Here are some of my notes from the last paragraph of To The Lighthouse.
Oedipus complex- Lily desires Mrs. Ramsay, and hates Mr. Ramsay because he had what she wants. Also mad at Mrs. Ramsay because she went and died while Lily desired her.
Also could be the other way around, Lily desires Mr. Ramsay, hates desiring him, and so hates herself. She is mad at Mrs. Ramsay for getting to him first, and then dying and putting him off limits.
Therefore, because the lighthouse represents all of this suffering that she has endured, the image in the center of the painting could be the lighthouse. Also, since the blues and greens are blurred and murky, much like having these feelings could be, the line could a penis, which would represent all of her struggle and emotional turmoil.
Lily and her thought- Because of Lily’s life, and its recent focus on the lighthouse, she cannot escape from its shadow, and that is what the center line is. Mrs. Ramsay, her idol, died because of the lighthouse, and her life has been quickly and permanently changed because of the lighthouse. The recent events where a whirlwind and are represented by the blues and greens, surrounding the constant throughout the times, the lighthouse.
Lily and Woolf- Lily is clearly a medium through which Woolf can express her thoughts and problems. The blues and greens and the blurry, swirled nature of them, represent the same thoughts that Woolf has been having in her own life. There is always one character that an author most closely associates with, and puts his or her feelings into, and that character is clearly Lily.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
to the lighthouse and the fall of mrs. ramsay
Clay Parrish
“...she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6
This was my first moment of “disturbia,” this line in the book kind of jumped out of the page at me, and made me smile, because I thought that it was a great description for Mrs. Ramsay. Woolf’s amazing ability to describe things is something that I have touched on in class before, because she seems to describe common things, and by being intentionally vague, every reader is left with a very good personal image to fit the description. When I read this is made me think of a mother sighing, doling out explanations all day long, spending all day cleaning and rearing children, and being so spent at the end of the day, just as she gets into bed to read a book, her baby cries. There is nothing for her to do but to sigh, lay her book down, and get back to work. Her work is never over, she must be simultaneously strict and loving, protective and prohibitive. To me, this is the perfect description, because a mother seems to soak up every emotion she can every morning, preparing to dole them out as the day goes on, squeezing every last drop out until the end of the day.
“To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other
people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so
brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without
replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of
jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There
was nothing to be said.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6
This created another moment of "disturbia” for me because it is such a foreign concept to me. While my mother always taught be to be honest and truthful, other people’s feelings have always mattered more. For Mr. Ramsay to blast through his child’s hope and his wife’s promises just because they may be false seems so foreignly cruel to me. Obviously Mrs. Ramsay agrees, so much so that this is one of the scenes in which Mrs. Ramsay’s tiredness and weakness begin to show themselves. It is as if she has been physically hit, “dazed and blinded.” Clearly she is taxed, spent, much as (relating to the first quote) a sponge losses is ability to retain water after a long time of use. I found it interesting that Woolf says dirty water, because that could be another reference to the sponge from earlier. It is like life has kept hitting her, and for a long time, she fought back, but now her will to fight is leaving her. This is what we looked at in class today, her folding in on herself, drawing away from the person that she used to be. Her husband has made her callus and unresponsive to the things that she would normally protect her children from. I can imagine that at this point, Mrs. Ramsay has a splitting headache.
“...she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6
This was my first moment of “disturbia,” this line in the book kind of jumped out of the page at me, and made me smile, because I thought that it was a great description for Mrs. Ramsay. Woolf’s amazing ability to describe things is something that I have touched on in class before, because she seems to describe common things, and by being intentionally vague, every reader is left with a very good personal image to fit the description. When I read this is made me think of a mother sighing, doling out explanations all day long, spending all day cleaning and rearing children, and being so spent at the end of the day, just as she gets into bed to read a book, her baby cries. There is nothing for her to do but to sigh, lay her book down, and get back to work. Her work is never over, she must be simultaneously strict and loving, protective and prohibitive. To me, this is the perfect description, because a mother seems to soak up every emotion she can every morning, preparing to dole them out as the day goes on, squeezing every last drop out until the end of the day.
“To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other
people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so
brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without
replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of
jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There
was nothing to be said.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6
This created another moment of "disturbia” for me because it is such a foreign concept to me. While my mother always taught be to be honest and truthful, other people’s feelings have always mattered more. For Mr. Ramsay to blast through his child’s hope and his wife’s promises just because they may be false seems so foreignly cruel to me. Obviously Mrs. Ramsay agrees, so much so that this is one of the scenes in which Mrs. Ramsay’s tiredness and weakness begin to show themselves. It is as if she has been physically hit, “dazed and blinded.” Clearly she is taxed, spent, much as (relating to the first quote) a sponge losses is ability to retain water after a long time of use. I found it interesting that Woolf says dirty water, because that could be another reference to the sponge from earlier. It is like life has kept hitting her, and for a long time, she fought back, but now her will to fight is leaving her. This is what we looked at in class today, her folding in on herself, drawing away from the person that she used to be. Her husband has made her callus and unresponsive to the things that she would normally protect her children from. I can imagine that at this point, Mrs. Ramsay has a splitting headache.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
worldwide fame
It's really cool, at the bottom of my site, there is a little link called "sitemeter" and it tracks the location, the time spent, and the way that all of my visitors get to my page. Since posting my Lit X paper, on the sitemeter people having been accessing my site from not just all across the country, but from the UK, and from Poland. Various searches such as, "sleepwalking as sign of guilt" or "sanity and insanity in the bell jar" have turned APe Talk as either the second or third search result on google. The great thing about this is the more time people click on me in a google search result, the higher up it moves on google's list. So, depending on the search, you can now find me on the first page of google! How exciting.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
A Question of Degree
A final copy of my Lit X paper.
