Blog 10: Song Response

Does anyone listen to Kenny Rogers anymore? I don't listen to much current music. Somehow, I lost the desire to keep up, preferring talk radio and audio books. But music was very much a part of my childhood and young adult life, and sometimes lyrics will come to mind. Kenny Roger's "The Gambler" has a great chorus that seems pretty important to my adult life:

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away, know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table,
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

The song is a narrative about a down and out young man encountering an experienced gambler who gives him advice. The chorus is the advice: you need to know when to keep playing and when to quit, and in quitting, you need to know when to get out fast. I do think it's hard for young people to know when it's time to give up. We're taught to "hang in there" and that courage involves seeing something through to the end. I think it's also important to know when no effort on my part will do any good. There have been important times in my life when I've folded and run, and I haven't been disappointed in that choice.

The other part of the advice is not to count your money while you're still playing. I read this as don't judge yourself. Whether you're winning or losing, judging doesn't do any good. Just keep going with the work until it's finished. I've found even after the work is done that judging doesn't matter because I'm on to the next job. It's really the game that's important, life, career, family, not figuring out whether you're winning or losing. Just be happy in the action of life.

I don't really think of Kenny Rogers as providing my life philosophy, but clearly my own experiences connect enough with the idea of this song to make it meaningful for me. :)

Blog 9: Haiku

From Rilke's "Panther":

The caged panther paces.
His fierce hunter’s heart seeks,
Finding only bars.

Blog 8: Poem Paraphrase

Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Panther": The caged panther paces, momentarily opening the eyes that once hunted only to find himself surrounded by bars.

Road through Wonderland

My friend Dawn Schiller wrote The Road through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes about her experiences as a “throwaway teen” victimized by the porn star John Holmes. The memoir follows Dawn on a road trip with her father, a Vietnam vet, from a tough neighborhood in Florida to Southern California where she met John. She was then 15, and he was twice her age. With the neglect of her father and John’s separating her from family and friends, Dawn came to see John as a protector, but their sexual relationship constituted rape, as she was not young enough to give consent, and he preyed upon her vulnerable situation.

Eventually, John became increasingly involved with drugs and abusive of Dawn. In one instance, John hit Dawn out of paranoid jealousy:

“Bam! John’s hand flies out across the glass and lands hard across my face.
I hit the ground with a thud that sends the air from my lungs. I immediately feel the searing pain of the blow rip through my jaw. It cracks with a loud snap and aches like it is broken. Stunned and in shock, I have no vision except for sparks of light against a black background” (259).

The use of present tense here and throughout the book makes the increasing violence gripping for a reader. While violence in a consensual relationship is never appropriate, it is even more terrifying that this is a big, male adult hitting a child, and the child has no adult to turn to and no frame of reference to use in understanding the violence as wrong.

John went so far as to traffic Dawn, prostituting her to raise money to spend on drugs. I can’t imagine that experience as the norm for a young woman. At the end of the book, following the Wonderland murders in which John was implicated, the couple fled to Florida where, finally, with the help of caring friends who notice the abuse, Dawn turned John in to the police.

Dawn’s book is written as a means to voice her side of the story in response to the film Wonderland, which focuses on John’s connection with the Wonderland murders. I had to watch the film version in small chunks, as I found the violence difficult. Kate Bosworth plays Dawn, representing her as a cute tagalong along for the ride. One planned scene of physical abuse was cut from the film, as the filmmakers were worried about making John look bad. One trafficking scene appears in the film, but it’s depicted so vaguely that it’s difficult to understand what is happening. John himself comes across more as pathetic than terrifying, which distorts his role in Dawn’s life.

As a means of turning the horror of her childhood into productive action, Dawn has founded the non-profit Empowering Successful Teens through Education, Awareness and Mentoring (ESTEAM): http://www.empowerteens.com/. Through this non-profit, Dawn plans to develop mentoring models that can guide adults in supporting teens experiencing neglect and in protecting teens from predators who prey on neglected youth. Nancy

Works Cited
Schiller, Dawn. The Road through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes. Medallion P, 2010. Print.

Image Source: http://www.medallionpress.com/authors/schiller.html

Blog Post 6: Gift of the Magi

I love O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi"! Della and Jim demonstrate their love for one another by each sacrificing his or her own prized possession to get a special gift for his or her partner. Of course, the irony is that neither can use the special gift because they sacrificed the possession to which it relates. The irony emphasizes their love by tinging it with regret, but it is only a regret for things, not for people, so it is dwarfed by the love their feel for one another.

