2nd Sem. ISP: The American Dream

UnJi Nam

Mrs. Elliott

AP English Literature

21 May 2009

ISP: The American Dream and its effects on literature

The American Dream has always been a siren of sorts for people, standing for upward social mobility, economic comfort, and material wealth. Since the formation of the nation, the U.S has stood for opportunity. Especially with the turn of the 19th century into which America became the economic powerhouse it is today, the American Dream however began to stand in more and more for fiscal wealth and attainment of material goods. Its economic standing depended on being able to sell the maximum amount of goods and services to its consumers, and the idea of the American Dream began to tie more and more into the economic system and values of the time. The American Dream is an ambiguous concept. It has been touted as signs of a meritocracy where those with talent and determination clamber to the top. It has been criticized as a tool of the social aristocracy to keep the lower classes behaved and well endorsed in the economic and social system not always the most congenial to the penurious. It has been described as something transcending a mere rat race, but of the discovery of personal identity, ideals and of the rare state of happiness. However, whatever ideals can be tied to the American Dream’s existence, there is no mistaking that the fiscal mobility aspect of it will always be a part of the American Dream. Ignoring this only handicaps the viewer into seeing clearly the concept of what the American Dream truly is, an idealistic system as well as a dark tool of conformity and loss of personal identity. Like all systems made by human beings, its nature grapples between its inherent bright and dark side. As a playing ground for the similarly ambivalent nature of human beings, it is without peer in allowing people to truly delve into human nature unmasked as it is. As a peculiarly American institution, it is much a part of the American psyche and hence a strong influence on its literature. A concept riddled with both greed and generosity, with both good intentions and guilt, with ignorance and irresponsibility as well as idealism.
Babbitt is one American novel that introduced the all-encompassing influence of the American Dream, with the economic aspect overriding all other facets. For George Babbitt the main character, the pursuit of social respect and all the newest modern comforts is all he lives for. True, he has vague passions and desires for something more, shown by his friendship with his philosophical artistic friend Paul, and his constant dream of “the fairy girl”, a lovely being that promises hope, beauty and magic for him, but is always slipping always from him even in dreams. Babbitt subscribes to the system of garnering wealth and prestige even when it obviously doesn’t fulfill him as an individual or even a human being, all because he needs respect from others. Emptiness with his life can be found with lines such as these describing the important aspects of his life: “The Babbitts’ house was five years old. It was all as competent and glossy. Throughout, electricity took the place of candles and slatternly hearth-fires. In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was not a home.” Later on in the novel, Babbitt goes on to abandon his square existence to take on a life of stereotyped hedonism as a Bohemian, in order to pursue an idea of what life should be like. However, Babbitt really only escapes the frying pan for the fire, as he enters a world fueled with as much materialism, shallowness and hypocrisy as the one he left. And in the end, his desire for his peer’s recognition is so great that he goes back to his old life and habits gratefully. “Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding the wickedness of Seneca Doane, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank accounts than was George F. Babbitt.” Sinclair Lewis, the author of this novel, was obviously presenting to American society the dark side of the American Dream, with its overwhelming emphasis on material wealth being the goal in life. Babbitt is the tragedy, who forever is trapped in this rat race, and is unable to extricate himself to find any true meaning or passion in his life. Instead, much like his name, Babbitt is reduced by society to nothing more than machinery gear, made to conform seamlessly to the values of whatever society he was in. The American dream is depicted as a tool as well, one that keeps individuals in check for the pursuit of material goods. Written in the Roaring Twenties when the whole of America seemed to be swept off its feet with post war prosperity and materialism with the advent of easy credit, Lewis intended to show the darker side of the American dream. One where people essentially sold their souls for physical comfort.
The Grapes of Wrath also parses through the American dream and its effects. The Great Depression in which the novel is set can be seen as the aftermath from the previous decade’s subscription to the idea of the American dream economic aspects. The sharecroppers who march onto the golden land California do so in pursuit of the American dream, not the bloated and avaricious dreams of rich men who seem to gain their wealth by skimming it off other’s backs, but a simple desire shared by all for food, shelter and security. With the sharecroppers lie the very heart and driving force of the American dream—and this desire is often manipulated by richer men to create a cheap labor force, a captive market, and a focus for dislike and arrogance. However, by reinforcing the sharecropper’s dignity and strength of character even in the face of hardship, Steinbeck emphasizes the basic value of the American dream that they represent. Both the value, and its darker promise. America a century ago colonized the west by hordes of men hungry for land and a living, so much so that they cleared the land of the original inhabitants. Steinbeck, writes of how “The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river; and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, and in the eyes of the people there is the failure. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy for the vintage.” By doing so, he emphasizes the common value that every man has, and each owns’ inalienable right to survive. For the sharecroppers at the end of the novel, oppressed by the upper and middle class, hungry and with no shelter, Steinbeck suggests that these oppressed have the right to fight back for their bread and meat if they have to. That even if it means embracing some form of socialism, revolution and re-ordering of the social hierarchy, the people have the right to do so to survive. Thus, Steinbeck reveals not only the downfall of evils in the system, but the redemption of the American Dream in the common man. No longer a tool to keep the workforce submissive, but a tool for revolution as well. A promise to the masses that all deserve a measure of physical security and comfort, and should get it, by whatever means.
In the end, the American dream can be seen as a truly American concept. It is both a tool for conformity as well as a philosophy advocating revolution. This hope by the people to better themselves, whether it be by economic, religious, political or idealistic measures, is something that has driven the path of this country, from the founding of the colonies, to the American Revolution, to the Industrial age, to the civil rights and environmental movements of today. The American Dream allows the U.S to take advantage of other nation’s, in terms of post-colonial control as well as manipulating cheap labor forces that enter the country. But it’s inherent idealism and the basic belief underwriting it that believes every person has a right to happiness, not just the elite, is what also drives ideological movements to better the less fortunate in America, such as programs to support third world countries or take a hand in stopping human rights violations abroad. The American Dream will continue to affect the views and values of this nation, and does so as a paradoxical force just like the country that created it—both idealistic and cynical, dark and yet drawing people towards the light and the happy ending.

Introduction 2nd semester

Well, the year is over.
It’s been an interesting year. Now, “interesting” is a word that one could use in various ways. Interesting can be a polite way of saying “It’s been living hell.” Interesting can be a muted way of saying “It’s been a romp of chaos and destruction, but, yeah, interesting.” Interesting can be a subtle way of saying “Nothing much happened, but since you’re my mother’s bestest nosiest friend, I’ll act like I didn’t squander my best years.” Interesting can be the plain way of saying “Yup, this was a year filled with hijinks and tragedies. This was a year where I’ve made my best friends, my worst enemies, and the acquaintance of many more. This was a year where I found my strengths and my faults. This was a year where I discovered more of the person that I am and not of the person others wish or perceive me to be. This was an interesting year that could fill a book. And of which I am writing down as to have material for that bestselling novel in the future.”
Well, my name is UnJi Nam and I’m here to tell you I’ve had an interesting year. In all the senses of the word. I’ve spent the whole year in one sense doing nothing at all interesting. After all, AP homework, essays, projects and the time spent complaining about the coursework to friends isn’t exactly palm-gripping material. But in another sense, the year has been hectic and chaos, full of tears, silence, and loneliness. And in another sense, this year I’ve made my best friends, a coterie that looks out for each other’s bad and happy times. I’ve experienced phenomenal bits of luck, like being able to indulge in my hobbies. I read somewhere that a life is not yet complete unless a birth, a wedding and a death has been experienced in it. Well, I’ve seen the birth of a new acceptance in myself that whoever I am is who I am. My close friend is actually literally going to get married after high school, the start of a new epoch where my friends and I will make new lasting foundations for the future. And I’m present at the death of many things—my childhood, carefree days, and old idealism.
Who knows what the future holds. Whatever it does, it probably will be even more hectic, chaotic, fun—more “interesting” than the year before. It’ll be at least four years of college ahead, after all. Lots of promise of long classes, boring professors, and quirky people letting loose after years of parental guidance. Whatever it does have, I look forward to maturing more and learning more of life. And also of long all-nighters in a row, tons of very late night study/lets-raid-McDonalds fests, and time to find fellow members of fandoms. I plan to study my head off, have fun, and go climb tall campus buildings without getting caught.
But whatever does happen, I know I’ll be the better prepared for it thanks to the lessons that writing English essays taught me. Every word I typed of the first semester E. P. essays was a stark reminder to never, ever procrastinate so much on essays that one has to do two all nighters to finish them all. The week where first semester ended was a dark, foggy, time of which I have little recollection of except being in a sleepy haze and wanting to kill someone. But on a more serious note: I’d say that it was the Poisonwood Bible essay that expanded my idea of what defined right and wrong. Writing this essay, and hence being forced to look more into what constituted responsibility, I realized just how much people are a community, not a collection of individuals with full control over their actions and their consequences. And also, of the human resiliency and will to redeem themselves. The novel taught me that it doesn’t matter so much what one does to correct a wrong as long as the individual acknowledges this wrong and addresses it in some way, to correct their responsibility for it. An individual has to address their responsibility in order to grow as a person.
Another essay that expanded my knowledge of people was delving into the Frankenstein essay. Writing this essay also opened up the idea of responsibility, but also more of the shades of grey in morality. And also of how human selfishness can taint morals. One has to be open to other viewpoints, to the lives and will of others as a factor to being a good person. Another essay that widened my viewpoint was writing an analysis of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. This made me realize the importance of honesty, and acceptance of what one truly is. With hypocrisy and denial is the death of goodness, as shown with Tess.
One day, I know I’ll end up using these lessons to guide my own way through life and situations. So thank you, AP English Literature class. You helped pave my way and make it a little less bumpy for when I have to find the path in tough times.

