My Possible Term Paper, Rough Draft: Storytelling

Storytelling is something we've talked a bit about in class, but I'd like to discuss it further in relation to children's literature and His Dark Materials.

***Please give me some feedback/comments on my extremely rough draft, Thanks***

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today - Robert McAfee Brown

Lyra is famous for her storytelling, her bending and twisting of the truth to make stories up. She lies to manipulate Iofur the false bear king and lies whenever she thinks she needs to manipulate a situation like on page 292 of The Amber Spyglass Lyra and Will have to get through the door to get to the ghosts on the other side. They meet a harpy called No-Name, who Lyra later names Gracious Wings. The harpy, for the Anthenians, was a sorrowful death angel. Although the harpies in The Amber Spyglass are not death angels, they are door keepers and inspire sadness and fear, but that later changes. The harpy in Greek mythology was a winged death-spirit best known for stealing all food from Phineas. Like the harpies in The Amber Spyglass steal all the happiness and comfort from the ghosts by reminding the ghosts of all the bad things they committed in their lives. No-Name would not let Will and Lyra pass and says, "What can you give me?" so Lyra offers to tell a story, but as usual she weaves a tale in her mind about things that are not true, and when she begins storytelling No-Name rejects the story knowing it to be a lie. All we have to give when we have nothing else is our own story, that would be all No-Name could fairly ask for from Lyra. We cannot take things like material possesions, relationships, or our five senses we enjoy of the body to our death when we die. Medieval drama, Everyman illustrates that the only thing people could take with them to the grave was their good deeds, which would be much like a story of the things they had accomplished in life. The only thing a person has to their name or to their life is the story they lived. This reminded me of Baz Luhrmann's recent film, Australia, near the beginning, Lady Sarah Ashley is talking with the drover and they are discussing how much luggage the Lady has. The drover tells Lady Sarah Ashley that he doesn't have many possesions because they are no good to him. He says all he has is his story and he's trying to make it a good one. The drover was very close to the Aboriginal people of Australia and and that culture values storytelling as a way to teach, remember, and entertain. So the drover would agree when Tialys from, The Amber Spyglass strikes a deal with the harpies on page 317 and says, "Every one of the ghosts has a story; every single one that comes down in the future will have true things to tell you about the world." The harpies have the right to hear the stories and the ghosts will have to tell their story, then the harpies will guide the ghosts to the opening into the world. THe harpies can ask for nothing else because the stories of our lives are all we have to give when we die. No-Name says on page 318, "We have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things." The harpy is saying that we need to gain knowledge and experience life. A person who watched TV all day, slept and did nothing else would not have much of a story at all. My dad always told me that the purpose of life was to love everyone, gain knowledge, and serve others. I suppose if I do all three I will live a pretty good story.

Philip Pullman says "Lyra and Will and the other characters are meant to be human beings like us, and the story is about a universal human experience, namely growing up," in response to his own claim of His Dark Materials being stark realism. Pullman is telling us the story of ourselves, the reaccuring myth of 'the Fall' of Adam and Eve, when they finally know themselves. By growing up we create the stories of our lives and we recreate 'the Fall' by gaining wisdom and knowledge which moves us from innocence into experience.
What does all this have to do with children's literature? As a child, the embodiment of innocence, most people are told stories or read to by their parents or family members to. My Book and Heart Shall Never Part ruminated on the idea of didacticism in children's literature. The didiacticism of storytelling is essential because we use stories to teach, remember, and delight. So by being told stories children are being encouraged to gain knowledge, remember, and have joy which fosters the child away from innocence and into experience. Like on page 433 of The Amber Spyglass when Mary Malone decides to "Tell them [Lyra and Will] stories" where she performs the role of the temptress by telling them of her 'fall' tasting like marzipan when she was twelve years old. This stirs up sensations in Lyra which leads to Lyra's fall. It is interesting how is is not Will who is tempted and falls, but Lyra. And Lyra doesn't really fall does she, she gains knowledge and experience.Which is how we create our own life story, because it is the change and the metamorphosis we go through to advance from innocence and reach the realm of experience.

