In defence of Holden Caulfield.

I know what you're thinking. Omg, Catcher in the Rye. What a dumb, boring, whiny piece of literature.

Well you're wrong. But I'd like you to take a moment and appreciate how lucky you are to be wrong.

For me, Catcher is one of my favourite representations of depression. It's not a glorified work about the beauty of the wilting flower and the triumph of Man's Eternal Spirit. It's about a teenage boy who's lost in the big wide world of adulthood. In my experience, depression does not go away just because you want it to or will it to. You can't just 'get over' depression in the way that most people suggest that Holden does. It's a slow upwards struggle that is neither glorious or triumphant.

Depression doesn't need a reason to hit you.

Depression doesn't care if you are young or old, rich or poor.

I read Catcher both before struggling with depression, and afterwards. At first I "didn't get it" but now I do. I know what it's like to be failing classes for no good reason, to be in an empty room with no one to call and no one to turn to. Depression is isolating, and it makes you very insular in your thinking. I didn't know where the ducks had gone or what I was going to do with my life, just like Holden didn't.

It's a truly horrible feeling, and that's why I'm partially glad when people 'don't get' Holden. Because it means that they haven't been through what we've been through.

But it also upsets me when people dismiss Holden's problems, or tell him to 'get over himself'. Mental illness is like a physical disease. You don't tell someone with cancer to 'get over themselves' after a few days of bed rest yet both problems can be debilitating and suck the life force out of you. Holden's cure was specialist treatment, not a spiritual journey. Telling someone with depression to 'cheer up' doesn't help. It just invalidates their feelings and exacerbates the problem, often with tragic results.

The Great Gatsby and why it's so great. Part one.

When you become known as someone who's enchanted with literature, so much to the point of perusing a degree in lit, you often get asked a question by people who don't quite know what they're getting themselves into.

What's your favourite book?

Now, I've read a lot of books. And I've enjoyed a lot of books. I've read books that have made me happy, books that have made me sad, and books that have changed me so profoundly that I owe who I am today to them. So I don't understand why I receive weird looks whenever I start rattling off a list that is being revised as it's said. But if I had to choose, at gun point, knife point or wand point, I would choose Gatsby.

Even though I grew up at Hogwarts.

Even though Holden stopped me from committing suicide.

Even though Augustus Waters made me cry for 20 minutes

and even though Julia Forester made me see what a real heroine was like.

Gatsby's my book. My favourite. My Gatsby.

And with the movie coming out next year as well as there being so many hate posts about it, I want to explain to you what makes Gatsby so Great.

First what it means: Symbolism and what we can take from this book. Then we'll do some proper close reading.

 If you're on the anti-lit brigade (Metaphres are stupid! OMG that's not what the author intended! Everyone is just making stuff up! This has no value in the real world!):

This is John Green. This is an author. He puts symbolism in his books. He thinks that critical reading is important. He loves Gatsby as much as I do.

From here:

You often hear in high school English classes, for instance, that thinking about symbols is dumb or useless or “ruining the book.” But underneath it all, this is why we have language in the first place. We don’t really need language to share the news of your back pain: You can point at your back and grimace to tell me that your back hurts, and I can nod sympathetically.
But to explain to you the nature and nuance of my grief or pain or joy, I need abstractions. I need symbols. And the better our symbols are, the more clearly we’ll be able to communicate with each other, and the more fully we’ll be able to imagine each other’s experience. Good symbolism makes empathy easier. 

So why the strings? The strings inside a person breaking struck me as a better and more accurate abstract description of despair than anthropomorphized symbols (broken heart, etc.).
And this is very important to remember when reading or writing or painting or talking or whatever: You are never, ever choosing whether to use symbols. You are choosing which symbols to use.

You are the composite of a hundred thousand different symbols. Every word, every gesture. The food you eat, your clothes, your hair, your make-up. All of it is symbolic. All these things add up to who you are and how you'd like to been seen. Your gender, your sexuality, your class and your taste and how you relate to others. Nothing you do is not symbolic in some way. It might seem like it isn't because the meanings of what you are doing are so indexed into society that they are transparent, but trust me, they are. And most of these are symbols that you choose.

But how does this wishy-washy liberal arts shit help you love The Great Gatsby?

