Assumptions of Kwaidan

I was hoping to read A Wild Sheep Chase for this week, but I didn't see it in the resources, and there also wasn't a copy available in the library so I decided to read the recommended Kwaidan stories instead, since they were free...

In The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi, the first thing I noticed was how in-tune with nature the author seemed to be. He wrote about nature spiritually. He called the beach haunted, but then wrote about it in a way where I wasn't sure if it really was haunted, or if it was just meant to be a poetic metaphor. For example, he said that when the waves crashed loudly at night, it sounded like people were yelling. If this wasn't a ghost story book, I would just assume that this was a metaphor. Religion in this story has a lot of influence on spirits compared with in ghost stories in Western culture, where generally ghosts don't really care or think about religion, probably partly due to the fact that ghosts are incompatible with most of Western religion (I think..?). It seems like in this author's culture, spirits are considered more normal and commonplace. They aren't always discussed as scary or amazing, just as a part of life that happens... I don't know much about the Shinto religion, but I believe it used to be really popular in Japan and involved making shrines on roadsides and in people's yards for spirits to take shelter in. Possibly the Shinto culture is the same or similar to the culture of this author. Hoichi must be very magical if he was able to completely recover after his ears were chopped off.

There was an interesting juxtaposition on the first page of Diplomacy, where there is a chaotic scene of a man about to be executed unfolding in a peaceful Japanese garden. Again, there is a very matter-of-fact perspective about the paranormal: "If any person be killed while feeling strong resentment, the ghost of that person will be able to take vengeance upon the killer. This the samurai knew." The ending of Diplomacy was interesting, despite being oddly abrupt. It made me wonder if the ghost of the dead man ever ended up biting the stone, since it was the only desire he knew and it would be weird if he didn't act on it, in my opinion.

The writing of these stories reminds me of Aesop's Fables or some other book of simple stories that have moral lessons at the end. It's very simplistic and straightforward with the occasional bit of dry quirkiness that may or may not have been intentional. It's not usually the type of writing that I see for Western ghost stories. It's weird how the girl in Of a Mirror and a Bell is obsessed with mirrors, like she got sad that she never got her family mirror and thought about the old saying, "a mirror is the Soul of a Woman." It's kind of funny to me how random this story is. The idea of a lot of loud crazy townspeople trying to smash the bell as powerfully as they can is a fun visual image, and so is are the religious leaders who get so annoyed with the loud noises that they roll the bell down a hill into a swamp. And then they went on a random tangent about nazoraëru before getting back to the bell in the swamp. The end of this story was also super weird but in a funny way I guess. They lead up this whole time to the wealth, and then never said what it was. Am I supposed to be getting a message out of this story such as be humble or don't be greedy? The farmer guy at the end was humble and greedy. I don't understand why the spiriti revealed herself to him and no one else. This story left me scratching my head. Maybe it is assumed that I would understand this ending as a member of Japanese culture. Possibly there were symbols that a Japanese person would understand and I wouldn't.

Relationships Portrayed in Twilight

A popular topic of discussion/marvel/confusion in class today was how the Twilight saga got to be so popular. Well, here's my theory...

The first time I read Twilight was as an eight grader, so this would have been the year 2007, one year before the movie was released. One thing that I don't think a lot of people know about/remember from being a middle schooler in the 2000's is how bad other popular books were at this time. In comparison, Twilight was probably around a B+. These are some of the other books that were popular around this time:

Not to judge books by their covers, but you can guess from these images that the quality of popular books in middle school was probably not that high...

Another thing about this short time period was that a fun new culture was just starting to take off in middle schools across the country...

Doesn't it look like if you were going to take the traditional teenagey book and combine it with the above picture, it would look something like this? 

So that is my theory on how Twilight got really popular. People complain about the writing a lot, but if you look at other books that were popular back then, this isn't too bad. That and people liked the slightly dark twist that this book had. The cover itself was mostly black with some red and white which were popular colors. But if you ask me why all of these books (such as The Clique, Gossip Girl, etc.) were popular, then I would be at a loss... 

Anyway, now to discuss the relationships portrayed in Twilight...

The main-ish characters in this book are Bella, Charlie, Edward, Renée, Tyler, Eric, Mike, Jacob, Jessica, Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and James.

Bella's parents are Charlie and Renée. Charlie is a police officer who lives in Forks, and he is quiet and awkward but down-to-earth and generous. He buys Bella a truck to give her when she first arrives in Forks, though he doesn't have a lot of money. They share a small house that only has one bathroom and a living room the size of a handkerchief, as Bella described it. Charlie is still in love with Renée, and has pictures of her hanging in the house even though they have been divorced for many years after a very short marriage. Unlike Charlie, Renée is very outgoing and talkative. She lives in Arizona in a "lower-income neighborhood" even though the city overall is wealthy. Renée lives with a guy named Phil who plays for a minor-league baseball team. Bella appreciates Charlie's quietness even though she finds it awkward at times. It's less annoying to her than her mom's overly-talkativeness. Strangely, Bella thinks of herself as a quiet, awkward person, but to me, she seems very average in her social skills, and definitely more outgoing than Charlie. 

Bella's high school friends/acquaintances are Tyler, Eric, Mike, and Jessica (along with some other less consequential people). Eric is the first person Bella meets, and she seems a little overly-judgey of him for someone who's supposedly bad at making friends and hasn't met anyone else yet and also is supposedly down-to-earth. On their first encounter, Bella tells him a bad joke and judges him when he doesn't laugh. 

