Viewing Blog 3

Supernatural

Season 1

22 Episodes

approx 45 min an episode

Throughout this whole season Sam and Dean are searching for their Dad, fighting evil every chance they get. The season ends with them just skimming by death barely getting knicked, finally reunited with their father, thinking they've escaped for now they get hit by a semi-truck driven by a human possessed by the demon. 

This represents the idea that even when you try and fight, and go through so much to finally get reunited with the one that you love, life can throw something unexpected your way and all you have left are those good moments. So appreciate the time you have with the people you love because you never know what's to come because life isn't always fair, and you don't always get that happy ending.

Paranormal Encounters (Blog11)

The Furnished Room

                The Furnished Room reflects O. Henry’s view on city life by showing that there’s always more to the story than meets the eye. A seemingly nice little old lady claims she has never seen the girl he is looking for, meanwhile she doesn’t reveal the fact that she committed suicide and that that room is haunted because it’ll mess up her business. She’s only looking out for herself, which is a very common way to live in big cities. Most people mind their own business and watch out for only themselves in big cities.

A place full of strangers that only look out for themselves, “’As you say, we has our living to be making,’ said Mrs. Purdy.”

The Boarded Window

                I believe that this story does have some supernatural elements to it. Some elements could be explained with reason but there is a certain vagueness of the story that leaves it up to question and interpretation by the reader. The initial start of the story opens with the cabin being haunted, so right there, in the setting is a sign of supernatural elements,

                “That closes the final chapter of this true story---excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many years afterward, in company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the place and ventured near enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informed boy thereabout knew haunted the spot.”

                But whether or not his wife was dead and came back to life or whether she was alive the whole time and just in some kind of comatose state is all completely up for interpretation. I believe that she was dead and then came back to life to protect her love. The fact that her wrist were bound and she was being prepared for burial but her husband couldn’t tell that she still had a pulse seems a little too far out. He’s a hunter, he deals with killing things himself all the time, I think he would’ve been able to tell if his wife was dead or not.

Haunted Houses (Blog 10)

“The Fall of The House of Usher”

This story was a hard read but I believe it is just a story meant to spark your imagination and play with the mind. I didn’t see much symbolism but more just a thrill of reading it. More or less a story to scare you and leave you wondering, was Usher’s sister dead at all? Or did he knowingly put her in the tomb alive?

 Poe even claimed, “And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom.”

Was the doom and gloom that Usher radiating from the guilt of burying his own twin sister alive?

Gotta Love Poe (Blog9)

The Raven

Edgar Allen Poe

The emotions that I believe Poe is trying to convey in "The Raven" are fear and a level of hysteria towards the raven that was sitting above his chamber door. It's almost as if he's being haunted by it and there's a level of psychotic-ness, for lack of a better term, being pushed through multiple different lines. 

"'Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked, upstarting-

'Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!-quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'

                                                                  Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'"

This quote especially, he's basically talking to a bird and imagining the bird is up there taunting him, refusing to leave him in peace, reminding him of everything he's trying to forget, or more specifically a certain woman he's trying to forget. Usually when someone doesn't want to be reminded, there's a level of angst and pain, as well as an undertone of regret.

"'Respite-respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!'

                                                                  Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'"

It's obvious by the punctuation alone that he's pleading, begging, crying out, for this bird to leave him alone but the bird, calm and nonchalant is just like, "Nah, I think I'll stay here awhile."

 Maybe he did something to Lenore, and the raven represents his conscience coming back to haunt him?

Annabel Lee

Edgar Allen Poe

The overall tone of this poem I would say is sadness, loss. It's all about losing a great love to one of the worst fates, death. There was no undertone, it was all spelled out pretty nicely. 

"For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

     Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

     Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And so, all the night tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,

    In the sepulchre there by the sea,

    In her tomb by the sounding sea."

The rhythm of the poem definitely helped make this piece not just a beautiful love letter to a lost loved one, but also a beautifully sounding piece of literature. The flow of the piece and the repetition helps deliver more emotion and have a bigger impact on the reader.

Happily Ever After's Are Overrated (Viewing Blog 3)

Ever After

Viewing Blog 3

121 minutes

The Cinderella fairy tale touches on a lot of different fears and expectations. Alike all other fairy tales, there is this expectant "happily ever after" ending.

That is why fairy tales are so well-known and liked, because they represent something that human beings crave, eternal happiness. If a fairy tale showed a true ending, the prince dies of cancer and the princess grows old alone and eventually gains a large sense of dementia and is no longer the person she used to be, it wouldn't be as well liked. No one wants to be hit with the harsh slap of reality of how life really ends for the majority of us. No one lives forever, and fairy tales are a symbol of eternal love and happiness.