Because, as Nick Points out, in chapter three, "most affectations conceal something eventually". 

 All the characters have affectations, all the characters are hiding something. Gatsby has his "old sport" to try and hide the fact that he's New Money. Daisy has her cool, melodic exterior to hide her inner discontent. Jordan acts haughty with her head thrown back, to show the world how cool and unaffected she is by life, her confidence hides her cheating and carelessness. Nick stays silent and polite to hide his disgust with the crowd he goes along with.

Tom... well Tom doesn't hide much. But Tom is also the biggest asshat on the planet.

And that's a point that can be brought up in this book. Is it arguing that everyone on the inside is just as ugly and unbearable as Tom? Certainly the character's inner selves do not serve much as role models. Can we project that to our lives? Underneath our clothes and hair and choices are we all bitter Daisy Buchanans and arrogant Toms, careless Jordans and prideful Nicks?

That, my dear reader, is up to you. I'm not going to tell you what to take away from a book or how to view humanity.

But as Nick says, and as John Green points out, Gatsby has an "extraordinary gift for hope". I take The Great Gatsby as a novel about hope. The ending is irrelevant, to an extent. "All lives end. All hearts are broken". That's life. It's a sad part of life, but it is inescapable. It's what you make of life that matters, not how much money you have, and that's something which provides contention in the book.

It's also the American Dream. That we can all be successful, no matter our class or standing. Except, as shown in the book, if you measure success by monetary value, things don't turn out too well.

Gatsby, to me, is a hopeful book that faces the human condition with a simple honesty. How do I come to this conclusion? Because of Nick.

 “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

We are all the narrators of our own stories. We all go to mystical places, like the party at Gatsby's. We all experience such strange and wonderful things. And sometimes they end. But it's not always the end. The difference between Gatsby's death, Tom and Daisy's evacuation and the break up with Jordan is the way that Nick feels about them after they have gone. He's not going to see any of them again, so they all might have died, for all the good that them being alive does for Nick. In his mind they are all dead. But Nick is not. Nick moves on, his life starts again.

Just like Gatsby did after the war. He rebuilt and kept on going in order to soothe his aching heart.

And we can take these things from the book. That we need to look behind peoples affectations to get to know them. That life starts again. That we are all broken little fools, but we can achieve so much, can rise to such greatness. "That tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out out arms further.... And one fine morning -

so we beat on, boats against the current born ceaselessly into the past."

Classics study 2012: 1 - Lysistrata.

Okay, Pathetic Mortals, let me give you the run down on Lysistrata.


This play was written in 411 BC by a dude called Aristophanes. And he was a sick minded puppy (but in a good way). He is the biggest name in 'old comedy' basically because we have no other plays. There was this one other comedian called Cratinus, but none of his full plays survive.  


Now, why is Aristophanes considered the Father of Comedy?


Because he used:

• Puns
• Witty dialogues
• Physical comedy
• Funny costumes
• Fart jokes
• Sex Jokes
• Poo jokes

Like, in one of the choruses for one of Aristophanes' plays, he actually got them to throw actual poo at an actual poet that he didn't like. 

But we're talking Lysistrata here, so I'm just gonna focus on the sex.

So, Lysistrata is set in some alternate universe Athens, which is just like normal Athens, but things are craaaaazzzyyyy(!!!) But, like the Athens of the readers, it's set behind a wartime setting.

So we get this group of women from many different parts of what would eventually become Greece. 

Audiance: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WOMEN calling a meeting?!?!

And this chick, Lysistrata (name meaning "defeater of Armies") stands up, all heroic like and proclaims:

I'm going to stop the Pelopenesian war and UNITE GREECE (even though there isn't a Greece yet) WHO IS WITH ME?!

And naturally, all the women are behind her, who wouldn't want to stop their children dying and bring their husbands home?

So they're all like "Yeah, okay, but how are we meant to do that?" to which Lysistrata replies

BY GIVING UP SEX. 

And there's naturally only one response a woman would ever possibly make in this situation:

OH HELL NO.

But, eventually the women agree, and one Choral fight, several speeches and one almost sex-scene later, things are getting desperate.