Class theme

The monsters we create. What does that mean exactly? At the end of the road, one has delved into the myriad of monsters that plague humanity, and they exist at every level. Nothing is free from taint—not the individual, and not the system that controls them. The one certain thing is that neither can exist without the other. In the novel Invisible Man, the nameless narrator realizes that even though he is victimized and rejected by society, his attempts to leave it to its own destruction are futile, for society holds the key for his existence and meaning as an individual. Without society, he waxes irresponsible and selfish, but with it, he at least struggles against it to reaffirm his values of justice and worth of every individual. And society at large cannot do without the individual, as the Brotherhood learns. Without the individual, an organization cannot run smoothly, can be doomed to be nothing but history as individual move on with their lives and leave the organization with its outdated ideas behind. Without the individual, the organization loses more of its conscience, and is eventually rejected by individuals. Monsters can be things to dance with on the edge of a knife, always a balancing act. But monsters can often be the consequences of good intentions, spoiled by ignorance of human nature. The Poisonwood Bible can illustrate this, with the Price family entering the Congo with the idea that they would civilize the heathens. But instead, the family members learn that they themselves are the savages and morally ambivalent. They learned that the civilization they brought was not beneficial to their neighbors, that in fact, it was used as a tool by Western nations to subjugate and bleed their respective colonies clean of resources. Some monsters arise because of tragic ignorance of one’s own culpability. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein never really understands his own responsibility for the monster. He created it, and did so not because of pure ideals or a pursuit of science but for human desire to conquer death, to better his own situation. Having created the beast, he instead shirks responsibility for its care and instead continues to try and live his old self-centered life spent caring for his own wants and needs. He blames the monster, blames others for their actions that led to his beloved ones’ deaths, but never really blames himself. Irresponsibility is a major root of the monsters we create. We, the irresponsible, have never really known the world, and expect it to be black and white. And if it is not, we assume superiority and rush in on white horses and good will to save the world. We, the irresponsible, create the monsters of pollution, crime, imperialism, and refuse to see our culpability in them, pointing fingers at other men in blame—politicians, ambassadors, officials. But who were the ones who sent them to conquer? Who were the ones whose materialism caused the poisoning of the earth? Who were the ones who fled from the deteriorating streets to the safer suburbs? It started with society, and its values of materialism and imperialism. It started with echelons of powerful elites, who shaped the world for their own gain. It started with the individual, unit of all human organizations, who invested in society’s wrongs in order to experience privilege. The individual has to admit responsibility first, for any change. So it was in Invisible Man, The Poisonwood Bible, and Frankenstein. (It was the monster, ironically a more rounded human being than his own creator.) The individual is the spark of change. The individual is the heart of darkness. Within us are the seeds for our redemption, and our destruction. We are the monsters we see in the dark. We are the seraphs we seek in the light.

Passage Essay: Ellison

UnJi Nam

Mrs. Elliott

AP English Lit

22 March 2009

Passage Essay: Invisible Man

In the novel Invisible Man, Ellison delves into the complex issue of individual identity, analyzing how it is repressed, molded, and exploited by others and by even oneself in society. The author explores the various methods of control and also concrete examples of repression of individuals, such as racism and self-serving philanthropism that paralyzes men into positions of benevolence and gratitude. A particular tie-in of how individual identity and lives are stifled by forces beyond them can be found in the passage before the battle royale scene, where the nameless protagonist encounters a dancer. This scene deftly shows by symbolism in the dancer the allure of the American dream—riches, opportunities, and ideals—and how she is used to mollify and scare the lower echelons of society into behaving for those men in power. With use of imagery the reader find hints of Ellison’s tone, an author who looks with disgust at the scene of men lusting after the symbolic dancer, but also at the same time sympathy for the basic desire for better things that drive men witless. One can also detect satire of this bundle of dreams and ideals that is the cornerstone of American idealism that is depicted as little better than a cheap whore to all. With this passage, Ellison does not only introduce the start of the dissolution of the narrator’s idealistic Washingtonian dreams of social value with hard work and virtue. The author also explores deeper into how individual identity is oppressed by both outside forces and with the consent of the individual themselves, how the seemingly virtuous and admirable in society is not always the good it promises. The individual identity is constantly preyed and manipulated by forces, be it good or bad, from others or even oneself in society.
Symbolism in the passage adds greatly to the theme of how identity is encroached by outside forces; in the passage, the dancer is quite crudely tied to American ideas and systems by the flag tattooed on her belly. The colors red, white and blue that are associated with her reinforces her ties to American ideals. “The face heavily powdered and rouged, the pink and erected nipples…the eyes hollow and smeared a cool blue, the color of a baboon’s butt.” It is interesting to note how American ideals are personified in this woman, cheapened and made sluttish for the masses that do not respect or uphold what she stands for. She is basely lusted after by white men, and manhandled by them as well as little better than entertainment. “They caught her just as she reached a door, raised her from the floor, and tossed her…I saw the terror and disgust in her eyes.” But yet this toy of powerful men is still dangled in front of the black boys as unattainable, the white woman and the freedoms and opportunities of America in one, both upheld as too pure and good for the unworthy lower classes. This dancer is the prize for the boys—she represents the economic opportunities, full breadth of civil rights, and social acceptance that they so badly desire, as shown by their lust. Men would become little better than animals to win her, giving up their high ideals and philanthropy. One can see how this pursuit of the American dream of betterment for the individual ultimately cheapens people to little more than characters, and in doing so lose their individual self.
Imagery in the passage is used to develop the author’s attitude towards this small playacting of American society at large. The woman who represents the chase of material goods and freedoms is cheapened by descriptions such as “the color of a baboon’s butt” and “yellow like that of a circus kewpie doll”, showing how the narrator can recognize the woman’s essential cheapness to the individual. And yet with the description of her physical body, which can tie into the desire for the solid and physical things of the world such as economic opportunities and civil rights, the narrator betrays his lust as well. With description of the somewhat obscene desires that the narrator undergoes, Ellison shows his own disgusted but sympathetic stance towards the pursuit of happiness and especially those who undertake it. Both can recognize how the pursuit of property and happiness is used by society to control the lower masses to servility and powerlessness. “On my right I saw one boy faint…his head hung and moans issued from his thick bluish lips. Another boy began to plead to go home. He tried to hide himself with his boxing gloves.” But both can also recognize the legitimate human need for such things. With the continuance of the cold-blooded dance of the woman, and the rush of the powerful for her, Ellison portrays the chaos of the scene and how human ideals break down in the face of animal wants. The whole scene is barbaric and pitiful for all involved at the same time. No man, whether rich or poor, white or black, escapes the woman’s effects. All have subscribed to the cheap pursuit of her, forsaking the growth of higher and more enlightened purposes. While author, narrator and reader may be disgusted by this animalistic chase, one realizes that this is part of human nature. As the story progresses, Ellison directs both his character and the audience to the realization that to blind oneself to the reality of base human wants is to blind oneself to the truth. To assume that ideals of virtue, sacrifice or the righteousness of rage can define everything about a human being is to not know the truth, to order the world according to lines that do not exist. And as a member of the lower echelons of society, the narrator as a poor black man often bears the brunt of such dehumanizing ideals of others that would force him to be something other than what he truly is. Whether he is seen as a hard worker, criminal, motivational speaker or scapegoat, none of them can truly define what he is. And the truth of one’s own identity is arguably the most important thing a person has. It has been called the last freedom, the soul, and the one thing that is carried with a person beyond death. One’s choice to react to circumstances as they see fit, one’s own truthful wants and opinions. Things that are all ruthlessly stripped away by others, and one such way to do so is by the dangling of the carrot known as the American dream. With it, men swallow blood and speak irony; for it, they would betray their own; for it, they would deny themselves and their true colors.
In the end, Ellison was not advocating the removal of the American dream from society, or the downfall of society at large that oppressed individuals to fit into a scheme like machine parts. What Ellison called for was simple knowledge of the fact of how the American dream was used, both to oppress and to integrate people to be the same. And also, for his readers to follow the actions of the invisible narrator and try to effect change in society. Change as that society could function together without having to lose one’s own soul for betterment in life, change as so others could recognize and accept both the idealistic and the base in humanity without rejecting both the ugly and the people associated with it in the world.