What is often lost in this love story is the title and the last paragraph addressing the magi. As the last paragraph states, the magi were the three wise kings who brought gives to Jesus at his birth. Henry states that Della and Jim, and people like them who give gifts, "are wisest." "They are the magi" (162). In a sense, Henry is saying they are better than the magi. I think there is irony in operation here, too. Della and Jim are not kings; they do not have wealth and time; they have to work hard for the people they love. It is the very irony that they can't use the gifts that makes them wiser and better than the magi because they gave of their whole hearts, sacrificing themselves for their beloved, without a thought to getting anything in return. Their gifts, therefore, are more in line with the story of Jesus than those provided by the actual rich, leisured magi. Nancy

Blog Post 4: The Lottery

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is one of the scariest stories ever. It starts out all happy--a sunny summer day--and everyone's going to the lottery. Based on the general understanding of a lottery, it seems as if someone's going to win something. Then, it turns out that the "winner" is the big loser, getting stoned by her fellow townsfolk.

Stories of ritual human sacrifice are part of traditional agricultural societies that believed something(s) valuable needed to be sacrificed in order to guarantee a good harvest. This one has a small detail that indicates the connection: Old Man Warner, who has lived through 77 lotteries, mentions the old saying, "'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon'" (216), which makes the connection between the lottery and the crops.

Other similar stories occur in the film The Wicker Man, which is very creepy, and in Wole Soyinka's play The Strong Breed. In these two, the sacrifice is made ironic by the fact that the community opts to sacrifice an outsider; they aren't willing to sacrifice their own, which seems to undermine the whole purpose.

Perhaps the scariest aspect of these stories is that tradition continues without reason and is so strong that it overcomes all human feeling. While hopefully we don't make human sacrifices anymore, there are ways in which harmful traditions outlast their usefulness just because that's the way it's always been done. When we can't think beyond "We've always done it that way," we're in trouble. Nancy

Silver's Edge

I recently read Anne Kelleher's Silver's Edge, which is a fantasy novel that includes a couple romance plots. Normally, I'm not a big fan of fantasy novels where mortals travel to fairyland. I do appreciate the tradition. I taught a British fantasy course this past year that included several influential fairyland novels: George MacDonald's Phantastes and Lord Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter. These authors influenced other more well known fantasy writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Ursula K. Le Guin. In that class, we also read Neil Gaiman's Stardust, which is a very recent version of the fairyland story that was also made into a movie. Both are delightful. (And, I have more to say on Neil Gaiman, whose novels are awesome.) I appreciate fairyland stories. I appreciate their impact on other works. But, generally, I find the depictions of fairyland rather simplistic, kind of like the wonderful children's book The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies or the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People. The stories tend toward cuteness rather than complexity because they don't take the fairies seriously.

However, Kelleher's depiction of fairyland seems more interesting. The characters are entangled in realistic relationship issues, some impacted by class, whether the need to make money or the need to marry for political advantage, and some impacted by political and racial tensions, such as those between nations or between mortals and the sidhe (fairies).

The borderlines are also drawn not just between the moral world and fairyland but also between the realm of goblins. The intersections among these three territories multiply the conflict and heighten the political intrigue, as characters make deals for their own advantage.

I also like the complexity in the depiction of the magical elements. There isn't just one kind of magic that some people have. There are differing kinds of magic and imlements that have magical effects, such as silver, and magic doesn't solve every problem. Instead, magic is one factor; bravery, honor, professional expertise, and hard work are others. It seems as if Kelleher takes fairyland seriously. It's not a realm of cute elfish caricatures as in Lloyd Alexander's work but more along the lines of Tolkien, drawn from a long history, with the sidhe simply being a race of non-humans for whom time moves differently.

Finally, I want to mention that I enjoyed the depictions of the female characters who are well-rounded and of the main character, Nessa, who has trained as a blacksmith in her father's smithy. She is capable and brave. She can make weapons and is willing to go weaponless in to the Otherworld to find her father. One sidhe character watches her swim back to the Shadowlands (mortal world): "He was forced to acknowledge her courage, and the intelligence, as well as the intuition that led her to not only chop off the goblin's head, but to bring it to the attention of the sidhe as well" (281). Although the sidhe are both attracted to and repelled by humans, this character, who seems trustworthy himself, views Nessa as a key player in the unfolding events, which allows the reader to take her seriously as well.

Nessa is likeable also because, like many fantasy heroes, she is looking for her future, whether that will be partnered with her father's apprentice Griffin or with the sidhe Artimour or working as a blacksmith or following the path of corn magic. She seems capable of many things, and the end of the novel leaves her future unresolved and her family mystery still hidden. So, now I have to buy the next book in the series...

Works Cited

Kelleher, Anne. Silver's Edge. New York: Luna, 2004.
"Silver's Edge" [cover image]. Amazon.com. 2011. Web. 9 July 2011.