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People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end anymore. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning. -Steven Spielberg

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Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all. -Hans Christian Andersen

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To be a person is to have a story to tell. -Isak Dinesen

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The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one. -Sid Caesar

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If you don't know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don't know the stories you may be lost in life. -Siberian Elder

a dust joke

A little boy was playing with a bouncey ball in his room and it rolled under his bed. He looked under his bed and yelled urgently for his mom. When she got to the room he asked, "is it true that man was made from dust, and when he dies he returns to dust?" the mom answered, "yes this is true." and the little boy said, "well, quick look under my bed because someone is either goin' or comin'."

My Dad told this joke to my 10-year-old cousin Andy at the Thanksgiving table. I asked my Dad where he heard that and he said it was from Paul Harvey in 1958. I don't know how my dad remembered the year he heard it, but he just did. The joke reminded me of page 273 in The Golden Compass where I think Lord Asriel is telling Lyra about Adam and Eve and the Dust.

***

"And now you know, the rest of the story....."

Milton's Golden Compass

William Blake, The Ancient of Days (1797)

On heav’nly ground they stood, and from the shore

They view’d the vast immeasurable Abyss

Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wilde,

Up from the bottom turn’d by furious windes

And surging waves, as Mountains to assault

Heav’ns highth, and with the Center mix the Pole.
Silence, ye troubl’d waves, and thou Deep, peace,

Said then th’ Omnific Word, your discord end:
Nor staid, but on the Wings of Cherubim

Uplifted, in Paternal Glorie rode

Farr into Chaos, and the World unborn;

For Chaos heard his voice: him all his Traine

Follow’d in bright procession to behold

Creation, and the wonders of his might.

Then staid the fervid Wheeles, and in his hand

He took the golden Compasses, prepar’d

In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe

This Universe, and all created things:

One foot he center’d, and the other turn’d

Round through the vast profunditie obscure,

And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,

This be thy just Circumference, O World.
–John Milton, Paradise Lost bk vii, lns 210-31 (1667)

There is an explanation for the Blake painting and the Milton passage here at Harpers Magazine online. "But the essence, the conception of a world driven by a celestial mechanics not altogether fathomable by humans, is distinctly a classical Greek idea..... The golden compass describes a world of order and reason, a place where the possibilities open to humankind are great. But it also describes the limits of this world, beyond which lies maddening and incomprehensible Chaos."

I found this by googling the words, 'golden compass.' This seems like a place where Philip Pullman may have gotten an idea for the alethiometer. There is a lot more to the alethiometer than just symbols. The alethiometer looks like the I Ching. The moveable hands of the alethiometer remind me of the Blake painting above.

Personifying the Unconscious: Daemons

I mentioned in class that when I first read the His Dark Materials trilogy that I wanted a daemon.....still do....but not as fervently. But before I read the trilogy I did carry a stuffed animal around when I was really young. It was a white bear I called whitey. Then I had a black bear called rocky. I actually still have rocky, but he is now a dog toy. I loved him, still do, but Oly got to him one day and I had to turn him over to the dogs.. But stuffed animals remind me of the false bear king Iofur who wanted a deamon and carried around a stuffed doll. People get pets too. Is that a way of trying to fill some void or place something within your life that you can connect with. Some people really connect with certain animals. Maybe through stuffed animals as a child or having a pet we can personify our unconscious. This idea of having a daemon sparks the imagination and highlights a part of us that we can explore.















My daemon: according to quizilla.com my daemon is a "SONGBIRD (male) - Your daemon may be a song bird if you are a true free spirit. You don't do any harm to anyone, but go along your merry way. You work hard and you play hard. You may be very talented and you use your talent to add happiness to the world. You may be a hopeless romantic, and probably put your family and significant other before anyone else. You might be a little vain at times, but no one can ever fault your for it." I feel this is fairly accurate. According to okcupid.com Sutter's daemon is a pole cat. Don't cats eat birds! But opposites attract.

I was looking around online about daemons and I found a website called Finding Your Daemon Within. Maybe we really do have daemons, but not quite the way Lyra does. It has some interesting things to say but an important idea was that, "the idea of picturing and speaking to your own subconscious soul is a very old concept, one which Carl Jung, the eminent psychologist, explored in great depth. Not only is finding and speaking to your daemon possible, but it is emotionally healthy and important for psychic growth." it goes on: Many people already speak to their "daemon" and do not realize it, because they call it by a different name. Students of Jungian psychology call it their animus/anima. Parents call it an imaginary friend. People who have read Philip Pullman's books call it their "dæmon". No matter what you choose call this part of you, it is a real part of the psyche that you can learn to see and speak with. Our dæmons serve as a conscience, a guardian angel, and a method of examining ourselves. By learning to hear this subconscious voice, we can help expand our own emotional development. Depending on the kind of animal our dæmon's form takes, we can learn a lot about our own personalities.
Carl Jung interested me and I found that Jung believed that getting in touch with your animus/anima was the route to getting in touch with your unconscious self. He called the animus/anima the "Soul Image" of the person. A man's soul image consisted of a feminine anima, while a woman's Soul Image was a masculine animus. This is the part that dæmians would call the dæmon. It is your inner, subconscious self, and by learning to talk to him or her, you can become truly whole once more.
It seems that maybe Carl Jung is where Pullman got his idea for daemons or is a part of the idea.