Poem Analysis--Hardy and Hopkins

UnJi Nam

Mrs. Elliott

AP English Literature

9 March 2009

Poem Analysis

In both “The Darkling Thrush” and “The habit of Perfection”, the two poems delve into the relationship between man and spirituality. In “The Darkling Thrush” Thomas Hardy explores the human capacity for hope and faith even in the face of pessimism. “The Habit of Perfection” in contrast delves more into how an individual can expand spiritually by reining in one’s fleshly appetites and selfish desires. Both explore the idea of divinity and enlightenment beyond a person’s scope. However, the two poems differ widely in their methods suggested for how a person does achieve or even relate to higher spirituality in the universe. For Hardy, the speaker of his poem comes from an apathetic, degenerating world who sees no reason for hope nor belief in God or the good, “All mankind that haunted nigh had sought their household fires, the lands sharp features seemed to me the Century’s corpse outleant…and every spirit upon earth seemed fervorless as I.”. In contrast, “The Habit of Perfection” sees the redemption of man’s soul and purpose in life inherent in the individual themselves, who must self-discipline themselves to find spiritual elevation. Written in the same period in Victorian society, these two poems are singular in their contrasting views for mankind’s abilities and place in the universe, as well as differing attitudes of optimism for the former. For “The Darkling Thrush”, the general point of pessimism with acknowledgement of man’s limitations in understanding the universe beyond him is delineated by imagery and structure. In “The Habit of Perfection”, the poem’s meaning of how a person can transcend their earthly limitations by ignoring earthly pleasures is enhanced by the poet’s use of personification and allusion.
The use of imagery in “The Darkling Thrush” is key to its overall mood set throughout the poem. Repetition of the theme of death and degeneration is emphasized by the use of words such as the frost of the winter evening being “spectre-gray”, “The weakening eye of day”, and a whole stanza on the subject of “The lands sharp features seemed to me the Century’s corpse outleant, his crypt the cloudy canopy.” Such words and lines contribute to the first two stanzas pessimistic and contemplative mood, touched with melancholy that only the speaker gives voice to, but the whole world feels. “And every spirit upon earth seemed fervorless as I.” Other images used add to the depths of the speaker’s depression, such as the “household fires” that humans have retreated to, suggesting that man with their ambivalent ability to create and destroy have isolated themselves from the growing darkness of the world with artificial light. This suggest even further the isolation between man and the universe—the universe that includes divinity and the natural flow of life beyond human vanities and short-lived passions. But it is with the third and fourth stanza that the imagery employed changes from reminiscent of aging and death to hope and regeneration. With the use of the singing thrush, “A voice arose among in a full-hearted evensong of joy illimited, an aged thrush in blast-beruffled plume.” The song of the thrush is symbolic. Its symbolic of human hope, not only for better things in the physical world, but of humans and the natural universe—represented in the singing bird—having a truer relationship with each other, of when people can accept their fleshiness and their ultimate unimportance instead of gouging and shaping the earth with memorials to themselves and their selfishness. It also is a stand-in for spring, the season of hope and regeneration, for which the thrush is preparing for. The speaker, with the last line “So little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound…that I could think there trembled through some blessed hope, of which he knew, and I was unaware.” is acknowledging that somewhere, there could be a higher purpose, a divinity, a higher state of human spirituality and enlightenment beyond his ken. Structure is also essential in delineating this change from matter of factual depression over the state of the world to hope for better things. The first two stanzas are quite structured and orderly, following a familiar rhythm throughout and written dispassionately. It is with the introduction of the bird that the stanzas rhythm and structure change drastically, the rhythm no longer it’s easy, familiar beat, but a rapid, emotional fluttering. The structure becomes more emotional in nature, with interjections added onto sentences and lines made shorter as the speaker is gripped with new feeling. The speaker, along with the thrush, ends the poem with hope, the eternal scourge and blessing of men.
With “The Habit of perfection” the poet comes from a different spiritual place. The speaker is almost exuberant with hope and resolution in comparison to Hardy. He claims that with deprivation and self-discipline comes a greater understanding of the divine in the universe, and that such understanding brings joy to its believers. The poet, Gerard Hopkins, works with the underlying assumption that divinity does exist, that it does care for the growth of the human soul, and that man has the capacity to elicit positive change in their life and the world permanently. In short, he is emphasizing the power and importance of the individual, whose hard work and dedication ends in such delightful rewards such as being closer to God, as opposed to Hardy who finds the individual powerless in the face of the universe to ultimately change anything, spiritual or physical, their efforts meaningless and ultimately marred by their own arrogance of their importance, and any divinity to be uninterested in the doings of men. Hopkins emphasizes his optimism of human individuals and the benevolent universe they live in by use of personification. The senses and human desires he speaks to are treated as sentient, separate beings from him “Elected Silence”, “Nostrils, your careless breath that spends” and “O feet, that want the yield of plushy sward.” By doing so, Hopkins elevates the position of these senses, and by doing so, also elevates the human individual by making a person and their fleshy accompaniments almost like a club of enlightened, reasonable beings who can consult each other to achieve higher spiritual elevation. By personifying and addressing these senses that often lead a person astray from a spiritual path to God, he also separates the human soul from its fleshly limits, further emphasizing the importance of a human individual. By allusion to the Bible, mainly in the last stanza, Hopkins ends the conversation between the speaker and his fleshly senses with the final result of spiritual elevation that comes by depriving one’s fleshly desires and senses. It all culminates in a marriage between the individual and poverty, “lily colored clothes not labored at, nor spun”, which is a reference to the teaching of Jesus emphasizing how God takes care of his believers, the final word in Hopkins point of a benevolent universe with a benevolent God with important human individuals.
In the end, both Hopkins and Hardy deal with spirituality being beyond human abilities, but they differ in the importance of the individual in finding this spiritual state, or even how advisable it is. Hopkins finds it the goal to aspire to in all humans, Hardy ends the poem ambivalently—it could be a true redemption, or yet another manifestation of human arrogance over its importance.

Q3 Essay: Tess's Ending

UnJi Nam

Mrs. Elliott

AP English Literature

19 March 2009

Q3 Essay: Tess’s Ending

In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy ends the novel on the somber note of Tess’s death. It concludes the tragedy of Tess’s life on a distant, alienating way, jarring from the novel’s passionate characters and motives by not depicting the actual scene of her death. Instead, the finale focuses on two living characters directly affected by Tess, Liza-Lu and Angel Clare. While some may argue that this ending detracts from Tess’s importance in the novel and ultimately cheapens her life, the ending is actually very appropriate for the message of Tess’s tale, and how it affects others in society. Imagery is used predominantly in the ending chapter to emphasize the solemnity and tragedy of the scene, as seen in the description of the two characters. It is also used when describing the setting, a cheery morning belonging to a universe that doesn’t care about the unjust death of Tess, the sorrow of men, the death of mankind’s pretty ideals. This emphasizes even more the tragic quality of the execution, delineating the world not as the fair and beautiful world of Victorian society’s creation but an apathetic and self-serving one not guided by a kind divinity or moral human beings. Symbolism is also used to craft the mood and message of the final ending, such as thee two people walking away from Tess. All this is bound together by Hardy to make his point on his readers—Tess’s life proves that the world is not the just and happy place that people would have it to be. The question is, what will one do about it? By leaving the future actions of the characters who know this message ambiguous, Hardy leaves this question for the reader and society to answer.
The use of imagery is predominant in setting the mood of tragedy and apathy in the ending. The tragedy is woven in by the presence of Angel Clare and Liza-Lu, the two characters who arguably were the ones who loved Tess best, fleeing from her death. “Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk to half their natural size. They moved on hand in hand and never spoke a word, the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto’s Two Apostles.” The apathy of the world they live in to their pain is obvious by the cheeriness of the day, “amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the brightness and warmth of a July morning” However, the actions of the characters, by walking away from the bright and orderly city that sacrifices Tess, gives the novel ending it most vital hope, the quality that had always pervaded the whole novel. First it was the girlish hopes for happiness, justice; then when hope faded, actions were taken to secure these things. Actions that may not have accorded well with a hypocritical society that could not stomach the death of a vile man, but could easily ignore the downfall of a young girl with only blame to heap on her head. With Tess’s death, the characters that loved her best are galvanized into taking action again, against unfairness and striking for happiness that all men have a right to, those basic ideals that Tess died for, even against an unjust society’s mandates. They abandon the city, which stands for all the things that converged to ruin Tess’s life: wealth overriding even justice; pretensions to morality that demonize those who do not follow the rules and anglicize those who do; deliberate ignorance of the base and ugly in life in an attempt to make life more idealized than it truly is to the point of blotting out those who stand for such things. And with this action lies hope for the characters, that perhaps with this newfound knowledge the two can strike out for a better world. However, the ending is, just as life is, tempered with doubt as well. Is it folly to hope that men can change the world and society to a better place? Or the redeeming quality of mankind, that it can do so, painfully, stumblingly, but surely?
Symbolism is also present in the ending, adding a layer of depth to the tale. With the mention “the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto’s Two Apostles” Hardy emphasizes the divine quality of Tess again. Only this time, she acts as the Jesus figure in the novel, sacrificed so that the world can know of the truth in life—that the universe is cold; humans are not enlightened beings but often pretentious figures pretending they are superior to others; and that nature and its impulses, while often decried, is often the most truest and most honest things of human life. Not God, not philosophies, not social responsibilities, but our fleshy selves with its unruly desires and actions—birth, life, and death. Hardy is very pointedly comparing Angel and Liza-Lu to disciples—they will have to be the main purveyors of Tess’s message. With the death of their divinity, it is up to frail mankind to hold a new fire to society—questioning what humans really are. Not enlightened, not always good, not always bad, pretentious, and striving to establish their own uniqueness and importance as in the case of Angel and Alec. With the existence of a man and a woman who walks away with this knowledge, one can find similarities to Adam and Eve. Does Hardy see the birth of a new society starting with this couple? Or is it another mark for failure by mankind, to sin again and suffer another slow fall from grace—to let Tess’s message go for naught?
In the end, Hardy tempers his ending with much ambiguosity. The reader never discovers what route Angel and Liza-Lu takes to purvey Tess’s message in the world. The reader is left unsure whether to feel hope for the couple and a happy closure that at least Tess’s death wasn’t for naught. Such an ending would emphasize the redemptive qualities of mankind despite its evils and faulty systems. Or Angel and Liza-Lu could have simply abandoned society completely to its vices, emphasizing the decline of mankind into further hypocrisy and pretensions while individuals can only survive by fleeing altogether. This would delineate the inability of mankind to escape its circumstances, that humans are mired in their flawed human natures that would continue to trample on others to maintain its pretensions of religion, morality and enlightenment. But by leaving the ending fairly open-ended, Hardy made his point that it is up to the reader as well to purvey Tess’s message as well. There are three disciples of Tess’s ministry that leave the book at the ending. How the reader reacts to this, what one’s actions are determines whether Tess’s ending is truly the tragedy or not. As the author, Hardy is charging others to take responsibility for the truth of man’s dual nature of base and enlightened. Will one accept it, or fight against its evils, intended or not?