The definition of insanity is a very unclear one. The classic definition is “a severely disordered state of mind” (1), yet that definition has almost universally been deemed unacceptable. To individuals, madness has many definitions, from depression to schizophrenia. The cry that the insane are not as crazy as we think has been analyzed, pursued and reexamined, and that is not the goal of this paper. The goal of this paper is to put forward a concept of madness as defined by three works of literature: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown all similarly portray madness. That concept is that madness is the inability to distinguish between the mental and physical. An insane mind reacts to a mental distress in a physical manner, treating it as a physical thing, without the ability to distinguish between the sadness of a loved one dying and the pain of a broken arm.
Before delving into this topic, it is necessary to explain its origins. Stress, according to WebMD, can be an “emotional problem, such as unexpressed or uncontrolled anger, depression, guilt, grief or low self esteem” (2). According to Doctor Nieske Zabriskie, ND, things such as stress often manifest themselves physically, “in addition to insomnia, stress can play a major role in depression, cognitive dysfunction, digestive disorders, weight gain and muscle and joint pain” (3). Stress is like a microcosm of insanity, while extremely stressed people sometimes act insanely. Now, I know that stress is not insanity, yet almost all of these physical symptoms are demonstrated in the characters of The Bell Jar, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Edgar Huntly, it is just a matter of intensity and scale. A question of degree. My conclusion is that all of these characters are insane because of stress, whether it be strong emotions, a traumatic experience etc., not only have caused the normal physical reactions, but led to an inability to distinguish between a mental and physical hurt. Whereas a sane person might become depressed or cognitively unstable, they would recognize these things as physical depictions of mental pain. To the insane, they are one and the same.
To start with, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a prime example of my concept of madness. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the main character, Chief Bromden is insane because of his inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical. One example is Chief Bromden’s inability to differentiate between actual fog produced by a fog machine, and the fog that he has imagined to surround him. When Chief Bromden mistakenly believes that Nurse Ratched has started the fog machine he becomes engulfed in the fog, and cannot “see six inches in front of [himself]” (7). The fog represents Bromden’s desire to be free of the asylum, and by hiding in the fog, he believes that he can accomplish this, if only for a few minutes. Often, when Bromden is in the fog, he is taken back to the home of his youth, and pictures his father standing up to the white man, or hunting. Of course, the fog is a mental construction that does not exist, yet Bromden believes that the fog is physically real enough for him to hide in, and he often does, “I’m glad when it gets thick enough you’re lost in it and can let go, and be safe again” (110).
Bromden also imagines other physical objects that are only present in his mind. For example, the machines that the ward uses. Yes, there really is a shock therapy table, but there different are machines, such as the fog machine, that Bromden has only imagined, yet he thinks that they are real. For example, Bromden thinks that Nurse Ratched has implanted tiny machines into all of the patients, to control all of them. Another example is the scene where an elderly patient dies in the night. Bromden awakes to a horrifying scene,
[The attendant] twists a knob, and the whole floor goes to slipping down away from him standing in the door, lowering into the building like a platform in a grain elevator!...It-everything I see-looks like it sounded, like the inside of tremendous dam. Huge brass tubes disappear upward in the dark. Wires run to transformers out of sight. Grease and cinders catch on everything, staining the couplings and motors and dynamos red and coal black (83-84).
When the patient, Blastic, is killed by an attendant, there is no blood or innards, “just a shower of rust and ashes and now and again a piece of wire or glass” (85). Bromden has imagined this mechanized world, because it represents the control that the ward has over everybody. Everybody runs like a machine, because they are too afraid of angering Nurse Ratched. The ward breaks down the human element inside everyone, making them cold and emotionless. To Bromden, they might as well all be machines, because no matter what they do, they cannot escape. Bromden’s dream, of which he thinks is real life, shows his insanity, because it shows an inability to distinguish from real life, and this cold world that his brain has imagined. It seems to Bromden as if everybody is actually a machine, that, like Blastic, if the nurse or any of the other patients were opened up, they would be made of gears, not fiber. Bromden is insane, however, because he does not just see how the ward mechanizes people, but be believes that they are actually made of metal, and are actual machines.
