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Writing

Okay so I lied I did not finish the paper this weekend, other stuff came up.  However I am determined to finish this project by tomorrow at the latest.  I put everything together all in one document and I still have to add on to some things but its already the longest paper I’ve ever bothered to write.  I feel so close to the end, but still so far.  I’m still stuck on what to write for the political section of the general intro, I have to write about one more background source, and I should probably add on to the annotations part because I feel like I could explain all that a little more.  I feel that, overall, doing this project has helped me understand my book and author better.  I picked up on a lot of things that I would have otherwise just brushed over while just reading.  While a part of me lacked motivation to actually sit down at write this paper, another part of me thought it was kind of fun.  

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Writing

As I write this paper, I split up each section into its own document so at the end I can just put all of the documents together.  I have written everything except the background sources part, the political section of the general intro, and I really should edit the intro to the annotations where I have to talk about the themes and stuff.  I’m losing motivation at this point.  I keep looking at the same four criticisms and rereading the same lines I highlighted.  I feel like I should branch out and use some of the other criticisms I have barely used at all, but also I cannot force myself to focus on something new because they all basically say similar things and have similar ideas / claims.  I’m going to try to finish the project this weekend so I can ask for feedback next week before I turn all of it in.

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Researching Rebecca

So I had to research some stuff about my book for the historical and literary sections of the general intro, but what was nice was that my novel already had a section in the front that showed the historical events that happened throughout the author’s life and what famous novels were published every year.  

Also the enlightenment from my criticisms was extremely helpful.  I did not initially pick up on some of the things in my book that were pointed out in the criticisms, but the more evidence they gave, the more I could see where they were coming from and understood why it was relevant in the novel.

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Reading Rebecca

There was a body found in the cabin of the boat that Rebecca had died on while sailing.  The cabin door was closed and there were holes poked into the floor of the boat so it would sink.  The only problem was Rebecca’s body had already been identified and buried.  So whose body was it?  The evidence builds up that the body is indeed Rebecca.  Then there’s a trial to try to find out what really happened.  Maxim eventually confesses to the narrator that he killed Rebecca.  He hated her, saying she was a liar, evil, was rude to others behind their backs, only married him for his money, and was having many affairs, one of which was with her cousin who got her pregnant.  Outside people started to suspect something.  Maxim shot her, put her on the boat’s cabin floor, poked holes in the floor, shut the cabin door, took the boat out as far into the bay as he could, and left her there to stage her death as a drowning at sea.  At this point, the only thing that the narrator cares about is her jealousy of Rebecca.  The narrator has nothing to be jealous of anymore.  Maxim never loved her so she doesn’t care that he killed Rebecca.  They do everything they can to cover up for Maxim even though Rebecca’s cousin knows Maxim is guilty.  Reading this book after Jane Eyre I kind of knew Maxim had killed Rebecca but how everything unfolded was very dramatic.  

Like so much of the imagery in, Rebecca, the last scene is very much in the Gothic tradition, presenting us with a picture that is both beautiful and terrible in the same moment.  It is assumed that Manderley, their mansion, is burning (and that Mrs. Danvers probably had a hand in it).  The narrator even sees the blaze as a metaphor for Rebecca's spilled blood, “The sky on the horizon was not dark at all.  It was shot with crimson, like a slash of blood.  And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea” (405).  Kind of like Rebecca’s last revenge towards Maxim and the narrator.  In Rebecca, the ending is chronologically before the beginning.  At the end, the reader remembers the opening chapter where the narrator was remembering the past.  However she recalls it a little sadly. Maxim and the narrator are free and together, but at what cost?  The narrator describes them as having a feelingless existence, living sparely, eating moderately, avoiding all excitement, and never talking about the past. Not quite the life they had hoped for.

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Reading Rebecca

Nothing happens in the book for a while until the narrator is pressed by some people to host a party like the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, used to do.  At this point the narrator has a lot of jealousy towards Rebecca and wants to outdo her.   She decides to host this costume party but she doesn’t know what to dress up as.  Mrs. Danvers suggests becoming a person in one of the mansion’s portraits.  The narrator keeps this a secret from everyone and when she goes downstairs to show her outfit off, Mr. de Winter, Maxim, gets extremely angry.  It was the most emotion he had showed throughout the whole novel.  Turns out, it was the same outfit Rebecca had worn to the last party she hosted before she died and the narrator had dressed up exactly like her.  Mrs. Danvers had set her up.  The next day, Mrs. Danvers corners the narrator by a second story window and tries to coax her to jump.  At this point it seems like Mrs. Danvers is crazy and her hatred for the narrator is made very clear.  Before the narrator can jump though, news that a body had been found inside the boat that Rebecca had supposedly drowned on.  This is when the book really starts picking up again 