Q3 essay: Joyce Carol Oates feminist reading

UnJi Nam

Mrs. Elliott

AP English Literature

4 March 2009

Feminist Reading of Joyce Carol Oates

In Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “Where are you going, where have you been?” Oates explores the effects of society’s expectations on the young, particularly on teenage girls. Through the main character Connie, Oates shows her readers the full effects of a society that emphasizes emotions, fleeting pleasurable experiences, and the tying in of romantic love as the fulfillment of adolescent dreams. Oates, by sketching Connie’s ultimate helplessness in the face of reality, shows her criticism of such standards. By use of imagery, Oates emphasizes the allure of the modern world with its promises of true love and hence excitement and social esteem for a girl. Details, however, also delve into the essential shallowness of such a world. Symbolism is used to shed light on the dangers of reality that exist hidden underneath the bright world of impressions and dreams that Connie buys into. Finally, with extensive dialogue throughout the story, Oates shows her audience the extent of Connie’s weakness in the face of male persistence, showing her ultimate lack of maturity in a society that has emphasized the need for girls like her “to be sweet and pretty and give in”. By all these techniques, the author delineates the need for change in a system that has made male attention and social popularity the driving goal for women. A system that emphasizes looks and attention above all is one that victimizes both the women who seek appearances, and the men who must adhere to them to win over women. In a sense, this short story is a rejection of romantic love and sexuality as marks of maturity and value for women: ideals that modern Western society has ingrained for decades.
Connie is sketched by Oates to be a typical teenage girl, who chafes under her mother’s authority and expectations, seeks romantic attention from older boys and in other times is carried away by materialistic hobbies such as shopping or daydreams. She encapsulates at heart the basic needs of the teenage youth to break away from tradition and blaze a new path in life, the childish dreams where anything is possible, and the needs to be accepted by society as a valuable member. However, society has channeled those desires into less wholesome and pure activities. Connie is taught that to be wanted by men and experience true love like the media portrays it is a mark of social value. Hence, being a physically attractive woman is essential for experience of such things—“She was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.” When she dreams of better things, she dreams of romantic love to fulfill all her desires—“dreaming and dazed…her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs” Ultimately, all of Connie’s energy and youth goes into getting male attention as the only mark of validation. It is this typical teenage girl’s self absorption and need for male validation that Oates sketches out, and in doing so, she criticizes the materialistic society that teaches girls so. A society that found that in order to sell their products more effectively, it was easier to groom girls to believe and search for dreams of love than how to respect their own selves irregardless of men and personal appearances. However, such values not only harm women and their self autonomy, but men as well. The reader can see the cracks in the disguise of Arnold Friend’s debonair persona “As if he was smiling from inside a mask. His whole face was a mask…tanned down onto his throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but had forgotten about his throat” The details presented show a tragic tableau of a girl who blindly follows what society has deemed will make her happy, and a man who follows the ideals of female fantasy to get what he wants. Both characters are false to their public persona, and are made almost comical in how they take up disguises in order to seek self esteem. “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home, and one for anywhere that was not home” And in this desperate attempt for validation, things become twisted and dark—Arnold Friend’s barely disguised threats to Connie if she doesn’t fulfill his desires—“But if you don’t come out we’re gonna wait until your people come home and then they’re all going to get it”; Connie’s basic shallowness and immaturity such as abandoning her friend for a boy, contemptuous of the women in her family for not being pretty and exciting. Though never mentioned explicitly, Oates’s use of details paint a picture of tense individuals in a society that cannot supply them with a true ideal in life, whose attempts to stay within the boundaries set by society are tempered with frustration.
Symbolism is used to add depth to the story. Music has a particular place for Connie. It is the stuff of dreams, and hence often about love. “’My sweet little blue-eyed girl’” It is the sign of her self-absorption and childishness, giving importance and meaning to everything in her newly unfolding life, “it might have been the music…She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive.” For Connie, it is almost a religious, divine experience, and in many places, serves as her stand-in to religion. “The music was always in the background like music at a church service” or the fact that she chooses to listen to the radio program on Sunday rather than go to church. Music, among other things, promises her fulfilling, exciting things: grand opportunities and experiences just beyond the horizon. It is the symbol for her teenage youth, found at teenage haunts such as the drive-in restaurant, teenage items such as ostentatious gold cars, and hanging around Connie on a Sunday afternoon like perfume. At the end, when she leaves with Arnold Friend, the symbol has changed along with Connie. Arnold murmurs a line of music “My sweet little blue-eyed girl” and it no longer has the simple connotation of romance. Now music has become false to her, “a half sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes.” a shallow tool of the society that she is leaving behind as she leaves. This marks Connie’s maturity, as she realizes all her teenage dreams of love and attention proving false and insignificant. These dreams, used by Arnold Friend to manipulate her into leaving with him, are left behind for a wider world beyond feminine submission to romance and men as in the movies and promised in songs. Arnold Friend also takes on a symbol in literature of the dashing tempter of the world, dressed in black, driving a gold car, decked out in all the familiar things of an appearance-driven world. However, the male seducer in literature usually proves to be a scoundrel that ruins the purity of the heroine and leaves her in appropriate distress to be rescued by a hero who would whisk her back into the arms of society’s conventions. In Oates’s tale, Connie is empowered by her leaving with Arnold, taking on new knowledge of a world without the illusions of romantic love and exalted human experiences.
By dialogue, Oates brought home the extent of Connie’s innocence in the face of real danger, and also just how much she was just a typical teenage girl. She poses and preens for attention “craning her neck to glance and mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right.”, takes much of her actions from pop culture, including her slang and dreams. She does not initially react to Arnold Friend as a danger because he comes in a blaze of glory, recognizably brass as the men in the movies, and hip to teenage culture’s fads. “She recognized most things about him…that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across ideas they didn’t want to put in words.” Her words and actions to Arnold at first are also studied and almost scripted, taken from a tradition of teen culture that demands the girl to be not too eager, cool, distant but ultimately still available. “She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure…Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder. She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.” As the story progresses, she gets more and more panicky, reacting to Arnold’s words in a more childlike way, instead of taking action to protect herself. “’Shut up! You’re crazy!’ Connie said. She backed away from the door. She put her hands against her ears as if she’d heard something terrible.” The reader develops sympathy for Connie, despite her shallowness and posing—she is depicted as the little girl she still is. And hence, the reader has to wonder at the end of the story how the current system of inculcating rosy dreams and ideals to girls is justified in existing. If it can’t protect Connie from Arnold, what good is it for her to trust in true love and the innate goodness of the universe?
Ultimately, Connie discovers the flimsiness of the world she was brought up in. That love can be used for a darker agenda by men instead of sweet ideas of protection and admiration. That the things of the world she loved such as music and boys can be used to violate her free will. Oates showed that Connie reaches maturity not by following the dictates of society which prescribes make-up, edgier fashions, edgier behaviors and boyfriends as marks of adulthood for women. Connie grows up by realizing that there is good and evil in the world, a basic part of the human condition. At the end of the tale, Oates is subtly advocating for the end of such traditions in society that ultimately delay maturity of women as they pursue surface things, and for a broader society that can include the widespread maturation of women as fellow human beings struggling in an uncertain world, instead of idealistic beings to be cosseted and protected. A society that Connie can enter into, with her newfound knowledge of life.

Poem analysis essay "The Oxen"

