Introduction to Literary Study Class Blog

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2009-02-08T09:29:00.001-08:00

11/12

2007-12-12T12:13:00.001-08:00

First the buisiness: The essays are due via email Monday December 17th by nine a.m. I'll be leaving town only two days later, and will not return before the grades are due. Therefore, missing this deadline will result in your failing the course.

Then the niceties: No speeches, but I will say that this was the either the first or second most engaging group of students I've taught in the last ten years. In fact, you were called 'the kind of students all of us at Queens dream of having' by another professor at this school. Many of you will probably not be in a classroom full of that many verbally engaged and engaging students again. Maybe, but probably not. So congratulate yourselves for that. And look over your blogs, and congratulate yourself on just writing so much about so many different things. It represents a fine effort.

I'll put up the pictures here as soon as Jennifer sends them.

Feminism

2007-12-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

The only thing that I can really get from my reading about feminism in Lear is in act II. The women Regan and Goneril are both being portrayed as stubborn and demanding. Women are typically stereotyped as needing too much from men, and being very set in their ways. This is something a feminist would have a problem with, stereotyping is the worst. Honestly though I don't think Shakespeare wrote it in a demeaning way for women. If you sit and study anything long enough you can twist and manipulate it to find whatever you are looking for in it.

Anyway you can see this in Act II when they are refusing to let him stay with them. They are asking him to get rid of all his servants or men or knights or whatever they are, and then they just throw him out in the cold. The whole scene just makes women look mean in general and does not show them in a kind understanding light. They also proceed to call him old and senile.

Also in the act before this one the third sister, Cordeilia, is the nice and sweet one and she is left with none of the power in the end, and she doesn't stand up for herlself she just backs down. Helen Cixous would say, "“Either the woman is passive; or she doesn’t exist." This is the only way that men want women to be, either do as they say or you are not even a person to them.

2007-12-05T06:57:00.001-08:00

It would be easy within the first few scenes for a feminist critic to find things that they are at odds with. Shakespeare’s reflection of a predominantly male oriented society if apparent in the roles females play within his plays. They are subject to dominated, disgraced, and always at fault. The historical fact that all female characters were played by men shows that society had an issue with the capacity of a woman perform accordingly, in life and in theatre.

Lear asks his daughter to express their undying love for their father, dependent on how they respond Lear divided his empire accordingly. In this sense the daughters are prostituting themselves out for the assets of their father’s kingdom. As we will learn later in the play there is no emotional attachment to their claims, which would make the reader think that they are sincere.

Feminist critics would also have an issue with Lear disowning Cordeilia for her lack of expression for how much she loves her father. Lear takes tosses her away as if she was a piece of property, The Duke of Burgundy also drops all attempts to marry her after he finds out she is worthless. As Cixous states “women are either passive or no existent”(p.230) , this is the case with Cordelia, she could submit like her other sisters and make a theatrical profession of her love for her father, or she could refuse and face the consequences. Her choice of the latter resulted in her the erasing of her existence, she no longer has any worth or value.

Luce Irigaray in King Lear

2007-12-05T05:42:00.000-08:00

In Act II scene IV When Goneril and Regan both treated him like crap and neither one of them gave him shelter. I thought about Luce Irigaray when she was talking about Sexual Difference in terms of space and time. I remembered the gap that mentioned on page 238 "But it is never found in the gap between man and woman. This gap was filled instead with attraction, greed, possession, consummation, disgust,etc." It seems to me that both Goneril and Regan filled in the gap. They both have all of the traits that were in the gap separating men and women: The two of them have some sort of attraction towards Edmund, They both are greedy in the way that they took over their fathers castle and they want to possess even more power by taking away Lear's remaining power (His Soldiers/Servants/etc). Irigaray also says that "The interval would never be crossed. There would be no consummation. Such an idea is a delusion. One sex is never entirely consummated or consumed by another. There is always a residue." I related this to the two daughters and Lear. Goneril and Regan have crossed the interval in some way but king Lear hasn't been consumed by them. I thought of the residue as the remaining power that Lear still has. That is why Goneril and Regan keep wanting to take it from him. In a way this play kind of supports Irigaray's thoughts and ideas. The stuff she said turns out to be pretty much true.

2007-12-05T00:07:00.000-08:00

Reading King Lear, I found that one could very easily read it through a feminist’s eyes and find much to comment about. First of all, Lear is, quite literally, the King of the castle, the master of his domain. His is a patriarchal kingdom and he is at the top of it. This image of a dominating man ruling over all is very familiar in literature (the elders in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart for example) and his placing value upon his daughters based on their affection for him is typical of how women were regarded in the course of such stories. A feminist reader would also point out how the girls were portrayed in two stereotypical ways. First is the infamous image of the femme fatale, the woman who uses her charm and sexuality to get what she wants, no matter what the cost. Regan and Goneril are the femme fatales of the story. They manipulatively toy with their father’s little vanity and basically seduce him, telling him how much they love and cherish him, until he hands over their share of the kingdom. Cordelia is the polar opposite. One could argue that, by refusing to take part in her sister’s conniving games, she is at a higher level, closer to the ideals of feminism. But, when her father cuts her off from her rightful portion, she just accepts it and backs down from him like a meek child. She just shies away from his critical remarks of her, not standing up for herself. She is still tied down by the patriarchy.

2007-12-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

The part which struck me as being somewhat marxist is the part when Lear, the fool, Kent and Edgar go to the hovel after they are banished from his castle. Here is where Lear must endure this storm that has come.
Here his character begins to see what is actually going on. Here he sees how the rest of the kingdom
lives.

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, 35
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this

Here he is feeling what his people feel when storms like this come and how he has done nothing to help them. He also sees how his daughters have mistreated him.

But I will punish home: 20
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.
In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,--
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; 25
No more of that.

I would interpret this as Lear being the upper class in terms of wealth over the people of his kingdom, but at the same time he is lower class compared to his daughters.

Marxism In King Lear (Too tired for a witty title)

2007-12-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

When taking a look at the opening scene where King Lear gives his three daughters; Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia the test of love and the after effects of this test, I can't help but feel that this scene has a Marxist connotation to it. Given this light, it might seem like Regan and Goneril could be seen as the bourgeoisie , as they flatter and "show their love" to King Lear in order to obtain what they desire, the ownership of the kingdom. However, their sister Cordelia could be seen as the representation of the proletariat, as she refuses to go along with King Lear's game in order to preserve her own integrity, and loses favor with the King as a result and certainly loses her shot at ruling the kingdom. At the same time, a Marxist could look at this contest as a positive at first, as the King gives his three daughters a fair chance. However, under these circumstances, Lear just wants to prove that Cordelia is worthy of being his favorite daughter (as she is young and sought after by many a suitor), but his requirement of "proof" is the way that Lear creates what a Marxist might see as a class division between his three daughters. Basically, in terms of Marxism King Lear has created a capitalist system and Goneril, Regan and Cordelia are forced to abide to this system in this scene.

King Lear......Feminist Reading

2007-12-04T20:13:00.000-08:00

It was a little difficult to relate King Lear to the topics that we have covered in the semester. Finally, after some thought, I decided to select Act II and relate it to the feminist critics discussed.

Helene Cixous in “sorties” states that “Either the woman is passive; or she doesn’t exist. What is left is unthinkable, unthought of. She does not enter into the opposition, she is not coupled with father” (pg 230). Women, in the past, were perceived as obedient and submissive. These characteristic traits were portrayed as favorable and if women lacked these aspects they were considered as non-existent. In Act two, the women, more specifically Regan and Goneril demonstrated the exact opposite of this notion. They utilized deception to gain priority. The sisters strived to completely dethrone their father. The king’s knights represented power and the sisters, acknowledged this fact, demanded the king to release them from their knightly duties. By eliminating the King of Britain, the women gained excessive amount of power and hence became more salient to the world as well as to the male dominating society. Another way in which they eliminated the king from power was when they sent Kent to the Stocks. Even though King Lear asked his daughters to dismiss him from the device, they refused indicating his lack of power.

Act two can also be perceived as anti-feminist. Luce Irigaray states “Man and woman, woman and man are therefore always meeting as though for the first time since they cannot stand in for one another. I shall never take the place of a man, never will a man take mine” (pg 238). The sisters, in a discrete fashion, strived to become the opposite sex. They could have gained power and rights to the country with out striving to deliberately belittle their father. This notion is also perceived through their relationship with their husbands. It seems as if they dominated that relationship as well. They refuse to listen to their spouses when they ask them to treat their father in a more kindly fashion. However, in order to gain power, according to Irigaray, once must remain in their own position and never strive to become the opposite sex.

Disowning people because they don't love you as much? That's F-d up

2007-12-04T18:32:00.000-08:00

Somewhere between working on a portfolio for my Creative writing class and napping was my response to this weeks blog, incase you haven’t guessed it yet the scene I am going to discuss takes place at the beginning of the play, when King Lear disowns his daughter because her declaration of love for him is not as heartfelt and profound as her other sisters. Found in ACT 1 SCENE 1
So I decided to do this as a feminist. I did it this way because its a good example of men and what happens when you don’t stroke their egos. I'm not going into a Freud thing here though I probably could. I decided to use the Ideas of Simone de Beauvior, with the idea of the "Eternal feminine" in mind his first two daughters that offer him praise and numerous reasons as to why they love him are given shares of his Kingdom, while the daughter that only seems to love him out of obligation because she is his daughter gets pawned off on other people. He understands that his two other daughters will never be queens but strips Cordellia of the ability to become that because she doesn’t love him the way he thinks se ought to. All women have inside of them the ability to either be the "saintly mother" or cruel stepmother" perhaps this was the authors way of showing the different facets of women at the time? On a more modern scale even today, women who suck up to men in powerful positions are more likely to get ahead, its extremely self defeating and sexist but it exists. de Beauvior says

The myth of women plays a considerable part in literature; but what is importance in daily life?To what extent does it affect the customs and conduct of individuals? In replying to this question it will be necessary to state precisely the relation this myth bares to reality

The myth is shown to exsist here because Cordiellia is written off as the immediate bad guy because she isnt like her sisters so she's basiay stripped of all worth and titles. She submits herself as the kings daughter to loving him out of obligation unlike her sisters as I mentioned earlier but the connection I wanted to make here was about that and de Beauvior's point that

Paternalism for hearth and home defines imminence and transcendence; when one offers the extent no ain or transcendence falls vainly into the past-that is to say, into imminence, This is the lot assigned to women in the patriarchate; but is in no way a vocation , anymore than slavery is a vocation of the slave

He try’s to pass her off to two people. The Duke of Burgundy and the king of France who only gets her by default. He banishes both her and Kent from his Kingdom because he argues that he has made a stupid decision in disinheriting Cordiellia, Keeping the earlier quotation in mind and the concept of vocational obligation of the slave, Cordiellia to me was not only indifferent to the situation because she felt this way, but because if she comes across feeling like this when asked to express her love for her father, what can he really do but renounce his loyalty to her? Realistically people arent always going to give you the response you want to hear. Social constructs leave all Lear’s daughters at his mercy, whereas he gets to decide what happens to them based on who he gives shares of his Kingdom to. This falls back into the idea that the man in the situation maintains "absolute rights" and imposes "categorical imperative" on the women. It is expected that the women in both this situation and any modern one similar to this simply take what they can get and be happy with that.

11/3

2007-12-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

For Wednesday, a bit of work to begin the work for the presentations: Write a 250-400 word response regarding one scene or portion of a scene from Lear, and begin in it to sketch out how it might be read by one of the particular critical movements we've dealt with this term. Make particular reference, of course, to at least one critic. And again, remember that most of the more interesting moments come later in the play, so read as much as you can as soon as you can.

Anyone who missed class can view the presentation parameters to the right.

12.3.07

2007-12-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

When looking and analyzing Hyeons dream there are some things that stand out after going over the main concepts that we learned from Freud. His dream focuses on him playing soccer with a close friend in his first dream, someone he hasnt seen in years. In his second dream he is with this girl that he specifically has physical images about. After talking about Freud we learned he likes to focus on how the dream was manifested, and how he talks about three achievments first being condensation, the second being displacement, and the third being transforming them into visual images. Using those achievments you can analyze Hyeon and his dreams in a couple of ways. Looking at his first dream of him playing soccer with a close friend you might think of him maybe wanting to see a friend he hasnt seen in a while. The playing soccer part maybe that was a sport he has played in the past or liked to watch on television. The concepts or as Freud said elements he might of had in his dream had to do with people he knew and a sport he enjoyed playing or watching, in which he condensed into one dream and then the dream was manifested. In his second dream where he meets a girl and has a romantic moment with her. The only thing he rembers is the girl having one certain physical characteristic. Maybe he was insecure about having a relationship with a girl potraying those characteristics. The dream was probably manifested because he had not been in a relationship for a long time and was looking for someone to be with.

Part II.

When reading the Lacan piece one passage that i had trouble understanding was "In the light of this conception, the term primary narcissim, by which analytic doctrine designates the libidinal investment characteristic of that moment, reveals in those who invented it the most profound awarness of semantic latencies. But it also throws light on the dynamic opposition between this libido and the sexual libido, which the first analysts tried to define when they involved destructive and, indeed death instincts, in order to explain the evident connection between the narcissitic libidio and the alienating function of the I.."

Interpreter of Dreams....

2007-12-03T06:11:00.000-08:00

I am a person who does not remember many dreams, but the last one I remember consisted of me hanging out with an old friend of mine, the friend being a female. And throughout the whole dream I kept feeling like it was forbidden to hang out with this girl. There was no special significance about the girl and all we were doing was watching T.V. on a bed. Look wise she was pretty. We used to be friends but nothing serious or personal. But I just kept feeling like I was doing something wrong when I really wasn't. It was short and boring and just woke up confused. I wonder what Freud would make of this.