The last thing that demonstrates the insanity of Chief Bromden is his perception of size. To Bromden, people are sized based upon their power, not upon their actual size. For example, after the first of McMurphy’s many offenses, as the Nurse goes to reprimand him, she grows, “Her nostrils flare open, and every breath she draws she gets bigger, as big and tough-looking’s I seen her get over a patient...when she rumbles past she’s already as big as a truck...every step hits the floor she blows up a size bigger” (93). Bromden actually sees this, instead of just thinking about it metaphorically. As Nurse Ratched reaches McMurphy, however, something changes, “Then, just as she’s rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine door right in front of her, holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! She shrinks to about head high to where that towel covers him, and he’s grinning down at her” (93). Bromden has also experienced a loss in size because of Nurse Ratched, and says that he used to be big, but is not any longer. Bromden cannot recognize that he has just been belittled in his mind, and while his perceptions about metaphorical size of other characters are correct, they are not physical changes. This confusion proves that according to my concept of madness, Bromden is undoubtably insane.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not the only literary work that fits the concept of madness through indistinguishability, indeed Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown is another such book. This book is slightly different from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because instead of having many different allusions to insanity and the mind and body relationship, this book has mainly one reference to a union of the mental and the physical. In Edgar Huntly, madness is exemplified by the sleepwalking of both Clithero and Edgar. Clithero, after having narrowly escaped accidentally murdering his fiance, traveled to America from Ireland. This voyage across the ocean, however, has not cured him of his guilt, and as a result, he has spent his nights sleepwalking through the wilderness of Delaware. It is important to remember that sleepwalking, although not legally viewed as a mental disorder, was one of the prime ways of showing insanity during the 18th century. There was very little information about what caused mental insanity, and to that time, sleepwalking was one of the most easily visible signs of insanity. Since there was no way of diagnosing mental insanity, physical signs were the only clues that doctors had. In Brown’s time, if one acted sane, then one was, but if one acted insane, then one was insane. Sleepwalking, especially to Charles Brockden Brown is the ultimate form of insanity. Sleepwalking is often caused by high amounts of stress, and Clithero’s sleepwalking proves that his previous life in Ireland has driven him mad. He tells Edgar that he is indeed guilty of a crime, and that by digging up his past, Edgar has ensured that Clithero will never escape his fate. Clithero has been driven mad by his past, saying, “Till consciousness itself be extinct the worm that gnaws me will never perish” (35). His guilt has suffocated him, and his sleepwalking is a manifestation of his madness. In sleepwalking, Clithero explores the woods, an unthinking act that is indistinguishable to him from his normal life. Clithero does not even know that he is doing this, and therein lies his madness.
In this same way, Edgar proves that Clithero’s story has driven Edgar mad when Edgar himself starts to sleepwalk. Edgar ends up walking to the cave that Clithero frequents, because he believes that he will find a way to help Clithero and relieve him of his guilt. Edgar feels such a strong sense of compassion of Clithero’s plight, and also some guilt for forcing Clithero to tell his story, that he falls to the same level as Clithero. Edgar proves his madness by waking up in a pit inside a cave, unsure of how he arrived or where he is, “I had determined to explore this cave on the ensuing day, but my memory informed me not that this intention had been carried into effect. Still it was only possible to conclude that I had come hither on my intended expedition” (156). To the characters in Edgar Huntly, madness is represented by their sleepwalking, and the minds inability to separate guilt and remorse from the physical actions that the characters act out in their sleep.
Finally, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath embodies the concept that people are insane because they have an inability to distinguish the difference between the mental and the physical. The book’s main character, Esther Greenwood, is undeniably abnormal. She spends time in multiple asylums and tries, unsuccessfully, to kill herself several times. However, the thing that makes her insane is her inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical, in this case, situations of pain. She associates and combines the mental with her physical body. There are several instances of this in The Bell Jar. A perfect example of mental pain being interpreted physically is in Esther’s hospital stay after her attempted suicide. She asks to look in a mirror, and describes the experience:
It wasn’t a mirror at all, but a picture. You couldn’t tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. On side of the person’s face was purple, and bulged out in a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person’s mouth was a pale brown, with a rose-colored sore at either corner (174).
In a superb example of mental pain represented physically, each different issue with Esther’s face can be used to represent something that has troubled her. To start with, the chicken-feather hair is a representation of the result of shock therapy, and the stress and pain that it caused her. Her facial discoloration also represents her pain. Her brown mouth represents the destruction of her sexuality and her idea of love by Buddy. She found his kisses to be uninspiring, and now her lips are dead to feeling. Also, the sores on either side represent the loss of her virginity, and the pain of that memory. The purple half of her face represents her experience in New York, and the mental bruises that have just started to heal. The “sallow yellow” represents the guilt of her lack of remorse towards her dead father. The green edges around the purple represent the attempted rape as a particularly scarring event in the city.
Another example of mental pain is the attempted rape of Esther by Marco. Obviously a traumatic experience, the attempted rape leaves Esther with torn clothes and Marco with a bloody nose. In this case, the madness is not in Esther, but rather in Marco. After he suddenly calls off his attack, he suddenly says, “Yes or no, it is all the same” (109). Esther thinks that Marco seems to be talking to himself, and later he crawls around in the dark looking for a black bag. Marco also drools and loves his cousin. All of these things would suggest that Marco is unstable, and it is illustrated when the emotional pain of his sexual and romantic advances that have been foiled result in his blood being spilled. Plath does a good job of showing how insanity is not just developed in Esther through indistinguishability, but that a confusion of the mental and the physical is a sign of insanity in any character. In Marco’s case, this means that the mental pain of his incestuous love of his cousin, coupled with the pain of failing to lead a normal love life, have driven him mad. He is mad because all the pain is flushed out in bloody nose, and the pain becomes both physical and mental to him. To Marco, his pains are one and the same. A bloodied nose and bloodied pride are the same thing, his failure to rape Esther is the same as his failure to love adequately.
