplane. I had no idea what the World Trade Center was, where it was, or why this was really such an incredible event. The only thing I remember was being worried about the plane crash. I wanted to be a pilot, and it worried me to hear about crashes. However, my mother had a hint of emergency in her voice and I could tell something was off about this. I went with her to her room, my dad was out of town on business and I guess my little sister was probably still sleeping. I looked up at the television, and saw the images which have now been burned into every American's memory. First, it was only the one tower smoking, then they showed another plane flying into the second, the first collapsing, the people on the streets of New York crying. Also, they showed clips of the Pentagon. Before that moment, airplanes flying into skyscrapers was something I never even bothered to imagine. Watching this occur was like watching someone do something grotesque or abnormal. I don't think I ate breakfast, I had to hurry up and catch the schoolbus. At the bus stop, we discussed this situation like we knew anything about the world besides suburban America. We weren't aware of any enemies, and I had never heard the word "terrorist" actually used to describe anyone, a word I could have frankly done without. At school, the news was on all day in every classroom. The teachers started giving us more insight as to the potential attackers, and we saw the footage of the plane that crashed in the field not far from my hometown in PA. At this time I lived in WA, though, so I was much further from the event. That's about all I remember about the actual day. The whole week after 9/11, my Arab friends were kept home from school by their mother, who feared they'd be attacked. They did suffer much discrimination and humiliation at school that year. I remember I still didn't understand why, because they were Americans like the rest of us. I remember the American flags being sold out at every store, and feeling ashamed of our patriotism. I don't know why, but I never really liked it when people displayed American flags or when we had to say the pledge of allegiance. I can't explain why. Anyway, then Bush announced we were going to war, and I began to watch the news every night. I was very afraid, for the world I had always known was the world of Internet, Clinton, glitter, TLC, and Baby Spice....never war. I was pretty angry. My family and I moved back to the east coast, and I met people who were actually affected by 9/11. Their brothers/in-laws/uncles/cousins had died in the towers. The schools began to teach students about the Middle East and Islam so they could understand an entire race, religion and region of the world was not responsible for this, but rather a select few extremists. Anyway, that's about all I have to say about 9/11. I'm actually really sick of hearing about it. I was sort of disappointed to hear this novel was about it, but it's turned out to be really disconnected from world affairs and mostly about the relationships between people, so I'm content for now.

Glossary Term

I want to present my glossary term tomorrow since I found the actual word in our reading of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. There are also a few examples, which I find helped me out a lot as far as presenting the term goes. The word is "idiom." It means, "a phrase established by usage and not immediately comprehensible form the words used." That was the definition from the Oxford Dictionary. Oskar's Grandma's examples from the novel we're reading are, "Chew the fat. Blow off some steam. Close but no cigar. Rings a bell" (80). Oskar himself often uses an idiom when he talks about things making his boots heavier of lighter. So I tought it seemed like a decent time to share my glossary term!

My First Encounter With a Graphic Novel

Satrapi's "Persepolis" was the first graphic novel I have ever even picked up. It was a good experience, I really enjoyed it and could see myself getting into her other 3 follow-up stories, or some other graphic novels. I still like regular, written novels better just because it leaves the scene and characters up to the reader's imagination. However, I think it was an interesting experience being able to see the characters' reactions based on the memory of the author. The fact that this was a memoir made the story more intriguing for me because it was about a history and culture I am pretty clueless about, so I felt like it was for my educational benefit to read this "comic book." I guess I felt a little more justified in sitting around at Hillside reading it while everyone gave me strange looks for reading a picture book, because of the historical context. I think it's also an important culture to be introduced to as an American; we have so much background in the Middle East yet not many Americans know anything at all about that culture. Marjane's age was important to the story as well; since it began when she was so young, you could see her opinions and values changed throughout the story like any normal child's development into the person they grow to be. I think she was the main character but the story wasn't just about her, it was a kind of history and since she was a child, Satrapi found ways to bring her parents secretly into the main picture. They were the ones who explained most of what was going on in the country, and they helped shape her political activism. As Americans I think we can find it easy to read about what we think of as such a different, distant place. From Satrapi's eyes, Iran seemed similar to America, minus the religious revolution and dictatorship. In this way, readers are able to sympathize with the "actual" people of Iran, instead of focusing on the religious extremists. I think if many young Americans get their hands on this book, it might help us understand the history of Iran more and get our minds out of the immediate "terrorist" mode. It's interesting that Marji wanted to be a prophet because in way she kind of is. She has written down her version of a period in history, and in such a way that makes it easy and fun to read.

Strange Fantasy

Having read Susanna Clarke's novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, I think I probably enjoyed her short story more because I was used to her writing style. She jumps around from place to place quite often, which I think is meant to inspire a sense that something mysterious is going on in each place, but the reader is allowed the ability to secretly view the mystery. Still, the reader isn't in on everything, the characters' personalities and secrets are usually pretty hard to read. Also, I think if I hadn't read her novel, I would be thoroughly confused reading this short story. A lot of the plot and characters revert back to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Jonathan Strange is actually one of the main characters in this short story, which I found intriguing but also kind of unoriginal. The short story actually seems to have taken place before the end of her novel, which makes me feel like this story was supposed to be in the novel, but the novel was too long already so she had to make them separate! Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was one of those books I could have read every day for the rest of my life, though, so I really enjoyed hearing more of the story. I just love the way Clarke writes about magic, like it's a well-known fact that it exists and if you try really hard you can find a gateway to the fairy world. She definitely made me believe in the Raven King, what can I say.