I know and trust that all of my fellow classmates most certainly understands that I and all of us are not really trained as pscychoanalysis professionals, so taking a stab at interpreting each other's dreams is all in good fun. I truly think that Ziyad's dream might have something to do with mayne his feelings towards women in general. Freud might say that there is a good chance that he is experiencing these weird feelings that he was doing something wrong because maybe secretly deep down inside he may feel more comfortable with having been with a man. Why would he feel it is weird to hang out with a girl if he is heterosexual? It could be his subconsious trying to tell him something. Or....maybe he feels uncomfortablw in hanging out with the girl because of his religious upbringing. If I am not mistaken, the religious upbringing he has was a muslim one. In the country that his family originated from, I know for a fact that marriages are arranged and there is no "hanging out" with the opposite sex. It is a major forbidden. Woman are viewed as much lesser then the man, and the virtue of a woman is held in very high regards. Maybe, in the dream, the weird feelings came from a deeper suppresed feeling of sexual need. He felt like he was doing something wrong for being on a bed and watching t.v. even though there was nothing going on. His mind led him to believe that he was because of condensation. A whole set of images packed into one, which this would make a lot of sense. He is just laying in bed doing nothing wrong, but a deeper reading is that maybe he wanted it to go a lot further and it didn't because he knows that it would be wrong because of his moral and religious upbringing.

Of course, I just realized that another classmate analyzed the same dream so I will take a stab at another dream as well....

I remember two dreams I've had this and last week. In onc of them, I was playing soccer with a very close friend of mine, whom I haven't seen for years ever since I came to States. In another, I was kissing this fat chick, thankfully not a french. The good thing is that I haven't had a nightmare in more than 10 years, if I remember it correctly.According to Freud readings I've done, these manifest dreams just represent my desire to meet my old friend (playing soccer may not have any meaning at all) and another desire to, well, have a romantic relationship with someone which I think is in the unconscious level (because I won't admit it).

I think it is very possible that the imagery of playing soccer with a friend that Heyon hasn't seen in along time might be perhaps just a condensation of a feeling of longingness. Maybe that one friend just represents that he is a feeling of loneliness and maybe the want and need to revert back to the past. The funny thing that I picked up on, is that he said, "I haven't had a nightmare in more then 10 years"... is it really a nightmare that you are kissing a fat chick? I think that this is a bit shallow, and might say something about what he perceives as good enough for him. Is it possible that he fears being with someone who does not meet his standards physically? This could possible illustrate that he might in his real life be striving for perfection in a woman and the dream might be illustrating that no one is perfect, and that he should try to connect with a woman on an emotional level as opposed to a physical one.

12/03

2007-12-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

Ketive's dream:
"Within my dreams, there have been several various settings; a classroom, out with my friends, in my own home with my family and the list goes on. But in each of these dreams, I am the center of attention. Everyone seems to be trying to speak to me, and only me, regardless of who is there. It could be my best friend, a professor, or even an attractive girl asking me question after question. But, in each dream, I cannot come to a response. I can't even process what these people are saying to me. I'm just sitting there, doing nothing, not able to move or even breathe. I can't walk or talk or feel anything emotional or physical. Just a bag of meat with eyes."

The relative position of him and others suggest me that level of attention Mike is getting normally is either insufficient of more than sufficient. Maybe there are some people in his life who are forcing him to do things. Also Mike suggests that he's not expressing himself enough, or that he just wants to stay quiet. Or maybe he just doesn't like crowd.

Lacan is basically way beyond my comprehension, but here's just one of them:
"In man, however, this relation to nature is altered by a certain dehiscence at the heart of the organism, a primordial Discord betrayed by the signs of uneasiness and motor unco-ordination of the neo-natal months. The objective notion of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal system and likewise the presence of certain humoral residues of the maternal organisms confirm the view I have formualted as the fact of a real specific prematurity of birth in man."

I honestly have no clue about Lacan.

2007-12-02T22:48:00.000-08:00

Well seeing as how it won’t let me see who posted what I’m doing the dream of the person going through the never ending meadow. Curiously, it sounds a lot like Catcher in the Rye with a few things changed. I think that this person is overwhelmed with everything there is. My interpretation is that there is no one to help this person and that they are ill-equipped to take on their daily tasks. This person is also scared about the future which they are unsure of. The blue dress could be significant because blue could represent depression and anxiety. These things could be the condensation.

The passage which I tried so desperately to translate is on 193 and is the second last paragraph. Here Lacan is saying that all knowledge and urges are taken by the wishes of the other (or the image, not the I). It is in this that abstract equivalence and meaning is given and through this the actions we take are dangerous even though these things seem natural. These normalizing values are only gained though living in the society and learning what is accepted. Through society we learn things, but our (I am guessing he is only talking about men) sexual preference and objectivity comes from the Oedipus complex, or the antithesis of that, which Hegel would argue.

I have to say though, I disagree with him philosophically.

Dream Analysis

2007-12-02T22:46:00.001-08:00

Kimberely's Dream
I am in my town which is in this house on the beach (I live by the beach) and I know exactly what block it is. I am in this dark brown, possibly black house which is black and red on the inside. It seems very gloomy and almost "vampirish" if that makes any sense. I am trapped inside and can't get out although I am free to roam around. There is an eagle in it that I think comes after me or something. It's just a very scary place and although I am in the house I can see that the town is isolated and no one is to be found. This is really all I can remember but I had this dream twice and it was almost the same both times. When I wake up I am petrified and can't go back to sleep, so good thing I don't have it often.

Analysis:
Maybe this dream is about your fear of being alone. (Dont take any of this personally please) Maybe the town and house being vacated is just you being alone and it comes across in this house just to make you realize like this house, being alone is something you are scared of. The eagle could possibly represent someone who may be coming to save you since eagles are sometimes a symbol of freedom. I think maybe you are free to roam but locked in to show you that you can be at peace and free within yourself even if no other person is around you. This is just about all I could decide. I think yours was one of the only dreams left unanalyzed. Sorry if this bothers you at all... if it does blam the professor...lol.

Short Boring Pointless Dreams

2007-12-02T20:56:00.000-08:00

Mike is just a piece of meat.

2007-12-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

"Within my dreams, there have been several various settings; a classroom, out with my friends, in my own home with my family and the list goes on. But in each of these dreams, I am the center of attention. Everyone seems to be trying to speak to me, and only me, regardless of who is there. It could be my best friend, a professor, or even an attractive girl asking me question after question. But, in each dream, I cannot come to a response. I can't even process what these people are saying to me. I'm just sitting there, doing nothing, not able to move or even breathe. I can't walk or talk or feel anything emotional or physical. Just a bag of meat with eyes. However, I do have a form of conscious within these dreams of mine, as I can seemingly understand (within the dream) the concept that someone is trying to communicate with me. But I am still completely non-responsive. I cannot do anything at all. It's almost as if I am comatose or at least heavily opiated. I don't really understand the cause of this, as these dreams aren't usually vivid enough to remember in detail (perhaps that plays into the dream in and of itself), but I can only see what happens in the dream. It's as if you're watching your own surgery while it happens, but you don't even know it, if that is pertinent analogy."

I believe that Mike's dream is showing him a near-opposite view of how he may actually feel when out with his friends, or in class, or talking up the ladies. Contrary to him being the center of attention, I think Mike feels cast aside if not downright ignored in most groups situations; his dream self cannot seem to respond to the attention given to him, whereas I think Mike IRL does not receive the attention he deserves in relation to how much he contributes to the group. Mike's dreams aren't vivid enough to remember in detail because most of his experiences are remembered in vivid detail; and his mind, subconscious, whatever is showing him what it'd be like if his life WASN'T how it is, if it was in fact the complete opposite. Methinks it may be his own mind telling him to be happier with what he's got, hmmmm?

I'll post the Lacant thing in a bit. Tootles!

Adrien's Bigness

2007-12-02T19:42:00.001-08:00

I remember this one dream I had during the summer. It involved this girl from Florida I had met online. For six months we had been in contact with each other (still are) and she would send photos of herself to me. I reached this point where I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. One night last July, I dreamt that I was out on my front lawn (not sure what I was doing). The atmosphere was strange. It was orange everywhere, like in an old 1970’s photo. Suddenly I felt someone’s hand brush up against my shoulder. I turned around and there she was. I was just stunned. I mean literally, I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t believe she was right there in front of me. Suddenly, before I could do or say anything, like a second later, she’s ten blocks away and turning the corner. I follow her as fast as I could but when I turn that corner, the setting changes from my neighborhood to this weird nighttime Manhattan-like street scene. I look everywhere but she’s nowhere to be seen, just a bunch of faceless people covered in torn coats and jackets, walking quickly left and right. They pretty much creep me out, so, to get away from them I run into this building (the sign indicated that it was a comic book store) figuring that maybe the girl might have done the same. The inside looked like an old abandoned subway station. It gets kind of weird at this part. The scene started to look like something out of a horror-based video game. I started to freak out. I just wanted to get the hell out of there and find her. Then I go through this door and I find myself in this huge room. It looked like a bedroom but it was just bigger then normal. I turned around and there she was. I had finally found her. But the thing is, she was now gigantic (or I had shrunk). I was speechless. It was like my greatest fantasy. She was a giantess lying down in front of me and it seemed so real… and then the damn alarm clock woke me up. I hate that alarm clock.
My analysis:

In order to understand what the idea of a Giantess was I not only had to find the definition but also ask Aidrien, the conversation took place a while ago but between the actual meaning an the shirt he wore on Wednsday I think I have a pretty well constructed idea. So before I get into the Freudian way of interperating his dream I wanted to start with what I compiled over the weekend according to both dream dictionaries, articles and what the actual term means. First the whole concept of him being attracted to larger than normal women ie the 50 foot woman has to do with a term called macrophilia. This is defined as fetishism towards giant women, these types of women do not exsist in the real world they are often described as similar to a woman you may have read about during the time of the titans and amazons. The only reasonable example I could find according to "Urge: A Giant Fetish" found on Salon.com was the Statue of liberty which was described as a

monument to freedom, democracy and the big-girl aesthetic, she looms over New York Harbor, 225 tons of womanhood, 151 feet from toes to torch tip, her head high and huge, her massive bosom outthrust to welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. For immigrants arriving on America's shore, the statue is the earth mother of international acceptance. For macrophiles, she's something else -- the ultimate sex goddess.

Macrophiles are turned on by giant women that uare also called GTS's. As I did some more digging for outside information I found out that the fact that he is dreaming about Giant women may not even be something that can be considered of a sexual nature. Giants in dreams often signify obstacles in a persons life where if a person constantly dreams about giants they may be consumed with the idea itself. Whereas on the opposite side if a person dreams they are a shrunken person being dominated by a giant they are likely to have an inferiority complex. Leaving the idea of sexual attraction or fetishism according to the article I read, these things may not even be his issue. According to Dr Helen Friedman, a clinical psychologist in St. Louis he's either

Playing out some old, unresolved psychological issue.Maybe as a child they felt overwhelmed by a dominant mother, or a sadistic mother. Or were abused. This macrophilia is not so much a fetish as a disassociation from reality. It's part of an internal world." The macro's submersion in fantasy, she says, serves as a substitute for a more normalized approach to sex.

The bed in the bedroom of his dream

Since he really didn't describe the state of the bed in his post there is no way to tell whats going on with him, because mostly from what I've learned our beds are supposed to be places we rest ourselves while in dreams their seen as a symbol for how we see ourselves and our lives when we are awake. The fact that theres a woman on his bed and its away from home may mean that he is not comfortable expressing the fetish he has in familiar surroundings or people he knows on a more personal level. Whereas say in class he may feel more comfortable because he doesn't know everyone and may feel less likely to be judged since on some level we're all relativitly strangers to each other

The Subway/Underground transportation in his dream Because this part of the dream was short, ot can be seen as a temporary look at his day to day life or hidden emotions based on what I've read. Going back to the idea that he fetishizes GTS' this may mean that he draws on it based on the people around him. It also has to do with the way he deals with normal things in his life. The last symbol I wanted to talk about in his dream was the color orange, now first I thought this had to do with sunlight, but sunlight in dreams and the color orange mean two totally different things. I was kinda hoping to get away from the sexual aspect of everything but that just seems to be a recurring theme at this point. The color orange has to do with a persons sexual well being and expression.

What Frued would say
Because I really would like to get back to sleep I'm going to sum up what I think his thoughts would be as well as incorperate the ideas of disasociation, condensation and
. First The dream ends in a SUBWAY then a bedroom, he beleived that any symbol in a dream ie: trains or tunnels were automatically about sex. So no there is no excaping this and we might have a freak on our hands. As far as the Giantess women go another Fruidian issue is visited, he might just be projecting his issues with his mother, I mentioned this earlier according to another Dr. But this was orginally a Fruidian idea. With dissociation in mind it is defined as a " state whereby the memory of an event is divided into individual parts which are not wholly, or partially accessible to consciousness at any one time" So even with everything that is going on in his dream everything may just be a result of what has gone on durring his day, his mind may just be projecting it all in a familiar surrounding with objects or people that he knows on some level (except the faceless people) Condensation is defined as when ideas merge together to form one, so the major symbol in the dream (The girl from Florida who later becomes a giantess) may just be all the events of his day culminating into one idea. People usually dream about things in the form of others they can relate to see on a regular basis or in someway idolize so this makes sense. His displacement issue was something I found more interesting than anything else because with the whole idea that displacement means most of the time bouncing an idea or emotion on to something or someone else Adriens dream could just represent how he feels about a separate person or situation. He mentioned that he couldnt stop thinking about the girl so maybe this was his minds way of internalizing his obession with her?

Assal's Never Ending Meadow

2007-12-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

1) "My most recent dream consisted of a meadow. I remember a bright, green, fresh, and vibrant looking meadow. The sun was beaming brightly. I was wearing a light blue dress. I was not wearing shoes and could actually feel the grass. I kept walking and walking and hoping that the meadow would end at some point and that I would eventually reach civilization. I eventually came across an old man and asked him for directions. He remained quite and ignored my presence. I decided to walk some more and hoping that I would reach the end of the meadow. However, this never occurred and as far as I can remember the meadow never ended. I felt lost and hopeless."