There are several more, minor revelations that prove Esther’s insanity. One is during the pain of her depression, she thinks about converting to Catholicism, where she would be “dead white” (165) as she threw herself at the feet of the priest, asking him to save her. In general, as Esther’s condition worsens, her body begins to deteriorate, and only after she begins to recover does she feel like her old self. Although not a painful experience, at least in terms of confusing mental and physical, another example of her mental and physical unification is in her blood-letting. As she cuts herself, she feels a “deep thrill” and feels better as some of her emotional demons are exorcised with this physical act.There are many reasons that Esther’s peers view her as insane, but her confusion of mental pain as a physical thing proves that Esther is mad, not simply confused or depressed.
For the most part, the clinically insane have been treated deplorably throughout history, despite the fact that insanity is as much of a disease as cancer. Often feared, always misunderstood, insanity has never been clearly defined. I offer up one qualifier for madness, as supported by the literary works One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown, and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. These three works support the idea that insanity comes when an individual loses the ability to distinguish between the physical and the mental, the real and the conceptual. Madness cannot be given one definition, because there are so many different cases and ways that in reveals itself. If madness were correctly defined, then one would find that everybody is mad. Clearly, by the fact that we are all different, it is inevitable that people will do things that others view as eccentric, or strange. By Miriam Webster’s definition, it would be easy to label everybody insane. There are so many cases of madness, and so many different types, that one has to draw the line between sanity and insanity. By labeling the insane as people who have an inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical, it becomes easier to correctly label the insane. Of course, there are minor cases, just as in the law, and to make a choice one way or the other, it becomes a question of degree.
The definition of insanity is a very unclear one. The classic definition is “a severely disordered state of mind” (1), yet that definition has almost universally been deemed unacceptable. To individuals, madness has many definitions, from depression to schizophrenia. The cry that the insane are not as crazy as we think has been analyzed, pursued and reexamined, and that is not the goal of this paper. The goal of this paper is to put forward a concept of madness as defined by three works of literature: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown all similarly portray madness. That concept is that madness is the inability to distinguish between the mental and physical. An insane mind reacts to a mental distress in a physical manner, treating it as a physical thing, without the ability to distinguish between the sadness of a loved one dying and the pain of a broken arm.
Before delving into this topic, it is necessary to explain its origins. Stress, according to WebMD, can be an “emotional problem, such as unexpressed or uncontrolled anger, depression, guilt, grief or low self esteem” (2). According to Doctor Nieske Zabriskie, ND, things such as stress often manifest themselves physically, “in addition to insomnia, stress can play a major role in depression, cognitive dysfunction, digestive disorders, weight gain and muscle and joint pain” (3). Stress is like a microcosm of insanity, while extremely stressed people sometimes act insanely. Now, I know that stress is not insanity, yet almost all of these physical symptoms are demonstrated in the characters of The Bell Jar, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Edgar Huntly, it is just a matter of intensity and scale. A question of degree. My conclusion is that all of these characters are insane because of stress, whether it be strong emotions, a traumatic experience etc., not only have caused the normal physical reactions, but led to an inability to distinguish between a mental and physical hurt. Whereas a sane person might become depressed or cognitively unstable, they would recognize these things as physical depictions of mental pain. To the insane, they are one and the same.
To start with, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a prime example of my concept of madness. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the main character, Chief Bromden is insane because of his inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical. One example is Chief Bromden’s inability to differentiate between actual fog produced by a fog machine, and the fog that he has imagined to surround him. When Chief Bromden mistakenly believes that Nurse Ratched has started the fog machine he becomes engulfed in the fog, and cannot “see six inches in front of [himself]” (7). The fog represents Bromden’s desire to be free of the asylum, and by hiding in the fog, he believes that he can accomplish this, if only for a few minutes. Often, when Bromden is in the fog, he is taken back to the home of his youth, and pictures his father standing up to the white man, or hunting. Of course, the fog is a mental construction that does not exist, yet Bromden believes that the fog is physically real enough for him to hide in, and he often does, “I’m glad when it gets thick enough you’re lost in it and can let go, and be safe again” (110).
Bromden also imagines other physical objects that are only present in his mind. For example, the machines that the ward uses. Yes, there really is a shock therapy table, but there different are machines, such as the fog machine, that Bromden has only imagined, yet he thinks that they are real. For example, Bromden thinks that Nurse Ratched has implanted tiny machines into all of the patients, to control all of them. Another example is the scene where an elderly patient dies in the night. Bromden awakes to a horrifying scene,
[The attendant] twists a knob, and the whole floor goes to slipping down away from him standing in the door, lowering into the building like a platform in a grain elevator!...It-everything I see-looks like it sounded, like the inside of tremendous dam. Huge brass tubes disappear upward in the dark. Wires run to transformers out of sight. Grease and cinders catch on everything, staining the couplings and motors and dynamos red and coal black (83-84).