On another note, I ended up being pleased but saddened at the ending of Never Let Me Go. The last couple pages were beautiful, I certainly cried. I was upset at how nonchalantly Kathy left Tommy for the last time, though. There did not seem to be enough emotion in that scene, and it made me think maybe these kids do have a little less soul than others. But the last couple pages kind of made up for that I suppose. I love the fact that they were let down by the reality of no deferrals, and how Miss Emily and Madame explained the truth to Kathy and Tommy. This was like when a child, being told by your parents that there is really no Santa Claus...sorry if I spoiled it for someone. It is also like realizing that we really don't have much time to live; we can't get deferrals in real life either. Of course, I still have no answer as to why Kathy and Tommy didn't just run away from it all. I must admit I had my doubts about this book in the beginning, but I felt myself really involved in the characters' lives and very saddened by the idea of them having to go through what they did.

Because it explains life better than I could...

I am a huge lover of poetry, and have been ever since I was a child reading Shel Silverstein. Happily, I have acquired a more sophisticated taste than Silverstein over time, wonderful as he is. The first poet I was really into, and am still in love with, was William Shakespeare. I know, cliche. I love his poetry because it is incredibly techincal and basically explains life in words I have always had floating around in my mind but could never place them together to make sense. That is the main thing poetry does for me. I love the creative ways people can put words together to mean so much. When I read poetry, I can actually feel what the poet is trying to describe. This is more difficult to achieve with stories. Since I have grown up loving poetry so much, I have always been a poet. It started off with Shel Silverstein-esque poems as a kid and have progressed into a discouraging, yet satisfying battle between my emotions and my slightly above average vocabulary. I won't share any poems here, though I gladly post them on myspace. My friends aren't as hip to what is good poetry as any of you are, so I can risk it with them. I pretty much read whatever poetry I can get my hands on. Sometimes I find the most beautiful and heart-wrenching poems are those written by children who are just discovering that sometimes life just isn't fair. I was at Starbucks once, and they had a display of poems written by local grade shcoolers on the wall. I read them all and even cried after reading one written by a kid whose dog died. Anyway, I appreciate all kinds of poetry, and enjoy finding it in daily life. My favorite poet is Emily Dickinson. I own all of her published poems and could reread them every day of my life. She says so much in so few words. Mary Oliver is another favorite. So I'm a big fan/collecter/writer or poetry and it is pretty much what has inspired me to become a literature maajor! Here is a favorite poem written by Emily Dickinson:

"I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty" I replied.
"And I for truth- the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names."

-Emily Dickinson

What is it that makes us so human?

A question from Coupland's "Life After God" that really got me thinking was, "What is it that makes humans human?" ? I think that what separates humans from animals is something no one can see or define, but most call it "the soul." What does the soul enable us to do that other animals can't? Mostly, it gives us creativity. I've never seen a beaver paint a mural or bust a move. This creativity is what makes every person different and makes the human world so interesting. So, the ability to create works of imagination and art is what I think mostly makes a human human. But then, what if someone loses that ability due to a tragic car accident or some other disaster? Are they still human even if that function of their brain is gone? And if so, what is it then that still makes them human? Do they still have a "soul"? Now I'm just freaking myself out.

Another question I wanted to ramble about was, "Do we have our most important memories before we reach the age of thirty?" I can relate to the narrator's feeling that we do. When you're young, you are experiencing everything for the first time, so those memories are more vivid in your mind. I don't remember every kiss I've ever gotten but I will never forget my first one, just like I'll never forget my first alcoholic drink, my first date with my first love, or my first attempt at driving. I do not necessarily think that these firsts are always the most important memories we have, but they are definitely the most vivid. I think that as we get older, we dwell more on our memories of being young, so they may seem more important in that way. We long to be young and free again, so we cherish our memories from those days, instead of thinking about how great the memories we're making now are. I find that the years are flying by now, whereas they used to take an eternity, or at least seem like a whole year. I find myself grasping for each day, trying not to let it escape. I stay up until 5 AM with my friends to try to stop time. Unfortunately, that method hasn't worked but it has created many more memories to be cherished. Hopefully I'll still have that after I'm 30.

Why My Friends Think I'm Crazy

My friends think I am crazy for being a literary studies major. These biochemists, architects, and chemical engineers claim that they could never do what my major entails--sitting on my bed and reading. I just don't understand how anyone could go through life ignorant to the thoughts of people like J.D. Salinger, Douglas Coupland, Sylvia Plath, and Paul Beatty. What are they thinking?! Reading brings me all the happiness those other people out there aren't giving me.

I used to read fantasy books when I was younger. They were a way for me to pretend I was someone other than the awkward, big-toothed girl who was constantly being moved accross the country. I imagined myself the heroines of the stories, and I longed to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... who doesn't? These days I still read only fiction. My favorite genres are naturalism, gothic, and postmodern/contemporary. Favorites include Jane Eyre, Catcher in the Rye, A Clockwork Orange, The Great Gatsby, and The Bell Jar. I like books that make me realize there are actually people out there who are crazier than me, and they are more interesting. I love being reminded of the beauty of the world in mundane things. I also love being reminded of how insignificant I am and how little time I have to spend here. I guess there are many other things in life that could do that but books do it for me. I like to lead my double life inside whatever book I'm reading. I like to write in my books in order to better understand the deeper meaning, and just to highlight thoughts that coincide with my own, but were stated much better by the author. I also write, and I think reading helps people become better writers because you can look for flaws or strengths in other people's writing.

Basically, reading is my life. It has made me more analytical and more understanding of human nature. If I hadn't read Catcher in the Rye when I was 16, I wouldn't have been able to realize that this world is full of phonies, and I'm the biggest one I know. If I hadn't read what I have read, I don't think I'd still have faith in humanity. Reading has taught me that there is a place I can always find refuge from this world.