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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Commentary

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a is a story set in England that discusses social class and the formalities interwoven into marriage in the early 19th century. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen. Takes the skeleton of the original story and transforms it in such a way to exaggerate the uselessness of all the formalities in a setting where zombie hordes plague cities and the most important part of life is staying alive.

              In the original story, a man named Charles Bingley enters the story by renting an estate, known as Netherfield Park, and quickly the people of the town figure out that he is quite wealthy. Mrs. Bennet, one of the main characters of the story, wishes for one of her daughters to marry this man as to gain social standing in the community. Both in the original story and the transformation, Mr. Bennet argues with his wife when she begs him to introduce himself to Mr. Bingley as a way to get a foot in the door with his daughters. However, in the transformation Mr. Bennett sees no need for his daughters to need a husband – his rationale being that a husband with money is not going to save his daughters from a zombie horde. Mr. Bennett’s proved correct later in the story when zombies attack the ball and only the girls are the ones to fight off the undying horde.

              By juxtaposing the formal, artificial culture in the original Pride and Prejudice story with a post-apocalyptic culture that has to deal with zombies, priorities in life become much more different, and the importance of having a hand in marriage becomes much more absurd. However, Grahame-Smith continues with the same plot of having the girls still swoon over Mr. Bingley as to display how in the original story there is no reason for them to – Mr. Bingley has not done anything other than be rich. The money he has isn’t even his own – he received it from his father. This displays how fake the society in which the Bennetts live is. Also, the women were the ones to fight off the zombies when they attacked the ball, despite Mr. Bingley’s friend – Mr.Dary, allegedly having several thousand zombie kills by his own hand. This displays the uselessness of the male figures in this story. They are only able to look pretty and try to swoon women so that they will marry them. The odd part of the transformation is that the Bennett women still fall for the trick – they are still falling in love with these men and still trouble themselves with trivial matters such as “how many times Mr. Bingley danced with each of them.” This proves that despite the women in the story having a lot of individual power, they still submit to the patriarchal society that they live in when they do not need to.

              Overall, the transformation effectively displays the faultiness of the culture that Pride and Prejudice is set in. The introduction of zombies into the story displays how life and death situations exaggerate the trivialness of marriage and having formals.

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Emotional Reading vs Class reading

When I am reading for class, it usually feels like a drag. Every page I just want to get the reading over with, especially if the content is something that does not particularly interest me. I usually have to take breaks every chapter or so, and it takes a lot longer because I need to take notes to retain information on what happened during the reading. 

With emotional reading, everything comes much more naturally. I am able to remember things after one read without taking any notes. If it is a book that I really enjoy, the only things that will stop me from reading it are class, chores, or tiredness. With emotional reading, I constantly want to know more and what happens next. I can feel a tension in my chest when something surprising happens or when something sad happens I can feel my body wilt. Emotional reading is a much fuller experience - all of your senses are involved. You can picture yourself as part of the story and want to imagine what life would be life if you could teleport yourself into the crazy fantasy world that you are reading. With emotional reading, you feel a sense of connectedness with the text that isn’t possible with reading for a class. You feel passionate about the characters and love when they succeed and cry when they fail or, in some cases, die. Emotional reading has an investment from the reader - I have stressed over a character’s bad decision in mangas that I have read multiple times, and sit in anguish waiting for the next chapter to come out. 

The main difference between emotional reading and class reading is how much we as readers care about what is happening in the book, and how it affects us long term once we are finished reading it.

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The Percy Jackson series was one of my favorite when I was a kid. I remember reading every single one of them as soon as they came out, and was super excited to see the movie when it was released. Sadly, the movie was not anything like the book and couldn’t recover from its awful plot-altering first movie, but the books still hold a really dear place in my heart.

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Emotions on “How Wizards do Money”

The Ron Weasley reading of “How Wizards do Money” was my favorite of the lot. I felt like the characterization of Ron was spot on, and the ending was quite satisfying. I felt like Ron would definitely be the type of dad who doesn’t care about the world outside of his own, and I was happy to see Ron’s journey from not caring about the Muggle world and Hermione’s parents to eventually finding pleasure in visiting them. It also made me happy to see the author implement a dad joke as part of Ron’s character because I feel that Ron would be the type of dad to excessively use them. I also enjoyed that the author kept using the word “maths” instead of math when talking about Ron calculating time on the time turner because it plays off of Ron’s ditsy nature from the original story which I found funny. 

