Friday, November 14

is for transcendence.












The Golden Compass:

• didacticism
• daemon
• dust
• storytelling
• agnostic
• gnostic
• atheist
• Philip Pullman

My paper

“Life, what is it but a dream?”

“A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep, in dreams you will lose your heartaches, whatever you wish for, you keep…” is a line from a very famous song featured in Disney’s Cinderella. I never paid much attention to these words as I’ve sang them probably a thousand times throughout my 23 years. Never questioned their validity or how they applied to the world, but truly, this idea is prevalent in every story ever written. From songs, to films, to literature, to our daily lives the idea of dreams and sleeping are vastly important. It is not merely something that people do during the REM cycle of their nights, but also something that they strive to accomplish in their lives, and is generally used interchangeably with the word ‘goal.’ Keeping this in mind it should be no surprise that the idea of ‘dreams’ are not only one of the key subjects in class discussion, but in all of the stories as well. Each heroine experienced their dreams differently, but each understood that what they experienced during their time asleep was the most important of all.
For Sleeping Beauty, it was not that she was dreaming, but her lack of dreaming that concerns the reader. “Right after touching the tip of the spindle, the girl collapsed on a nearby bed and fell into a deep sleep” (Grimm 99). She was cursed into a dreamless sleep, which is the worst thing imaginable for a witch to do because then the princess would spend eternity in a world of nothing; a world where there are no wishes, hopes, joys or happiness. Luckily for her, a prince was waiting to rescue her from this horrible state, but what if he wouldn’t have come along? To spend forever without dreaming is horrible thing to imagine, which the sorceress must have known, thus choosing this as her princess’ fate. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams are “a realization of unfulfilled desires” and the princess probably didn’t realize how important her dreams were until they were taken away. It wasn’t until the prince kissed her awake that her desires could be fulfilled and they could live happily ever after (Freud).
Lyra from His Dark Materials experiences her profound dream in a very different way than the rest of our heroines. “Oh, but my dream, Will- can’t tell you how strange it was! It was like when I read the alethiometer, all that clearness and understanding going so deep you can’t see the bottom, but clear all the way down” (Pullman 670). She dreams, when induced into sleep by her psychotic mother, of speaking to her friend Roger, who is stuck in the land of the dead and is afraid. She believes, because of this dream that she needs to speak to him and ask him to forgive her, to move on not only with her life, but to fulfill her destiny, whatever that may be. When she tells Will, he too believes in her dream, because he wants to speak to his recently deceased father to ask for guidance. Her dream tells her what she should do, which can be connected to Jungian dream psychology. Jung wrote: "The reason for this exceptional position of dreams lies in their peculiar mode of origin: they do not arise, like other conscious contents, from any clearly discernible, logical and emotional continuity of experience, but are remnants of a peculiar psychic activity taking place during sleep. Their mode of origin is sufficient in itself to isolate dreams from the other contents of consciousness, and this is still further increased by the content of the dreams themselves, which contrasts strikingly with our conscious thinking" (Jung). It was in Lyra’s conscious that knew what she must do, and without her dream as a guide she never would have known the course she needed to take. If Mrs. Coulter had never induced her into this sleep would Lyra and Will have known what they needed to do? Perhaps, but more likely not, making this presentiment-type dream far superior to its dream-brethren. Not only because it was more realistic, but also because it contained a foretelling aspect, which led them to the next step in their journey, the true path they were destined to take.