My interpretation of this dream is simple. Through the first couple of lines, I get the feeling that Assal feels tranquility by being in this meadow. Personally, I would too...an endless field of green on a bright sunny day, (kind of like that desktop background that already comes with the Windows XP software called Bliss). Assal later writes that she walks continuously, hoping to reach the end of the meadow, in a way contradicting her initial feelings of peace and happiness. If the meadow was such an inviting place, why would she want to reach the end of it? When she encounters the old man who fails to give her any directions, I feel as if Assal begins to feel desperate, anxious to get somewhere productive. Perhaps the old man didn't even see her there, perhaps Assal was invisible to anybody around her. She pretty much sums up her own dream with her last line: "I felt lost and hopeless". This dream might parallel with her life right now; maybe she feels as if she's lost in certain situations and no one cares enough to help her get out of that hole.

2) "..the mirror-image would seem to be the threshold of the visible world, if we go by the mirror disposition that the imago of one's own body presents in hallucinations or dreams, whether it concerns its individual features, or even its infirmities, or its object-projections; or if we observe the role of the mirror apparatus in the appearance of the double, in which psychical realities, however heterogeneous, are manifested" (Lacan 191).

In English, Lacan might be saying that one's mirror-image, in other words one's reflection is thought to be what appears in our dreams, even if the imago's details aren't exact. Later he goes on to say that "pshychical realities are manifested", in other words, the remainder of one's dream is purely created by our brain and these additional thoughts or images are false.

Lacan

2007-12-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

"For me, this activity retains the meaning I have given it up to the age of eighteen months. This meaning discloses a libidinal dynamism, which has hitherto remained problematic, as well as an ontological structure of the human world that accords with my reflections on paranoic knowledge." (Lacan, 190).

This behavior demonstrates the point I've been making about children up to eighteen months old. It reveals an active conflict between the individual and its core needs. The impact of this behavior, which has been a difficulty up to now, also reveals insight into the metaphysical structure of the human worlds that coinsides with my exporations of fear driven knowledge.

My Dream...... Lesley

2007-12-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

Lesley’s Dream: “When I used to work as a corporate trainer for The Cheesecake Factory, I would have nightmares almost every night that I was on the road that I would walk into the restaurant and everything that I had done to make things successful for the opening the day before would somehow be a disaster the next day, and I would have start over from the beginning again. I would dream that all my servers would quit the day of the grand opening and I would have to take all the tables by myself and my feet would be stuck to the ground and I wouldn't be able move. It would be as if I was in slow motion, and there would be nothing that I could do to keep it moving.Now that I am in school, almost every night I have bad dreams that I wake up late and miss tests. I also have dreams of my friends and family saying things to may that make me feel like I am wasting my time, and I should just give up. This couldn't be further from the truth in real life.

I am not Freud so Lesley please do not take this seriously by any means! Your Cheese Cake Factory dream seems quite contradictory. You were a corporate trainer, an individual with high status, but yet you were boggled with failure. I am assuming that you had to demonstrate confidence, professionalism, responsibility, and leadership in order to achieve such high status. Perhaps, explicitly, you illustrated those traits, but implicitly you suffer from failure syndrome. You are constantly afraid of failure and that your accomplishments are never quite good enough. You might be apprehensive about authority and how they might view you. Most importantly, you might fear their disapproval and its effects on your life. Their disapproval might demote you to your starting position within the company. The fact that time, with in your dream, occurred in slow motion, can indicate your feelings towards the future. Perhaps, since time moved slow, you may think that you will not be bestowed with the opportunity to move up the corporate ladder. Also, the dream can indicate that Lesley fears abandonment from her servers. What would cause you to feel that way? Did they not listen to you in the past? Did they have a tendency to abandon their managers?

Her dream can also present a specific trait that can be perceived both negatively and positively. She can be viewed as an over achiever. She might never be satisfied with her accomplishments hence the starting over and setting up the tables by herself. She might believe that in order to accomplish a task accordingly, she has to accomplish it herself.

Her dream about her family telling her that she is not good enough might have to due with the fact that once again she is an over achiever. She feels that her family members are never quite satisfied with her achievements. She must go that extra mile in order to demonstrate her worth to herself and family.

Part II

“The child at age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence can nevertheless already recognize as such his own image in the mirror. This recognition is indicated in the illuminative mimicry of the Aha- Erlebnis, which Kohler sees as the expression of situational apperception, an essential stage of the act of intelligence. This act, far from exhausting itself, as in the case of the monkey, once the image has been mastered and found empty, immediately rebounds in the case of the child in a series of gestures in which he experiences in play the relation between the movements assumes in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it reduplicates- the child’s own body, and the persons and things, around him.”

What I think he is saying in this passage is that a child recognizes him/her self for the first time when they are capable of distinguishing them selves in front of a mirror.This act indicates intelligence. The act of recognition will eventually become"empty", which will then allow the child to recognize his surroundings. I however do not understand the whole scenario with the chimpanzees.

Interpreting a Dream....

2007-12-02T13:08:00.001-08:00

Part (1) The dream I'll try to break down is by Ryan, who wrote: "My dream last night was a bit weird, it was basically a day at QC. I can't remember it all but I basically remember being in a class I registered for next semester and just really hating the concept of the class. And what was even more weird was the professor was a this guy from my math class. After we left the class I remember them asking us to come into this seminar like thing and this lady started speaking. Unfortunately that was when my 4 a.m. wake up call came and ended all dreams."

My interpretation for this dream is that the dream is an illusion of the everyday life experienced by the student. In this case by Ryan, who only remembers the moments in college, where he feels the class not being adequate to his learning experience. Attempting to talk about the condensation part of his dream I would say is, focusing on the two concepts of interpretation to come up with a dream illusion. An example would be how Ryan, interpreted the class registered for the next semester as hating it by its whole concept, the other interpretation is bringing a third person who is the "guy in his math class", as being the professor for this class, who might be a guy who he can't listen for a long time, someone who may exaggerate too much in his conversations that just seem unimportant. Thats what I think, I don't know if its ok. Therefore, the point of condensation is by 'Over-interpreting' the idea of a class which would happen in a few months, a class that he is unaware of the concept that would be implored. Displacement in this dream can be seen by replacing a typical day by an example in the present days in qc, to the days that would come later on, a class that he finds less interest nowadays, than the class he dreams of. The way Ryan used his thoughts into visual images is, by imagining a day in qc which he is in a class he finds lacking the idea of the class, after that walking up to a seminar which most of the time is boring, by having a public speaker talking for hours, as a result most students loose interest and just leave. In the end, the dream is just an illusion of an everyday life, by going to school, and disliking or liking the class idea implored. Consequently, all of us have an everyday routine that we follow, from waking up and taking a shower, to attending class, and by this we are accostumed by making iilusions of what life will be like. Therefore, for me this dream is an illusion that Ryan has by remembering his life's routine, in this case going to school and not agreeing on the 'class concept'.

(2) "This Jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in wich the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other and before language restores to it, in the universal. its function as subject."

I read this and all I could understand was, an image of a child in his infantry stage, still unaware of life, and its problems. The stage of innocence that describes how the person is at the time. After that I was lost with the whole 'matrix', I think this means that the same child later experiences its role in society, by the different language and beliefs of the society it belongs to. Therefore, as the child grows so does his adaptation in society and in the world.

Freud and Lacan: A Psycho-Analytic Battle Royale

2007-12-02T12:37:00.000-08:00

PART I

I think I’m up to the task of going Freud on Kasey’s “monster of a dream”. To start, I believe the whole setting in the beginning (the “massive yellow water slide stretching comically into a cel-shaded sky”) could be a representation of how he sees this world (the conscious world) as a very comical, almost cartoonish place where the most improbable things seems to happen and this dream world of his might be an over-extension of his views (that could also tie into the drying off immediately after getting out of the water). The instant transformation of scenery from a lake to a dirt road with a group of people could be seen as a manifestation of his life that could keep changing without him even realizing it.

When he and his group encounters the “mirror group” who battle his group and the leader has a red glowing crystal sword while he has only a plastic knife shows that Kasey might feel like he cannot face himself, but somehow manages to anyhow, as he defeats his enemy. When Kasey is in possession of the sword, it turns into a “fierce blue”, which feeds into the inability to face himself as he might be in a state of stability (which is supported by the cheers of his group) when he does not have some sort of internal conflict.

Upon the encounter of this Matt person, it seems to have some effect on him, as someone (or a composition of a group of people) who attempts to affect them negatively, but seems to be simply shrugged off, as shown through how easily he gets rid of that Matt person who can’t control his emotions (this could be a representation of someone or some people in Kasey’s life that can’t seem to get their lives in check and he clearly realizes that as he finally has his own troubles put to rest for the time being).

Overall, this dream could be seen as a view of Kasey’s daily life taken to an imaginative extreme, where things don’t always run so smoothly and people try to get the best of him and, because of their own issues, cannot do so as he is clearly aware of their issues though he might not be aware of his own issues or aware of a potential solution to these issues.

PART II

I will be honest here, this Lacan piece is a difficult one to read through for me, much less difficult to find a passage to pick and translate. However, I found one portion that I feel that I get the general gist of:

"It is this moment that decisively tips the whole of human knowledge into mediatization through the desire of the other, constitutes its objects in an abstract equivalence by the co-operation of others, and turns the I into that apparatus for which every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger, even through it should correspond to a natural maturation- the very normalization of this maturation being henceforth dependent, in man, on a cultural mediation as exemplified, in the case of the sexual object, by the Oedipus complex." -Pg 193

This, in layman's terms, is stating that the way we interact with one another, how we feel about one another has become a normal dependency that comes together as one societal unit. The way we interact with one another and perceive one another (the Oedipal complex, as Lacan states, is exemplary of this) ultimately helps create and mold who we are.

Part 1 May Chuckie burn in hell

2007-12-02T10:07:00.000-08:00

Dream: Anyway as far as dreams go I don't get them much. The dream I can remember however happened way back when I was very little, I would say around the age of five. The dream I had happened the same way every night for about two weeks straight. What would happen is me getting out of my bed in the middle of the night. After I get up and walk out of my room I would make a right and go into my formal dining room. At this point I knew what would happen. As soon as I enterned the dining room I would be blocked by the big table we had. I knew that as soon as I walked into the carpeted pink pathway that Chuckie the little doll would come out and kill me. I'm not making this up and I'm not joking. There was one dream I remember where one of my parents came out and asked me whats the matter. Being right across from my room the entrance to the Chuckie then proceeded to kill the parent and then me. I was horrified I couldn't sleep for those couple of weeks. Then one day the dream went away.

Time to play "What would Freud Say": Joe don't be embarrassed by a Chuckie dream, we all have them, even me mine consisted of Chuckie and the Olsen Twins but lets not into that. Chuckie has nothing to do with the true meaning of the dream, it is the fear of losing a loved one, and yourself. Maybe your sub conscience feels your home may be insecure and a fear of someone breaking in. Maybe you have something that you fear losing whether it's a person or an object, you love this thing and fear it being taken away from you. I only say this because in the Chuckie series he tends to kill people tied to a family or people related to each other in some kind of way. Which is a good thing because you express that you care for these people that are close to you and fear to lose them. Do not be frightened by the imaginary character of Chuckie for he has no part in what your dream is truly trying to tell you. Do not take the following part of my posting seriously (Now to Kid around with this I'm kinda bored) To help yourself not fear this character I would do things to take away the fear, by taking a Chuckie doll stuff it with candy, and like they do at fiestas and turn it into a pinata and watch the joy on kids faces as candy comes from this once feared character and turn it into a lovable candy midget.

I am not Freud

2007-12-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

1) A dream by Mike Nektalov: “I had a dream recently. I looked a little older, maybe 24 or something. I was playing Poker in some place i cant recall, and i was playing with these Rich folks who had a lot of money. I felt
honored at first, but then realized that they couldnt play. They sucked. I remember betting 45,000 $ pre-flop and some famous basketball player called me all in with 2,6, off suit. He took me out of the game in two hands. Then got up and made a scene of it "Yeah, Thats whats up, who's getting out next". At this point i remember saying to myself who calls 45,000 $ on a 2,6, off suit. For christ sake he won with a pair of 2's. Then i couldnt sleep for hours.”

Keep in mind that I am not Freud so my interpretation may completely insane. As for the dream you can see plenty of Condensation and Displacement but not so much of The Transformation into Visual Images. The dream seems to be quite short and he has omitted quite a lot of information that I believe is important. The dream is obviously a fantasy because he is dreaming of a particular point in the future where he is perhaps a pro poker player. He doesn’t say it but I am guessing he is playing Hold’em poker because that is what is the most popular since 2003 when moneymaker won the main event. Mike doesn’t mention if he was playing in a tournament or a ring/cash game but it is most likely a ring game because $45,000 isn’t much money in a tournament. He cannot recall the name of the casino or the famous basketball player’s name. If you were playing with someone famous don’t you think you would be able to remember their name? Some other things that he omits or is unable to produce are the rest of the cards. Mike doesn’t tell us what he has or what the flop, turn, and river are. This is just me but I believe a lot of important information is missing. I don’t know what else to say but he probably couldn’t go back to sleep because of a bad beat. 2,6 off suit is the second worst hand in poker next to the 7,2 off suit.

2) I can't pick any particular passage that is troubling because when Lacan started using all the big words and terms he loses me. But most of it just revolves around the mirror stage. He starts us off slowly talking about chimpanzees and babies and how they recognize themselves in mirrors and then he just keeps going.