The only thing that made me upset was the use of the time turner. I know that it allowed for Ron to better himself in the end, but the whole point of the time turner in the original story is that the time turner didn’t really change the story of the Prisoner of Azkaban at all - Harry ended up saving himself with the patronus and Buckbeak allegedly didn’t die before they used the time turner. In this fan fiction, everything went back to normal EXCEPT when he googled his name he didn’t come up as a time travelling Dumbledore. Maybe I am missing something, but that seems like a clear change in history to me. 

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A bad Woman is Hard to Find - Especially if she stays at home

THE GRANDMOTHER didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to go visit people in east Tennessee and was trying to convince her son, Bailey to go there instead. “Do you even read the newspaper, Bailey? There is a murdering convict, the Misfit they call him, on the loose in Florida. Now why would you ever want to go anywhere near that God-forsaken place?” she said. “Grandma, you are being paranoid,” said Bailey, “we are going to Florida whether you like it or not.”

“Everyone has been to Florida before” argued the grandma, “East Tennessee is beautiful this time of year and we owe it to the children to show them new parts of the world.” John Wesley, one of the children, intervened and said “Well why don’t you just stay home then? You won’t be any fun on the trip anyways.”

“Maybe I won’t” scoffed the Grandmother as she stormed out of the room.

“What a drama queen.” Said June Star, one of the little girls of the family.

The next day, everyone was packed in the car early in the morning… except for the grandmother. John Wesley, realizing that he had hurt his grandma’s feelings from the night before, runs inside to go find out where she is. He bursts into the grandma’s room to find her sleeping in her bed, with her cat, Pitty Sing, at the base of the bed with no suitcase in sight.

“Grandma, wake up! We were supposed to leave thirty minutes ago” exclaims John.

“I don’t feel like going anymore”

“I am sorry for what I said yesterday, I really didn’t mean it”

“I know you didn’t sweetie, but I decided that it is best if I don’t go. I can’t leave Pitty Sing behind and you know that Bailey hates when I bring the cat to the motel.”

John Wesley sighs and tells Grandma to get some rest, and apologizes again if he was the reason why she decided not to go.

The family gets on the road without grandma and has a great time. The family stops at a restaurant called the Tower on the way down to Florida, and has a wonderful meal while talking to the owner Sammy Butts. Sammy Butts goes on complaining on how he let some men buy gasoline from his store on credit, but the family blows it off and thanks Sammy for the meal and gets back on the road. The family’s GPS takes them an odd route on some back-country dirt roads, but other than passing an old beat-up Chrysler the drive was quite uneventful.

Once the family got to Florida, they checked into the motel and got on their bathing suits – ready to go play on the beach. The family had a lovely, relaxing vacation for the next week, and read in the newspaper that the Misfit had even been detained since their stay!

“Grandma always did worry too much” said Bailey as he reclined his chair in the sand on the beach drinking an ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon.

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The Lottery of Death

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a suspenseful story about a lottery in a town where the person who “wins” the lottery is stoned to death. All throughout the story Jackson uses colorful, upbeat imagery to hide the true nature of the ending of the story – only adding subtle foreshadowing events that would be noticed after a second read of the story.

The setting of the story is able to hide the dark ending of the story because it is unexpected that something so awful would happen in such a beautiful setting. The story starts off stating that the day was “sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” which would bring people to believe that the lottery is a good time of the year where people are rejoicing and enjoying good weather. However, there is subtle hints that the lottery might be a savage, old tradition that does not fit with the current ideals of many of the time. Mrs. Adams states that “over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery”, but her suggestion is ignored and the northerners are called a “pack of crazy fools.” Looking back, this scene is comical in a dark way because the ones who are a “pack of crazy fools” are the ones participating in the lottery – it is a savage, non-sensical tradition that holds no purpose. Despite this tradition having no purpose in Shirley Jackson’s story, many have adapted the idea of the lottery in their own story as a way to improve the protagonist in their stories.

There are many other stories that have adopted this “lottery” system, but the difference between those stories and the original is that there is no purpose for the lottery in Shirley Jackson’s story. The Hunger Games implements a lottery system because the state wants to punish the people of each district for rebelling against the government. The lottery system makes it so that everyone is in fear of being picked and allows the government to rule through that fear. One of my favorite animes, Gurren Lagann, has a society where people are living underground in fear of the people who rule on the surface and food is scarce. One village called Adai that uses a lottery system to decide who from the village will be killed – as they have made it law that the village population will not exceed fifty.