Alice from Alice in Wonderland is the victim of a reality-seeming dream. She is completely lucid in the dream and feels like it is reality, although she is confused by it greatly. Her time in wonderland was nonsensical and fantastic, seemingly unreal, but real all the same. She awakes at the end, in her sister’s lap and is confounded by the realness of what she just experienced, “‘Wake up, Alice dear!’ said her sister. ‘Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!’ ‘Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!’ said Alice…” (Carroll 125). But when Alice attempts to explain the dream to her sister, because she had not experienced it, it did seem incredible, yet yearned to understand it herself. Although her sister does try to imagine it, it seems so unrealistic that she cannot wrap her mind around in entirely. Perhaps this is solely because she wasn’t there with Alice, or perhaps because she had lost the childish ability to believe that dreams are reality. In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice awakes in the same manner, although she had already experienced the same thing before. She is confused and disoriented, and believes that her cat, because it was there too, remembers as well. The last line in the story is “life, what is it but a dream?” in which Carroll helps the reader to understand that we too are living in a dream, awaiting the day we will wake up and realize it (Carroll 239).
Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had a dream occurrence much like Alice, where she had an amazing experience, only to wake up and realized it was only a dream. In the film version, the viewer discovers that all the characters in the dream are in her ‘real’ life in Kansas. The fascinating part of Dorothy’s dream is that she sleeps, eats and lives her daily life during it. Mainly in dreams, such as Alice’s, the dreamer doesn’t do these practical everyday things, instead, they live a super-human existence, where these mundane things aren’t necessary. But it seems that Baum makes a point of mentioning these things, and making it clear that certain characters, like the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman don’t need these to survive as the Lion, Toto and Dorothy do. While in the field of poppies, all of the characters (aside from the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman because they were not “made of flesh”) fall into a deep sleep (Baum 112). If not for the mice that the friends had saved earlier, they would have perished. Unlike Coleridge’s drug-induced slumber, this one did not breed brilliance; it was a deep, dreamless slumber. The emphasis on dream versus reality is a major theme in both Alice and The Wizard. But dissimilar to Alice, Dorothy realizes that she has to experience the dream to see that reality is the most rewarding, whereas Alice likes the dream better than reality.

All of the characters found in literature dream and sleep, and those who cannot feel as if they are without a vastly important part of their life. Dreams can help to fulfill our goals, show us to treasure our lives and help us understand our destinies. Many live their lives dissatisfied because they long for their dreams to become reality, while others learn to treasure their lives because the dream is never as good as the reality, because “life, what is it but a dream?” (Carroll 239).

*for a detailed works cited, please contact me. :)

The many faces of Ariel...

Take one: Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, The anime version made in Germany in 1975.

Take two: The original Disney version, where Eric and Ariel fell in love and got married.

Take three: The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea, The story of Ariel and Eric's daughter, Melody.

Take four: The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, which chronicles the violent death of Ariel's mother and the relationship between her and her sisters. Emphasizes their love of music.

Once Upon a Mattress

For my bday my friend back home sent me this silly movie called 'Once Upon a Mattress' which is AMAZING! It's sarcastic, funny and goofy but the songs and acting is great. It tells the story of how Lady Larken and Sir Harry are in love and want to get married, but the controlling Queen, Aggravain won't let anyone until her son, Prince Dauntless finds a 'real' princess. So her and the Wizard create very very difficult (impassable) tests for them to take and no one is good enough, until Princess Winnifred. Although it takes some trickery on the part of the Prince's friends, Winnifred is truly the one for Dauntless. Good stuff! Anyway, this obviously is based on Princess and the Pea and was off-Broadway for a while. It's cleaver and good, check it out.

Bridge to Terabithia

Speaking of children's books being made into movies, Bridge to Terabithia is a wonderful book that they made into a movie a few years ago. Wiki describes the plot as:

Bridge to Terabithia is the story of fifth grader Jesse Aarons, who befriends his new neighbor Leslie Burke when he loses a footrace to her at school. Leslie is a smart, talented, outgoing tomboy. Jesse thinks highly of her. Jesse is an artistic boy who, in the beginning of the novel, is fearful, angry, and depressed. After meeting, and then ultimately losing Leslie, Jesse is transformed. He becomes courageous and lets go of his anger and frustration.

This lengthy explanation seemed to sum it up better than my dramatic and emotional prose. At community college I had to read this for an online children's lit class, and I was heartbroken at the end. So heartbroken in fact that when we had to discuss it in the online conversations I couldn't stop crying. I think the aspect that stood out most to me, besides their amazing friendship, is their imagination. They create an entire land completely in their minds, and the movie did an amazing job bringing that to life. Although the movies wasn't exactly like the book it is one of the few movie adaptions that I actually enjoyed watching.

Where the Wild Things Are

Whilst I was blogging class notes from eons ago I came across our discussion of 'Where the Wild Things Are.' When I did a google image search, I realized that they are making a live-action movie! It has Forest Whitaker, Catherine O'Hara, and James Gandolfini to name a few. Apparently it is going to feature live action, suitmation, anamatronics, and CGI. I'm not sure about you, but I am very excited to see this movie in 2009!

imdb site

wiki site

Speaking of T. S. Eliot...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.


The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

By T.S. Eliot