Never ask me to psychoanalyze ever again >.<

2007-12-01T00:19:00.000-08:00

1)In her dream, Jennifer mentions how she’s a ghost. “As a ghost I visit all the people who I knew in my life and help them to figure out something or to learn something.” In most media, ghosts are usually spiritual organism, almost undetectable to the naked eye. The image of Jennifer helping others in the guise of an unseen being such as a ghost could be metaphorical to her being a caring individual. She’s willing to come to the aid of others but (being a ghost) does not care if she gets the credit or not. It makes her out to be a benevolent, selfless person, one loyal to those she cares for, like her brother. This could be seen positively or negatively. She reveals, later on, that, sometimes, she also sees herself as a dog. The dog (“man’s best friend”) is also seen a lot as a symbol of loyalty. But it’s more of a domesticated loyalty. Now it sounds more like she feels obliged to help others, like it’s a task she put upon herself because she feels like she deserves it. She tends to the needs of others to please them, not paying attention to her own.

2)”This fragmented body- which term I have also introduced into our system of theoretical references- usually manifests itself in dreams when the movement of the analysis encounters a certain level of aggressive disintegration in the individual. It then appears in the form of disjointed limbs, or of those organs represented in exoscopy, growing wings and taking up arms for intestinal persecutions- the very same that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch has fixed, for all time, in painting, in their ascent from the fifteenth century tot eh imagery zenith of modern man. But this form is even tangibly revealed at the organic level, in the lines of ‘fragilization’ that define the anatomy of phantasy, as exhibited in the schizoid and spasmodic symptoms of hysteria.”

Really having a hard time understanding the passage much less translating it, but here goes nothing. I think here he is trying to establish the relation between our physical selves in the real world, everything that makes us whole in the anatomical sense, with our symbolic form in dreams. He explains how we appear in dreams explains a bit about our mindset.

PATIENT NAME: JESSICA

2007-11-29T16:59:00.001-08:00

PART ONE …

Patient #1 : Jessica –“ I barely remember anything in the morning, so this will be really undescriptive and lack lots of detail.”

The Dream: My boyfriend and I were in his parking garage and I was driving his car, which is brand new and he seems to love more than me. It's a stick shift, so I was practicing how to park it into his spot, #23 to be exact. I remember that he was in the back seat, someone else (no clue who) was in the passenger seat, and we were all listening to music while I ATTEMPTED to park the vehicle. I do remember that it took me a really long time to park it but I finally did it successfully, and surprisingly, no one was impatient and anxious for it to get done, we were all just happy and singing along to the tunes.

The Analysis: Jessica makes it very clear that she barely remembers of any details in her dream. On contrary there is a sufficient amount of evidence to perform a ‘Dream Work’ of Jessica’s dream. The latent content of a dream is the very thoughts that are disguised in the unconscious. The fist stage of ‘Condensation’ she omits certain latent elements. In her case the very unknown third party in the back seat. She then takes this third party in the back seat into her manifest dream, which is the dream remembered or recounted.
The displacement of the dream takes place when she becomes the driver, and attempts to park the car. The manifestation of the psychical accent is shifted from important elements to a non-important, so the dream appears strange. The important element is the third individual in the back-seat, and it is shifted to something non-important because there is another task ‘parking the car’. Another important element is the Boy friend. It is clear that the parking of the vehicle has something to do with Jessica attempting to hold, or maintain control in her relationship. Her success in parking only reveals the thinking which is opposite to the way in which it would revoke distress. In other words, her boyfriend probably gets anxious and impatient when he is with her. The very Charlie Chaplin like ending “all like happy and singing along the tunes”, is another suppression of hidden thought that attribute to the displacement of the dream, a.k.a. reaction formation.

PLEASE DON’T TAKE ANY OF THIS TOO SERIOUS…OR EVEN SERIOUS

PART II

“Indeed, for the IMAGOS—whose veiled faces it is our privilege to see in outline our daily experience and in the penumbra of symbolic efficacity—the mirror-image would seem to be the threshold of the visible world, if we go by the mirror disposition that the IMAGO OF ONES OWN BODY presents in hallucinations or dreams, whether it concerns its individual features, or even its infirmities, or its object-projections; or if we observe the role of the mirror apparatus in the appearance of the double, in which psychical realities, however heterogeneous, are manifested.

: I don’t want this means. But I am guessing that we dream in a mirror like fantasy? Even if one sees one self in a mirror, it’s an illusion that you see yourself, because that is not entirely you. (ex. Your right arm is the mirrors left)

My dreams....

2007-11-28T17:39:00.001-08:00

As long as I can remember, my dreams are more and frantic then calm and satisfying. When I used to work as a corporate trainer for The Cheesecake Factory, I would have nightmares almost every night that I was on the road that I would walk into the restaurant and everything that I had done to make things successful for the opening the day before would somehow be a disaster the next day, and I would have start over from the begining again. I would dream that all my servers would quit the day of the grand opening and I would have to take all the tables by myself and my feet would be stuck to the ground and I wouldn't be able move. It would be as if I was in slow motion, and there would be nothing that I could do to keep it moving.

Now that I am in school, almost every night I have bad dreams that I wake up late and miss tests. I also have dreams of my friends and family saying things to may that make me feel like I am waisting my time, and I should just give up. This couldn't be further from the truth in real life. My family members tell me on a daily basis how proud they are of me and how much they believe in my success as a student and as a person in life in general. I suppose that my dreams are just illustrating my own personal fears, and that I need to keep going and working hard no matter what it takes.

11.28

2007-11-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

For Monday, three tasks:

1) post a 'reading' of one of the dreams posted on Wednesday. I'm specifically interested in the use of Freud's concepts of condensation, displacement, and the transformation of thoughts into visual images. Try to guess at what lurks behind the manifest dream the author wrote about. Please do not respond to any dreams which are already responded to.

2) Type out and post one three or four sentence passage from the Lacan which you found particularly troubling, and then try to paraphrase it in 'ordinary' language. Again, do not use any passage which another classmate has dealt with. Look at the 'a bit about lacan' lecture for a relatively valuable gloss.

3) Read Act I of King Lear. Read more if you have time, because we have to get through the play relatively quickly. I've linked to the Shakespeare on-line text, which will help us standardize the text for the class. Any standard version will do, though I recommend staying away from the varioriums and concordances, which can keep folio versions separated rather than creating a single text (they can be very valuable, because there are problems with all the edited versions, but for our purposes a single text will be best).

Lastly, if you are worried about your final paper, be sure to start early and talk to me often.

My Dream

2007-11-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

In my dreams all I can usually remember is the general things that happen and then a couple of random details. In my most recent dream that I can remember is one in which I am a ghost. As a ghost I visit all the people who I knew in my life and help them to figure out something or to learn something. One thing in paticular I remember is helping my brother get a house. Another weird thing is that I also part of the dream am a dog that is just like a dog all the time and its for my family when we were all younger. Then I sometimes become a ghost again and thats about it.

My Dreams....

2007-11-28T06:08:00.000-08:00

The thing about my dreams is that I don't really remember exactly what happen. There can even be times that I wake up out of nowhere and then I go back to sleep, but have a different dream. I think that a dream its all an illusion that one seeks to come true, or it can also be a desire of the mind deep inside. Eventually, it turns into a wondeful dream sometimes that one wishes not to wake up from it, but just when you least imagine, your up.

A dream I can remember recently is me playing in a concert with alot of people in the audience having a good time. Although, I was playing a new song, new melodies that I havent even heard before, and the words I don't really remember. It was new music for my ears, but eventually as spot lights traveled around the audience I would see them jumping and screaming, it was just weird. Maybe it can all be an illusion on some concerts I have been as part of the audience, or it can also be by an experience I had in the past by been playing in a concert. Unfortunately, as I wrote earlier, I woke up from that dream, but would go back to sleep and have a different dream, it can be related to sports, soccer which I enjoy playing, or even nightmares, by watching too many horror movies. Another dream I would have is by having the illusion of being in my country in the beach, its a feeling of comfort and relaxation, by taking a moment to stop thinking of things that happen in our lives routine, and just enjoy the moment. Although, I don't really remember all the exact details that happen in my dreams, but I wish they are good ones and not nightmares, because in the end good dreams are illusions that one enjoys and do not want to leave, and nightmares well they're not cool.

11.28.07

2007-11-28T04:58:00.000-08:00

The dream I had happened about a week ago and happened back to back nights. I had a dream of being in a deli/candy store and I purchased one of those NY lottery scratch off cards where you have a chance to win a certain amount of money. So I bought what I think was a "Win For Life" card and I won $100 dollars on it. I remember going back to the place cashing it in and getting the money and spending it on something. After spending the money I woke up from my dream I couldn't remember where i bought or who i might have been with all I knew was i had one $100. So on my way to school the next morning I had stopped by a 7-eleven to get a coffee and while I'm paying I see they sell the same card I won the $100 on. So i decided to buy one thinking maybe it was a sign and I'm going to win that amount of money now. That wasn't the case I lost like you normally do. So that was the end of that.
The next night however I had the same dream again this time it had a couple of more details in it. I once again was in another candy store this time it was a certain one that i always go to. They had the "Win for Life" card there again so I bought one and once again its a $100 winner.This time i remember seeing the card, and seeing I had three $100 symbols in three certain spots. That's what you needed to get in order to win. So I woke up from my dream dazed and confused and kind of angry I keep having this reoccurring dream. So once again i go to the Store that I saw in my dream and buy a card to play. This time however I won $10, so I thought to myself its not $100 but at least I won something. Then the weird thing was the $10 numbers were in the same spots I dreamt the $100 numbers were. Could it be I thought in my dream it said $100 but was actually $10? I don't know but after that happened I stopped having that dream!

Not much going on up here

2007-11-28T01:32:00.000-08:00

My dream last night was a bit weird, it was basically a day at QC. I can't remember it all but I basically remember being in a class I registered for next semester and just really hating the concept of the class. And what was even more weird was the professor was a this guy from my math class. After we left the class I remember them asking us to come into this seminar like thing and this lady started speaking. Unfortunately that was when my 4 a.m. wake up call came and ended all dreams.

But from what I can piece togther there were also a couple more dreams before that, which I can only remember vaguely.
Sorry !

sweet dreams are made of these

2007-11-27T22:23:00.000-08:00

Showgirls. Best. Movie. Ever.

2007-11-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

Sorry I just had to quote that. Anyway as far as dreams go I don't get them much. The dream I can remember however happened way back when I was very little, I would say around the age of five. The dream I had happened the same way every night for about two weeks straight. What would happen is me getting out of my bed in the middle of the night. After I get up and walk out of my room I would make a right and go into my formal dining room. At this point I knew what would happen. As soon as I enterned the dining room I would be blocked by the big table we had. I knew that as soon as I walked into the carpeted pink pathway that Chuckie the little doll would come out and kill me. I'm not making this up and I'm not joking. There was one dream I remember where one of my parents came out and asked me whats the matter. Being right across from my room the entrance to the Chuckie then proceeded to kill the parent and then me. I was horrified I couldn't sleep for those couple of weeks. Then one day the dream went away.

Hail Mary

2007-11-27T22:02:00.000-08:00

It may sound semi crazy, but the dream I’m going to discuss turned out to be a premonition. I usually don’t talk about this dream because usually when I tell people about it they look at me like I’m crazy, but any way’s here goes! (Keep in mind I had this dream 2 weeks before the person died) I was at this 2PAC concert, everything was normal people are everywhere. Before he performs he signs autographs. So I ask him for an autograph and end up having to stand on a milk carton because I’m short. (I was older, but still short) So I get the autograph everything seems to be going fine. He’s in the middle of one of his songs and people are singing along. All of a sudden as hes on stage the grim reaper swoops in and pulls his spirit out his body just leaving the body there, the concert is still going on, he’s still rapping and people are acting like nothing is wrong. I’m the only person who has noticed that he’s dead at this point so I stand there screaming and there’s no sound coming out of my mouth. Two weeks later 2PAC dies. Was it a coincidence? I don’t know. I have had dreams like this one before, but they involved family members. I had a similar dream before my Uncle died in 2003. My entire family was at an open casket funeral and everyone was crying. When I got to the casket I could see that it was a man in a suit but the face was blacked out. A couple months later my uncle had a brain aneurism. I’m usually able to remember my dreams pretty clearly, about 80 percent of the time they’re like this and tell me about something that has happened or will happen.

Never ending Meadow

2007-11-27T21:45:00.000-08:00

It was quite hard to recall a past dream. I do not dream that often and when I do, they tend to be very short. They occasionally tend to associate with events that occurred during that day or week. They usually lack meaning until I tell them to my mom. She then tries to interpret them, since she is a big believer of dreams and what they might represent.

My most recent dream consisted of a meadow. I remember a bright, green, fresh, and vibrant looking meadow. The sun was beaming brightly. I was wearing a light blue dress. I was not wearing shoes and could actually feel the grass. I kept walking and walking and hoping that the meadow would end at some point and that I would eventually reach civilization. I eventually came across an old man and asked him for directions. He remained quite and ignored my presence. I decided to walk some more and hoping that I would reach the end of the meadow. However, this never occurred and as far as I can remember the meadow never ended. I felt lost and hopeless.

A recurring motif in my dreams

2007-11-27T20:59:00.001-08:00

Within my dreams, there have been several various settings; a classroom, out with my friends, in my own home with my family and the list goes on. But in each of these dreams, I am the center of attention. Everyone seems to be trying to speak to me, and only me, regardless of who is there. It could be my best friend, a professor, or even an attractive girl asking me question after question. But, in each dream, I cannot come to a response. I can't even process what these people are saying to me. I'm just sitting there, doing nothing, not able to move or even breathe. I can't walk or talk or feel anything emotional or physical. Just a bag of meat with eyes.
However, I do have a form of conscious within these dreams of mine, as I can seemingly understand (within the dream) the concept that someone is trying to communicate with me. But I am still completely non-responsive. I cannot do anything at all. It's almost as if I am comatose or at least heavily opiated. I don't really understand the cause of this, as these dreams aren't usually vivid enough to remember in detail (perhaps that plays into the dream in and of itself), but I can only see what happens in the dream. It's as if you're watching your own surgery while it happens, but you don't even know it, if that is pertinent analogy.