Oddly enough, both of these implementations of the lottery served as a catalyst for the protagonists to achieve their goals. The Hunger Games’ lottery gave Katniss the power and influence to eventually overthrow the government running the games and in Gurren Lagann, the population cap allowed the protagonist to save two children in the village who would eventually fight alongside the protagonist and save the world. It is interesting how so many different stories have adopted this system and twisted it from being an objectively bad, pointless ceremony to being something that is empowering to characters.

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A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway is a dark story about a man who is struggling to deal with pain in the world and has yet to find a cure to the suffering of the world. The audience finds out that the man has money, but that has not filled the void. He used to have a wife, but she left him. He even tried to kill himself in an attempt to end all of the pain, but even failed in that endeavor. He is stuck sitting in the well-lit café as his only means to deal with his sorrow. While this reading might appear to be sad at first glance, after further inspection it is quite optimistic in how despair can be kept in check.

              The “well-lit café” represents all of the things that serve as an outlet for pain in the world, and by the old man having the well-lit café, he is able to cope with all of the pain in his life. I can completely understand the situation that the old man is in – I might not have had as serious life problems as he does, losing his wife and trying to kill himself, but pain, suffering, and helplessness is universally understood. There are days where I feel like everything is going wrong, and the world is against me, but then I hang out with my friends and talk through things with them and everything is alright. The solution to despair is having good friends that you can open up to. The old man had a romantic relationship with his wife, but that is not the same as having an intimate relationship with peers. Romantic relationships are more volatile in nature because of all of the baggage that comes with physical attraction. True brotherly or sisterly love is a more sustainable solution and serves as a better outlet.

The short story hints at this being an outlet for the old man through the two waiters and the symbolism of the café. The old man uses the two waiters throughout the story as a tool to vent about his struggles – he is not close friends with these men, but his conversation with them is unusual to have with two strangers who do not know him. Normally, a deep conversation would be had between close friends, but this man does not have one of those people in his life, so he has to settle with the waiters. Also, the well-lit café represents the joy the man has in the world and by having two pseudo-friends present in the café, the text suggests that friends are one of the ways to deal with despair

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is a dark story about a man who seems to have lost it all, but the old man’s engagement with the other characters suggests that his situation is not hopeless. He might not be in the best situation, but through the well-lit café and conversation with others, he is able to better himself and work through his problems.

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A Srsly Good Commentary

In Sarah Mesle’s “Srsly.” She prefaces the article by stating that most men aren’t bas people, but then goes on to state how despite this she still remains mad at many men. She explains that she knows that she shouldn’t be angry at all men, but she cannot help but feel mad at them for how society currently functions – even if her anger isn’t necessarily productive. Mesle then addresses Texts From Jayne Eyre and how the book is a catalyst for this anger in a productive way.

              Mesle claims that Texts From Jayne Eyre attacks “male geniuses” from pieces of literature by using satire as a means to display the cruel nature of men. I believe that this is one of the best ways to address difficult topics of conversation. Comedy allows for people to talk about hard topics in a more lighthearted nature. For example, women oppression is something that is difficult to talk about when in a group of men because men do not feel like they are inherently oppression women. However, through satirical text messages between the narrator of The Yellow Wall-Paper and her husband, John, Ortberg is able to help men realize how absurd the state of things are without offending men. Mesle realizes that this is the best way to address the problem because of satire’s unique ability to be an analysis of a piece of literature while also being critical of misogynist themes. Mesle also argues that Ortberg’s approach is unique in that she is not particularly interested in being friendly through her text messages. I completely agree – Ortberg is blatant in who she is attacking through every conversation, but still remains fairly un-offensive which is perfect for addressing feminism.

              Mesle also addresses the blatant misogyny of the current literary community. David Gilmour in an interview with the magazine, Hazlitt, said that he was “not interested in teaching books by women” and that “Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women.” This statement is absolutely absurd and displays how the community needs to be addressed with writings like Texts From Jayne Eyre. Men in positions of power are condescending in subtle ways that we would never think are condescending unless we were to meditate on them. Since many men aren’t intentionally trying to be condescending, it is vital that we address problems with inequality among men and women so that we ensure that the difference in respect between the two groups is non-existent. Mesle states that she does love her “literary dudes” but men in the field continue to attack women and make them feel like their ideas are not as intelligent or that they are stupid.

