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"The Anything Box"

Zenna Henderson’s “The Anything Box” is a short story that explores themes of childhood wonder and imagination. The story focuses on a young girl named Sue-Lynn, and what seems to be her inability to tell fiction from reality. Sue-Lynn is the owner of a fantastical box in which she claims she can go wherever she wants. Of course, this makes the adults in her life both questioning and concerned. Her teacher specifically notices her attachment to this box and at first she brushes this off. It isn’t until her curiosity gets the best of her that she looks into this box herself. 

Zenna Henderson shows readers that imagination can be a very powerful tool, especially in childhood. She takes an incredibly simple object and turns it into a magical item that possesses this extraordinary power. Sue-Lynn is positive that the box can take her anywhere, and show her whatever she wants to see. Her teacher, however, is skeptical of this. Of course a box can’t take you everywhere. It’s impossible? Right? It isn’t until she looks into the box that she manages to see what Sue-Lynn does, and it’s beautiful. She is immediately enthralled by the world in front of her. She only saw what she wanted to. Her teacher questions Sue-Lynn on where she got it, but she became defensive as soon as the words left her mouth. 

Days later, after an incident where Sue-Lynn fainted at school, she loses her anything box, and no one knows where it has gone. The teacher, searching through her desk drawer, finds the box. She had it the whole time. With the box now in the teacher's possession, she opens it once again and sees a life where she could be with what appears to be a past lover once again. Her use of the box blurs the lines of fiction and reality for her, and this convinces her to sympathize with Sue-Lynn once again, and return her anything box. 

Your imagination can be a really terrifying thing if you really consider the extent of it. It was brought up whether or not Sue-Lynn was using this as some kind of coping mechanism, and the box was just her withdrawal from her reality. This is brought into question when her teacher sees inside the box as well. Surely they can’t both be serious. I think it’s interesting how it's never completely clear to readers what they could have been dealing with. Is the box really magical? Is it possible that the teacher convinced herself to see something that wasn’t truly real? Obviously this story is magical realism, so the likelihood of the box really being magical is quite high, but it’s interesting to speculate. Kids can have some really crazy imaginations. It can go really far, and it can be dangerous if you let it fall to delusion. It makes me wonder about how that plays in this story. The end really solidifies their solidarity in this situation. Sue-Lynn offers her anything box for whenever the teacher wants to use it. The final line is SUe-Lynn, confirming that she will never again lose her anything box, and this is a reminder to the readers that she is really attached to this thing. She truly can’t let it go. 

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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas- Review

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin presents a utopian society that thrives on the happiness of its citizens. It almost seems too good to be true, and the narrator even acknowledges this, speaking directly to readers, “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.” They then go on to tell of a child, locked in a basement and facing neglect. It’s explained that the society rests on the shoulders of this childs misery. The text illustrates this moral dilemma: Does the happiness of many justify the misery of one?

This is a loaded story for me, and my second time really digging into it. I remember reading this in my senior year of high school, and it definitely sent me into a little bit of a spiral. I almost want to compare it to 1984 by George Orwell. It has been quite some time since I read that, but both of them give me the same dystopian “you’ll only be happy here and no where else” kind of feel. The story really did not sit well with me, but it wasn’t really intended to comfort rather than discomfort, so I guess the author conveyed what she wanted to! I think one of the reasons it feels so disturbing is the connect to human nature. It makes readers think about what they may do in this situation. It brings up alot of moral quandaries, mostly all leading back to the “the good of many over the good of one” argument. Personally, I can’t say I know what I would do if I was put in such a position. I would like to say I would help the child, but realistically I don’t know how true that is. It has been so instilled in these people that the reason their society functions is because of the suffering of one child. I’m sure the fear of causing the collapse of their utopia is enough to keep people from doing much of anything. Really, the only safe option would be to simply walk away. That would only lead to the endangering of oneself rather than an entire city.

As a general review, I think this short story is beautifully written. I believe it conveys everything the author wanted to say while being incredibly thought provoking long after you have read the last sentence. It is one of those that really stays with you from quite some time. It’s a pretty easy read, and I love the narrative form of it. I feel as though the narrator is speaking directly to the audience, trying to describe everything and make us believe what they are saying is the truth, even encouraging you to throw in personal desires. “They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! But I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all.” 

The tone shift is immediate, however it’s flawless. She ends the description of luxury with “Then let me describe one more thing.”, then proceeds to tell the horrors of what this child is going through as if it makes it more believable that it is not perfect, and for me, it does.

I love this story, and it is definitely my favorite this semester. I enjoyed how haunting it is, and it gave me something to think about for a while.

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Literature Review I

“Dagon” by H.P Lovecraft is a horror story that feels almost real through the elements it introduces.It follows an unnamed narrator, a merchant mariner, through his experiences in World War I. By his accounts, the ship he was working on had been captured and sunk by the Germans in the South Pacific Ocean. His crew is taken on to a German ship, but our narrator makes the decision to escape on a small, unseen boat. He drifts aimlessly for days with no land in sight. Evidentially this takes a toll on his mental health, as it is revealed that this is a suicide note and he is a morphine addict. One of these isolated nights, he wakes up from a dream to find himself in an environment nothing short of hellish. In his exploration of this new environment, he stumbles upon huge white monuments, creatures that almost depict man. He attempts a desperate escape from this pit, and wakes up in a San Francisco hospital after being rescued. Once recovered, he seeks out information on what he has seen, particularly interest in the lore of a fish-god, Dagon. He loses himself to madness.

This story is an interesting one. Published in 1919, it established a standard for “weird” fiction. It draws on themes of humanity and existential dread, making it feel familiar to readers, as well as an element of cosmic horror to bring in the concepts of fantasy. This is common around the works of Lovecraft, centering on the unknown and the inner workings of fear.

One of the elements that makes this story so intriguing to audiences is the vivid, twisted imagery presented. It is not quite the picture you see when you think “horror”, leaving out most of the blood, gore, and ghoulish apparations. Instead, it draws focus on the terrors of the deep sea, a fear that is common among people, even myself. This story resonates with me as something I would never want to witness, or I fear I can understand out narrator isn the loss of himself to madness over what he discovered. The imagery presented is incomprehensible, allowing readers to imagine the worst that the human mind can possibly draw up. 

Another unique element of this story is the format of it. It begins as a suicide note, and this is made immediately clear to readers. Clearly, our unnamed narrator is in a mental state that is indescribable, paired with his morphine addiction. This is the set up for a completely unreliable narrator, which allows the reader to wonder whether or not what the narrator witnessed was real. It could simply be chalked up to the trauma he experienced during the war, his fear of the sea, and the delusion that can come with being alone and starving on a boat for days at a time. It could potentially have been a bad dream. I personally was reminded of “The Life of Pi” in this way, and how the main character of that was thought to be hallucinating his experiences by the end. 

Another element of horror brought about in this story feels more real, and has potential to connect with every audience. The idea that humanity is insignificant in a vast world, especially when we have no idea what could be out there beyond what is discovered. This is a common trope in horror and fantasy, but what separated “Dagon” from the others is how Lovecraft forces audiences to consider it. It draws on those feelings of dread, and almost has the potential to send audiences into an existential crisis with the narrator. Considering there are forces far more powerful that we could ever imagine, and if I had believed I was witness to something, I probably would also lose my mind. 

Overall, I really did enjoy this story the second time around. It is horrifying to think about, which surely means that H.P. Lovecraft is doing at least something right. The combination of an unreliable narrator with a concept as scary as other worldly beings, it's the perfect pair for a long think and contemplation about what on earth is here with us?