When the patient, Blastic, is killed by an attendant, there is no blood or innards, “just a shower of rust and ashes and now and again a piece of wire or glass” (85). Bromden has imagined this mechanized world, because it represents the control that the ward has over everybody. Everybody runs like a machine, because they are too afraid of angering Nurse Ratched. The ward breaks down the human element inside everyone, making them cold and emotionless. To Bromden, they might as well all be machines, because no matter what they do, they cannot escape. Bromden’s dream, of which he thinks is real life, shows his insanity, because it shows an inability to distinguish from real life, and this cold world that his brain has imagined. It seems to Bromden as if everybody is actually a machine, that, like Blastic, if the nurse or any of the other patients were opened up, they would be made of gears, not fiber. Bromden is insane, however, because he does not just see how the ward mechanizes people, but be believes that they are actually made of metal, and are actual machines.
The last thing that demonstrates the insanity of Chief Bromden is his perception of size. To Bromden, people are sized based upon their power, not upon their actual size. For example, after the first of McMurphy’s many offenses, as the Nurse goes to reprimand him, she grows, “Her nostrils flare open, and every breath she draws she gets bigger, as big and tough-looking’s I seen her get over a patient...when she rumbles past she’s already as big as a truck...every step hits the floor she blows up a size bigger” (93). Bromden actually sees this, instead of just thinking about it metaphorically. As Nurse Ratched reaches McMurphy, however, something changes, “Then, just as she’s rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine door right in front of her, holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! She shrinks to about head high to where that towel covers him, and he’s grinning down at her” (93). Bromden has also experienced a loss in size because of Nurse Ratched, and says that he used to be big, but is not any longer. Bromden cannot recognize that he has just been belittled in his mind, and while his perceptions about metaphorical size of other characters are correct, they are not physical changes. This confusion proves that according to my concept of madness, Bromden is undoubtably insane.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not the only literary work that fits the concept of madness through indistinguishability, indeed Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown is another such book. This book is slightly different from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because instead of having many different allusions to insanity and the mind and body relationship, this book has mainly one reference to a union of the mental and the physical. In Edgar Huntly, madness is exemplified by the sleepwalking of both Clithero and Edgar. Clithero, after having narrowly escaped accidentally murdering his fiance, traveled to America from Ireland. This voyage across the ocean, however, has not cured him of his guilt, and as a result, he has spent his nights sleepwalking through the wilderness of Delaware. It is important to remember that sleepwalking, although not legally viewed as a mental disorder, was one of the prime ways of showing insanity during the 18th century. There was very little information about what caused mental insanity, and to that time, sleepwalking was one of the most easily visible signs of insanity. Since there was no way of diagnosing mental insanity, physical signs were the only clues that doctors had. In Brown’s time, if one acted sane, then one was, but if one acted insane, then one was insane. Sleepwalking, especially to Charles Brockden Brown is the ultimate form of insanity. Sleepwalking is often caused by high amounts of stress, and Clithero’s sleepwalking proves that his previous life in Ireland has driven him mad. He tells Edgar that he is indeed guilty of a crime, and that by digging up his past, Edgar has ensured that Clithero will never escape his fate. Clithero has been driven mad by his past, saying, “Till consciousness itself be extinct the worm that gnaws me will never perish” (35). His guilt has suffocated him, and his sleepwalking is a manifestation of his madness. In sleepwalking, Clithero explores the woods, an unthinking act that is indistinguishable to him from his normal life. Clithero does not even know that he is doing this, and therein lies his madness.
In this same way, Edgar proves that Clithero’s story has driven Edgar mad when Edgar himself starts to sleepwalk. Edgar ends up walking to the cave that Clithero frequents, because he believes that he will find a way to help Clithero and relieve him of his guilt. Edgar feels such a strong sense of compassion of Clithero’s plight, and also some guilt for forcing Clithero to tell his story, that he falls to the same level as Clithero. Edgar proves his madness by waking up in a pit inside a cave, unsure of how he arrived or where he is, “I had determined to explore this cave on the ensuing day, but my memory informed me not that this intention had been carried into effect. Still it was only possible to conclude that I had come hither on my intended expedition” (156). To the characters in Edgar Huntly, madness is represented by their sleepwalking, and the minds inability to separate guilt and remorse from the physical actions that the characters act out in their sleep.
Finally, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath embodies the concept that people are insane because they have an inability to distinguish the difference between the mental and the physical. The book’s main character, Esther Greenwood, is undeniably abnormal. She spends time in multiple asylums and tries, unsuccessfully, to kill herself several times. However, the thing that makes her insane is her inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical, in this case, situations of pain. She associates and combines the mental with her physical body. There are several instances of this in The Bell Jar. A perfect example of mental pain being interpreted physically is in Esther’s hospital stay after her attempted suicide. She asks to look in a mirror, and describes the experience:
It wasn’t a mirror at all, but a picture. You couldn’t tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. On side of the person’s face was purple, and bulged out in a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person’s mouth was a pale brown, with a rose-colored sore at either corner (174).
In a superb example of mental pain represented physically, each different issue with Esther’s face can be used to represent something that has troubled her. To start with, the chicken-feather hair is a representation of the result of shock therapy, and the stress and pain that it caused her. Her facial discoloration also represents her pain. Her brown mouth represents the destruction of her sexuality and her idea of love by Buddy. She found his kisses to be uninspiring, and now her lips are dead to feeling. Also, the sores on either side represent the loss of her virginity, and the pain of that memory. The purple half of her face represents her experience in New York, and the mental bruises that have just started to heal. The “sallow yellow” represents the guilt of her lack of remorse towards her dead father. The green edges around the purple represent the attempted rape as a particularly scarring event in the city.