UnJi Nam

Mrs. Elliott

AP English Literature

19 February 2009

“The Oxen” analysis

“The Oxen” was written by Thomas Hardy in a turbulent time of England’s history, published during the First World War near Christmastime. At first glance, the poem seems to reaffirm faith in the noble and spiritual, and most readers and publishers interpret the piece as the tale of a speaker’s journey back into the ideals and joys of Christmas that he encountered as a child; the triumph and immortality of these principles inherent in his desire to return. "If someone said on Christmas Eve, / Come; see the oxen kneel, / In the lonely barton by yonder comb/ Our childhood used to know/ I should go with him in the gloom, / Hoping it might be so.” However, while that may be one facet of the poem’s meaning, pigeonholing this work as just a life-affirming Christmas product is doing it great injustice. By use of diction in some parts of the poem and allusions, Hardy makes it clear that he is quite alienated from the faith and innocence of his early days, one that included a faith in the goodness and redemptive qualities of mankind. However, should a reader be tempted to paint the poem as a two-dimensional work with only an interplay of supposed belief and actual rejection of ideals, the structure of the poem emphasizes the emotion and inner struggle of the speaker who wants to believe. Lastly, Hardy polishes off the inner complexity of the poem with the symbolism of the imagery used, standing for various things that affected post turn of the century Western Society.
By analyzing the diction of the beginning part of the poem, one can see that Hardy uses comfortable, cozy words such as “hearthside” “embers” “meek” “elder” and “elder” to paint the innocence of the speaker’s early years as imbued with community and definite structures. This is used to delineate the rift the speaker has later on in life, as revealed by the phrase “Nor did it occur to one of us there / To doubt they were kneeling then.” With the advent of this phrase sneaks in a more reserved and disbelieving voice, as shown by the phrase “So fair a fancy few would weave / In these years!” in referring to the legend he accepted as truth so long ago, along with the words “lonely” and “gloom”. This rift the speaker has is significant to the poem—it can be interpreted as a loss of faith in a benevolent God, or a loss of faith in humanity’s goodness, particularly interesting when noting the major event of the time of the poem’s creation. With the advent of a war that was increasingly more impersonal, horrific and ultimately a waste of lives, people began to lose faith in the old traditions and institutions, and the speaker is a reflection of society as a whole. The average reader’s interpretation of the poem is turned on its head as one faces the question of whether the speaker’s depression and loss of faith is truly justifiable, and whether it is innocence and blind belief that is evil that should not be returned to. After all, such qualities in Western society led to the First World War: a blind belief in one’s rulers and religion to always be right no matter the action taken; innocence in the perception of war as glorious.
With the symbolism of the imagery used, particularly for the legend of the kneeling oxen, Hardy emphasizes the aspect of lost innocence but also ties the oxen to the soldiers of the war, who are much like the “meek mild creatures” and of the people who “[sit] in a flock”. At a time when Britain was manipulating its media extensively to raise public support and outrage against the Germans, Hardy was voicing his dissent and lack of trust in the ideals of civilization that Britain held itself to be the sole protector of, thus making him and the speaker of the poem alienated from the common herd. A herd that was being herded with lies and distortions to a pointless death on the battlefield for a few feet of ground, and suffering deprivations of war, not to protect religion or human virtue, but for a power play between the aristocracy of Europe. It is also interesting to note what the meaning of the line “I should go with him in the gloom, / Hoping it might be so.” could be. Is the gloom representative of the future the speaker foresees, as humanity continues on its downward path, always to be blinded by illusions of human virtues and optimism? Or is the gloom a passing “dark night of the soul” to be conquered?
With the use of structure and changing diction in the third stanza, Hardy captures a third layer to his poem—the emotional state of the individual forever torn by the question of whether humanity is really a force for good in the universe, or just a bestial species in an uncaring world.
The first two stanzas of the poem are structured neatly and rhythmically, almost in a sing-song way, tying the themes of belief in the good of humanity with childishness and of a drone. With the third stanza where the speaker notes his loss of faith, “So fair a fancy few would weave in these years!” the poem’s rhythm abruptly shifts, and loses its continuity with the previous stanzas, paralleling the speaker’s break with old beliefs. It is with the tone of the next line, “Yet I feel, if someone said on Christmas Eve, come; see the oxen kneel,” that the poem re-establishes a new cadence, and the hesitant hope of the speaker finds voice. The speaker dances between hope and loss of faith, something that he continues to do for the rest of the poem, by juxtapositioning words such as “childhood” and “hoping” with words like “gloom” and “used to”.
Overall, the message of the poem centers on the journey of the speaker, an individual who has been affected by war, lies, and a rapidly changing world to see the truth underneath the veneer of politeness and virtue of society. He has lost the ideals and beliefs that masked his vision, but at the same time, the individual is left to wonder who is truly right in the end: the optimistic view of his childhood in the universe, or the more pessimistic view of a rational, unmysterious universe without guiding principles or moral consequences to evil. This speaker’s journey underlines the dilemma of all individuals in modern day society faced all around by evil deeds and ignorance—what is humanity in this universe? A force to pursue good, or a species that rationalizes its selfish actions? And what is the correct reaction? Is it to keep hope in humanity, as the speaker is tempted to do by believing once again in the legend of the kneeling oxen? Or is it to accept that man is not the improving, orderly, and moral force of the Victorian’s ideal (The “meek mild” oxen) but an animal driven by selfish desires and ignorance? (The bestial animal that innocently takes itself to the slaughterhouse) Ultimately, as is the fate of all individuals, the speaker may ask the question, but does not know the answer—“I should go with him in the gloom, hoping it might be so.” It is a question every individual reader must ask, and then answer for themselves.

Revised 1st semester essay Explanation

The things I decided to change in my essay included: sentence structure; organization of paragraphs; imagery and details; and more inclusion of the poem “To the Virgins”. I changed sentence structure to be a bit more varied and less lengthy. I also tried to cut out excessive repetition of details packaged in threes. I split off some sentences to be separate paragraphs in order to highlight specific points in the essay. I definitely added more details and imagery as to the hospital stay to emphasize the life-changing aspect of it, cutting out the original ending anecdote as too sentimental and unorganized for the essay’s message. Lastly, I tried to include more text from the poem I quoted in order to strengthen the message of my essay.

Revised 1st Semester Essay

When I was seven, I was seriously ill. It started with my legs first. Tiny red dots sprinkled liberally on my ankles, inching up to the knee caps. It was a pointillism painting on my skin, and my mother couldn’t read it at all. She furrowed her eyebrows at my explanation that her freckles were contagious. She took me to the hospital when the icy green of winter was thawing into spring, where the walls were eternally pea-green soup frosted slick. I studied them intently in boredom as I sat in the waiting room, not knowing just how familiar they would become. The doctors ordered tests, smiled brightly at me, and told me that I would be out in no time. Indeed, time in the hospital follows no rules of the universe. It is a limbo outside of a bustling world. At first, I thought it fun, lying on a bed all day, exempt from the bustle of outside life. Then it got to be monotonous, having resting all the time, always being warned to be careful. And the faces of the regulars were always guarded and strained.
Though I didn’t realize it, this was a purgatory of sorts, where the soul was purged not of sins but of disease. And with both Dante’s and modern civilization’s creation, both were characterized by the unknown. Why was this happening? I was fairly healthy before. Maybe too fond of junk food but not a sickly child. And I wasn’t a very bad person in my opinion. On the whole, I thought I was too interesting to be cooped up in a building with needles constantly jabbed in me when I could be proving to the world my talents. So if it wasn’t really my fault, then why was I here? It didn’t make any sense to be here with the other pale children.
A child of seven isn’t really aware of death. Injections, spinal taps and pills were nuisances, not life lines. I wanted to know why I couldn’t handle community books, or go outside to see the roses bloom in summer. But you’re not completely unchanged. You would have bedmates that would help you make a Lego castle, and the next day, their beds would be empty, the sheets folded into a small, neat roll at the foot of their bed. You’re aware that your condition hurts your family, though you’re not exactly sure why. While I lay there, in boredom, aware of my parents hurt, aware that my life meant so much to them, I slowly formed a few resolutions, for when I got out of limbo. I wanted to get better, for them. For myself. There was a rose garden in the hospital grounds on the seventh floor, a hanging Eden of sorts that bloomed through the two wintry springs that I stayed there. I was rarely allowed to go and look, much less pick a flower to bring back. If I got better, I promised myself. I’ll grow my own rose garden and pick them all. Fill the house to bursting of pink and red blooms. That was something simple to do. Easy and simple things in health: walking down to the grocery store to buy an ice-cream. Petting a stray cat. Things that weren’t all that unusual in the past were now something to aspire to, to hope for.
I did get better eventually. Now real life presses in my head far more than the simple things of life. Studies hover like a bad dream, textbooks need to be read and colleges have to be wooed. But still. When things get too pressing, one has to put things in perspective. Yes, there’s a lot at stake for the future in terms of preparation, but at least one still has health. The ability to enjoy a summer’s walk. To breathe in crisp autumn air on the way to school. Robert Herrick probably encapsulates it best with his poem “To the Virgins, to make much of time.” To “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”. Life is precious, and it is short as a rose bloom. Herrick, writing the poem during a turbulent time of war and tension, knew about life’s inherent chaos. Life isn’t always fair. Hence war, hence disease. But Herrick also knew of the importance of the good, simple pleasures of life. How they can make life worthwhile, despite their transience. Hence, one should live life to the utmost. For “The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, the higher he’s a-getting, the sooner will his race be run, and nearer he’s to setting.”

Bibliography #1

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Evanston: McDougal Littell, 1847. Byron, Glennis. Introduction. Dracula: a Victorian novel. By Bram Stoker. New York: Broadside, 1998. 16-25.Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Bantam Dell. 1910.Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Signet Classic. 1851.Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Broadview, 1818.Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Broadview, 1897. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood.” The Cult of True Womanhood. (1966) 24 24 October 2008.