I Ching, U Ching, We all Ching together

Erin Doherty has an excellent image comparison of the I Ching and the alethiometer on her blog.

The I Ching also called “Classic of Changes” or “Book of Changes” is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book is a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. The text describes an ancient system of ccosmology and philosophy that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese cultural beliefs. The cosmology centres on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change (see Philosophy, below). In Western cultures and modern East Asia, the I Ching is sometimes regarded as a system of divination. The classic consists of a series of symbols, rules for manipulating these symbols, poems, and commentary. Thank you Wikipedia. Also see I Ching divination.
Symbols and rules for the symbols....sounds like the alethiometer. There are also books that help translate symbols, much like there are for the alethiometer. Mary Malone actually has an I Ching in her office....later she uses it to communicate with Dust. When Lyra asks about it, page 369 in The Subtle Knife, Mary responds by telling Lyra that it is a form of divination, fortune-telling, and it is only up for decoration. Decoration!? Then it just so happens it comes in handy later for Mary. Coincedence that it was only there in her office for decoration....I don't think so. Lyra tells Mary that the I Ching is used to communicate with Dust or Dark Matter.

A Few Rememberings

As of this very moment I am on page 469 of The Subtle Knife. Serafina Pekkala found Lyra and Will saving them from a mob of vengeful children, which reminded me of the mob mentality in Lord of the Flies when the boys beat another boy to death because they thought he was some animal. Will and Lyra are walking to a cave about a half hour walk from where they had been to meet the witches near a cave safely far away from the Specters...a good place to stop reading for a bit.

I was thinking about Lyra in comparison to Alice. Alice and Lyra, first of all, seem to like to ask a lot of questions. Alice is an altogether unimaginative and unremarkable girl. Lyra, I would argue is somewhat of the same....Lyra thinks to herself when she finds out the alethiometer was stolen from her, "Without the alethiometer, she was...just a little girl, lost." Lyra is granted the gift of reading the alethiometer, and without that ability she is altogether useless to the story. I don't think her actually being a child has much to do with her ability because Mary Malone can communicate with Dust. So it really is that state of mind that is described in the Keats poem. Lyra is like a pawn in a very large scale chess game. She isn't even all that likeable because she is often a stubborn, stuck up, brat. Alice isn't a brat really, but she isn't all that likeable.....all the other characters are more likeable than she is...maybe because they are more interesting. Not to say that Lyra isn't interesting. Lyra is brave, I'll give her that.

To revisit my comment about Lyra being a pawn in a chess game...page 320 of The Subtle Knife Lyra asks the alethiometer if Will is a friend or an enemy, it answers, "He is a murderer." Therefore Lyra rationalizes that she can trust Will. I asked Sutter what if how he would respond if he was in Lyra's place, and he would of thought of Will the "murderer" as an enemy. So the answers Dust gives to Lyra are very much made for how Lyra thinks. New Historicist critics argue that there are no such things as facts or truth. There are only versions and interpretations of truth. So when the the alethiometer gives Lyra answers to her questions, it seems that it is manipulating her, and by it, I mean Dust. It doesn't give her direct "facts," but rather responds in such a way as to guide her thoughts and actions. But I don't think it is manipulating or guiding her as it first appears. We discussed in class about how truth in the alethiometer is remembering. Images of the soul. Unforgetting. My only way of explaining this to myself is that maybe the Dust communicating with Lyra through the alethiometer is helping her remember her destiny. And she certainly has a destiny because everyone knows what she has to do, except her. For example the prophecies that the witches have. And if Dust is consciousness, then I guess that makes sense.