Another example of mental pain is the attempted rape of Esther by Marco. Obviously a traumatic experience, the attempted rape leaves Esther with torn clothes and Marco with a bloody nose. In this case, the madness is not in Esther, but rather in Marco. After he suddenly calls off his attack, he suddenly says, “Yes or no, it is all the same” (109). Esther thinks that Marco seems to be talking to himself, and later he crawls around in the dark looking for a black bag. Marco also drools and loves his cousin. All of these things would suggest that Marco is unstable, and it is illustrated when the emotional pain of his sexual and romantic advances that have been foiled result in his blood being spilled. Plath does a good job of showing how insanity is not just developed in Esther through indistinguishability, but that a confusion of the mental and the physical is a sign of insanity in any character. In Marco’s case, this means that the mental pain of his incestuous love of his cousin, coupled with the pain of failing to lead a normal love life, have driven him mad. He is mad because all the pain is flushed out in bloody nose, and the pain becomes both physical and mental to him. To Marco, his pains are one and the same. A bloodied nose and bloodied pride are the same thing, his failure to rape Esther is the same as his failure to love adequately.
There are several more, minor revelations that prove Esther’s insanity. One is during the pain of her depression, she thinks about converting to Catholicism, where she would be “dead white” (165) as she threw herself at the feet of the priest, asking him to save her. In general, as Esther’s condition worsens, her body begins to deteriorate, and only after she begins to recover does she feel like her old self. Although not a painful experience, at least in terms of confusing mental and physical, another example of her mental and physical unification is in her blood-letting. As she cuts herself, she feels a “deep thrill” and feels better as some of her emotional demons are exorcised with this physical act.There are many reasons that Esther’s peers view her as insane, but her confusion of mental pain as a physical thing proves that Esther is mad, not simply confused or depressed.
For the most part, the clinically insane have been treated deplorably throughout history, despite the fact that insanity is as much of a disease as cancer. Often feared, always misunderstood, insanity has never been clearly defined. I offer up one qualifier for madness, as supported by the literary works One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown, and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. These three works support the idea that insanity comes when an individual loses the ability to distinguish between the physical and the mental, the real and the conceptual. Madness cannot be given one definition, because there are so many different cases and ways that in reveals itself. If madness were correctly defined, then one would find that everybody is mad. Clearly, by the fact that we are all different, it is inevitable that people will do things that others view as eccentric, or strange. By Miriam Webster’s definition, it would be easy to label everybody insane. There are so many cases of madness, and so many different types, that one has to draw the line between sanity and insanity. By labeling the insane as people who have an inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical, it becomes easier to correctly label the insane. Of course, there are minor cases, just as in the law, and to make a choice one way or the other, it becomes a question of degree.
Monday, January 21, 2008
a question of degree
OK, so this is my first stab at an intro paragraph to my Literary Exploration paper about Madness. I know that I'm waiting a bit too long (the paper is due on Wednesday), but that's how I operate. Chia gets emails when I update, so hopefully he and the rest of my rabid fan base will approve.
Without further ado:
The definition of insanity is a very unclear one. The classic definition is “a severely disordered state of mind,” yet that definition has almost universally been unacceptable. To individual people, madness has its own definition, from “loving” to “being sane.” The cry that the insane are not as crazy as we think has been analyzed, pursued and reexamined, and that is not the goal of this paper*. The goal is to put forward a definition of madness as defined by works of literature. While there is no one definition for madness, several different literary works, namely: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Edgar Huntly: Or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockton Brown hold similar concepts of madness. That concept is that madness is the inability to distinguish between the mental and physical, especially in situations of pain. An insane mind reacts to a mental pain in a physical manner, treating it as a physical thing, without the ability to distinguish between the sadness of a loved one dying and the pain of a broken arm.
*I should note that I am not sure if referencing the paper by calling it "this paper" in the writing itself is OK, but that was the way that it came out.
Without further ado:
The definition of insanity is a very unclear one. The classic definition is “a severely disordered state of mind,” yet that definition has almost universally been unacceptable. To individual people, madness has its own definition, from “loving” to “being sane.” The cry that the insane are not as crazy as we think has been analyzed, pursued and reexamined, and that is not the goal of this paper*. The goal is to put forward a definition of madness as defined by works of literature. While there is no one definition for madness, several different literary works, namely: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Edgar Huntly: Or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockton Brown hold similar concepts of madness. That concept is that madness is the inability to distinguish between the mental and physical, especially in situations of pain. An insane mind reacts to a mental pain in a physical manner, treating it as a physical thing, without the ability to distinguish between the sadness of a loved one dying and the pain of a broken arm.
*I should note that I am not sure if referencing the paper by calling it "this paper" in the writing itself is OK, but that was the way that it came out.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
A return to normalcy
OK, so I know that it's been awhile, but, faithful readers don't despair, I'm back. A combination of college and school and extra curricular activities have left me without my inspiration and will to write. So, now I'm feeling it again, and to return to posting, I am posting something that I wrote last summer.