Introduction #1

What should a portfolio represent? Well, a good start would be to look in the standards. Which thus states that the theme for the class and hence a starting point for the portfolio is “The monsters we create.” Pleasant, really. Immediately, literary and scholarly tradition states that one must create a portfolio of angst and depth, following in the traditions of Melville’s “thought-divers” to bring up dark pearls of strange luster. There are plenty of tried and celebrated answers to that statement in literature, but many of them follow dark roads and darker endings, and of course, yours should too. One must follow in the footsteps of greater writers, repeating in different cadences, that man cannot escape from inner darkness. Then mouth in centuries-old tradition, thank the deities that there is an end to this life of suffering. The she-wolf, the horror, and the white whale awaits, don’t they? Thus, pessimism and dourness eventually sweeps over and swallows the portfolio, anarchy rules, and life ends with depressing metaphor, then soliloquy and the much awaited, period. That would be an established way to answer the theme of the class, and as good as any way to earn a grade. But would that really say anything about the writer, other than the fact that he or she is well-versed in literary traditions, from Thebes to America? “The Monsters we create.” The reaction to that statement is generally downcast and thoughtful agreement that humanity makes most of its demons. But the words of someone shouldn’t be of the general reaction or opinion, but of their own truth. Everyone has their own unique slant, their own story to tell regarding a universal statement. If the literary audience wanted a general consensus, they’d read surveys. The individual experiences make up the community, and hence society’s collective response to the theme. There are some darker answers from authors regarding the theme of man-made monsters, and some of them are more celebrated than others. And they certainly are not the worse for their pessimism. But in no way should they replace one’s own personal view, even if it should conflict with the opinions of established literature. If they do. I don’t know what to say. The monsters we create. I know they come from dark places, as fairytales state, from under the bridge, over the mountains, the secret fears in the huddling corner. They come from good intentions and evil wishes alike. They come from apathy and zealousness. They haunt the noble and the poor alike. But what are monsters anyways? Are they our fears and desires never mentioned, or too well known? Is the self-driven businessman who worked his way up from poverty driven by monsters? Is it just initiative then? Or are monsters giant affairs, like a repressive society? Is it really a monster then, or just a tradeoff between freedom and security, a tool of humanity? Are monsters controllable? Can one have a good relationship with monsters, dancing with them ‘til the wee of night, then getting up at dawn to step once more? I know what I see monsters as. Monsters to me can be voices in your head, furrowing fear and compulsion wherever they go. I'm not very well accquainted kind of monster that physically binds you, like alcohol or penury. But I know fear. Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of a meaningless future with no passion, no dreams--just existence. Fear that weighs down your wrists until the hands lay passively in the lap, too afraid to do anything for fear of mediocrity, the kind accompanied by the incredulous voices and unpleasantly suprised faces of an invisible, watching crowd. And thus a compulsion, to stay up late until morning, to revise once over again, crafting minor things painstakingly until just right, all to stave off the invisible crowd. Monsters can also be the fear and pain that drive other people, sometimes so maddened that they tear and inflict hurt on others to ignore their own selves. Monsters have evil in them, but sometimes hold a little good. They can be the ugly truth behind the facade or the trial that makes heroes and saints. We need them in a way, perhaps as much as they need us to exist. I don’t know much. But I hope to find out for myself, rather than trusting the bywords of others on what the truth of things are, what they look like, why they matter. A journey then. My portfolio should then represent my very own quest over faraway hills under foreign stars, using literature as my compass, and my own head for the direction taken.

Informal essay: The summer day

UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Lit
27 August 2008

The Summer Day

If life is wild and precious, for most of my life, I didn’t know it. I had a standard childhood, cramped, passionate and overall spent in happiness. As a girl, I would catch bugs, pluck flowers, collect pretty little stones and pony figures, all for my own happiness. I would regularly destroy furniture. I would have heated fights with my older sister. It was a normal set of self-indulging, formative years.
Then came older childhood, when the inches measured each year would exceed two, and when concepts of beauty and friendships extended beyond princess dresses and the joy of playing with each others unicorn collection. There the storms of little things overwhelmed, and would often leave me in tears. Acidly jealous of a friend, with physics-defying slimness and clarity of emotion swaying in her graceful features. This was late Elementary, when being the right kind of feminine was so important, when little girls knew little else that could compensate for a face that would topple crowds. This was the eager times, when one would conform fiercely to the ideals of girlhood that others had set for us. Wear coquettish skirts with flowers and fluffy sweater for the cute look that would wow teachers and strangers. Have long, smooth hair. Delicate features. Know everything about fashion. I followed, and was mostly miserable for it. Being chubbier and taller than all the other girls of my grade meant I stood out awkwardly in nearly all things feminine. Skirts didn’t fit right. Pretty rings wouldn’t fit on my large fingers. There were good times. Fishing for tadpoles until your knees turned green-grey with dried mud. Climbing a tree to grapple with ripe mangoes. Playing a fast and hard game of dodge ball. And there was always paper and pencils, where I could lose myself in pursuit of graceful lines for hours. But for the most part, these activities were looked down upon by teachers and classmates, and would usually lead to some expression of contempt. This didn’t help build up much self-esteem.
I remember one time in particular when I was ten, playing on the play field with classmates. They were of the slim and wide-eyed variety that the Romantics of the nineteenth century would have adored. A dance teacher suddenly came up to us with a camera, and motioned us all to come over by a large neon slide. We ran over in curiosity.
“Hi girls! Would you like to be in a yearbook picture?” she asked liltingly. In a strong chorus of smiles and gasps, we all showed our burning desire to be in the yearbook. This was something to be proud of—in a joint elementary, middle and high school, especially with the high school students managing the yearbook, shots of elementary students were rare, beyond class pictures. In a rush, we all crowded and balanced on the slide. The teacher took one photo, paused, and then frowned.
“You there,” she said, pointing at me. “Could you move out of the picture?”
Surprised, I slowly crawled off the slide from the mass of posing girls. I watched from the side the smiling girls pose before an enthusiastic photographer saying a variation of “Wow, that’s pretty, girls!” and “Beautiful!” I was vaguely hoping that the photographer had only waved me aside to take a picture just of me alone. But she soon finished, and amiably thanking the girls, walked away. I remember feeling my throat ache and eyes sting as I wondered what was wrong with me. Why pretty, shiny things like Valentine cards and the attention of a camera weren’t for me, but for girls like them. My childhood diary entry of that day only notes a stoic desire to better myself. “I’m ugly. That’s the truth…That is it. I’m using cream for your skin to take freckles away. The problem is my fat. I’ll bike every day and swim on weekends. No more leg, belly, arm and good riddance to cheek fat. Aloe Vera applied twice a day. I’ll brush my hair and wash face at lunch too. A new, pretty hair style too. I vow to be skinny.”
Even before I hit the rocky teenage years, I was none too happy about myself. I wasn’t skinnier by then, I was still growing alarmingly, and I felt unlikable, worst of all. Not being able to smile and chat easily like other kids, but shy and withdrawn. I felt that people saw me as large and awkward, not made to be treasured like other girls. Forever doomed to play the bumbling villain instead of the princess on the playground. Forever to be the handmaiden to others.
Things changed, slowly and quietly. I moved from the tropical nest that was Singapore to the colder climes of North America. I survived middle school, with its even fiercer preenings and now competition for gentleman attentions. I found other venues to find a power and a voice that was listened to that I never found in trying to be pretty. But to this day, I still struggle with that demon. The one that says one is never good enough. One is never going to be loved, or appreciated, or even remembered when gone. That being precious and treasured is all about being chased after, being physically exquisite.
But the thing is, I know better now. When I was younger, I had nothing to believe but the surface world around me that valued princesses and models. That a girl’s value is measured only by her graces and charms. Now I am older. I can make beautiful things now out of paper and pencils. I care for a gold-livened slip of scale and fins in a fishbowl that grows more precious in sight and heart as the days go by. I can make precious things. I can and will do things like climb a tree or catch live beetles for pets without worrying so much about other people’s reactions. I can appreciate “the grasshopper…gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.” Life in its beauty. I only wish I’d been more attentive to the world outside the artificial when I was younger, not so focused on the world that people make that is often cruel but yet asserts itself as the only world worth living in. There were scoffers in Mary Oliver’s poem too, ones who said there were better ways to spend time than dreaming about in the fields. One has to find out on their own the validity of other experiences, of the existence of other worlds. So I am not always treasured in an image-conscious suburban society that prizes vivaciousness and beauty in girls above all. Now I see: why should I even labor to change myself to be more of the standard of such a world anyways? Not that genetics is really that malleable anyways, but the point is, there are other worlds. One that I create out of paper and colors in which my skills lead the way. Other in which nature in its beauty envelops and swallows me up. Worlds in which that which I treasure the most, in my “one wild and precious life” can be the highlight, rather than the accessory or a pretension in others.
The hurt is still there. There are days when my body and face are hateful to the sight. But now there are more days when I simply do not care. When I am alive to inspiration and the thrill of a good book. There are less days now, spent hurt over the past, and the injustices of the present, and more days spent ready for tomorrow. A tomorrow I will make on my own, not slanted to please the world and its denizens so hungry for things. A life for my own, made to enjoy every bit of things, from the scent of books, to the stress and anticipation of projects, to dreams of making something beautiful for the world. A life not so caught up in a rat race of beauty and wealth that never is won, but a life more focused on simply enjoying. Enjoying fresh flower buds, appreciating warm tea in winter, taking every little thing and packaging it in lavender for years to come, rather than swallowing them all and only wanting more and better that never is the best.