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Quotes from The Golden Compass that I like...among many many many

page 274 of The Golden Compass:

Lord Asriel says to Lyra, "Anyway, it's what the church has taught for thousands of years. And when Rusakov discovered Dust, at last there was a physical proof that something happened when innocence changed into experience."

page 24 of The Golden Compass:

"'That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.'
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious."

Trusting in Lyra

D.H. lawrence said when reading a story trust the tale not the teller. That is exactly what I do when I read His Dark Materials. Even though Philip Pullman is a very outspoken atheist, I have always and will remain to ignore that when I read his books because there is more meaning in his books than what he intends (not because I disagree with atheism or Chritianity, but because I don't like the idea of knowing too much about the author of a book, sometimes it ruins my experience). Dr. Sexson points out that it is a rather odd thing to say that we might understand an author's story better than the author himself, but I think it is a very useful one. There is a great deal of religious material in the books and it is enriching and adds to the themes, but the politics of religion can get messy, so I try to focus on other themes. The themes seem to focus around innocence/experience, truth, storytelling, didacticism, what is a child, etc. as Dr. Sexson listed for us in class. The influences surrounding Philip Pullman's novels are rich and vast. He certainly does not worry about anxiety of influence, but rather embraces it. I want to blog later about some of the themes, this is just a quick intro blog to His Dark Materials.

A list of the impossible...or the possible?

It's kind of fun to do the impossible - Walt Disney

I was trying to think of impossible things, and it isn't hard to do, but I was still troubled. Impossible things depend on reality and dreams. Most of these impossible things could never happen in real life, notice I say most because I believe we don't really know what is impossible. But all of these impossible things are completely possible in our dreams.

So then if I write down a list of impossible things then it might really be a list of possible things. Or what if we read a book and we become the character in the book we do impossible things as the character like riding on the back of a polar bear who talks or talking to a large catapillar smoking a hookah or dancing down a yellow brick road with a scarecrow, tinman, and lion? Then we are able to do impossible things so that these things become possible through dreams and reading. So then am I providing you with a list of 5 impossible things or 5 possible things? Whatever it is, here is a list of both impossible and possible things:

1- I seperate my soul from my body and place it within my dog Copper and he will now live forever as my daemon.
2- When Sutter and I go fishing I will catch a Sperm Whale in the Upper Madison.
3- My hair will grow 3 feet over night.
4 - The law of gravity will be abolished by congress and we will all float around but we will still be able to breathe.
5 - A large ship from the 19th Century will plunge through the Overbrook neighborhood and Larry (our neighbor) will hop on board with Sue and Little Bear and they will fly away into the sky to play the ultimate game of jepordy to save the world with attacking aliens.
(6) - Sutter :P
I do the impossible for most college students everyday by waking up before 8 am.

"You pass through places and places pass through you, but you carry them with you on the soles of your travelin' shoes.......the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs..... it's time like these I feel so small and wild, like the ramblin' footsteps of a wanderin' child.....the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs....." The Be Good Tanyas

about 6 degrees of seperation....

From Alice to Oz -
A character in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the Cheshire Cat.......

Cheshire is also the name of a county in NW England.....in London there is a pub called the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Pub.....

Charles Dickens frequented this pub which was popular for its gloomy charm, supposedly where he got a few of his characters for A Tale of Two Cities......

Charles Dickens also had a pet raven named Grip.....the Ravens are the American Football team of Baltimore.......

Baltimore is where Edgar Allen Poe spent the latter part of his life (his poem "The Raven" was the inspiration for naming the football team the Ravens).......

Edgar Allen Poe also wrote a news article about hot air balloons called "The Balloon Hoax" all about a man who lied about flying over the ocean in 3 days in a hot air balloon......

the hot air balloon is what the wizard from The Wizard of Oz flies away in abandoning Dorothy in Oz, but we all know she wasn't really abandoned.

Quiz #2......Good luck!

1. know the subject matter

2. know the pages of Sunderland discussed in class - I wrote some of the page numbers down, but I'm sure I don't have all of them, here are some: page 92, 27, 28, 206, 134, around183 - 186.