Cinderella stories, especially, cover a lot female reliance for a man to come and "rescue her". That's the one thing I really liked about this version of the Cinderella tale, on at least two different occasions, Danielle (Cinderella), proves that she can pull her own weight, or better yet, even the prince's.

Love Knows No Gender (Blog8)

"Day Million"

Frederik Pohl

(1966)

There is something to be said about a love that doesn't need touch, or physical contact of any sort to be pure and true. What greater love could there be than connecting at the mind? Men and women get so caught up in physical looks, they forget when all is said and done you're left with who a person is, not what they look like. This story greatly advertised this aspect of any relationship.

"Adrift on a sponson city a few hundred yards over her head and orbiting Arcturus, fifty light-years away, Don has only to command his own symbol-manipulator to rescue Dora from the ferrite files and bring her to life for him, and there she is; and rapturously, tirelessly they ball all night. Not in the flesh, of course; but then his flesh has been extensively altered and it wouldn't really be much fun. He doesn't need the flesh for pleasure. Genital organs feel nothing. Neither do hands, nor breasts, nor lips; they are only receptors, accepting and transmitting impulses. It is the brain that feels, it is the interpretation of those impulses that makes agony or orgasm; and Don's symbol-manipulator gives him the analogue of cuddling, the analogue of kissing, the analogue of wildest, most ardent hours with the eternal, exquisite, and incorruptible analogue of Dora."-p.384

"When It Changed"

Joanna Russ

(1972)

This story reflects on the inequality that women face, the message is loud, clear, and bold. Although, I also think that even though there will be men coming into their world that the only way they (the women) would feel belittled is if they let men make them feel that way. Though having men around in general is likely to have some impact on the younger generations.

Just like now, in the human race today, if you want your daughters to grow up strong and independent and never feeling less than a man, you, as her parent, must instill those thoughts and ambitions. No matter what there will always be someone in life who will try to make you feel less than what you are, who will try to take what you've worked for. It doesn't make you the weak one, it makes them the weak one.

"This too shall pass. All good things must come to an end. Take my life but don't take away the meaning of my life."-p.515

Breaking A Nasty Habit (Viewing Blog2)

Once Upon A Time Season 3 Episode 4

"Nasty Habits"
(43 minutes)

Much like the title the central theme to this episode of Once Upon A Time is all about breaking nasty habits to become better, to do good.

                In this adaptation of the original fairy tales, not everyone is who they’re depicted as in the classic Disney movies. For example, Peter Pan has always been this symbol of freedom for children, Neverland being the home every kid dreams of. No parents to tell them what to do, how to dress, how to act. Just pure freedom and ever-lasting youth. Though, in this version, Pan is anything but a symbol of freedom. He resembles treachery, evil and entrapment. He lies and takes little boys against their freewill. Then, tells them lies to make them actually want to stay. He plays mind games and uses people as if they’re pawns in a game of chess. His face is that of a child but his heart is as black as night. His intentions are evil and I believe this represents an idea that although someone can have a good reputation and can even play the part that not everyone is as they seem and there is nothing like the love of a parent for a child. Seeing as how Henry, the boy that he’s taken, has a whole army(family) hunting for him in Neverland, they represent that the bond of family is an unconditional love.

              Although, there are some contradictions to this unconditional love in real life. An example is Henry’s grandfather, Rumpelstiltskin. He knows of a prophecy that Henry will be his undoing, so when Rumple believes that his son (Henry’s father), Neal, is dead, he’s willing to break his cowardice, selfish habits and sacrifice his own life for the better good of saving Henry from Pan. A twist is enacted when Neal shows up in Neverland to save Henry, thus giving Rumple a reason to live again and giving incentive to kill Henry before the prophecy could be enacted. Once Neal finds this out it reminds him that he can never trust his father, Rumple, and he shows this distrust by leaving him binded and behind. When Neal does this he tries to escape with Henry and gets caught by Pan, having burnt the bridge with his father Neal is left powerless and again Henry gets recaptured by Pan.

If Neal had given Rumple a chance to prove himself and left his anger and loathing for his father behind for Henry’s well-being(the better good) than maybe it could’ve saved both Neal and Henry from the fate of Pan. Now, Neal has no choice but to wait and trust that his father will come after them and, hopefully, break the habit and do the right thing.