Wierd, but understandable

2007-11-27T20:30:00.000-08:00

I remember two dreams I've had this and last week. In onc of them, I was playing soccer with a very close friend of mine, whom I haven't seen for years ever since I came to States. In another, I was kissing this fat chick, thankfully not a french. The good thing is that I haven't had a nightmare in more than 10 years, if I remember it correctly.
According to Freud readings I've done, these manifest dreams just represent my desire to meet my old friend (playing soccer may not have any meaning at all) and another desire to, well, have a romantic relationship with someone which I think is in the unconscious level (because I won't admit it).

A Recurring Dream..

2007-11-27T20:24:00.000-08:00

I actually have been dreaming alot lately but I either don't remember it when I wake up or I only remember a certain part. Often, someone will say something to me throughout the day and bits and pieces of my dream will pop up and I will remember some more. This morning I had one of those deep sleep, long dreams and unfortunately can't remember a single thing. Sooo, I figured I would pick this dream that I have had two times which I thought was a little weird. I'm not sure of every detail but here it goes. I am in my town which is in this house on the beach (I live by the beach) and I know exactly what block it is. I am in this dark brown, possibly black house which is black and red on the inside. It seems very gloomy and almost "vampirish" if that makes any sense. I am trapped inside and can't get out although I am free to roam around. There is an eagle in it that I think comes after me or something. It's just a very scary place and although I am in the house I can see that the town is isolated and no one is to be found. This is really all I can remember but I had this dream twice and it was almost the same both times. When I wake up I am petrified and can't go back to sleep, so good thing I don't have it often.

Weird party

2007-11-27T18:35:00.000-08:00

I don't know about other people but I don't have dreams that often and if I do have them it is difficult to recall every single detail. I forgot where I heard or read it from but I remember someone saying that after someone wakes up from a dream they tend to forget it. I forgot the reason for it but it probably has something to do with the the unconscious part of our brain since our dreams come from there.

As for my dream the most recent dream that I can think of is one that I had maybe two days ago. I was at a some sort of party somewhere with my friends. There were a lot of people I didn't know but they were good looking girls so I didn't mind. I might have been at a club or something because the music was blaring and many people were dancing. The people were drinking and just having fun. I was dancing with these two girls that were cute but I don't know their names. I think I bought them some drinks and I drank with them until we got tipsy. After that I think I was making out with the skinnier one who I thought was hotter then the other one. The other girl disappeared into thin air somehow. When I started kissing one girl I lost sight of the other one. This was a weird dream because I was watching myself. I didn't imagine myself being there. I was like a ghost or something. It was like one of those cliche out of the body experiences that people have to look at the past or future to change them. I have no idea what to make of this dream because I woke up while I was kissing her. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't woken up. That's one of the funny things about dreams you can't continue them. I guess that is a good thing if you were having a nightmare.

Sorry, no zombies

2007-11-27T17:29:00.000-08:00

I’m in my grandparent’s house. They live on a farm in upstate New York. It’s very green acres. It is the middle of the night and I’m standing in the kitchen and hear the door to the outside open behind me. I turn around and my friend Tommy (whom I haven’t seen for years) comes bounding in with a whole group of friends I no longer keep in touch with. Tommy let’s me know that they all followed me as I drove up, as per the plan, we are to have a party. In the dream I remember specifically reflecting on and recalling making no such plans to party at my grandparents home of all places. This also strikes me as odd (whilst still in the dream) because Tommy is exuberant and energetic. He never behaves this way, he smoked his brain to a semi-catatonic mush several years ago. At this moment from the back of the house there erupts the tremendous thunder of engine noise, like a muscle car show. I race through the house to the field in back. Along the way my grandmother tells be she’s going to bed and she’ll see me in the morning. When I reach the sun porch with its floor to ceiling windows and gaze through them I see a trail of cars, not a part of the party of friends these people driving are strangers, dragging miscellaneous chunks of cars behind them. The car parts are weathered and rusted as if they were towed from a junkyard.

I return through the house toward the kitchen but make it half way before Tommy stops me and assures me he can get rid of these people. He disappears from sight, at the same time there is a huge boom from the field and this next part is difficult to describe so hang in there, I’ll do my best.

A dream certainty comes to me. I become aware that my father is dead, he has gone out to the back, I’m not sure what for or how but at this point in the dream I am sure he is dead. He had not appeared in this dream yet at all but just the same I become secure in the knowledge in the way only dreams can assert things for you. It’s not a fear I experience in the dream but a certainty of knowledge.

I race through the house once more, running back toward the sun porch. This time when I look through the windows I see a line of cars. It’s still the middle of the night so I don’t see them so much as a nearly endless trail of headlights. Not unlike the end of the movie field of dreams, a tremendous line of headlights zig-zaging it’s way across the countryside into infinity. Then I wake up.

Just for context: This dream occurred on the night before the one-year anniversary of my grandfather’s death, October 24th. I haven’t been to that house since a year ago when I buried him. He never had a muscle car and my father is alive and well.

Short Boring Pointless Dreams

2007-11-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

My latest dream...

2007-11-27T16:15:00.000-08:00

I wasn't in class on Monday, so I don't really know what's going on, but as far as the instructions go, all I have to do is write about a dream I've had. Unlike Kasey, my dreams are super short and I barely remember anything in the morning, so this will be really undescriptive and lack lots of detail. Here goes.

I actually dreamt this last night (or this morning rather) and this is what happened: My boyfriend and I were in his parking garage and I was driving his car, which is brand new and he seems to love more than me. It's a stick shift, so I was practicing how to park it into his spot, #23 to be exact. I remember that he was in the back seat, someone else (no clue who) was in the passenger seat, and we were all listening to music while I ATTEMPTED to park the vehicle. I do remember that it took me a really long time to park it but I finally did it successfully, and surprisingly, no one was impatient and anxious for it to get done, we were all just happy and singing along to the tunes.

That's really it...hope you enjoy.

2007-11-27T16:09:00.000-08:00

I dont really have long dreams. My dreams are very short. Even my nightmares, i only wake up if i get stabbed or something. Then i eventually force my self to sleep, and i am aware that my mind has created this nightmare, and i resolve the problem by going to sleep by pretending to dream in a non-REM sleep environment. But this time i have weapons of mass destruction, or become NEO from Matrix and kill all the bad guys while some hot chick is watching. I the end she end up sleeping with me....

I had a dream recently. I looked a little older, maybe 24 or something. I was playing Poker in some place i cant recall, and i was playing with these Rich folks who had a lot of money. I felt
honored at first, but then realized that they couldnt play. They sucked. I remember betting 45,000 $ pre-flop and some famous basketball player called me all in with 2,6, off suit. He took me out of the game in two hands. Then got up and made a scene of it "Yeah, Thats whats up, who's getting out next". At this point i remember saying to myself who calls 45,000 $ on a 2,6, off suit. For christ sake he won with a pair of 2's. Then i couldnt sleep for hours.

-
This was the shortest dream ever.

To sleep, perchance to dream

2007-11-27T14:05:00.000-08:00

Since you've all already heard about my morning "false starts", so to speak, I'm going just a bit further back in my search more the most bizarre dream I have in recent memory, and here it is. Good luck going Freud on this monster.

There is a massive yellow water slide stretching comically into a cel-shaded sky (like from The Legend of Zelda : Windwaker). I'm sliding down this massive water slide at a breakneck pace. I know this because the pattern on the slide is going by very quickly. I hear somebody say something behind me and I turn around to look. Perryn (a friend of mine) is sliding down right behind me. She keeps on asking me questions but I cannot hear her so I keep screaming "WHAT?". We get to the bottom of the slide and land with an epic splash in the middle of a very large lake. I lose track of her during the splash. I start swimming towards the end of the lake opposite the water slide, which fades from view (I glance over my shoulder) as I swim. I eventually reach the wooded shoreline and climb out of the water. I am dry instantly. Also, I'm on a dirt road in the middle of the woods, without having taken a step. I am accompanied by several people, of whom I am the leader. We reach an old style roofed, wooden bridge and pause. There is another group of people, in an almost mirror-image arrangement from my own group. They are led by a man in black armour wielding a glowing translucent red sword. My group and his group start to fight using medieval style weapons. He and I walk towards each other in the middle of the fray. I am armed with naught but a plastic knife, like from the Student Union Cafe. I duck under the first swing of his sword and plunge the knife deep into his face. While he reels back I pick up a rock off the ground and smash it full force into the side of his head. It squishes like an over-ripe tomato. My group seems the have either finished off or chased away his, as they aren't fighting anymore. I pick up his sword and it glows a fierce blue as soon as my fingers touch the hilt. My group cheers. They break into groups and start talking with one another. I walk amongst the groups, speaking to each one in turn. I look up the path and Matt (another... I don't want to say friend, but somebody I know) is walking towards me. He is dressed in black goth pants and a fishnet shirt (which he actually owns so that's not my idea) and has a pair of nun-chucks hanging off either hip. He talks to me about how he has spend the last 16 years in training to be worthy of wielding the crystal-sword that I got from the bad guy. I ask him if he's ready. He says yes. I hand him the sword and it's colour changes. It is now a pale blue with a some red at the bottom. I tell him that he was not mastered his emotions yet, which is indicated by the red on the blade. It glows fiercer as I tell him this, as if proving my point. He says, in a very low voice, that the Crystal-sword WILL be his and that he will not rest until he possesses it. I tell him, in a light joking voice, "better luck next time, kid." He stalks off down the path from whence he came. The dream ends.

*let it be noted that my perceptions during this dream change from first person to third person from scene to scene, I would indicate the changes here if I remembered them*
*please also note that this dream was had on a saturday night after much activity, so to speak, so that may account for some of it's... interesting themes*

Freud in dreams and literature (better late than ever)

2007-11-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

I've been having connection issues back home which is why I'm posting monday's post today.

When it compared to literature, Sigmund Freud's analysis on dreams, specifically his theories on "transforming thoughts into visual images", is very much appropriately relevant. When writing a story, we usually tend to picture it in our heads as it unfolds. We then process these mental images into writing in order to transmit the thoughts to others. Dreams are technically subconscious thoughts, those driven by suppressed desires, as Freud would probably put it. So, of course, the story that they unfold to us is displayed with vivid images.

"But your difficulties will begin when you come to the representation of abstract words and all those parts of speech which indicate relations between words- such as particles, conjunctions and so on." This means that one will not be able to translate the least tangible objects into visual imagery without having to put up with some struggling. And even with there stands certain impossibility. Writers face the reverse to this problem. They often find it a challenge to have their thoughts understood while trying to come up with the words that might best do the job. It's all about details really. The deeper dreams get, the more detailed they become. In the same way, the further we get to writing a tale, the more we feel we need to enhance it with vivid descriptions which, more often then not, forces us to face a sort of obstacle trying to determine how to achieve this.

11/26

2007-11-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

For Wednesday, read the Jacques Lacan excerpt 'The Mirror Stage...' an unbelievably influential concept and text in critical theory. Think, as with the Freud (with whom we aren't finished, as you probably can guess), how it might fit into the study of literature.

But for Wednesday, let's try something else for a response--simply transcribe a dream that you've had. We'll let someone else play Freud for you over the weekend.

Freud and literature

2007-11-26T07:12:00.000-08:00

When trying to figure out the revelance to Freud and Literature, I first thought about his whole theory about dreams and the idea of dream-works, and interpretating what is not relality and wanting it to be real. Now when trying to relate this idea to Literature I looked at how fiction can be seen as somewhat as a dream, in that it is a made up idea or story from many ideas. We know fictions is not true an not reality, same thing dreams. But when putting the two together they both send messages about ourselves personally. When an author writes fictionI believe in his mind he is writing about a dream or fantasy he might have, or a nightmare. Now relating this to Shakespere, he has written many fiction plays containing nightmares, and personal fantasy's becoming true, individuals doing anything by all means to fulfull their enjoyment which happens in dreams. Using literature he turns his plays into amazing stories containing dream like attributes that we can all relate too. When taking a look at the story of Oedipus you recongnize right away that this was a fantasy gone wrong, and this literature can be seen as a dream that one may have if one son feels for his mother the way he did. And using literature the dream is expressed. Literature allows you to play with words however you would like, and create anything thing out of it, and an author can use it to express a dream or fantasy he might have using fiction and a character that might not be him but have characteristics of the author. An author is able to live it without really living it, like a dream.

Freud and Literature

2007-11-26T06:30:00.000-08:00

Freud's theories on dreams and their meanings definitely correlate to our study of literature.
"We laid down four main relations of the kind: the relation of a part to the whole, approximation
or allusion, the symbolic relation and the plastic representation of words." When I read this quote of Freud's, it is very clear to me that this can not only deal with the interpretation of dreams, but also literature, and how we write it, read it and understand it as well. A writer, uses words to symbolize things and meanings, and writer's also try to create allusions in their story.
This idea is especially true when reading Shakespeare because most all of his plays, are filled with allusions and dreams themselves, where the character's spend most of their tormented time trying to figure out exaclty what they mean. Shakespeare is also a genius when it comes to "play" on words and their symbolic meanings. One can clearly see the correlation here between Freud and literature because of this example.

Imitation

2007-11-26T05:35:00.001-08:00

There are many ideas that can be derive to what a dream is, but the result is that the dream is a mental picture waiting to be turned real. Although, many times is made into a fictional memory, where the mind plays a kind of 'invention' to what a dream is seen, and what will really happen. All will be left with is a illusion to what a dream is in real life. In the end, a dream is like a scene in a fiction movie hoped to be turned into a scene in ones life.