3. Know chapters from Alice:

• Humpty Dumpty
• Wool and Water
• Tweedle Dun and Tweedle Dee
• Caterpillar
• Question of morals

4.Know My Book and Heart Shall Never Part

5. Talbot movies.....i don't know why I wrote that down

6. Name and illustrator of Alice books: Tennial

7. Last word in Beauty and the Beast in the Tatar book: Virtue

8. Who wins after death, the worms, but we triumph over the worms how? - through art

9. Oscar Wilde "Life imitates art"

10. Know the themes of the class:

• history
• myth
• dreams
• art
• coincedence

11. The white knight might represent Carrol himself

12. What is the parodists counterpart to How Doth the Busy Bee? Carrol's How Doth the Little Crocodile -- Dr. Sexson mentioned that this sounded like a good essay question.

13. What is the beautiful food the mock turtle sings about? soup....this is also a parody of something about a star

14. Hatter's riddle: Why is a raven like a writing desk? Stolba's answer: I haven't the slightest idea

15. According to Talbot who is the most quoted author after Shakespear? Lewis Carrol.

16. _______ is a depersonalized ______ and ________ is a personalized _______. Answer: myth is a depersonalized dream and dream is a personalized myth.

17. know about Humpty Dumpty, the Jabberwocky, and portmanteau

18.Stephanie thinks the rudest of all the flowers is the violet.

19. animated contains the word anima which means soul

20. Who is the volcano? Alice

21. Alice lives in the collective unconscious.......in The Golden Compass that would be Dust

22. The first time Alice drinks something she shrinks to 10 inches

23. What is the title of the deleted chapter from Through the Looking Glass? The Wasp and the Wig

24. How does Alice offend the mouse? by talking about her cat

25. During the Protestant Reformation the intent of literature was to teach moral values to children

26. According to My Book and Heart Shall Never Part the first Bible published was in Algonquin

27. What two animals sparked curiosity? the mammoth and the monkey

28. What machine influenced the 19th Century? the Guttenburg Press

29. Why are matters mad? the idea that mercury in the hat bands made hatters mad is an example of misplaced concreteness

30. Create an anagram of a Chapter title

31. White Rabbit drops what? white gloves and a fan

32. In Jean Cocteau's film version of the Beaty and the Beast, Beauty's tears turn into diamonds.

33. D.H. lawrence - When reading a story trust the tale not the author

34. Lewis Carrol's nickname was Dodo because he had a stutter which inspired one of his characters

35. tautology - circular argument it is what it is because it is

36. Goody-Two-Shoes is an emblem of perfection that adults lack - from My Book and Heart Shall Never Part

37. According to Dum and Dee: if Alice is a part of the Red King's dream then what are Dum and Dee? ditto ditto ditto

38. What image randomly appeared in Rebecca's dream? flying pigs

39. English class looks into the dark side of things

40. Who was the most prolific cereal.....haha i mean serial killer in 19th C England? Mary Ann Cotton

41. Two ghosts in Talbot book - Sid James and The White Lady

42. Jabberwocky poem about ledgend that haunted Sunderland the lambton worm

43. recreate last line of Alice books "Life, what is it but a dream?" this line is from the poem at the end which is an example of a structured poem called the acrostic poem which spells Alice Pleasance Liddell

44. Walter Pater - All art aspires to the condition of music because music doesn't ask the question of what does it mean

45. The text informs reality - from My Book and Heart Shall Never Part or rather life imitates art, things are only real because they are written about

46. What do the Tweedles really enjoy saying? contrary wise

Pretending and Daydreaming...or just Dreaming

In class we've been talking about dreams, reality, and imagination. And when we talk about dreams it might have mostly been about the kind you have when you are in your REM sleep. But what about pretending and day dreaming. I suppose many students know quite a bit about day dreaming. But both Alice (from Through the Looking Glass) and Lyra (from His Dark Materials ) have a different sorts of dreams that I wanted to highlight.

Instead of Alice suddenly seeing a white rabbit running by this time Alice decides to pretend. Page 156 she says, " 'Kitty, dear, let's pretend -' And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favorite phrase 'Let's pretend.' " Later on Alice says about the looking-glass, "Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so we can get through. Why it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare!" And then Alice made it through the looking-glass. Was she dreaming, day-dreaming, or pretending? Maybe it started out as pretend and turned into daydreaming, which then led to a dream. And at the end of Through the Looking-glass when Alice is shaking the Red Queen it only turns out to be a kitten. So then was she dreaming or was she just pretending the whole thing. But then on Chpater XII she says she was woken by the kitty. It is all very ambiguous. But I suppose pretending is very much like day dreaming or even dreaming, because the impossible can happen. I used to pretend I was a ninja turtle when I was 4-years-old. It was physically impossible for me to turn into a ninja fighting turtle, but when pretending to be one and doing kicks and jumping off my couch, nothing was impossible and I became the Leonardo, one of the Ninja Turltles (turtle power!). But I was not dreaming, not sleep dreaming that is.