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Reading Rebecca

After the narrator marries Mr. de Winter, the book slows down and there isn’t a lot of drama.  The most significant thing the narrator does is explore the mansion she now lives in and builds up jealousy towards her husband’s dead wife.  The narrator constantly mentions how she feels like she took someone’s place and she doesn’t deserve to be there.  She is scared of everything, especially the housemaid, Mrs Danvers, who adored the first Mrs. de Winter.  Mrs. Danvers is old and is described as having hollow eyes and looking like a skeleton.  She has it out for the narrator for the whole book for “taking the place of the first Mrs. de Winter.”  Eventually, Mrs Danvers humiliates the narrator as an act of revenge.  The reader knows the whole time that Mrs. Danvers dislikes the narrator but it’s not until the end that it’s revealed how much she actually hates her.  

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Reading Rebecca

The first couple chapters of the novel start out where the narrator is remembering way in the future, after the story has finished, what her old life was like, what it was like before she got married and was getting paid to be a woman's, Mrs Van Hopper's, friend. The story slowing changes point of view from the narrator remembering the past to the narrator living the whole thing over again in the present.

This part of the book happens extremely quickly. The narrator meets her future husband while they are both staying at this hotel in Monte Carlo. The narrator hangs out with this guy behind Van Hopper's back for like two weeks before he, de Winter, proposes. Van Hopper is upset, naturally, because now she has no one to pay to be her companion as she travels to New York. She takes it out on the narrator saying, "you know why he's marrying you, don't you? You haven't flattered yourself he's in love with you? The fact is that empty house got on his nerves to such an extent he nearly went off with his head. He admitted as much before you came in the room. He just can't go on living there alone..." (65). Tbh I agree with Van Hopper but that was kind of rude to say to someone who is going to get married. After this section of the book, everything slows way down.

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Reading Rebecca

The first part of the book is the introduction where a woman named Lucy Hughes-Hallett talks about the themes of the story and why characters are the way that they are. She talks about how the book is related back to the author, Daphne du Maurier. Du Maurier was a jealous person apparently when it came to her husband as demonstrated with the narrator, whose name is never given, and her husband, Mr. de Winter. There are a lot of spoilers in this section of the book and the reader is warned when to skip ahead to the actual story and come back later after they have finished the book.

Hughes-Hallott also mentions du Maurier's personal life and how as a child du Maurier "fantasized about being a boy" (xii). Hughes-Hallot goes on to explain about du Maurier's struggles with her sexuality growing up in the early 1900's, how she called herself a '"half-breed".' Du Maurier had an alter ego growing up that she called Eric, but she "put that boy that was in her in a box" once she reached her late teens.

I wasn't expecting to find any of this out in only the introduction of the book but I think it adds to how the characters and their personalities are perceived.

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Choosing a Fiction Book

At first I was going to read some Stephen King novels like Cujo, The Green Mile, or The Shining, but then I was told it may be hard to find some criticism about any of these books or their author. So by asking for suggestions, I reviewed my options and ended up selecting the novel, Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier because it seemed interesting and had some criticism about it and du Maurier. The plotline is very similar to Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, except for the fact that the main theme in, Rebecca, is jealousy and has a kind of horror vibe about it because the end is twisted and unexpected.

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Postcards

I’ve seen you a thousand times.

Every time you look slightly different

But bear a similar image.

You ask

How I am

You say

How they were

They love me

Goodbye

I live for your art

That tells where you’ve been

Maybe I should visit one day

And send them a postcard

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Perks of Being a Wallflower

     The portrayal of the characters and their problems in the movie, Perks of Being a Wallflower, seemed more accurate than that of, Rebel Without a Cause.  While many teenagers may have some of the same problems as characters in the movie, no one person has all of those problems at the same like Charlie did.  The characters did seem more believable because they had more natural and believable interactions and deeper relationships with each other than those in, Rebel Without a Cause.  

     In relation to the rhetorical triangle, the audience was still teens.  Teens and young adults are becoming a bigger target audience, especially if they believe they may be able to relate to the movie, music, or other media.  The purpose of the movie was show how teens act nowadays and shoe they too can have mental problems and need help and a role model to get through their problems.  I’m still having trouble with the speaker because if teens are the audience, can teens also be the speaker?  Maybe the speaker is adults that want to inform teens that everything will be okay, their problems are only temporary.