The second person Bella meets is Jessica. Jessica is a typical loud, popular high school girl. Bella is a bit overwhelmed by her but they form a decent friendship and go dress shopping and whatnot together. According to Edward, Jessica is very empty-headed... not much substance there, he says, unlike SUPER INTERESTING BELLA! 

The other two (non-vampire) boys Bella befriends in this book are Mike and Tyler. Mike is one of the more popular boys in Forks High School (which again makes you wonder, why did Bella say she was shy and bad at making friends if she ending up making friends with some of the most popular people in school?). Also, he asks her out and shows interest in her many times, but Bella turns him down. Tyler is an idiot who almost hits Bella with his giant van, accidentally, of course.

Jacob Black is one of Bella's closer friends. He's pretty normal, but has just a little more depth than the other mortal boys Bella meets. He lives on the La Push Indian reservation. His dad, Billy, is friends with Bella's dad Charlie, and the tow of them go on fishing trips sometimes. Billy was also the one who sold Charlie the truck. In many ways, Jacob acts like the stereotypical all-American boy. He loves working on cars, and he also likes telling stories at campfires. He's big and strong but still cute... 

The Cullen family consists of Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, Jasper, and Edward. The Cullens are a group of vampires who were "adopted" by Carlisle and converted to "vegetarianism," in which they eat a diet of only non-human meat. Because of this, their eyes are golden instead of red....? After Bella, Edward is the character who shows up the most in the book. He is a studbomb vampire who is constantly saying how he has a dark side and is dangerous for Bella, which just adds to his studly intrigue. For some reason, the scent of Bella's blood is much more tempting to him than normal blood, and that's why he's always really nervous about being around her and is constantly having to control his urges (so studly!). Also, Edward has the amazing ability to read minds. Actually, he can read everyone's mind except Bella's, which adds to his intrigue in her. That's why he assumes that her mind is really interesting and complicated, unlike that stupid Jessica person. 

Carlisle is basically the leader of the Cullen clan. He has very strong morals. He refuses to eat humans, and won't let anyone join his clan if they don't agree to do the same. He works at the hospital as one of the top doctors. If someone is about to die, Carlisle will sometimes turn them into a vampire, which is how Edward became one. He's kind of a fatherly figure in some ways. He is married to Esme, the motherly figure. Rosalie is a beautiful blonde vampire who is really moody and doesn't like Bella very much. She kind of reminds me of the mermaids in Peter Pan who are like, "We were only trying to drown her..."She dates Emmett, who is bulky and testosteroney but nice. Alice is a cute small pixie-like vampire who can see the future. She approves of Bella and Edward's relationship more than any of the other Cullens. 

One last side note, there were no vegetarian vampires that sucked on carrots in this book. That was Bunnicula. 

Frankenstein and the Gothic as it Appears in Contemporary Culture

To me and probably many others, the part of Frankenstein that stood out most was when the monster was observing the De Lacey family for months before he cautiously approached the blind father and was then chased out by the younger De Lacey family members. When I first read Frankenstein as a high school student, I found this scene very relatable and touching. At the time, I struggled in an environment where people were highly judgmental of each other's appearance, which helped me to identify with the monster when he was isolated from others for his appearance.

The monster later hid in a small hovel, resigning to end all interaction with humans, and watched the De Lacey family, learning about what humans are like from them. This is probably not too different from why some people are interested in reality TV shows. They want to learn what it is like to be a part of a group and culture that they don't think they'll ever really be a part of. Someone who is shy and poor might be interested in a show about a family of outgoing, rich people.

Mostly I was moved by the kindness shown by De Lacey to the monster, and the contrast between him, as a blind person, and his children. What would the world be like if everyone judged people by their words instead of their appearances?

Today in class, when we identified some characteristics of Gothicism, I noticed that this part of the book had many of the Gothic attributes. The biggest one is probably strong emotions. The monster experiences strong emotions when he realizes that no one likes him because he's so disfigured. De Lacey experiences strong emotions as well when he shows compassion to the monster. Finally, when De Lacey's children come in, they experience strong emotions of fear and contempt. Another Gothic theme we discussed was turmoil, which was evident in the way the monster viewed himself, and the turmoil between the monster and the younger De Laceys.

One example I think of as an example of the Gothic as it appears in contemporary culture is the popular TV series American Horror Story. I watched the first season, Murder House. This show dealt heavily with death, immortality, and supernatural. It centered around a family that lived in an old haunted house in Los Angeles. Many people died in the house over the years living up to this family moving in, and everyone who died in the house became a ghost there and weren't able to leave the house for all of eternity. The family's interactions with the various ghosts resulted in subplots that had a lot of mystery and suspense, two Gothic characteristics. Another common characteristic is a main female character who ventures into dangerous situations. This was present in Murder House in a character named Violet, a teenage only child of the family that moved in. She ended up being the first in the family to become a ghost after she befriended one of the ghosts in the house named Tate, but then found out that he was a murderer. Tate represented the Gothic characteristic of having a lot of emotion. He was often almost melodramatic and very dark. Violet suffered from depression. The house itself resembles a stereotypical Gothic style house. It was old and Victorian-style. The show is extremely popular and will soon put out a fourth season. All of the seasons so far have strong Gothic themes in them, showing that Gothicism is still alive and is something that lots of people are very interested in.