I also noticed this passage which connected to a part of Alice in Sunderland. Chapter XII of Through the Looking Glass Alice says, "Now, Kitty, let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear.....You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream of course - but then I was part of his dream too! Was it the Red King, Kitty?" And the last line before the poem Carroll speaks to the reader, "Which do you think it was?" Which reminded me of page 181 - 186 in the Sunderland graphic novel, some of which we discussed in class. Page 181, "life is but a dream," then page 182 the author wakes up from his dream, but then on page 186 he says, "Or is this your dream?" speaking to the audience. This question of who actually had the dream is popping up in both of these texts. Why does it matter? Is this a questioning of reality? Is anything ever really real? Or is it all enhanced and twisted through our dreams, imagination, and pretend.

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I was re-reading The Golden Compass, and I have read it many times (and it is much more fun to read it in the context of this class along with other classes), but I don't remember reading this passage on page 284:

They spoke no more for some time. Lyra felt herself moving into kind of a trance beyond sleep and waking: a state of conscious dreaming, almost, in which she was dreaming that she was being carried by bears to a city in the stars.

She was going to share it with Iorek, but then she had to cross a crevasse. This may be a forshadowing. Or maybe it is how she is learning to see the other worlds, by day dreaming rather then focusing on reality which doesn't give way to the impossible being possible.

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Just a side note that I found very cool....page 244 when Lyra is talking to a prisoner at Svalbard, whom she thinks is crazy, and the prisoner says, "There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child. Did you know that? Everything out ther is alive, and there are grand purposes abroad! The universe is full of intentions, you know." I don't think he is all that crazy. But what I really found interesting was that in my Medieval Literature class Dr. Morgan stresses about all the overlapping meanings and allegories within Medieval drama, one key example that is found throughout all of the cycle plays is the microcosm and the macrocosom. Both words are derived from greek meaning. Read more about micro and macrocosom HERE. Both of which affect eachother, which would be the correspondence. When the microcosm is out of sync, the macrocosm is too. The microcosm is centered more on the earth and it's issues and the macrocosm is associated with the cosmos and the spheres around the earth. They represent this in the plays by tempests and intensely stormy out-of-place weather, it all calms down when Jesus is born because he saved us all right and everything is better now. I would continue on with this typology, but I fear I would spoil the book, so I will cease. Phillip Pullman used a medieval way of thinking in his modern text. It just goes to show all the influences he used and the genius behind his story, and I feel so sad because I probably miss most of the influences, allegories, etc.

Class Notes 11/7 plus a bit more

**films to rent if you desire:
-Alice Through the Looking Glass with Kate Beckinsale
-Dreamchild
~~QUIZ on Wednesday Nov. 12 bring your questions on Monday the 10th. Question ideas can come from your notes, the Tatar book, Alice in Wonderland, and Sunderland~~
**Paper ideas for those who are still looking
-history -Alice
-myth -Dorothy
-dreams -Lyra
-art*
-coincedence
~~Discussed Alice in Sunderland pages 184-186 about dreams/identity and the author addresses the reader directly~~
*Discussed Alice's Adventures in Wonderland specifically, the part where Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum tell Alice her tears may not be real (page197 in my Alice book) in relation to the Jean Cocteau's film Beauty and the Beast and how Beauty's tears turn into diamonds.

(not discussed in class, but a pertinent connection) There was a part in Through the Looking Glass that reminded me of Cocteau's film: At the very end of chapter one, "She [Alice] just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then she floated on through the hall..." (166). Just as Beauty floated down the hall in this magical scene:
Also quoted Alice's adventures in Wonderland, "Life, what is it but a dream?" page 272 in my book. Which reminded me of "row row row your boat etc."

People shared their insights about Lewis Carrol's Alice stories and Sunderland. Hopefully that will be on people's blogs because I failed to take adequate notes on this.

------------ One Liners from Dr. Sexson in class today -------------

• "transform terrors into art...which may be the only way to deal with terrors" (which is why we should read the Grimm fairy tales etc. to our children)
  
• "are you willing to dance?" (in reference to chapter X The Lobster Quadrille, "Will you, wo'n't you, will you, wo'n't you, will you join the dance?"


