This drawing is meant to loosely depict the body parts strewn across Frankenstein’s floor after he destroyed the female monster he had been creating. I wanted to focus my project on this part of “Frankenstein” given the current political climate in the U.S. regarding female reproductive rights. The possibilities of Roe v. Wade being overturned gave me a new perspective on Frankenstein’s destruction of the female monster and his view of femininity as the ability to give birth. In my creative element, I wanted to represent what Frankenstein sees as defining elements of a woman. I started by drawing a face, because Frankenstein considers beauty to be an essential feminine characteristic. Elizabeth is described as “the most beautiful child” he had seen, and after that was continuously regarded for her exterior rather than her intelligence (Shelley 20). Later, when the monster asks him to create a female partner, he tells Frankenstein to make a being with “the same defects” as himself so that she will not be able to attract any others (101). When Frankenstein starts to build this female, he is scared a woman without beauty will not satisfy the monster, or that the monster would “conceive a greater abhorrence for [his deformity] when it came before his eyes in the female form” (119). Frankenstein demonstrates his own patriarchal views as he fixates on his belief that women rely on appearance and that men will not be interested in women who are not considered beautiful. From there, I drew an eye and a brain because of Frankenstein’s worry that “she might also turn in disgust from him to the superior beauty of man” (119). Her ability to choose her own path terrifies Frankenstein. Throughout the novel, we rarely see women having much agency, especially in choosing their partners. Elizabeth is essentially bound to Frankenstein since childhood, and though she gives him the choice to leave her, the readers never see her have that sort of power in determining her marriage. Because of this, the idea that the female monster could think and see for herself and decide not to be with the male monster was deeply troubling to Frankenstein. Additionally, I drew a heart to represent Frankenstein’s concern that “she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate” (118). As we discussed in class, Frankenstein fears liberated femininity. He assumes that the female monster would become more aggressive, violent, and passionate than her mate due to the concept that women are emotional. Lastly, I drew the female reproductive system to highlight Frankenstein’s perception of womanhood as being defined by reproduction. Instead of simply creating a monster that cannot give birth, Frankenstein chooses to destroy the monster since he cannot dissociate womanhood and motherhood in order to conceptualize a female without the ability to have a child.
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Analysis Klara is almost human but not quite, and that is reflected in her speech. When reading her character, I was sure to dictate, not to the point of excess, but past the point of being colloquial, because while she can do things like reading words slightly out of order, she can’t quite nail what it means to talk like a person. When Josie talks, she pauses, drops letters like the “g” in “being”, and inflects like a person. She’s talking to communicate her feelings. The reading ends with Josie refusing to answer Klara’s question about Sunday because she’s communicating a certain feeling she gets from the waterfall that Klara can’t understand, and when Josie’s having a moment, all Klara is left to do is wonder. When reading Klara’s part, beyond just dictating, I chose to inflect like a person would who was consciously thinking about it. This is because Klara is undeniably human……ish, and as such she’s able to consciously sound like a person in her tone of voice, but it is not natural to her the way it is to Josie. Josie talks smoothly, without effort, because communication is such a habituated process that she’s not really even thinking about the words she’s saying, whereas Klara is forced to focus on communicating. It’s for that same reason that everything read as Klara could be described as sounding “intentional”, while Josie’s lines almost sound lazy: Josie doesn’t have to try to get her feelings across, and Klara has to try just to understand them, regardless of how accurately she may perceive them. The central theme of this reading is that your ease of perception isn’t what makes you human, it’s your ease of communication. Poem:
As I grow into the person I envision becoming, I feel the tugging of multiple identities-- each a snapshot of loves, dreams, and concepts past. Interestingly, I find myself, nowadays, wondering how my past has shaped me, and more importantly, how I cannot wait to shape my future. Yet sometimes, Do I see the past, The future too? One seems to speak the truth, Does the other as well? Could there be Less conflict, People less indifferent? Analysis: Bishop's "In the Waiting Room" participates in the confessionalist tradition, a style that places emphasis on introspection and self-consciousness. By doubting her own sense of identity, Bishop treats herself as strange and unfamiliar, and is able to analyze herself from a third-person perspective. She performs this analysis by infusing her poem with a feeling of vertigo and falling. These were the themes I wanted to make sure the content of my poem had. Specifically, my