It's my journal thing from my mission trip in Chicago, courtesy of the folks from Youthworks. Before I get into this, I want to make it clear that this is nothing against the Youthworks program, but rather the way that it tried to get us to follow their ideas. Even beyond that, it was the people who ran the Youthworks chapter in Chicago, four young college kids who didn't really know what they were doing. They handed out a workbook of ideas a quotes for us to reflect upon every morning. I guess what bothered me was the format of the booklet. It was like a test, with annoying questions about how we would interpret different quotes. Everything is as it was written, I haven't edited it, so forgive any grammar mistakes. Anyway, on to the journal.
Day 1
Sometimes words and thoughts, pictures and messages, can make meaning clear. In school, a simple reading and discussion will suffice for most things. There is no real issue with understanding. In life, this is not always the case. Words may not make on feel, pictures may not lead to comprehension. The forced attempts of enlightenment, such as this devotional booklet, are not effective. Sometimes, to truly understand, to find enlightenment, one must experience for themselves. One must have one moment that changes their lives in a way that pictures never could. (exert from booklet) "Jesus takes our imaginations far beyond where we can go on our own. What we see as impossible is possible through the Spirit. Aligning ourselves with God's dreams for us expands our capacity to love and serve. This week you will be challenged to stretch your imagination. Many new people and places await you. Let Jesus shape your experience, drawing you beyond boundaries of self and into the mind-boggling adventures of following him. Imagine!"
Imagination cannot be forced. Jesus may indeed expand our imaginations, but this devotional book does not bring us to Jesus. This week I will challenge myself, life as I know how to bring meaning to my life. A book made by people I have not met is not the answer, is no the path to salvation. That path comes from the heart.
Only one page for journal entries? So they want us to think, just not too hard. We have to follow their path instead of our own. I have finally become unafraid to voice my true thoughts. I know now that it is not necessary to share them with the world. The rages and satires against devotional and club time, and the over-excited college leader are not something that the world has to know. I know them, and that is enough. Maybe someday, to the right person, I can show them.
Day 2
I saw some neat things yesterday. I saw third-generation gang members smile. I saw them smile, not out of hate or malice, but out of joy, and love. 5-8 year old children with the most beautiful smiles. In the children 8-10 year olds, those smiles had started to fade, become more rare, more out of coldness than any love. I have finally realized that the purpose here is to keep that beautiful smile alive, so that Hod has a chance to work, and keep them smiling. I came here looking for a God moment in my actions. Instead I have found my God moment in the innocent smile of a child.
Obviously I could ignore this book, refuse to do it. When we discussed it last night, that is what people suggested. I could do that, but my problem with this book is not that I have to fill it out. I don't have to fill it out. The problem I have is with the principle of the thing. The point of this book is to help us find God. It, however, is not the God that I am looking for. This book looks for us to find their God. I would find it far more meaningful if we were given blank paper, and given two word instructions: "find him."
Day 3
Why is everything a test? Life is a test, but there is no reason to answer these questions. They do not provide enlightenment or enrichment. If these were on a test in school then I would get annoyed because they would be annoying questions. These things do not make me think about my faith, they make me want to avoid it.
George says that the Youthworks staff lives in a room with computers, and TVs, and beds and floors. I understand the bed and computer, they are here for much longer, and need to keep in touch. Why though, do they have TVs, does their work give them some better quality than us? Are we young and irresponsible? Doomed to watch TV instead of helping if they provide it? I think not. I am only 4 or 5 years younger than most of the staff. Am I less mature than them? No. DId they give me a chance? No. Is this accusation fair to them? Probably not.
When I look around the room, I see some of us with eyes closed. I can tell for some that they are praying, and that others are obviously hiding. There are also people in the middle whom I cannot tell if they are sleeping or praying. Which do I assume? Do I assume God is at work, and that they pray? Or, do I assume teenage human nature is at work, and that they sleep? One is unfair to the kids, one to God.
Ask yourself, "How can I live more like Jesus?"
Does Jesus want us to live like him? Are we supposed to be sin free? I don't think so, I think God wants us to sin, because humans sin, but God wants us to put his faith in him, to trust that he loves us, and will deliver us from evil.
On a side notes, if God loves unconditionally, is it fair to love some more than others? If not, then why worship, why seek God's redemption and forgiveness if he gives that to us anyway?
Day 4
So I'm not sure if I have had a God moment yet. There have been plenty of moments where I know God has done work, but no moment of clarity such as I have had in past years. I want my God moment to touch other people as well, to make them see what God can do. Sometimes I hear a God moment, but it doesn't really impact me. But, other times, I hear or see a God moment that touches me and everyone who sees or hears it. Maybe I am asking too much, but that is what I want for my God moment. The only moment that comes close, comes close because of the way that I can tell it. To most it would just be a smile. To me, it was a smile, until I thought about it afterwards. I think that I can make this moment special, but does it fit the criteria of a "God moment?"
As I write this, however, I wonder, does it have to? No, I don't think so. A god moment is what you make of it, and I have taken God's opportunity, and made it into a moment, a thought, a story that will last forever.
Day 5
My writing in this booklet has changed from angry to thinking about God. This comes not from less hate of this book, but form a change in me. I still would burn this book if I could, but I won't, because I know I have written some good things in here. The questions that they ask me to answer have not furthered my faith journey. The questions that I have asked myself, they have.