• "The end is where the adventure begins"
  

Dreams and Imagination, Oh my

DREAM: I am living with Sutter's family in a huge mansion that is fashioned more like a palace, with an enormous winding staircase, and the glow around everything is yellow. I am wandering around the house wondering where I am supposed to sleep when Sutter runs up to me wearing a white robe and a stocking over his face, like robbers wear. He said something like, "Did you see that guy run by? He's an intruder!" Sutter started racing down the stairs after this intruder. I started to run after him but panick started in my stomach, and rose to my chest, and burst. ...
*

AWAKE (halfway): I sat bolt right up in bed and looked to my right where the closet/bathroom door was open and there I saw the intruder staring at me with black clothes and a black hat from the darkness. I screamed. And screamed. I finally turned to my left and switched on my bedside lamp, hands shaking, and looked to the closet, but the intruder wasn't there. Sutter panicked when I screamed and was no use at all for defense. When everything calmed down I made Sut look in every nook and cranny of our house to see if there were intruders. It was 2 a.m. and we turned every light in the house on.
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This incident happened at the beginning of the summer. I did not sleep well for three months after that. I was convinced there was a man that came into our house and watched us sleep. Before going to bed I locked all the doors, checked closets and dark places for intruders, and I shut all the blinds, and locked the bedroom door. In the morning I would check for footprints around the house. Every night I still felt a presence. Sometimes I would lay awake with the TV on as Sutter slumbered deeply. (I nearly hated him for the peace he could find). I was able to sleep better, but not perfectly when I got a night-light. The nightly routine of checking everything was still in place. I was getting better week by week until I watched a scary movie, Mr. Brooks starring Kevin Costner. I was back to my old habits of a paranoid freak. (I really sound like a nut case here, I am really not).
*

Now everything is fine. I sleep well without checking for intruders, without checking all the doors, and without shutting all of the blinds in the house. I am still baffled about how a simple dream ruined my sleeping life for so long. The impact was so deep I considered an exorcism of the closet. I was given Feng Shui books from my friends. Therapy was an option I hadn't ruled out. But now everything is fine and I fall asleep like I used to and sleep peacefully.

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I blame my bad dream experience on my overactive imagination and maybe a fear of something destroying my happiness. Did Alice (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) have an overactive imagination? Of course she did. How could she fall asleep and have such a dream about Wonderland without an overactive imagination. Northrop Frye says in The Educated Imagination,

But we use our imagination all the time: it comes into all our conversation and real life: it even produces dreams when we're asleep. Consequently we have only the choice between a badly trained imagination and a well trained one, whether we ever read a poem or not (134-5).

I obviously have retrained my imagination to be positive rather than drak, scary, and negative. I forced myself to think of good and happy things before bed. I stopped watching TV before bedtime/scary movies and I have returned to reading books(not scary books) to put me asleep, which I used to always do in highschool.

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There seem to be no morals to dreams. Only images and fragments of story lines that merge and morph into other story lines. Like in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on page 103 (in the Barnes and Noble's Classics edition with an intro. by Tan Lin) the Duchess says that Alice is thinking about something and that makes her forget to talk and she can't remember what the moral of that is. Alice responds, "Perhaps it hasn't one." The Duchess responds, "Every thing's got a moral, if you can only find it." Onto page 104 after the Duchess points out several morals, Alice thought, "How fond she is of finding morals in things!" That does seem to be the trend in children's literature, didactic practices, and adults (like the Duchess) often like to insist on morals to teach children a thing or two. Maybe in a dream and in our imaginations there doesn't have to be a moral. We don't have to learn anything from our dreams, or from our creative thoughts, but rather experience the imagination and put it to good use in our feelings, conversations, and basic daily life. Does that make us more interesting? Like Dr. Sexson suggested in class, that the text is not boring, but if we are bored with what we are reading than it is us who are the boring ones. Dr. Sexson said, "the more interesting we become, the more interesting books are." So then I assume the more interesting the books become, that mean we are becoming more interesting. This made me a little concerned with my sense of self....am I boring!? No of course not. No one really is....well maybe there are exceptions, and wouldn't that be awful to be the exception. Just thinking about exceptions, Alice is not exceptionally imaginative, but does she become imaginitive because she has this creative dream that a boring girl shouldn't have? I should think so, for she seems to have a "well trained" imagination.