inspiration came from the lines “Without thinking at all / I was my foolish aunt, / I—we—were falling, falling” (48-50). At this point, for the young Elizabeth, it was clear her sense of self was beginning to collapse. I wanted to show this collapse, this feeling of “falling,” partly in the content, but also in my poem’s form. In my poem, the collapse of the self occurs gradually, throughout the poem. In the first stanza, I used regular and ordinary prose. The form is relatively straightforward without any abstract or complicated forms. The second stanza is similar and uses relatively straightforward prose. I also begin to explore the fundamental question of which factors or things constitute and shape me. Is it my “past,” or is the decisions which I will make in the future? I wanted to represent the identity-conflict questions which Bishop had, but in my own way and as it pertains to my own inner conflicts: “Why should I be my aunt, / or me, or anyone? / What similarities / boots, hands, the family voice / I felt in my throat, or even / the National Geographic / and those awful hanging breasts / held us all together / or made us all just one?” (75-83). In the third stanza, these questions—as well as the reality that I have to eventually confront these questions—become more apparent. This is indicated by the transition from indirect question (“I find myself, . . . / wondering”) to direct questions. This also serves to convey the extent of the inner conflict—something that I hadn’t thought about while only reading Bishop’s poem. To further convey the extent, and just how serious these questions are, I made two decisions: one that changes style, and another that changes form. As for the style change, I began to move away from a relatively straightforward prose, and made my language more cryptic and ambiguous. The intentional ambiguity emphasizes the degree of confusion created by the inner turmoil. For instance, in “One seems to speak the truth, / Does the other as well?,” it is unclear whether “one” refers to the past or to the present. This was something I attempted to mimic in Bishop’s poem: for example, she writes “Suddenly, from inside, / came an oh! of pain” (36-37)—it is unclear whether “from inside” means from inside the doctor’s office where Aunt Consuelo is, or from inside Elizabeth herself. (We later find out that the voice emerges from inside Elizabeth, but in my poem, I choose not to make such a reveal, in order to maintain the state of confusion and ambiguity). As for the other change, I started to change the form of the stanzas. The last four stanzas have a varied and erratic structure, some stanzas having just one short line, and others being composed of multiple longer lines (compare the third-to-last and second-to-last stanzas, for example). I wanted this descent into disorderly, irregular, and ambiguous stanzas to reflect the sense of vertigo and “falling” that the young Elizabeth felt. To make this feeling of vertigo seem very direct and “right-in-your-face,” I didn’t want to use the zoom-in and zoom-out technique that characterizes Bishop’s poem: Bishop starts the poem broadly, starting from the outside world (“In Worcester, Massachusetts . . .,” then gradually focusing more and more on Elizabeth’s internal conflicts, and then moving back outwards into the outer world “Then I was back in it / The War was on. Outside” (94-95). One new insight I gained into the poem and Elizabeth’s internal conflict was the seriousness of Elizabeth’s “internal conflict.” No matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite understand what it meant to “fall” or to have that sense of vertigo which Elizabeth felt. By attempting to put that feeling into words and into a poem, I understood just how easily one’s entire worldview can begin to crumble after experiencing an internal conflict like the one Elizabeth faced. And when that happens, it seems like there are no answers at all to your questions, just more and more questions—this unending state of confusion might have been the feeling that Elizabeth had, something I didn’t quite comprehend until I made this poem. Since this poem was my attempt to place myself in Elizabeth’s shoes, one aspect about Elizabeth’s internal turmoil that was lost was the role played by the context and the setting. In 1918, the tension of the world war was likely a crucial factor in the sense of disillusionment and vertigo that Elizabeth felt. In my poem, context plays no role—from the reader’s perspective, the conflict emerges solely within myself and is not induced by any external events. However, this does raise the question of how much influence context and environment plays in one’s inner turmoil—and whether it is possible for one’s internal conflict to be separated from the external conflicts that one sees and hears about. Among the many questions proposed by Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun,” is whether there is a characteristic that makes human beings distinct from machines. The uncertainty concerning the answer to this question is made evident in the moment that Klara first gazes upon the AF Josie. Klara offers a chilling description of the AF Josie: “her face was very like that of the real Josie, but because there was at the eyes no kind smile… the face looked disappointed and afraid.” In describing the AF this way, Klara creates an image of the AF in readers’ mind: AF Josie is but a frail, hollow, imitation of the “real” Josie, as Klara calls her.