Personal statement: informal essay 3

UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Lit
25 August 2008
Famous
I am famous to a battered set of aged color pencils. They are blind, deaf and dry mouthed; the yellow one is pockmarked with the marks of my toothed distress, and the Deco blue is spindling away to nothing, spinning aerie and wistful spun on its roiling past of sheets. They generally lie in a rainbow clatter on the top of my desk, and are often left for weeks at a time languishing under dust and thread of glue. But when I do use them, I do so with a fury. The satin wood is carved bright under a box cutter until the sharp eyed steel finds the vein of pure pigment. The once pointed pencils now spend most of their time in stub-nosed labor. The wee morning hours, then the late morning hours will pass by without notice, and one measures time by the ages between each new re-sharpening. I use them ferociously, and they in turn leave me shaky-eyed and ambivalently proud of a new piece of art in the morning’s light.
Ours is a partnership. We have aged together well, and like those in an old marriage, we understand each other, and make allowances henceforth. I pare the wood carefully away from the sensitive color, backbone and life span of the pencil. Stripes of color always apply smooth and strong, without having to leave valleys crisscrossing the surface to do so. There is also responsibility at work. I ply light colors, especially flesh tones, carefully away from pencil lines, since the two blends easily, and tend to make variations on the color of a dead salmon. The pencils will not shift to inform me what colors look devilish together, or will join only to form mud on the paper. They will not murmur when what started as a candy-pop picture of sweetness sours to clotting rainbow matter degenerated all over haphazard space. The fault lies solely with the artist. She should know better. Or so I thought.
I remember when I first inherited the set from my sister in middle school. It was a limited edition set of 72 shades, and they were Prismacolors to boot, meaning these were one of the best to be had in the glorious world of color pencils. Soft buttery wood that didn’t fight with the razor, color as vibrant as pastels, and the pencils themselves cool to the touch with imposing gold leaf lettering indented on the side. No more of those dry and squeaky Crayola affairs. As an aspiring artist, I hoped I had the talent to properly do these pencils justice. In those early days, I took them everywhere with me, to school where they would be jostled, borrowed, trodden on and whisked out at every opportunity. They collected in a puddle of magnificence in the bottom of my purse, and served many uses, among them good luck charms, fake claws wedged between knuckles in drama class, and swipe tool to collect coins that hid under the refrigerator. They were beloved, and some did snap in the process. In those bright pastel days, art was everything and yet nothing. There was no perfection, no such concept as serious art, and no such bully as the muse known.
Things changed, as it does. An artwork of mine met with honorable attention at a student art competition. All of a sudden, I was expected to recreate the airiness of the original, forge it with ease again and again. And I wanted to as well. What was once only a fragment of a dream, a fleshing out of a feeling, was now important and flush with meaning. When I would once start drawing instantaneously, I would now look at the uncertain paper and fight with myself, plead with the gods to make something positively breathtaking. Something to make people stop and notice. I’d think back on other inspiring works of art that drew praises, and try to recreate it in my own way. Though my skill level had not changed much from before to now, now was the constant scrutiny, the constant judging—and more often than not, constant anguish over my pale imitations. The pursuit of perfection, which had belonged to many a better artist before me, was now mine as well. Art was no longer a social hobby, involving friends who wanted cats or flowers for binder art, but was now a serious activity involving quiet, cold and wide rooms with only self-doubt and brief, sweaty-palmed glories speaking to me.
And my artwork and skills did improve under the tyranny of self-doubt and lust of importance, the need to grab attention and soul of my audience. This was power that I in my other lives as little sister, quiet classmate, or bookwormish student never possessed. And by the time I entered high school, my faithful Prismacolors were still with me. Except now, the pencils were always to be found in their original gold-embossed package, neatly arranged and carefully sharpened. I carried them to school in a separate bag, and made sure not to drop a single pencil for fear of breaking the fragile twig of color within. Art was no longer spontaneous for me, shown in the rigidly perfect and fearful compostions, and in the tightly cosseted pencils. I would spend hours fighting with the blank paper trying to perfect the idea spinning in my head before commiting a single line. The act of drawing and coloring became painful cycles in self-doubt and misery over whether I’d made a mistake in picking Night Blue rather than Royal Violet. But I fought doggedly on clinging to the art long after it became a chore; through late nights of frustration and tears, nail marks embedded in palms, and gut clenching jealousy of other artists who seemed to carelessly waltz through their work and win awards while my own painstaking work went unsung to an early grave. The pursuit of perfection through other people’s opinions was destroying the reason why I even started drawing, long past when I was five and rollicking with candy bright markers on the wall. I was so engrossed in perfection that the organic love of just creating was forgotten. I had metaphorically sold my soul to the devil for the things that I thought my art could bring me: accomplishments, self-esteem, the regards of others.
Nowadays are more calm days. Life, more often than not, levels out most human efforts. But I’ve never luckily lost the joy of creating, slim though that flame faded. Now I try no longer to use my art so much as a accomplishment, a skill used to please other people, and hence myself. I have little desire to be famous now as the word is defined by Hollywood and the world. Rather, I look to Naomi Shihab’s version—namely, that famous which is that I “never forgot what it could do.” Not to let my color pencils and I be merely decorative for others. But to know that I have my own strength, to live apart from my fears that demand me to be famous, popular, accepted by all. That I and my passion can live together, famous to the other, and that would be all we ever demanded of the other. Not fame, not money, not social acceptance. Just a comfortable silence and well-worn nubs of color.

Informal essay: Personal Statement 2

The world I come from is a true salad. A salad in my definition is a mix of vegetables, sometimes strange combinations, all brought together with the common bond of the dressing. In my case, my world is made up of slices of my solid homeland that is South Korea, enlivened with dashes of Arizona, curls of green Georgia, and among other things, brought together by the common splash of Singapore, the latter being the best place to be when trying to be reconciled to the constancy of moving boxes. There, the inhabitants are used to living with many cultures and traditions jostling side by side. In the homes and apartments, different things designate different worlds. Some have bright red and gold firecracker bunches hanging on the door at New Years day to usher in luck and prosperity. Some may have jasmine flowers tied up in necklaces on a tiny shelf up above the doorbell, the sweet scent of them embracing the neighbors as well. In Singapore, if you are a combination of cultures, no one will notice much. As a salad, one is enriched by this medley of cultures and customs; a salad is a poor thing if it’s only made of lettuce, or bacon. To take a literary standpoint: Adah of The Poisonwood Bible, noting that with standardization “what you have to lose is your story, your own slant.” Without one’s own story, where would you be in the sea of bright trinkets and lights? The many sentences, phrases and excerpts of everyone’s stories make up the fullness of life.
But wherever one does come from, or end up living in, some things are always the same. People are driven by ambitions, dreams, and basic needs no matter where they live. There may be friends, there may be enemies, there will always be people, and the capacity to appreciate beauty. No matter where I’ve ended up, everyone can marvel at basic beauty. Given, definitions of beauty change. A flock of green and red birds flying over the sky at sunset may not attract much attention in Singapore, but a ripe branch of red and green rambutan fruit will bring smiles and whistles of appreciation. People anywhere are just people. They are the true note to a dish that brings all the conflicting tastes of vegetables to one perfect dish. However, with isolation and fear of other cultures, people ultimately limit themselves, such as considering one culture to be better than another, or never seeing the lifestyles of a group as anything beyond a National Geographic special. The basics are the same. We are all trying to thrive and we are all trying to find happiness and purpose. It’s how we go about it that differs.
I want to be able to connect all these people, their different stories and backgrounds. With constant exchange of values, people can help and enrich each other. That is why I want to be in health science—keeping someone well and fit is a universal good, no matter where you are. By being in this field, I would come in contact with more people as well as more kinds of cultures. By simple interaction, one could contribute to a future with better multicultural relations. A true salad of a world.

Personal Statement: Informal Essay

When I was seven, I was seriously ill. It started with my legs first. Tiny red dots sprinkled liberally on my ankles, inching up to the knee caps. It was a pointillism painting on my skin, and my mother couldn’t read it at all. She furrowed her eyebrows at my explanation that her freckles were contagious. She took me to the hospital when the icy green of winter was thawing into spring, where the walls were eternally pea-green soup frosted slick. The doctors ordered tests, smiled brightly at me, and told me that I would be out in no time. Indeed, time in the hospital follows no rules of the universe. It is a limbo outside of a bustling world. At first, I thought it fun, lying in a bed all day, exempt from the schedule of classes and homework.
A child of seven isn’t really aware of death. Injections, spinal taps and pills were nuisances, not life lines. I wanted to know why I couldn’t handle community books, or go outside to see the roses bloom in summer. But you’re not completely unchanged. You would have bedmates that would help you make a Lego castle, and the next day, their beds would be empty, the sheets folded into a small, neat roll. You’re aware that your condition hurts your family, though you’re not exactly sure why. While I lay there, in boredom, aware of my parents hurt, aware that my life meant so much to them, I slowly formed a few resolutions, for when I got out of limbo. I wanted to get better, for them. For myself.
I try to keep those promises I made to myself at seven today. I read a great deal. It started in the hospital, and still do today. To know everything you can about this world and how it relates to you, instead of isolating yourself from it. I read a poem that encapsulates much of what I feel recently. Written in the 17th century by a Robert Herrick, it was called “To the Virgins, to make much of time”. To “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”…it’s a difficult sentiment to live. But necessary. If life is precious, than so is this world that we spend it on. Both are ours for just a little while.
When a friend of mine became ill, I knew what I could do for her. I packaged my Chicken Soup for the Survivor’s Soul book which I had read shakily through at eight; brought some spicy chicken broth to counteract the eternal blandness that is hospital food; and the latest school gossip. She was paler and looked lost in her bed. After a while of talking, she began to cry. She was scared and didn’t know if she would make it through kidney cancer, or what her future would be like if she did. I didn’t know what to say. Careless words can wound worse than any needle. They can make you feel alone in this world. I hugged her, and we both started to cry. I knew I could lose her and I wanted so badly to at least give her some peace of mind.
“Hey. Let’s go look at the roses.”
The flowers bloomed bright in the spaces of the brick garden. We didn’t say anything, but for the short time we had left, gripped hands tightly.