              Overall, we need to address the current problem that is men in literature. Men still write women in a way that makes them look like they need men or that men are in some way superior to women. This is unacceptable, but sadly the only way that this will change is through more conversation through mediums like Texts From Jayne Eyre where men will not feel as attacked.

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@oasisabraham

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The Yellow Wall-Paper: Analysis and a Personal Anecdote

The Yellow Wall-Paper is a first-person story about a woman who has nervous depression and writes her thoughts down in a journal in response to her illness in hopes that it will help relieve some of the symptoms. However, her doctor and husband, John, refuses to let her write or work at all so the narrator has to be secretive when writing journal responses. This story actively discusses how women and wives in particular have been controlled by their husbands in her time period and how that controlling nature hurts those involved.

              The yellow wallpaper appears multiple times throughout the story and the imagery used to describe it throughout the story vastly changes between entries. At the start of the short story, it is seen as “unclean yellow” which displays that she is uncomfortable with it and finds it repelling, but by the end she cannot stand the wallpaper so much that she rips it off herself. The wallpaper represents her relationship with her husband and his choices in how he treats the narrator for her illness. The narrator cannot stand the secretive nature of her writing and wants to escape from the isolation that her husband is forcing her into. More broadly, the wallpaper can also represent the isolation many women have felt in marriage during this time period because they were expected to do nothing other than to take care of the house and social events were not for them.

              The journal is also serves for an important lesson in this story. The narrator uses the journal as a means to escape from her anxiety, even though it was against the doctor’s orders. This emphasis on writing exhibits how important it is for people to express themselves in order to have a happier life. Some people choose not to use writing as a means of expression, some use sports, dance or their work, but the emphasis of the author of the short story is that people need to be able to express themselves in some way or another or they will live terrible lives and go crazy, just as the woman in the story did at the end. Personally, I use soccer as a means to express myself, but I have also started to journal this spring term. I feel like with journaling I can remember a lot more of what happened each day, and I think that I will find it fun to reminisce on fun adventures I had during spring term in months to come by re-reading what I wrote.

              Self-expression is a main emphasis of The Yellow Wall-Paper, and many people’s mediums for expressing themselves is through writing and more specifically – fan fiction. Some people enjoy writing fan fiction even if they know that nobody is going to actually read it because when they write their story it makes them feel better about themselves and when they re-read it themselves they have a sense of accomplishment with their work. Fan fiction can serve as a more effective medicine than Dr. John’s orders due to the community revolving around it and the joy of writing for the sake of writing.

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A Selective History of Media Fandom

In “A selective History of Media Fandom”, the author discusses how relationships are the reason why fanfiction has become so popular. The author uses examples such as Ruth Berman and John Boardman as authors who have become popular through writing fan fiction over Star Trek and Sherlock Holmes, and implements these examples to prove how much of a backing each of these communities have. I have interacted with multiple different communities on tumblr and reddit, but my first interaction with fanfiction came a long time ago while I was in middle school.

I can definitely relate to the author’s passion for fanfiction and understand the enthusiasm behind the communities. When I was younger, a popular TV show, Dragonball Z, was recreated into a show on Nickelodeon called “Dragonball Z Kai.” On the Nickelodeon website, they had online forums where people could discuss about the new episodes that came out and part of those online forums included a section for fanfiction. I used to get online every day and interact with people’s fun stories for how their own personal character would fit into the world of Dragonball and also made some friends with people who were creating content regularly. Sadly, the Television series ended after a year or so and people became inactive on the medium. However, while it lasted, there was a passionate group of people who were in love with Dragon Ball Z Kai and wanted to see what it would be like if they were part of the action themselves. Often people would insert characters from the show and then as people joined the community, start to include community members in their stories which made it really interactive and got people more involved in the stories. In fact, I wrote a couple stories (that are hopefully long gone because my seventh grade writing level limited my fanfiction writing ability), and had a couple popular users on the site feature my character in their stories. People also loved being able to ship themselves with Vegeta or Goku or Videl or Bulma. People also would ship characters that aren’t together in the show like Goku and Bulma and make them have kids (sometimes making those kids themselves). People love these interactions because fans want to feel like they have intimate interactions with the characters they watch on television, and want to become friends with people who are also interested in writing fanfiction. That’s why people band together and create communities to write fan ficition.