I think the quote that best represents the whole theme of this reading is,"The 'creative' imamgination, indeed, is quite incapable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another." Therefore, this means that the sense of creativity plays a major role in what to see in a work of literature, or in a dream. In a work of literature the best example can be fiction stories, that are based on made believed stories of mythological creatures, or worlds. In the other hand there are dreams that can be seen as moments in life that are made up to what one wishes or really wants to what can really happen and is going on. In this writing 'The Dream Work' by Sigmund Freud, talk about all the different ways a dream can be interpreted from the illusions to what really happens. Although, the main problem is 'Imitation', which plays and will continue to be a problem in trying to develope new ideas. The problem is that stories that where popular in the past, written by great minds, start to be developed into new versions of the same or simular story but with different time settings. As a result, history is repeating itself by learning things that where already taught in the past, and will not give way to new ideas and new minds to write new stories. If by any means new stories come to be seen, they must be interpreted wth a great amout of intelligence, that in a way attracts people's interests. In the end, in order to for each dream to be turned from the creative-illusion, to the real life, the mind needs to focuse on real memories that are alive in present times, in order to have a dream be a memory of what might happen or what did happen in real life. The dream should be like an experience that has happen recently or will happen, to the extent that one is aware of what is true in real life and what is just an illusion.

Freud

2007-11-25T21:17:00.001-08:00

I think the parallel that is trying to be drawn here is that literature and dream-work as Freud puts it are two things that are a lot alike. He writes “It is possible, naturally, to make a composite structure out of things and places in the same way as out of people, provided that the various things or places have in common something which is emphasized by the latent dream.” Here I think it refers to what writers use as symbols. Freud here basically tells you how to make a character in a story. You take a bunch of things you want the character to be and put them together. This character then takes on those qualities. Then you get to the next level where the character is then equal to those attributes. For instance you could say Superman stands for justice, courage, and strength which he then becomes. He also writes that “You will only be able to form an idea of the further significance of these discoveries when you learn that the mechanisms of dream construction are the model of the manner in which neurotic symptoms arise.” I think that if you parallel dream sequencing with literature you get insight into what makes people tick. Now being that stories were around way before psychoanalysis this is saying that stories give insight into the human condition (which Freud goes into trying to explain it with the unconsciousness) and tell us about how people as a collective function (for lack of a better word).

2007-11-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

Freud argues that the foundation of all dream content is the fullfillment of wishes, whether one is conscious or not. The unsconscious wants to show the wish fulfilled but the preconscious won't allow it which then only an understanding of the dream-work can explpain the dream.

The first few lines caught my attention after reading them a few times. "When you have thoroughly grasped the dreamcensorship and representation by symbols, you will not yet, it is true, have completely mastered the distortion in dreams, but you will nevertheless be in a position to understand most dreams". When one is reading literature, they may interpret it according to what they know. The "symbols" in the story may make sense and provide a storyline but the reader may not have grasped the entire concept of the story that the author was trying to make. In other words, the reader will interpret what they are reading according to what they know and believe and the author could be aiming for a totally different concept.

Some thoughts

2007-11-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

The first paragraph of the passage made me think a lot especially the line that goes “In doing so you will make use of both of the two complementary techniques: calling up ideas that occur to the dreamer till you have penetrated from the substitute to the genuine thing and on the ground of your own knowledge, replacing the symbols by what they mean.” For some reason I thought about dreams being fiction writing and non fiction writing to being awake or whatever because of “dream-distortion.” Freud basically says that we have to decipher and understand our dreams. That is a lot like fiction because in fiction there is a lot of things that we have to interpret and figure out what something means. There is also the part where he says that dreams are fulfillments of wishes that haven’t been experienced. It made me think that maybe the only way that people can tell other people things is through fiction because it has to be interpreted and understood. You can’t just tell people facts like in a nonfiction book because they wouldn’t really connect with it because it is just raw information that is thrown at them. You need to get through to them by writing fiction so that readers can see things for themselves. Freud then goes and breaks down the whole idea of dreams. But that is just the gist of things on how I thought it related to literature. Most of what Freud was saying is just things related to our dreams and how they are constructed.

Freud..

2007-11-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

After reading excerpts from Freud’s ‘The Dream Work’ of 1916, I couldn’t help to think about the relationship between the writer and its reader. The writer/artist produces a work, and the readers/audience makes sense of it. The question is: where do we fit in Freud? Does Freud allow or help us (the audience) make sense of the message put forward by the author/artist? Through interpretation, can we truly seek to translate the symbols put forward in front of out eyes, where in the end all we see is the truth about the author/artist?

In any case Freud has a lot to do with literature and literary theory. For the most part, whenever anyone thinks of the word psychology, they begin to ponder about Freud. A great example that demonstrates the significance of Freud (psychology) in literary theory is our own very class and assignments. The professor asks us to do a Marxist reading of a short story, or a novel. ‘Read A, and B like a Feminist would’. It is a great task, and it encourages an individual to really get into the psyche of that person. How are we supposed to do that? What is really left of that person(s) (Marx, Cixous…)? Oh yeah, it makes great sense now. We should study the work they left behind. The solution to the assignment would entail a heavy reading of all the works produced by some famous author/artist, and only then can we truly read another work from a different perspective. – (one can write a dissertation about this…).

Freud and literature

2007-11-25T19:44:00.000-08:00

From the reading, I've learned that the latent dream reflects our wish and desire, and they're projected onto manifest dream. Therefore, trying to make a connect manifest dream to latent dream would be interpreting the dream. Freud notes that most of the time, what's manifested in dreams may not seem related to the latent dream thoughts at all:
"just so does the dream-work succeed in expressing some of the contect of the latent dream-thoughts by peculiarities in the form of the manifest dream - by its clarity or obscurity, by its division into several pieces, and so on" (I think he calls this "dream distortion")
Also, Freud defines the work of interpretation as follows:
"The work which proceeds in the contrary direction, which endeavours to arrive at the latent dream from the manifest one"
To me, this really sounds like what we did in class when we were reading Waiting, (or when we read novels in general) like why did magistrate do this and do that? Trying to find out the motive of a character's actions, I find it very similar to dream interpretation. It is so in the sense that sometimes the motive is very clear, and sometimes it's not, so we need to investigate.

Freudian Concepts? In My Literature?

2007-11-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

There is one excerpt from the Sigmund Freud reading that provided some food for thought: "The achievements of condensation can be quite extraordinary. It is sometimes possible by its help to combine two different latent trains of thought into one manifest dream, so that one can arrive at what appears to be a sufficient interpretation of a dream and yet doing so can fail to notice a possible 'over-interpretation'." With this in mind, I think of several works of literature that fall in perfectly with this notion that Freud presents in this passage; the notion that literary characters can create two different images of themselves and portray them accordingly throughout the story, creating the ultimate reality of that one character within the story.
I feel that this idea of "two trains of thought arriving at one manifest dream" is prevalent not only to the relationship between fictional characters within a story, but to the relationship between the reader and the writer that is developed through the power of imagery. The writer develops an image of their very own, based upon their own reality even if that particular story to be is a complete fantasy piece. The writer then takes these images and transcribes them to the written word, which is then read by another party and said party develops their own image of the vision that the writer initially had. This image could be completely different amongst the writer and the reader.
This seems like the idea that Freud tried to express in his work. Two ideas, no matter how similar or different they could be, could combine to create a reality.

Freud

2007-11-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

“The material offered to the dream-work consists of thoughts- a few of which may be objectionable and unacceptable, but which are correctly constructed and expressed. The dream-work puts these thoughts into another form, and it is a strange and incomprehensible fact that in making this translation (this rendering, as it were, into another script or language) these methods of merging or combining are brought into use. After all, a translation normally endeavors to preserve the distinctions made in the text and particularly to keep things that are similar separate. The dream-work, quite the contrary, tries to condense two different thoughts by seeking out (like a joke) an ambiguous word in which the two thoughts may come together” (pg 26).

Freud, in general, was more interested in the sub-conscious and unconscious state of mind. He attempted to search for the true meaning that lies behind an individual’s deepest thoughts and beliefs. Dreams occur in our unconscious state of mind, hence there must be a deeper interpretation to them. An individual can interpret a dream in numerous ways and yet all of them can be “correctly constructed and expressed”. An individual is granted the right to interpret a dream according to their wishes and beliefs. They can also relate their dreams to other unrelated aspects.

In reading literature, although in a conscious state of mind, we are granted the same rights. We, as readers, can interpret most literary works according to our beliefs and ideologies. We are also granted the privilege to combine and condense “two different thoughts”. This task has been accomplished through out the course of our class. For example, we have related Marx’s readings and “Sara Cole” to feminist writers. At first glance, these literary works did not illustrate similarity but once dwelled into they demonstrated common thoughts and ideas. Additionally, we used ambiguous terms, such as feminism and Marxism, to draw correlations between them.

Watch your language

2007-11-25T17:55:00.000-08:00

I too, found Freud's statement about the mind being unable to create anything on its own very compelling. He states "The 'creative' imagination, indeed, is quite incapable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another. But the remarkable thing about the procedure of the dream-work lies in what follows. The material offered to the dream-work consists of thoughts-a few of which may be objectionable and unacceptable, but which are correctly constructed and expressed. The dream-work puts these thoughts into another form, and it is a strange and incomprehensible fact that in making this translation (this rendering, as it were, into another script or language) these methods of merging or combining are brought into use." Freud believes that the use of language, the choice of words used is a reflection of the writer in that it is also an "account of representation", and about what isn't written down, but is being read. I think the saying is "reading between the lines". Theorist Edward Said had also discussed language and its effectual use. He points out the inability of language to accurately represent reality. “In any instance of at least written language, there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a represence, or a representation.” (Orientalism 21), (http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/ba990922.htm Freud also believed that the development of language played an important role in the inference, "intonation", physicality of the spoken word, and with writing, an accompaniment such as a picture to get the story across to someone.

On Freud

2007-11-25T15:53:00.000-08:00

In our class discussions we spoke often about contributing to genres. One part of the Freud reading struck me as particularly useful when considering genre theory. Freud writes: “The ‘creative’ imagination, indeed, is quite incapable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another.”

It is useful to consider this phrase in terms of the creation, or as Freud would claim “combination”, of fiction. It seems to me that in terms of fiction Freud might contend that the entirety of fiction has already been written and it is the practice of “new” writers to do nothing more than combine or manipulate elements of past works and massage them into a contemporary format, thus creating a “new” but entirely un-original prose.

The question that this leads me to is the same paradox, the same which came first; the chicken or the egg, question that we’ve followed since the beginning discussions on genre theory. If one was to claim that every new thing is just a sum of previous parts, a conglomerate of some ancient original then, by design, they are admitting to the establishment of some “original” thing at some point. Before we can contribute to the genre it must be established and defined. In order for an original to be imitated it must first be created or introduced. If Freud is accurate in his claim that imagination cannot invent anything then how was the “original” form conceived of in the first place? Then my curiosity forces me to wonder if we understand the original creative process is it possible to ever get back there and create something truly new. Or by investigating the original and attempting to redo it, are we merely falling prey to imitation once again?

-Okay, I’ve given myself a headache, I’ll see you in class.

11.26

2007-11-25T15:31:00.000-08:00

Freud's all about reading into the meaning behind dreams and stuff like that (or at least that's what I've gleaned from the reading, I know close to nothing about Freud otherwise), so would learning his techniques not be useful in picking out the hidden meanings and subtle nuances within the very works we've already read? Be showing us what to look for and what those things mean, Freudian (<-is that a word? yeah, right?) techniques would be extremely useful in the study of not just literature, but literary theory. Now that we've learned WHAT these theorists are looking for, Freud can help us figure out WHY that is, and WHAT it means. Or, at least, that's the theory.

Besides, even if we were to completely ignore the work we've done so far (unlikely), Freud would be very useful in analyzing the authors of the next few pieces we work on. It is because fiction is so like a dream, both within our control and just barely beyond it. What somebody writes (as opposed to what may have been said in previous classes) DOES have some basis in how they think, or what they believe, or what they've been through. Cut back to the beginning of the term, with the car chases. If we read a story with a very realistic and believable car chase Freud, or rather, somebody with Freudian ideas, would conclude that the author has had some experience with car chases. I know that this methodology is flawed, at best. Just look at A Million Little Pieces, the author didn't go through that, but god damn it if it's not believable.

I thought this passage, about the difference between latent and manifest dreams, was relevant to my interests:

"Among the most surprising findings is the way in which the dream-work treats contraries that occur in the latent dream. We know already [...] that conformities in the latent material are replaced by condensations in the manifest dream. Well, contraries are treated in the same way as conformities, and there is a special preference for expressing them by the same manifest element. Thus an element in the manifest dream which is capable of having a contrary may equally well be expressing either itself or its contrary or both together: only the sense can decide which translation is to be chosen."

Feminism, Colonialism, now this? Oh My!

2007-11-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

After everything we have learned up to this point I am left to wonder why were were given this specific reading. However after what we did this past Tuesday with the Shakesphere the reading makes some sense. Sigmund Freud's "Dream Work" exerpt was difficult to pick though but after looking it over over the break I decided to do the following paragraph:

The first achivement of the dream-work is condensation By that way we understand the fact that the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent one, and is thus an abbreviated translation of it. Condensation can be on occasion be absent; as a rule it is present, and very often is enormous. It is never changed into the reverse; that is to say, we never find that the manifest dream is greater in extent or content than the latent one. Condensation is brought about (1) by the total omission of certain latent elements (2)by only a fragment of some complexes in the latent dream passing over into the manifest one and(3) By latent elements which have something in common being combined and fused into a single unity in the manifest dream

When asked what this specific paragraph may have to do with the idea of literature and Freud I had to really sit down with this. First I decided to examine the word condensation. Condensation is defined as, when something ie: a thought or something physical is made smaller or summed up. The other definition of condensation I recall based on my on my outside knowledge is what occur es when a room is too hot and the inside walls sweat. However keeping in mind the idea of condensation according to Freud he defines this as "a manifest dream that has smaller content than the latent one" Latent dreams already exist but have not yet been realized.Tying Frueds thinking in with what we did on Tuesday, could this be saying that the fathers visit to Hamlet or Hamlet's mother committing suicide was forshadowed, based on what we learned so far? I think Freud's Ideas concerning literature and the general idea of Dream-works is correct to some extent but not completely. I usually wouldn't agree with his thories but this one actually holds up in the discussion. He also mentions that condensed dreams cannot be changed into the reverse I disagree with this. Not to be entirely off topic here, but generally speaking about dreams, what's to say that just because you have a small idea or dream it cant become something bigger. Yes it is true that bigger dremas can become small over time because of distraction or loss of interest but this doesnt make them any less important. Going back to the idea of condensation, in terms of literature this idea can be compared to the novel and the short story. One is obviously longer than the other so you are going to have more time to say more and develoup more, whereas short stories force you to flush out your ideas and characters early. Freud's Idea of dream-work leads back to this. Condensation and expanding of dreams even if it is done on purpose or unconsciously still means that the person involved has to on some level acknolege what they want or desire eventually.