It's my journal thing from my mission trip in Chicago, courtesy of the folks from Youthworks. Before I get into this, I want to make it clear that this is nothing against the Youthworks program, but rather the way that it tried to get us to follow their ideas. Even beyond that, it was the people who ran the Youthworks chapter in Chicago, four young college kids who didn't really know what they were doing. They handed out a workbook of ideas a quotes for us to reflect upon every morning. I guess what bothered me was the format of the booklet. It was like a test, with annoying questions about how we would interpret different quotes. Everything is as it was written, I haven't edited it, so forgive any grammar mistakes. Anyway, on to the journal.
Day 1
Sometimes words and thoughts, pictures and messages, can make meaning clear. In school, a simple reading and discussion will suffice for most things. There is no real issue with understanding. In life, this is not always the case. Words may not make on feel, pictures may not lead to comprehension. The forced attempts of enlightenment, such as this devotional booklet, are not effective. Sometimes, to truly understand, to find enlightenment, one must experience for themselves. One must have one moment that changes their lives in a way that pictures never could. (exert from booklet) "Jesus takes our imaginations far beyond where we can go on our own. What we see as impossible is possible through the Spirit. Aligning ourselves with God's dreams for us expands our capacity to love and serve. This week you will be challenged to stretch your imagination. Many new people and places await you. Let Jesus shape your experience, drawing you beyond boundaries of self and into the mind-boggling adventures of following him. Imagine!"
Imagination cannot be forced. Jesus may indeed expand our imaginations, but this devotional book does not bring us to Jesus. This week I will challenge myself, life as I know how to bring meaning to my life. A book made by people I have not met is not the answer, is no the path to salvation. That path comes from the heart.
Only one page for journal entries? So they want us to think, just not too hard. We have to follow their path instead of our own. I have finally become unafraid to voice my true thoughts. I know now that it is not necessary to share them with the world. The rages and satires against devotional and club time, and the over-excited college leader are not something that the world has to know. I know them, and that is enough. Maybe someday, to the right person, I can show them.
Day 2
I saw some neat things yesterday. I saw third-generation gang members smile. I saw them smile, not out of hate or malice, but out of joy, and love. 5-8 year old children with the most beautiful smiles. In the children 8-10 year olds, those smiles had started to fade, become more rare, more out of coldness than any love. I have finally realized that the purpose here is to keep that beautiful smile alive, so that Hod has a chance to work, and keep them smiling. I came here looking for a God moment in my actions. Instead I have found my God moment in the innocent smile of a child.
Obviously I could ignore this book, refuse to do it. When we discussed it last night, that is what people suggested. I could do that, but my problem with this book is not that I have to fill it out. I don't have to fill it out. The problem I have is with the principle of the thing. The point of this book is to help us find God. It, however, is not the God that I am looking for. This book looks for us to find their God. I would find it far more meaningful if we were given blank paper, and given two word instructions: "find him."
Day 3
Why is everything a test? Life is a test, but there is no reason to answer these questions. They do not provide enlightenment or enrichment. If these were on a test in school then I would get annoyed because they would be annoying questions. These things do not make me think about my faith, they make me want to avoid it.
George says that the Youthworks staff lives in a room with computers, and TVs, and beds and floors. I understand the bed and computer, they are here for much longer, and need to keep in touch. Why though, do they have TVs, does their work give them some better quality than us? Are we young and irresponsible? Doomed to watch TV instead of helping if they provide it? I think not. I am only 4 or 5 years younger than most of the staff. Am I less mature than them? No. DId they give me a chance? No. Is this accusation fair to them? Probably not.
When I look around the room, I see some of us with eyes closed. I can tell for some that they are praying, and that others are obviously hiding. There are also people in the middle whom I cannot tell if they are sleeping or praying. Which do I assume? Do I assume God is at work, and that they pray? Or, do I assume teenage human nature is at work, and that they sleep? One is unfair to the kids, one to God.
Ask yourself, "How can I live more like Jesus?"
Does Jesus want us to live like him? Are we supposed to be sin free? I don't think so, I think God wants us to sin, because humans sin, but God wants us to put his faith in him, to trust that he loves us, and will deliver us from evil.
On a side notes, if God loves unconditionally, is it fair to love some more than others? If not, then why worship, why seek God's redemption and forgiveness if he gives that to us anyway?
Day 4
So I'm not sure if I have had a God moment yet. There have been plenty of moments where I know God has done work, but no moment of clarity such as I have had in past years. I want my God moment to touch other people as well, to make them see what God can do. Sometimes I hear a God moment, but it doesn't really impact me. But, other times, I hear or see a God moment that touches me and everyone who sees or hears it. Maybe I am asking too much, but that is what I want for my God moment. The only moment that comes close, comes close because of the way that I can tell it. To most it would just be a smile. To me, it was a smile, until I thought about it afterwards. I think that I can make this moment special, but does it fit the criteria of a "God moment?"
As I write this, however, I wonder, does it have to? No, I don't think so. A god moment is what you make of it, and I have taken God's opportunity, and made it into a moment, a thought, a story that will last forever.
Day 5
My writing in this booklet has changed from angry to thinking about God. This comes not from less hate of this book, but form a change in me. I still would burn this book if I could, but I won't, because I know I have written some good things in here. The questions that they ask me to answer have not furthered my faith journey. The questions that I have asked myself, they have.
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