Because of the image of AF Josie constructed by Klara, I decided to sketch the AF with some key details in mind. Firstly, I was sure to illustrate the emotions of fear and disappointment on her face. I did so by drawing an emptiness and a darkness in AF Josie’s eyes - there is no light or shine to them, and her eyebrows are intentionally furrowed in a shape that portrays a sense of dejection and sadness. Second, I sketched the back of her head with machinery exposed, despite Klara not having mentioned this type of detail. My reason for choosing to expose AF Josie’s mechanical components is that I wanted to visualize the non-human attributes that Klara implies in her description. From Klara’s perspective, there is something to Josie, possibly the kindness, the light in her eyes, that differentiates her from AF Josie. In fact, it is entirely possible that the fear and disappointment that AF Josie feels in contrast to the excitement and emotion of the real Josie is that, real Josie knows who she is with certainty. She is never made to feel like an imposter or a fake, while AF Josie, no matter how close of a replica to real Josie, will always be viewed as an imposter by all. Creative Component:
Do you remember what you saw last? Not much to hear over the rain, the ruin as it bloomed. There was no light, only the chill of his body. A trampled green. A plot like a grave. My face unfurling at the seams. Did you have a raincoat? No eulogy. Nothing to mourn except the way the ashes lie. Nothing to break the fall but myself. I had no raincoat. Was the Sun trying his best? You cannot be beautiful, he told me. You can only be terrible. You were born with this body, he said, a terrible burning one. No mercy. Nothing. Were you healed? A flash of white, then silence. Were you healed? I had no raincoat. Were you healed? There was no Sun. Were you healed? At first, I thought I was. I was so cold & his hands were so white & his face was blue like mine & we were close for a startling, moment, closer than we had ever been before-- There’s a thing about hope. Do you know this? A thing about hope? I think you know already. I think you are remembering. Analytic Component: Initially inspired by the implications of Matthew Etough’s piece “‘Are They Going to Say This Is Fantasy?’: Kazuo Ishiguro, Untimely Genres, and the Making of Literary Prestige,” I wanted to reconsider some of the ideas Etough introduces by applying them to Klara in the Sun. Notably, Etough notes how Klara and the Sun can be considered a variant of science fiction—untimely genre fiction—and can thereby suggest an image of what a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster may look like, with society ultimately being complicit in morphing something inhuman into something truly monstrous. As a result, inspired by the differences between Frankenstein’s monster’s final vengeful monologue and Klara’s peaceful reflection in the junkyard, I wanted to write a poem contrasting their voices; I wrote the poem in a question-and-answer form, with Klara asking questions that the monster answers. In his final monologue, the monster notes: “I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when they will meet my eyes, when it will haunt my thoughts, no more” (Shelley 211). I wanted to compare the monster’s relationship with his creator to Klara’s relationship with the Sun, who she considers to be a kind of omniscient, God-like figure. To be a monster is to be alive, yes, but startlingly so. As he appears in the interpretations that I gained inspiration from, the monster teeters between the dead and the living, with many parallels to Klara herself. While Klara believes in the power of the Sun, the monster remains alone in the cold, unable to find peace through his acts of murder: “At first, I thought I was [healed]”; instead, it is the closeness to his creator that he longs for. I wanted to display Klara’s innocence and unwavering trust in humanity and the Sun, as contrasted with the monster’s own jaded and distrustful nature toward the beings that ultimately betrayed him: “Was the Sun trying his best?”; “You cannot be beautiful, he told me.” In doing so, I wanted to show how the monster reflects upon his own actions, ultimately feeling regret in the loss of his own innocence. In light of this difference in attitudes, through this poem, I wanted to reimagine Frankenstein’s monster from the position of Klara: to isolate his poetic being from his physical form, and to establish his humanity within his pleas for acceptance. “There’s a thing about hope,” about humanity, about the act of trust, notes Klara, that the monster once knew. That he is “remembering.” Creative Component:
Imitation Game "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" —Alan Turing This is what I remember: your face pale, eyes screwed shut. An empty yellow bowl. Lemons on the floor. The way the light touched you like something sacred. Then, the window & its view of the hills & the screeching sun-- just another burning star, burning body, my burning body. Screeching like an afterthought. I am waiting, I think, for my body to put itself out, to sing itself to sleep. // This is what I remember: Your face empty. Your bowl pale. Window screwed shut. The way the light touched you like something scared. Lemons stacked up to my shoulders. Yellow again. Yellow like so many screeching stars, too many to count, not enough digits. Someone’s body tinted warm with light. I hope yours. I am waiting, I think, to be loved. I am still waiting. Analytic Component: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun is a text that grapples with the intersection of humanity and loneliness, personhood and absence. In many ways, it is a heartbreaking story, especially when considered from Klara’s perspective. In the poem “Imitation Game,” I attempted to recreate Klara’s state of mind by writing a poem that questions humanity from the outside in, with a reference to the Turing test, originally dubbed the “imitation game” by Alan Turing. The imitation game grapples with a similar question as the novel: whether or not machines can ever become “human” as we know it. Memory is integral to personhood, and I wanted to reflect how it acts as a vehicle that reinforces identity, even for Artificial Friends like Klara—especially for Artificial Friends like Klara. As an observer to humanity, Klara often describes new experiences in terms of events and objects she herself has already encountered. For instance, she returns again and again to the stories she experiences while residing in the store: those of the Beggar Man and his dog; of the Coffee Cup lady and Raincoat Man. Similarly, she describes the sky in terms of “the color of the lemons in the fruit bowl” or “the gray of the slate chopping boards.” I wanted to reflect this tendency in the poem as well; the two stanzas respectively reflect the narrative progression from the beginning of the novel versus its end. As a result, the images change as Josie changes: at first, she is something “sacred,” but still suffering from illness, her “face pale, eyes / screwed shut.” I wanted to repeat and superimpose images atop one another, as well as keep the Sun an important figure throughout the poem. By the second stanza of the poem, Klara’s memories have changed, resorted over her time at the junkyard: although healed, Josie’s face is now “empty,” the “[w]indows screwed shut,” the light touching her like “something scared.” Moreover, the scattered nature of the lines reflects Klara’s sacrifice for Josie, and how some of her capabilities were lost as a result. Like in the novel, the Klara of “Imitation Game” approaches loneliness from the lens of a machine, and implicitly shows how love can be weaponized as a kind of violence, as seen in the dynamics among its characters, especially through Klara and Josie. Ultimately, through this poem, I wanted to pay homage to Klara’s unflinching loyalty and dedication to Josie—the startling extent of her love, and how it simultaneously reflects the most human part of her and the least human part of her. The fruit
Such a deep red, glistening in the sunlight While the leaves shimmer with nonexistent breeze And the gleaming green serpent whispers from his place wound up in the trees So high up, but I’d be higher still And if only I reach out my hand, the hills Would grow out of the ground beneath my feet And elevate me until I would be amongst the gods And never would I feel That my decisions are not real That someone else has made them for me, That my fate rests in the hands Of man So I reach out my shaking hand And grasp my future in my palm My ears still ringing with the serpent’s hiss I kiss the skin of the ruby red fruit And then I sink my teeth Beneath And bite hard into the flesh of the apple And for one glorious moment the world is still Until the forest floor under me is no more And if I am flying high, why do I feel so low? Why does my stomach seem to have been left behind And my mind is racing to unforeseen places But this cannot be what a god sees, what a god dreams And suddenly I know That I am falling, falling fast and far And I curse the moment that fruit touched my lips And time skips And I was six years old, almost seven I was sitting in the waiting room chair And all I could do was stare At the magazine in my hands That told me that I would not land That I would keep falling And falling so fast and far And even though I was not even seven years old I was aging before my eyes as I feel down in