11/21

2007-11-21T09:05:00.000-08:00

For Monday, read the excerpt from Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis in Modern Literary Theory, and the relevant pages in the introduction to that section, if you haven't done so already.

For the response, please try to use the text (quote it) to try to take a stab at what relevance this (or Freud generally, if you know anything about him) might have to the reading of literature.

Have a fine Thanksgiving.

11/14

2007-11-14T12:11:00.000-08:00

As I was leaving class, Adam said I had him a little worried, suggesting that a fiction writer should be responsible for what she or he writes, the positions that she or he inhabits. Let me be clear: I don't think she or he should be, not even a little. At the same time, I worry that an author who doesn't treat their work as a matter of consequence (even to the extent of worrying about real world consequences of their work: intifada, exile) is an author who hasn't fully engaged with the problem of writing, in this case defined as the problem of trying to understand others.

And as a final note on the writing/reading question, there is ample evidence throughout this book and Coetzee's work generally that the critical movement outside of the self doesn't happen through reading, but writing. And not just writing anything, but writing fiction in particular. This is a position with which, I hope is clear, I fully concur.

For Monday: No reading, no blog. Just an exemplary paper (for those of you who missed class, I've extended the deadline for the paper to class on Monday, November 19th). We're running out of time for revision this term, so let's attempt perfection.

Self centered magistrate

2007-11-14T07:13:00.000-08:00

"And to restore some of the goodwill that previously existed, I am undertaking a brief visit to the Barbarians"(pg.57) I think that this helps exclaim why the magistrate helped the barbarian girl back to the mountains. I do not think that he wanted to be a part of the Third Bureau and he did not want to be anything like Colonel Joll. I think he also may have slightly regretted what he did to the barbarian girl because he was totally taking advantage of her by washing her and using her body to satisfy his whims.

I also think that he did not accomplish anything at all throughout the whole book. All he kept saying is hoe he wanted to die alone and happy in his own bed, so then why did he concern himself with things that were beyond his control. He was kidding himself the entire time. He was not able to restore anything to the barbarians and ended up hurting himself in the end! I think he is a selfish and self centered person!

Selfish actions, Selfish man but so far a good read

2007-11-14T05:57:00.000-08:00

When we had started working on this book, you mentioned that regardless of anything we may get out of it the book is centered around a man and his penis of sexual needs/wants. At first I didn't think that would be completely true, but even with other things going on as I read everything goes back to that, It may not be done by the character himself but there are alot of undertones and instances in the novel that can be considered sexual I understand that we were told to focus on one particular passage in order to prove our answer but I think that my answer goes beyond a passage. Also I feel like the barbarian girl symbolizes perhaps more civilized people coming to some how modernize supposed savages. Though I agree the magistrate did what he did for love, what kind of love is that? Even though he does come to care about her as the book progresses from what I understand, he still seems distant and withdrawn from his actions. This can be seen in "Dreamless spells are like death to me, or enchantment blank and outside time" This first starts on (pg 28) when he washes her feet. He's obviously in some way turned on my this and as she later "yields to everything" he does to her cited (pg 30) He also notes that he himself found on (p 33)

From the beginning my desire has not been to enter her, my desire has not taken on that direction, that directness lodging my dry old mans member in that hot-blooded-sheath makes me think of acid in milk ashes in honey, chalk in bread. When I look at her body I find it hard to believe that once upon a time I imagined the human for as a flower radiating out from a kernel in the loins.

(pg 33) Hr objectifies her here but at the same time he tries to remember another time when he knew her as less civilized. He tries to make it seem like she has been made into a better person because she is staying with him but he has tainted her in the process. To say that the magistrate's actions were out of love would mean that they weren't for the sake of the barbarian woman but himself, even if he does seem like he is doing things to help her out as I said earlier it all reverts back to him, as a negative when he dies I felt like his actions have come to fruition. He may see the error of his ways too late but this does not stop the inevitable. The reason I said that the barbarian girl represented savages being modernized is because as a country according to history American's have always tried to force other places or people in the world to emulate them. Even if this does ruin the overall culture as a whole or the people themselves, it all doesn't seem to matter as long as who they are attempting to fix/colonize resemble them in the end in some form of fashion

Magistrates true intentions....

2007-11-14T05:51:00.000-08:00

There are many things the Magistrate did that can be confusing in coming up with a central idea, although he got to live moments of torture, pain, agony, discrimination, all the events that occured before his eyes when he was at power and didn't do much to help. I think that one of the main reasons the magistrate do what he did is as an act of abuse in his power. First of all what he did was be part of an injustice army which for them was an empire, ll he did was follow the law, he practiced it, adored it as something valuable, and gave orders as if he was also the law, all coming to the same idea that he was just a puppet manipulated by the injustice of his empire.

The magistrate as forming part of the empire he believed was full of justice, but later realized it was all a mistake. He would see the injustices committed by the torturers, specially to the barbarian girl, how they broke her ankles, and almost blind her completely. Although, to me the magistrate didn't completely will pitty for the girl, he did help her by taking her into his house, off te streets as a beggar, he cleaned her, oiled her, massaged her, but all for the same purpose to see and use her as a sexual desire. It can be explained by him saying, "From the moment my steps paused and I stood before her at the barracks gate she must have felt a miasma of deceit closing about her: envy, pitty, cruelty all masquerading as desire." (132) I think this is one main reason to explain what the magistrate did, by seeing the fragile girl alone and suffering in the streets, he took her in his house helped her but for his own interests. Another reason may be that he felt guilty of all the injustices that where being done by the bureau, by tutoring the slaves, and discriminating the barbarians, as comparing them to animals of them being savages. The magistrate was part of this empire, therefore he wanted to make a difference in helping the barbarians, he accomplished it by taking the girl back to her people, therefore for him he was different from the other real savages who where the people who committed injustices. In the end, the magistrate accomplished a kind of rebirth for a new empire, where afier he experienced all the pain, torture, and discrimination he saw the barbarians where given in his time of power, he also lived by it and by his suffering he valued his life and that of others. Consequently, after all his sufferings the magistrate would live to the moment where the old empire left and all was started to come alive again, there was new crops, new life for the people, a new beggining, a new empire for the future.

The Magistrate is a selfish old man.

2007-11-14T05:46:00.000-08:00

"I hope that when we return them to their homes along the river they will have many far-fetched stories to tell their neighbours. I hope that the history of their captivity enters their legends, passed down from grandfather to grandson. But I hope too that memories of the town, with its easy life and its exotic foods, are not strong enough to lure then back. I do not want a race of beggars on my hands." (Page 19)

The magistrate proves in this passage, and does so repeatedly for the remainder of the book, that we is acting in his own (and the town's purely by association) self interest. In this quote, he is showing his desire that the town becomes the stuff of fisherfolk legend, and surely him with it as its administrator, so to speak. He wants the glory to be recorded, but just that. That he why he so vehemently ejects the notions of keeping prisoners and torturing them. He sees it as a glaring blemish in this charming hamlet's history. It surely becomes quite more than just a blemish as the book goes on, quite more like a horrendous infection that sweeps through the town, destroying all it was and all it could be. The magistrate does not want this. It is not for the love of the township, it is love of himself, his desire for an easy last few years. He is more selfish even than Joll, who at least puts the empire before himself. The magistrate could care less about the empire, all he cares about it his retirement.

11.14.07

2007-11-14T05:18:00.000-08:00

After reading the book and understanding what the Magistrate purpose was throughout the story, I think he did what he did for more than one reason. The first reason he says is "To repair some of the damage wrought by the forays of the Third Bureau." The second reason being, "And to restore some of the goodwill that previously existed, I am undertaking a brief visit to the Barbarians"(pg.57). The third reason being and the most obvious is a feeling of love and gratitude towards the barbarian woman. I feel he went on this excursion to show the girl and the other barbarians that his life wasn't going to be dictated by the colonel and that he wasn't scared of the barbarians. I think he also went to show the barbarians that even though he works for the Colonel and that there goal is to capture the barbarians that he wasn't like them he was different and didn't want to do any harm to them. As he stated before he went, "To repair some of the damage wrought by the forays of the third bureau", he didn't go there to justify what the colonel and his people did. He went there to show them that he wasn't like them he didn't agree what they did and explain to them he was different. I think he uses the Barbarian girl to show the other barbarians that he can be trusted by bringing her back to them. Showing them he risks his life to save one of there own, and probably thinking to himself this would beneficial to him in case the barbarians would strike or in case he needed them in a time of trouble. Even though his feelings were true towards the Barbarian girl I think they both were using each other. For him to have a reason to leave and pursue the barbarians and raise his stock as an overall good guy. For her it was her ticket out she knew he would be her only chance to get free and find her way back to the barbarians.

2007-11-13T23:53:00.000-08:00

The magistrate’s actions seem to be driven by different purposes at different points. He acts out of love, for instance, when he escorts the blind nomad girl through the desert and into the arms of her kin. His crying out in protest to the flogging of the prisoners was out of outrage at the savagery of his own people. Mostly though, I get the feeling that he wants to disassociate himself with the Empire. He’s seen what it has to offer with the oppression, torture and death (“You are depraving these people!” he exclaims), and he wants no part of it. He hates the position his superior put him in. He hates that he is unable to fight back at first because of the laws restricting him. “We live in a world of laws” he tries convincing himself earlier in his career as a magistrate though he knows that, when the empire’s concerned, the law is not as orderly as first apparent. As the years go by, he cannot lie to himself any longer, and, upon meeting Joll, a product of the Empire, he realizes that things cannot continue as is. Joll is the embodiment of what the Empire stands for and he knows that, if the Empire had its way, he would have turned out as twisted as that man. He does not want to become Joll. That is something he wants to avoid above all else. Joll is his opposite, his reflection in a twisted mirror. He sees in Joll’s actions the evils the Empire would eventually force him to perform upon the peaceful people and he knows he must cut all ties to it.

2007-11-13T23:13:00.001-08:00

I honestly cannot say that the Magistrate accomplishes anything and as to why he does the things he does; I don’t even think he knows why he did them. As we talked about in class he pretty much stumbles into every situation either totally oblivious to the consequences of any of his actions or he is simply naïve enough to believe that nothing will happen to him. This is not to say however that the man I stupid. I think the flaw in his character lies in recognition in worldly matters. There is one progression or accomplishment that he has made however. Early on in the book he talked to the girl about grim, very melancholy subjects. He even goes as far to say that he talks to her about his self resentment. As we come to the end and he is beaten, starved, bruised, broken (in more than one way) and humiliated he no doesn’t talk much about how this resentment toward himself. I can certainly see that clearing this personal obstacle could be some sort of accomplishment but does this end really justify the means in which he obtained it? There is a chilling line that he lip syncs to Joll “The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves.” I think this is where the Magistrate is summed up. To understand you must be wronged, and true understanding is when you do it for yourself. I believe that even though he might be oblivious he is doing it in the interests of bettering himself. To call that self-serving however, I leave that for Adam to decide.

2007-11-13T21:46:00.001-08:00

The magistrates reasons for doing what he did, is he came to the realization that 1). He, himself has realized the lack of justice in his ability to plead his case. 2). the punishment of the Barbarians was not justified. The magistrate has realized that he will not receive a fair trial, or the ability to explain his actions, he has critiqued “Civilization” and its ability to maintain and promote justice. The colonel has his perceived assumptions of the magistrates’ dealings and therefore finds the magistrates truths to be false.
The Magistrate then goes on to question whether crushing the Barbarians feet was justice. “Justice: once the word is uttered, where will it all ends? Easier to shout No! Easier to be beaten and made a martyr. Easier to lay my head on the chopping block than to defend the cause of justice for the Barbarians” (p.106)
The Magistrate sees justice for those that have the whole world against them as pointless, the “civilized” ones have their idea of a fair punishment for an unknown crime, and despite what this old man has said they will stick too it.
The Magistrate was not successful in his ranting; the Barbarians were still whooped senselessly by the Mob. Whether or not the Nomads were guilty of any crime was not discussed, nor was awareness raised. The settlers seemed not to be disturbed in any way by the actions that had occurred, they seemed elated that some form of twisted “JUSTICE” was served at their hands.

The Magistrate and his confusing actions...

2007-11-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

Although I have finished reading the novel, I still find the Magistrate's actions to be confusing. I have several opinions about him and what he has done throughout the book, but it seems to be impossible to precisely pinpoint any reasons.

That being said, on the third to last paragraph on page 71, we can read about the Magistrate's encounter with the barbarians as he is giving the girl the option to return to the Empire with him or go back with her people: " 'Tell them what you like. Only, now that I have brought you back, as far as I can, I wish to ask you very clearly to return to the town with me. Of your own choice.' I grip her arm. 'Do you understand me? That is what I want.' " My interpretation of this is that the Magistrate felt it to be his responsibility to return the girl to her people because he had already made it his responsibility to take care of her whilst at the Empire; he bathed her, healed her wounds, provided her with shelter, clothing, food, etc. However, in the end, he grew so fond of her company that he found it difficult to actually have to say bye to her, which is why he made it clear to the girl that he honestly wanted her to return to the Empire with him. We obvioiusly learn that the girl did not feel the same as he did because she decided to abandon him and proceed with the barbarians.