I'd just like to take a moment here to remind ourselves of two every important facts

1. All the parts in these plays were performed by men
2. All the costumes were designed to exaggerate the body, eg. butts. which means that
3. All the men were walking around with gigantic phallus's (because the women would not have sex with them) "Who are you? A man or a walking Phallus?"

So yeah. The Spartan Herald comes all rearin' to go, and the Athenian men realise that they're not so different after all. Enter an actual female prostitute all naked to please the audience and viola! One happy ending for all. 

Main Characters:

Lysistrata: Leader of the Women. Strong, resourceful, and strategic.

Cinesias: Husband of Myrrhine, name is a pun meaning to strike or to fuck  he's kind of a leader of the men, although he really only tries to stop the war because his wife says she won't have sex with him unless he doesn't.

Myrrhine: Said wife of Cinesias. Refuses to have sex with her husband, which is apparently a really big thing and we should all applaud her self control.

Lampeto: Spartan warrior. funny and bad ass.

Magistrate: Misogynistic pig. Doesn't like the women folk nor does he believe that they can run Greece. 

There were really only 3 actors in these sorts of plays  a volunteer if they could find them. There was the chorus of around roughly 12 people, this time split into a men's and a women's chorus. These people were sponsored by some wealthy dude to dance and sing. The Ancient Greeks were big on dancing and singing. As well as sex and alcohol. 

You've also got to realise that this play presumes a few things. Like 1) The men could only have sex with the women to whom they were married. In reality there were slaves, prostitutes and even each other to have sex with. Also I don't see why they couldn't have just done it themselves, they obviously had masturbation, there's even a remark made by one of the females that they "haven't even seen one of those six-inch leather jobs that helped us out when all else failed". And 2) Why were the men so effected? They were out at war, therefore they really shouldn't be this effected by the strike!

Oh, also I need to make a point about feminism in this play:

It doesn't really exist. Sorry.

I mean I know a case may be made for it, with the lead character being a female who stops this massive war, but really about 80% of the humour came from the fact that a woman (of all things, how modern) managed to stop it. It's like a miniature poodle standing up to a Doberman. That being said an argument can be made for that because it was a woman who ended the war, that it could be Aristophanes sending out a message that if a mere woman can end violence, why can't all these big men in the real world do it?

But really, we try not to presume much real-life meaning inside if Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Just sit back and enjoy the show. 

Review: Chronicle

So I saw Chronicle last night. Yeah, the one with the really annoying ads everywhere.

Trailer:

Personally, I was expecting some funny but eventually serious "Oh hey we have superpowers, let's be HEROES!!1!!" movie, but I was actually quite surprised when it turned out to be quite dark and deep.

Okay, so before I go any deeper:

You have been warned.

From a Media/English student point of view, this movie is actually really good. I kept getting distracted by the pretty shots and the interesting way that it was filmed almost entirely by hand held cameras.

Using hand held cameras has several interesting effects on the movie. It draws the viewer in to the movie, for one, and it also helps us to bond with the main characters, giving us an American Beauty-esqe type of voyeuristic look into their world. But a window is still a barrier, as the main character says, when he is questioned about constantly recording his life.

And it raised a good question of why it's weird that he records things, why we feel so uncomfortable when we are being filmed. Could it be  a link to George Orwell's "1984" where the constant scrutiny stops people from rebelling? Is is that we are just afraid to fully commit to our actions? Anything that we do wrong will die with us and all that remember it. Anything that's recorded stands forever.

Which in return relates to modern day society where celebrities are constantly under scrutiny, just like our (hahahaha) protagonists. 100 years from now people will still know how Brittany shaved off her hair, but they won't know about that time you stole something from the corner store or got a perfect score on minesweeper.

The other interesting thing about this movie is the theme of "power corrupts"... except when it doesn't. This movie was cool because only 1/3 of the guys with telekinesis abused that power. I mean sure they mucked around, but  only one guy, surprisingly the main guy, actually went bad with it.

And by bad I mean he killed people to save his mum, and then sort of went on a power hungry psychotic rage when he was foiled in his plan to kill him abusive dad. It was done in such a way that you could forgive the guy up to a point.

So yeah, Chronicle is a pretty cool movie, and definitely worth a watch.
4/5