ISP: The Color white as a symbol

UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Literature
6 Jan 2009

ISP: The Symbolism of the color white

Although Western literature has spawned many symbols that are now part of the public consciousness, the color white as a symbol is by far one of the more long-lasting and established symbols. It finds its way in much literature over the centuries, from the Bible that formed the basis of the rise of western literacy to Heart of Darkness, Moby Dick, all the way to modern day’s The Poisonwood Bible. The color white also holds much symbolism in everyday Western life—wedding dresses and religious wafers are white for purity. White pages present endless possibilities, light made up of all seven colors holds completeness, and the moon presents hope and wonder. And yet despite the symbol’s basic meaning being well entrenched, the color white has changed meanings in the past as seen in literature. As Western society struggled with new moral questions, new endeavors into the world, the symbol of white also shifted meanings and depths in the literature of the day that questioned events and ideas. The color white, so favored by western culture as a symbol of purity and goodness which the West claimed a monopoly on in centuries past, is interesting to see as it, along with the society that made it so prominent, changed in response to events in history, and shifts in ideas.
The Bible, as it was read and distributed across Europe, was most responsible in establishing the color white as a major symbol in literature. In the Bible, the color is used to represent purity and innocence, as seen in the Old Testament laws that dictate the use of white animals as a sacrifice to God for sins committed. If white is also applied to the symbol of light which it is often tied to in the Bible, it can also be seen as a sign of divinity, a sign of good.
By the time of the 19th century, the color white’s meaning was well known enough as one of morality and Christianity. The short story Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad takes advantage of this to twist the symbol on its head, representative of the general message of the text of western civilization’s powerlessness and hypocrisy in the face of sumptuous riches and primal instincts. White in the story is used in describing a city that is compared to a sepulcher, a white marble tomb that holds rot and bones inside. White is also a description for the race that runs wild in Africa, looting and killing with no thoughts of Christian morals or ideals of civilization and brotherhood. White was used first in describing the light of Western civilization, made concrete by the sailing ships on the Thames River of England. “Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire…What greatness had not floated out on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!” These very ships, carrying the West to the unknown lands, are the ones who unload cannonballs, epidemics, exploitation and greed onto those far-off shores. This is the Western light brought onto the world, not the hazy and warm ideals of brotherhood, improvement, and morals that those who stay in the West enjoy, but a harsh illumination of man’s basic corruption and evil, unleashed in fertile, primordial soil. The story, using white as a symbol of hypocrisy, made its point on an optimistic, self-congratulatory society that plumed itself to be the guiding light of intellect and civilized behavior. Humans anywhere live with basic primal instincts of survival that do not always accord well with Romantic Western ideals of transcending flesh to become almost divine. It was a sharp reprimand of late 19th century Western society, and an early questioning of the ideas behind western colonialism. Colonization of nations was justified by some saying that the spread of Christianity and civilization uplifted the regions. Conrad here deftly deflates that rationale of Western superiority.
Moby Dick has arguably the most famous use of the color white as symbolism in his creation of the white whale, which in itself is a complex symbol. By using the hunt of the white whale as a symbol for man’s need for purpose, as well as an exercise in the question of divinity in relation to humans, Melville elevated whaling and the common man into a noble enterprise of life, one that confronted its members regularly with the mysteries of life. Thus, one can see the rise of the common laborer in the consciousness of western society, a rise that was slowly being mirrored in reality with the rise of unions and improvement of working conditions. In both situations, the working man was uplifted to humanity, no longer just a drudge, but a human being with a right to necessities and to grant purpose onto his existence. The symbol white echoes the idea, as the object of the whalers desires proves to not be economic gain, but a desire to uncover the existence of divinity, to know the deepest mechanics of nature and the universe—in short, to find purpose in life against the inclinations of society.
In The Poisonwood Bible, white again shifts from its traditional meaning. In this case, white is like the sap of a poisonwood tree, irritating and toxic to all that it touches. This symbolism is extended to the West’s ideas of government, religion, politics and civilization that are imported into the Congo of the novel, which are personified in the missionary Nathan Price. Though these ideas, this western “interpretation” of living may have been beneficial back in America, like poisonwood, these interpretations prove to be useless and even harmful to the Congo. Like the symbol of white, inverted from its western roots to become something harmful instead. White is also seen in paleness of skin, bones, and in light in the novel. None of these things are seen as particularly good in the novel, especially pale skin. Rachel, extremely light in complexion and materialistically western in thought is called “The Termite” for her paleness, but one can also see how the name can apply to her contributions to Africa—a parasite who feeds off its bounty. This inversion of the symbol is meant to emphasize the West’s effects on the lands it claimed it was trying to uplift into civilization by colonialism. Whatever ideals and love the West had to impress upon others was lost in translation.
Ultimately, as Western society continues to face new challenges and questions, it will also continue to dissect and answer issues in its literature as well, proving the intellectual answer to the mass events that affect all. And as it do, its literary symbols can also be expected to grow and change in response.

Formal Essay: Frankenstein

UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Literature
1 Jan 2009

Frankenstein: The makings of a monster

In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley delves deeply into her characters and settings in order ask the following questions: What is a monster, and how does one create one? What makes a human, with his or her own inalienable rights to basic necessities, knowledge, and fellow sympathy? To answer the question, the novel introduces the two main characters of the text: Viktor Frankenstein, scientist and creator of the nameless human-like creation who haunts him. At first glance, one would be tempted to immediately assign Frankenstein humanity, and the creation bestiality. After all, Frankenstein seems to the reader at first “a noble creature, destroyed by misery…so gentle, yet so wise…and his words flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.”, a person blessed with the best of humanity’s virtues—intelligence, a happy childhood, a loving family, friendship, and love. The monster, when created, leaves a swath of death and sorrow, and eventually leads to the death of its own creator. However, Shelley makes it clear that Frankenstein, first impressions by reader and the character Robert Walton nonetheless, is not an innocent character who had suffered unfortunate circumstances. It is by his unswerving pursuit of knowledge, even against moral and spiritual concerns, as well as his fundamental selfishness and irresponsibility that leads to his calamitous end. The “monster” that Frankenstein creates acts violently, but it does so out of loneliness, despair, and rage stemming from his situation, all very human emotions and motives. Throughout the novel, as Shelley details their interactions and decisions, she makes many criticisms on the culture of her day—the question of moral evil, the exclusion of moral guidelines in scientific pursuit, and man’s ultimately degenerate nature as opposed to Romanticist’s optimistic view of self-improvement.
Frankenstein as a character is ultimately a frustrating one for readers to swallow. He may have seemed to be like the Romanticist’s ideal at first: intelligent; avidly pursuing knowledge; appreciative of nature and its almost divine “power of elevating soul from earth.”; and almost passionately individual and separated from an ordinary society. But as the novel progresses, the reader slowly loses any respect and awe Frankenstein may have garnered at first. One sees that the character, despite the perfection of his upbringing and childhood in terms of family, love, and friendship, the man is ultimately selfish, easily leaving behind his family to pursue his education abroad, and once there almost completely ignoring them in the pursuit of knowledge. In a way, Frankenstein’s later fall from grace can be foreshadowed in the way he rejects the pure and good represented in his family, particularly his mother and his love Elizabeth. Perhaps Shelley meant to make a point that Frankenstein the monster was birthed by Frankenstein’s lack of balance—his overwhelming pursuit of his studies even when it led him to unsavory deeds such as grave-robbing, his over-emphasis of masculine traits such as rationality and swallowing of emotions and morals. Because whatever Frankenstein’s good intentions were before the creation of his experiment, they dissipate into horror and rejection at the sight of the creature. Though Frankenstein himself in the progression of the novel learns to some degree how responsible he is for the evil that stalks him and his loved ones, he never really loses his basic evil traits—his rejection of responsibility to the “monster”; his selfishness that causes him to send Justine to her death and ignore the monster’s own right to happiness. Though society and the world may commend him, the monster he created is living reminder of his sins. If he had taken responsibility for it, cared for it and educated it as to right and wrong, the monster could have avoided a future of loneliness, violence and vengeance. Instead, as with many of the evil things man has made, such as a polluted environment, man has simply left it behind him and left it alone, forgetting such ugly things created in pursuit of his own selfish desires. By Frankenstein’s rejection of the experiment and its ultimate vengeance, Shelley shows her point that man cannot trust his own judgments in all situations, that he by nature is an unfit judge for himself. The idea of her day, that an individual rather than society was more fit to deem morals for oneself, is dismissed here—Frankenstein, as a human, cannot judge for himself the right path, and hence brings himself, experiment and family into destruction. This is a clear rejection of Romantic ideals of man being basically good, and capable of refining his nature. Society is pictured not as the immoral and soulless system some intellectuals of the day painted it as, but a system to control and lessen the effects of the perversity in an individual’s heart. Shelley does not clear society at large of all responsibility for the evils of humanity—it is interesting to note that while Frankenstein in his ambiguous deeds and misguided actions is widely respected by his peers who are sympathetic to him, society reviles his creation, which is more innocent than his creator.
The monster himself, never named throughout the book, works mostly as a moral counterpart to Frankenstein, posing to his creator the uncomfortable questions of how justified his creator was in making him, and rejecting him. Just by what superiority did Frankenstein believe in that gave him the right to create intelligent life? His supposedly better morals? And by what authority does Frankenstein have in trying to destroy the creature? That he is violent? That he cannot control himself? The creature has no traits that a human does not, and whatever evils he does commit come from the evils that he learned at the hands of humanity. If anything the creature, despite the lack of anything perfect in terms of human interactions and basic necessities, has a better nature than Frankenstein. He is shown to be caring, kind, hungry for affection and curious, though not to the same obsessive degree as Frankenstein. If anything, the tragedy in the novel consists not of Frankenstein’s decline and death, which actually works to underline Frankenstein’s degeneracy and just reward. The tragic feature is the moral decline of the monster himself, who turns to wrath and violence upon humanity for his loneliness imposed upon him, and the fact humanity reviles him the more for his justifiable actions. This is the alienation man faces as he marks his irresponsibility and selfishness on the globe—a sickening environment, radical and aggressive post-colonial nations, social unrest as income gaps widen.
In the end, Frankenstein the technically human is not so much an admirable character as so much a portrait of human evil condensed into a person. The monster, in his innocence, wrath, and eventual grief and penitence, is far more human, far more admirable than his creator himself, lost forever due to humanity’s evils that could swallow any sins of its own but not of others. It is his loss that makes culpable both the irresponsible individual and society as the true monsters.