Silly Magistrate, Empirical Opposition Is For Barbarians

2007-11-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

"Amazed I stare at this elaborate utterance as it winds its way out of me. Am I mad enough to intend a provocation?" (Coetzee 116)

Prior to this passage, The Magistrate questions the torturer as to how he can devote himself to torturing people. The response that he receives is indeed a provocation as he seemingly knows how the torturers would respond, despite his inquisition. This leads me to believe that The Magistrate might actually be "mad enough to intend a provocation". One has to take into account that he is an elderly man who has been serving the very empire that brands him as an enemy for his entire life. As he draws closer to death, he might begin to wonder if his service to the empire is for a greater good or a greater injustice. While it isn't explicitly revealed in the text, it seems as if The Magistrate would not be one for the use of torture and execution to bring justice to those who have done the empire wrong.
It seems as if he was surprised at his actions and the reactions that they caused, though one could attribute that to his seemingly naive nature. However, I do believe that while he may be surprised at the actions of the empire (though he really shouldn't be), he does have a hidden motive behind his actions as his last living action could be to make change within the world, or at the very least, open people to the idea that the empire is slaughtering an entire group of people for being what they are and nothing more. The Magistrate may be reckless and careless in his actions, but his potential intentions could stretch years beyond his lifespan.

Washing the dirts off her legs

2007-11-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

After the magistrate takes the begger woman to his abode, he starts washing her body. On page 28 there's a description of that scene "I begin to wash her. She raises her feet for me in turn. I knead and massage the lax toes through the soft milky soap. Soon my eyes close, my head droops. It is rapture, of a kind." Why the rapture? The first thing that came to my mind was his sexual drive which was later on disproved after sleeping next to her on the same bed for days there would be no sexual activity between the two. Also magistrate knows his limits as an old man to a young woman, and over and over what magistrate wants from her is for her to talk to him, answer his questions, not sex.
When he brought her to his place, he knew about the tortures committed by the interrogators to her (specifically to her legs and eyes). He also confesses later on how he feels about the empire and what it's doing to the Africans. He just can't stand the injustice and wanton cruelty of his greedy empire, and is shamed for being a part of it. The source of this "rapture", in my opinion, was the relief that she is now on his safe and caring hands, and by washing her legs and kneading her body he felt as if he is kneading her scarred and tortured soul, washing off the injustice done to her in the jail. This is another scene where we can witness what a conscientious individual he is.
Another scene I would like to point out is when one day he goes out to hunt, he sees a buck. It was just another hobby of his, his usual activity, in which he shoots to kill an animal or miss it. However, this time he doesn't shoot. He tries but he cannot. Here's the scene: "With the fuck before me suspended in immobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to turn my gaze inward and see what it is that has robbed the hunt of its savour." He never figures out why he didn't pull that trigger. Not even a hint. What did he see in that buck that disabled him to shoot? The defenseless buck that's only good at being shot at. Maybe he saw a barbarian. A barbarian in the crosshair of the empire's rifle. The empire that he hates for its barbaric measures of fulfilling its greed. Shooting the buck would have been a confirmation that he also is part of the empire, and for that reason, I believe, he didn't shoot.

Justice or Freedom?

2007-11-13T19:43:00.000-08:00

I think that the Magistrate does what he does because of his sense of justice? He believes he is doing the right thing by helping the barbarians. There are many scenes where he aids the barbarians. In the second chapter page 47-48 in my book the Magistrate is having nightmares because he probably feels guilty because he was unable to help the barbarians. Then there is another scene page 71 in my book where the barbarian girl is speaking with another barbarian. The magistrate tells her to “Tell them the truth.” I kind of got the impression that the Magistrate wanted her to tell them about what a nice man he is and stuff but I guess she didn’t. It seems to me that the Magistrate wants someone to recognize him for his honorable actions?

Or perhaps there was an ulterior motive? After he was put in a cell he seemed pretty happy. Page 78 in my book “I am aware of the source of my elation: my alliance with the guardians of the Empire is over, I have set my self in opposition, the bond is broken, I am a free man.” Did the Magistrate intentionally help the barbarians so he would be expelled of his position? We know that earlier in the book the Magistrate was talking about just living out the rest of his life doing whatever. I don’t know these are just some things I thought about as I was reading the book. If the Magistrates goal was to become free he accomplished it otherwise he just really screwed the people. The town lost their crops. I’m pretty sure that the barbarians got word of what they were doing and what they did to other barbarians so they got revenge.

The Magistrate's Trial

2007-11-13T19:10:00.002-08:00

The Magistrate did what he did to satisfy his own guilt not just because he kept the girl, but because of the entire movement against a people, their culture. By returning the girl to her people, he thought he was squaring it between the empire and the barbarians in his own mind. ( However, I think the Empire were the Barbarians, and the natives waited for them)
"I want to say that nothing passed between myself and the barbarians concerning military matters. It was a private affair. I went to return the girl to her family. For no other purpose." I think the magistrate put himself on trial and the only righteous action to take was to bring the girl back. I think his age was constantly on trial, and the 'road trip' was another action to take to prove his virility (mostly to himself).

The magistrate says something very interesting at the end of chapter six "I think: 'I wanted to live outside history. I wanted to live outside the history that Empire imposes on its subjects, even its lost subjects. I never wished it for the barbarians that they should have the history of Empire laid upon them. How can I believe that that is cause for shame?'" I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

For Love?

2007-11-13T19:10:00.000-08:00

The Magistrate’s actions are still quite ambiguous. It is difficult to interpret the true meaning that lies behind his performance. Even though his actions are vague, a progress can certainly be observed. His feelings for the girl develop gradually. At the beginning of the novel, he views her as a vulnerable girl who would do anything for shelter, care, and food. Hence, he takes advantage of this notion and utilizes her for his sexual needs. If his intentions were any different, then why didn’t he shelter and clothe a young lad?

However, half way in to the novel, specifically during their dreadful trip, he demonstrates his true and evolving feelings towards the girl. Most importantly he reveals the true meaning that lies behind his actions. On page 67 he says “For five hours we huddle behind the piles firewood and the horses while the wind lashes us with snow, ice, rain, sand, grit. We ache with cold to our very bones, the flanks of the horses, turned to the wind, are caked with ice. We press together, man and breast, sharing our warmth, trying to endure.” Why does he endure this crucial weather? His sincere love for the girl pushes him forward to complete his journey and to hand her to the barbarians. He could have simply turned back once he sensed the cold weather approaching. He did not even have to initiate the trip in the first place. Further, this trip caused him his job, self identity, and respect. This idea can be further demonstrated through when he says “In twelve days on the road we have grown closer than in months of living in the same rooms” (page 70). Perhaps, this statement can demonstrate the fact that he was truly happy with the trip and its gains. Even thought he illustrated his true love towards the girl through what he did, I am not sure if he actually accomplished anything.

11/12

2007-11-12T17:55:00.001-08:00

On Wednesday, we will finish up our discussion of Waiting for the Barbarians. For the response, let's try to point to a passage that particularly illuminates your final reason behind your answer to the following question(s): Why did the Magistrate do what he did, and did he accomplish anything by it? Quote that passage, and then explain your reasoning.

11/12

2007-11-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

My essay will cover Achebe on Novels in Africa, Conrad on Achebe. And will also include Waiting, somehow, not sure since I'm still reading it.

TOPIC # 2

2007-11-11T23:49:00.000-08:00

Feminism, 'motherfucker'....and probably a movie similar to that of 'M...f...r.'

Essay 2 Topic

2007-11-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

My topic for this paper will be on feminism. I am going to analyze the works Aimee Bender and also refer to a movie..possibly Mona Lisa Smile or Tootsie.

My Topic

2007-11-11T19:52:00.000-08:00

My second essay is a, I guess feminist reading on the two readings Debbieland and Sarah Cole.

Essay #2

2007-11-11T19:04:00.000-08:00

I will be exploring the field of feminism for my second essay. I will attempt to relate the movie ,Wicked Man, to the feminist writings that we have read. I will also strive to interpret the movie according to a feminist point of view.

Kafka?

2007-11-11T18:16:00.001-08:00

I read the back of Waiting and I found that one of the reviewers mentioned Kafka and how Coetzee writes like Kafka. I have The Metamorphasis by Kafka and was thinking about comparing the two.

Essay #2

2007-11-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

Ive decided that my second essay will be about Post Colonialism. Using the works of J.M Coetzee's Waiting For The Barbarians and the works of Mary Rawlandson's Women's Indian Captivity Narratives. This should make an interesting paper because both stories are like looking in a mirror seeing double.........

The most wonderful blog ever!!!

2007-11-11T15:01:00.001-08:00

My second essay, I have decided will deal with feminism and I will be discussing the two pieces we have read, A Room of One's Own and The Company of Wolves in the essay and how a feminist would analyze them.

Post Colonialism

2007-11-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

My topic is on Post Colonialism in Ireland. So raise your Pints

Essay 2 Topic

2007-11-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

I plan on focusing on the theory of feminism and relating it to the Judd Aptow movies. I am not sure exactly which ones yet. And also, back to the theorists in the class Woolf definitely being one of them.

my topic

2007-11-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

As we've talked about on Wednesday, I'll be discussing Attack of the 50ft. Woman, reviewing it as a feminist would and comparing it to the reading of As Things Fall Apart in my report on feminism.

Most difficult blog ever produced ever!

2007-11-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

I too, will be taking the feminist route. The center of this essay will be the film "Dogma", as there were some interesting ideas about the film that I have touched upon on the blog, but have not truly explored as of yet. I will be discussing this film in relation to what can be considered as "feminist" in relation to the general cultural capital of feminism and in relation to two of the feminist philosophy readings done in class.

Kasey's a douche for stealing my essay topic

2007-11-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

I decided I want to take the feminist route and discuss two peices we have done in class as well as how they fit into the general ideas of mainstream society, and how men view women. Now that my topics been theifed (and no thats not a real word) this is my default Idea

Topic #2

2007-11-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

For my topic I'm going to analyze Waiting for the Barbarians, through the theme of colonization found in the story. I will also talk about another major example of colonization in another country, that can be related and be useful in comparing it to the story. I will also include examples that are useful in Achebe's essay, hopefully these work out in order to write my essay.

Essay 2 Topic

2007-11-09T16:30:00.000-08:00

I will be analyzing 'Waiting for the Barbarians' in a feminist perspective, in other words, analyzing the Magistrate's relationship with the barbarian girl. I'm planning on referring to the feminist criticism of Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart' and compare Woolf's 'The New Dress' to Carter's 'The Company of Wolves'.

Essay #2

2007-11-09T08:08:00.000-08:00

For my Second Essay I plan to talk about Feminism and how two works we have discussed offer different representations of women. The two pieces I am going to focus on are, Luce Irigaray "Sexual Difference", and Aimee Bender "Mfer". I will show through each piece a different interpretation of how the author portrays the role of women in society. Then examine how one of their opinions compare to the viewpoint of another Feminist theorist that we have discussed in class, showing overall if all Feminist theorists have the same or a different perspective when talking about the role of women in society. Finally evaluating the benefits that one theorist could have over the other when talking about Feminism.

Does this mean I don't have to email it?

2007-11-09T05:41:00.000-08:00

I'll be writing (hopefully, if you approve and all that) on how feminist views are represented in Sarah Cole and Waiting, with a focus on how both main characters idolize women, yet use them. I might even throw some Motherf*cker in there, I'm not sure yet.

11/07

2007-11-09T04:35:00.000-08:00

In the interests of what alleviating a generalized fatigue, no response for class on Monday. Please post your topic for your next essay, however, so we all can see it.

And read at least to the beginning of Part V of Waiting, though the discussion will be much richer if you can finish the book.

Is he black?

2007-11-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

The problem with both Conrad and Coetzee I have is that when they say he, they, women, prisoners, or boy, they don't specify whether the person is white or black, and I believe if they did, it would have helped. Coetzee thought Conrad is a racist based on the way Conrad portrayed the Africans as a group. It doesn't take Coetzee to realize that the main character is a kind, sympathetic, and conscious man. And yet, there's not much going on in the first chapter I just read. I remember the three women (I assume they're black) walking by, looking at the party curiously. And there's a boy who seemed to lost his grandfather, killed by interrogator. The main character is very kind to the boy. When he learns that the boy hadn't eaten anything that evening, his heart "grows heavy." Well I guess this might not be enough for Achebe to conclude that this person isn't a racist. I mean, even Marlow in Heart of Darkness gave a biscuit to one of the African who was finding a shelter from the explosioin under the tree? All I can say is, we do not seem to have enough stuff to judge him through Achebe's eyes (or any theorists). But I do know that when the main character says "barbarian", I know he is refering to an African.

Misrepresentation

2007-11-07T06:02:00.000-08:00

As many people have stated already Coetzee does the same thing that Conrad did."The characters are not represented as individuals but as stereotypes." This is a short line from the Achebe/Conrad Controversy. If you have been reading the book you should have noticed that for some reason not much is known about the barbarians yet. We just know minor things and they aren't supported really by facts yet because we don't know if the barbarians are really like the way the author depicts them to be. Hopefully as we get further into the story the barbarians will appear so they can represent themselves. The barbarians have to appear in the book and do what they do. If they come pillage villages, rape women, and steal things then we will know that Coetzee was not just making up stereotypes.

It is not just with the barbarians either. There is also the fishermen and the other prisoners in chapter one. When they are first introduced they don’t seem like very pleasant people and they don’t speak because no one speaks their language. Then comes all of the bad things about that like they pick each others lice and they go to the bathroom in a corner. Also the people living in the frontier, they dream about barbarians doing horrible things but have they ever met a barbarian in person? Everything about the barbarians so far are just stereotypes. Achebe would probably be furious if he only read up to this point. Just like with the African people in Conrads novel, Achebe would feel that Coetzee is devaluing the barbarians.