     In a conversation with my sister about the movie, we agreed that the characters in this movie were very problematic.  Many people do not have some of the problems that Charlie, Sam, and Patrick had, at least not all at once.  I compared, Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Rebel Without a Cause, and while they were very different movies, they both had similar aspects: gay characters, the main character was a boy that eventually got his girlfriend, each main character found solace in their parents by the end of the movie, and both Jim and Charlie have a male role model they look to for help during the movies.

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Rebel Without a Cause

     The portrayal of the characters and their problems in, Rebel Without a Cause, did not seem accurate to how people would act now or even back then.  Even the problems did not seem believable, kids would never get into as much trouble as Plato did at the end of the movie.  The characters and their acting were unbelievable because, for example, nobody seemed effected by Buzz’s death.  Buzz’s friends did not seem to care, only Jim really did once he got back to his house and was having a conversation with his parents.  Plus, Judy started to have a relationship with Jim the same night that her boyfriend died, she did not even seem all that upset by his death.  

     In relation to the rhetorical triangle, the purpose was to show teens in the movie industry and really highlight how teens are seen as rebels to adults, but they really over exaggerated it with the cars at the cliff scene and Plato’s standoff with the police.  The audience was supposed to be teens because at the time the movie was made, there were not a lot of other movies with teens as the main characters.  I am still unsure about who the speaker was.  It could not be teens because teens do not see themselves in this light.  Maybe it was adults and they wanted teens to see how adults see them in society.

     In a conversation with my mom about the movie, we talked about how every teen character had something that each of their friends did not have, but wanted in their family life.  Judy wants love from her parents but they don't reciprocate it.  Jim's parents love him but he doesn't reciprocate it.  Plato just wanted somebody (preferably a family) to love him.  By the end of the movie, Plato had almost made parents or parental figures out of Jim and Judy.  We also talked about how we thought Plato might have been gay.  It turns out, Plato was the first gay character ever on screen which was almost unheard of at the time the movie was made.  I also made a connection between this movie and the book, Catcher in the Rye.  Both in this book and the movie there was the prominence of the color red, they were coming of age stories about rebel teenagers eventually finding some sort of self acceptance at the end, and they both came out in the 1950′s.

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Originality

     I have been thinking about the question, “What is original?” for days on end and I still cannot think of anything.  Maybe nothing is original, except for the wheel if you really want to go back that far, but even the wheel is probably based of something.  

     I’ve always been told that everything stems from something else.  Are our own imaginations even original then?  Every piece of artwork I’ve ever created has been based off of something, even if I didn’t mean for it to be.  Art can display individuality but not originality.  

     Abstract art is not supposed to be based off anything.  The first abstract artist, Wassily Kandinsky created his artwork by “expressing his inner experience.”  Many could argue then that his art was based off of nature and therefore not be original but individual.   Plus, it was also said that Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art; that musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds.  He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.  So if Kandinsky’s art is based off of music, is it really original?  Music and painting are different types of art so are they original in their selective fields?

     I think that we like the believe things can be original, it makes us believe we can create original things too.  However, deep down we know that everything stems from something else and that its really a question of what is the original vs the individual.

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My goal for this project was to bring more awareness to the stages of accepting grief so that teenagers and young adults are more understanding of those grieving the death of a loved one. It is important to understand that everyone grieves in their own way. Not everyone goes through all of these stages and not necessarily in this order. However, all grief takes time and being aware of these stages will help people be more understanding of those who have lost a loved one and their healing process. I will know if this project was successful if at least 10 people like and/ or repost my video.

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Primary Work #6

This article highlights a few of the major scenes in the book and how closely they compared to the major scenes in the movie.  It points out the differences, what makes them different, and why.  There are links on the website to other sites that, if the reader so desired, would teach them more about, Wild, and the Pacific Crest Trail.

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/wild/

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Secondary Work #5

The book, Wild, was turned into a film in 2014.  According to my next source, the movie followed the book closely with a few exceptions.  I intend to watch the movie so I can make these comparisons for myself.  Maybe I’ll write another post about the comparisons.  Here is a link to the trailer:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2305051/

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Primary Work #5

In the fifth and final section of, Wild, Cheryl Strayed comes across a river on the final stretch of her hike. In order to continue her hike, she has to cross the river. When she bends down to wash her face in the water, she thinks of her mother for the first time in several chapters. She decides her mother is on the other side of the river. She feels something release. This is the last major character development. This scene is kind of like Strayed has finally let go of the grief and loss of losing her mother. She can finally move on with her life. Strayed has let go of her past life along with everything and everyone in it. This is the part of the book that I wait the entire book for. This is the desired result of Strayed wanting to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in the first place.