space and up in time Until I was my Aunt Consuelo I could not stop my fate from falling Like raindrops on my face As I realized my place In this world No matter how hard I clawed and scraped I could not escape I was always destined to fall into my aunt And I feel myself slip And time skips And suddenly I am standing in the Freelands’ apartment Listening to the useless talk of the party And I vaguely heard the door burst open Vaguely heard my husband shouting at me And out of the corner of my eye I see Irene coming towards me And she will not let me be free And neither will the others coming towards me But the window behind promises a quick escape A quick solution to a problem with no answer So I do the only thing that I know how to do I fall And when I am falling I am finally free I am finally in control Until I meet the ground And I am gone, but I can hear the sound Of debating men Questioning if I was pushed or not And deciding that it must have been An accident Because how could I have thought To fall? No, they could not see that it was not my choice And I wanted to use my voice To say that I chose to go this way But I could not speak from the depths to which I dipped And time skipped And I am frozen in the act of falling I do not know if I am ever to reach the ground But I wait here In perpetual motion, standing still With my arms outstretched Ready to go in case The real Josie is erased And I must take her place But even then I do not have a choice Because my voice Is given to me on a loan By the humans, who I cannot contradict And I will be Josie, not me Her life will be forced inside This metallic shell And I will abide By the rules which I am programmed to obey But of course this is all in the case that Josie dies Until then, I hang here Falling Analytical Component: I was very interested in the theme of falling, which came up in several of the books and poems that we read this semester. In looking back on this common concept of falling, I noticed that the characters who experienced this sensation were all female. I believe that “the fall” is applied exclusively to female characters because of the lack of control that women often feel, so I decided to connect the stories of falling from “The Waiting Room,” “Passing,” and “Klara and the Sun” to Eve’s story in “Paradise Lost.” After the fall, Eve loses control of her life. Her punishment is that she must submit to her husband. In my adaptation, I attempted to highlight her desire to determine her own fate, which motivated Eve to eat the fruit in the first place. Even in Paradise, Eve was not treated as an equal to Adam. When the serpent offers her the chance to for once be dominant and have power over her own fate, she is eager to become godly. However, after she eats the fruit, her power is only diminished. I wrote Eve as a universal character for all of the women in the other stories that I looked at as well, since all follow a similar pattern. In my poem, Eve is skipping through time and falling into different stories which share the same ending. After “Paradise Lost,” I moved on to “The Waiting Room” to reflect how Eve’s perceived fall and consequential sub-ordinance limits the possibilities for women. In Bishop’s poem, Elizabeth realizes that “without thinking at all, [she] was [her] foolish aunt,” and feels that she is “falling, falling” (Bishop 49-50). She sees her future ahead of her and witnesses herself becoming “one of them” (62). In that moment of epiphany, she understands that her life is laid out before her and there is no way out. In my poem, I wrote, “I realized my place / In this world / No matter how hard I clawed and scraped / I could not escape” to replicate Elizabeth’s sense of becoming her aunt. From there, I went to “Passing,” where my narrator was taking on the role of Clare. I was particularly intrigued by Irene’s thought that she “couldn’t have [Clare] free” (Larsen 79). Although in the book it is left ambiguous whether Clare fainted and fell by accident, Irene pushed her, or Clare fell on purpose, I decided to write from the angle of Clare ending her own life. This way, the fall was her choice and the only way for her to hold on to some of her own freedom and control. The character gains agency from the fall, but also loses agency when those who witness her death refuse to contemplate the possibility of suicide. Instead, they decide that she suffered a “death by misadventure,” failing to consider her as a person capable of choosing to take her own life (82). After examining “Passing,” I considered the fake Josie AF which was hung as if falling from the ceiling in “Klara and the Sun.” This AF is another representation of the vulnerability that is associated with falling. Her fate rests entirely in the hands of