Ultimately, people watch television series and read books for the characters. People fall in love with Harry Potter, Goku, Luke Skywalker, and long for more stories about them and want to believe that they could be part of the same mystical world that their favorite characters are in. In return, people create fanfiction and insert themselves in. People will continue to ship people within series and across series as long as fan fiction is being created – these interactions and creations will only lead to larger, more unified communities that love fanfiction and feel like they are friends with the characters in their fandom which will lead to these people making more friends.

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A Scandal In Bohemia - Analysis of Holmes and Watson

Holmes and Watson’s relationship is one of the most iconic of all time – up there with Batman and Robin and Han Solo and Chewbacca. Much of this duos popularity comes from the unique juxtaposition between Holmes’ absurd intellect and Watson’s mediocrity. This relationship can be best summarized In A Scandal In Bohemia, where Watson and Holmes discuss the differences in what the two take the time to observe in their daily lives.

In A Scandal In Bohemia, Watson is walking past Baker Street, where him and Holmes used to live together, and sees Holmes from the window pacing back and forth. Watson goes to the door and gets invited in by Holmes who starts to analyze his old friend based on his appearance. Holmes is able to deduce that Watson has trekked through wet terrain recently, is able to tell that Watson has acquired an inept servant for his home, and that he has become a practicing doctor again. Watson is stunned that Holmes is able to determine this based purely on his appearance is asks for an explanation. Holmes explains that Watson’s shoe has cuts on it which would insinuate that a servant was scraping the mud from the sole of his shoes ineffectively. Also, the fact that the servant had to scrape mud off of his shoes must mean that he has been in wet weather recently. Also, he smells like iodoform and nitrate of silver, which are commonly used in medicine, and Watson’s hat clearly has the indent of a stethoscope in it. Watson is stunned that Holmes is able to think this critically in this short a span of time and admires him for it.

This scene perfectly describes the relationship of these two characters. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Watson is usually not doing any of the work in the investigation and is merely a bystander, noting the adventures of Holmes while not totally being part of the adventure himself. Watson is unable to think in the same way as Holmes, as can be seen in the scene where Holmes asks Watson how many stairs there are in his house, and this barrier makes it difficult for Watson to actually determine what in the investigation is an actual clue.

Arguably, Watson is not even part of the story and his character is primarily used to display Holmes’ intellect from an outside third party. What is interesting though is that the common reader is very similar to Holmes and would need an explanation for his thought process because it is so sporadic and hard to follow. This makes the reader feel more like they are part of the story – because it would not be that irrational for them to place themselves in the story.

Ultimately, while Watson is not dumb by any means, he is a practicing doctor and must be pretty intelligent to have become one, but by contrasting him with Holmes, it makes his character seem dull and unintelligent.

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The last thing that I read outside of school was The Future of The Mind by  Michio Kaku. I enjoyed it because it displayed some really interesting applications for technology that before seemed unrealistic until recent discoveries of the brain. For example, telepathy facilitated through a brain implant is not out of the question for the future, and could be used by soldiers on the battlefield for quicker communication.

If I wanted to impress someone, I would say my favorite book is The Odyssey because it would make me look cultured and well educated. I have also not read the entire thing, but could make it work if I needed to bs my way through a conversation about it.

I do not usually tell people that I am a fan of anime because some people have negative connotations with it, such as the shows being misogynistic or people who watch them being socially awkward, but I really enjoy the art style and story telling of mangakas in the same way that people enjoy the art style and story telling of comic books. 

First Thing I remember being a fan of was Harry Potter. I read all the books, had Harry Potter costumes, and watched all the movies as soon as they came out. I did not remain that active of a fan for very long though.

A website I read regularly is https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/

Introductory post

What’s the last thing you read that wasn’t for school? Did you like it? Why or why not?

If you wanted to impress someone, what would you say your favorite book was? Why?

What’s something that you probably wouldn’t admit to many people that you like or are a fan of? Why wouldn’t you admit it?

What’s the first thing you remember being a fan of?

Link to a website you read regularly (not a social media platform, but an actual website).

Link to or post your favorite meme.