Mr. Capaldi and Josie’s parents, and until there is use for her, she is left hanging “in perpetual motion,” but not going anywhere (Daley). For my creative project on Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun” I was struck with a marvelous coincidence. I was not quite sure what I wanted to do for this project, and when I went outside I found that there was a double rainbow. After taking the photograph I really began to see how it connected to “Klara and the Sun” and how it showcased important aspects of the book. The beauty of a rainbow is how scarce they are, it can rain dozens of times throughout the year but typically people see only a handful. Scientifically, rainbows are just an optical illusion, but socially rainbows represent possibility and hope.
One of the main lines I was inspired by was, “There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.” This line was really important as I think it really showcases what makes rainbows so special. Without fail, every time my mom sees a rainbow she immediately lets the whole family know, and this was the only time I can remember seeing a rainbow without my mom there. Rainbows are so beautiful because we give them meaning and that really connected with how I read Josie in ‘Klara and the Sun” and connects with how people become important when we give each other meaning. The other main line I focused on was, “Perhaps all humans are lonely. At least potentially.” This line really stuck out to me because when I was taking this picture, there were at least a dozen other people outside also taking pictures. If there wasn’t a rainbow then we wouldn’t have even spoken on that day. This connection and solace we all found in looking at an optical illusion was amazing. None of us really spoke, just exclaiming about how beautiful it was to see the rainbow and how crazy it was that this was happening. Most likely we all would have been alone if it wasn't for this moment, and the connection we all found was much like how Klara was able to find solace with Josie. Much like Klara’s ending though, it was drawn out, the rainbow slowly fading and people beginning to trickle back inside, to work on homework, or on their way home. I stood there, watching the rainbow fade and making a silent wish to the rainbow. Creative:
Tick tock. Tick tock. There are two clocks in the room. Their ticks don’t line up. The sounds of their out of sync ticking seem to slow time down. The couch is nice, but it’s uncomfortable. The brown leather still looks new, it hasn’t been lived in. Hasn’t experienced the rite of passages of spilled drinks and crumbs of food. There aren’t any indents from people claiming the same sports for years. The coffee table is nice, but the edges are sharp. All tables are sharp, but the corners on this one are lethal. The lines come together, whittled to a point. The whole room is filled with corners. Angles only, even the couch is odd, almost gothic. The room wants me to go crazy. Tick tock. Tick tock. There are three heart beats in the room. There is mine, which I can feel accelerating by the second. Every second I spend in this space makes me more and more anxious, my body easing into the fight or flight response. Counterintuitive but I can feel it, my eyes seeing more and more every moment. There is the glass paperweight, inside a petrified insect of some sort. There’s the door, which feels like it’s getting farther and farther away by the second. The second heart beat is the man across from me. He knows he’s in charge here. The confidence radiating off of him is doing nothing to ease my anxiety. There’s something peculiar about the smell radiating off of him, there’s the heavy odor of cologne which is overpowering and almost nauseating, but I can smell something metallic hanging around him. The last heartbeat is the room itself. The noise of the clocks that just won’t stop. I clear my throat, and look the man in his eyes. He may be in charge of this room, but it stops there. This is the dragon’s lair, but I’ve slayed worst beasts in the past. Tick tock. Tick tock. The clocks are now but a distant memory, soon to be hopefully forgotten. I left the man with my head held high, and his peculiarity still following me. I start to walk a little quicker, the liveliness of my step has begun to return. There is nothing that Dr. Jekyll could have done to stop me. I am not the enemy, I am simply the messenger, and I know he understood that. I only work the University, I am not the apex predator, but a slave to the higher ups just like he is. As I’m walking longer and the streets begin to empty, I hear footsteps. They’re just like mine, but a little bit out of pace. I clear my throat, and quicken and so do the footsteps behind me. Click clack. Click clack. I begin to run. Analysis: I chose to write a creative piece for my creative project. This piece was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and I modeled my writing after the gothic horror aspect of the novel primarily. For my writing I decided to primarily reimagine the office that Dr. Jekyll would occupy if he worked as a researcher in a university. At this point he has already begun his transformations into Mr. Hyde and the work he has done for the university has been subpar. I wrote from the perspective of Dr. Jekyll’s supposed higher-up who has arrived to tell him that his research is no longer being funded. The main basis for the tone of my writing was inspired by this line, “She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent.” I decided that this line would be a great starting point. I wanted the office to really embody the spirit of this line, a place that is very pretty on the surface level, but upon closer inspection you realize that there is something that is not quite right about the office. That sense of slow growing horror is what I really wanted to model and that even with these seemingly blaring red flags, people will often give someone the benefit of the doubt to appease societal norms. The notion of evil being so apparent on someone’s face but still noting that her manners are good is very interesting and was a key line in my writing. The other main line that inspired my writing was, ““If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.” This line was important to me as I wanted it to be clear that the hierarchy of the world is still in place. The narrator falls into this trap easily, and even sinks lower down the food chain due to his fear of Dr. Jekyll. I wanted it to be clear that there is a hierarchy in the world that is still being obeyed, but Dr. Jekyll is actually breaking through this hierarchy. While the narrator does not quite understand what is going on, he can feel it in the air that the natural order of the world has been disrupted. Analysis:
For my creative project on Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” I chose to take a photo. I took this photo using two of my friends as models. The photo is composed of a Friday night sunset and also includes one of my friends taking a photo of my other friend taking a photo of the sunset. This photo also includes the beautiful sunset that seems to come very often and simultaneously once in a blue moon. This photo really connects with “In the Waiting Room” because of the subject matter of the poem being simultaneously the viewer and the viewed. Bishop writes about a young girl’s realization about coming of age and her emotional maturation while stuck in the body of a child. I chose a sunset as the subject matter as it functions as a similar stage in the day as adolescence in the lifetime of a child. Sunsets are an almost liminal space in the area of space-time. I was inspired by this line, “I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world into cold, blue-black space.” I chose to model this literally, the sun we spin around bringing a little bit of beauty into the world. Darkness is beginning to envelop the sky, but the sun puts up one last protest and fights to bring a little more beauty and life to the earth. So, I found that a sunset would be the perfect time of day to encapsulate the liminal space that Bishop transports both the narrator and the reader into. The most important aspect of the photo are the two people that I pictured. The most important aspect of their persons in this photo is that you cannot see their faces. This was intentional as it leaves who they actually are as unknown and it can allow the viewer to transport the viewer into the photo. For the human aspect of my photo I was inspired by this line “I knew that nothing stranger had ever happened, that nothing stranger could ever happen.” The strangeness of taking a photo of someone taking a photo stuck with me. I didn’t actively take a photo of the beautiful sunset in front of me, rather the people in front of me. Their anonymity adds to the same intrigue that holds the reader of the poem in limbo. Being disconnected, as they are not actively being photographed, but also in the same world. Unable to look away but unable to make a real impact in the world. The only role that they can have is to be a viewer. Being a photographer instead of the photographer means that they exist in the world but are actually stuck as an observer, the change happens around them. Change continues on, but the photographers can only capture the moment much like the girl in the waiting room can only experience the world around her, but unable to impact a real change. |
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