Third Time's A Charm

     In the novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the old and troubled Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. On the night of Christmas Eve he is warned by these ghosts of the severe consequences of his cold bitterness that could potentially lead to not only the death of ones around him, but death of himself. Similarly, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe comes in the presence of Paul D, Denver, and Beloved to be saved from the long, suffering life she would have lived had she continued to put up with the haunting of her past.

     On the night of Christmas Eve, Scrooge returns home from work to be visited by Marley’s ghost, the ghost of his former business partner who died seven years before. Marley’s ghost carries a load of heavy chains, representing the consequences of greed and selfishness. This ghost parallels with Sethe’s baby ghost that haunts 124 in the beginning of the novel. The presence of the vengeful baby disrupts 124 and constantly reminds Sethe of her murder, which the child believes to be a greedy and selfish action.

     Soon after, the Ghost of Christmas Past haunts Scrooge. The ghost takes him back to his youth, when he was kinder and more innocent. Scrooge also sees his neglected fiancée who ended their relationship because she knew that he could never love her more than he loves money. In Beloved, Paul D represents the “ghost” of the past. He is the first character that brings her into a different state of mind. Paul D brings back good and bad memories of Sethe’s past, including her relationship with him. This sparks her desire to want to go back to feeling that love for him. Paul D convinces Sethe to stop restricting herself to the house. He also tells her to never love one thing a lot, but love a lot of things a little. Comparably, the Ghost of Christmas Past convinces Scrooge to stop restricting himself to only work and money.

     Unlike every other character in Beloved, Denver lives in the present instead of the past. She is aware of what will happen as the course of events changes and tries to keep Sethe grounded, just as the Ghost of Christmas Present tries to show Scrooge. 124 remains separated from the entire community until Denver takes action and changes that. After Denver seeks help, 124 becomes a part of the community and lives up to the present day, no longer stuck in the black hole of the past.

     Ghosts are typically known to be dead people looking for vengeance, or are omens to death. Beloved, although she is a figure of the past, brings out what was determined to come for Sethe: death. Therefore, Beloved’s character mirrors the third ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Sethe was going to let the spirit of 124 and her past eat away at her soul if she didn’t let it go. Beloved returns to surface that guilt which lets Sethe see what her future would be if she wasn’t saved from the past by Paul D and reminded of the present by Denver. If Beloved had not come in human form, Sethe could have died of guilt and loneliness. If the ghost of the future had not come to Scrooge, he could have died for the same reasons. The ghost shows Scrooge his name on a gravestone, which haunts him, just as the name “Beloved” on the baby’s gravestone haunts Sethe. Scrooge’s gravestone is the final straw that brings him to a new state of mind, like Beloved does to Sethe.

     Without Paul D, Denver, and Beloved, Sethe would have never been saved from the haunting of her past, in the same way as Scrooge had the three ghosts to bring him to a present state. In his book “Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination” addressed in the article “How To Do Things With Ghosts” http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/ghostlit/howto.htm , Avery Gordon claims that “being haunted draws us affectively, sometimes against our will and always a bit magically, into the structure of feeling of a reality we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as a transformative recognition.” This reinforces my point of how Scrooge and Sethe both come to recognize the consequences of falling in to what haunts them. 

  

Picture Perfect by Aubrey Chick

Picture Perfect
By: Aubrey Chick

     Isabelle Rose had always dreamed of becoming a model. She would spend her days in bookstores reading the latest fashion magazines and watching runway shows on her television. A part of her would tell her that her curly brown hair, brown eyes, and round rosy cheeks would never be seen on the cover of one of those magazines, yet another side of her had hope.
     Never has there ever been any human more strikingly beautiful than supermodel Caroline Dupree. Caroline stood precisely six feet tall, thin as a piece of paper, and had long black hair that shined like silk in the runway lights. Isabelle just knew she could only dream of even coming close to looking like her. Caroline was "the face" of the top modeling agency in the country, and lived the life that Isabelle had always wanted. At least that's what she thought.
     After years of begging her parents to become a model, seventeen year old Isabelle finally convinced them to let her move to New York City to audition for the modeling agency that produced the one and only, Caroline Dupree. She stepped one foot into the city, where the cars whizzed by, the lights beamed into her eyes, and billboards hovered over every street, and she instantly knew she was one step closer to her dream. However, the perfect dream had quickly been jumbled in her mind when she finally met with the agency. She was taken back when the poised, arrogant people demanded that she lose 25 pounds and get cosmetic surgery in a deadline of six weeks. That same part of her that told her she would never be seen on the cover of a magazine spoke loudly once more, but she refused to listen.
     Young Isabelle opened one of her magazines to a picture of Caroline Dupree, looked in the mirror at herself, took a deep breath, and knew that everything was about to change. Over the course of six weeks, she dedicated herself to a rigorous exercise and diet, and gave into having cosmetic surgery. All she could think about was the hunger and sleep deprivation she suffered each day. Hesitation was always present, but she assumed that maybe it was all worth it.
     After what seemed like an eternity, the day that the new Isabelle appeared in front of the agency finally came. Stepping in front of the mirror that once reflected the Isabelle with round rosy cheeks and curly brown hair, she saw a body she did not recognize. A body with bones protruding out of the shoulders and torso; a body that looked like a skeleton. After the removal of her facial bandages, the doctors praised their fine work, but all Isabelle saw now was dark, sunken eyes and a face she couldn't claim as her own. She said goodbye to who she once was, then headed out the door for the agency.
     The agency, surprised by Isabelle's quick and dramatic change, believes she is now their perfect fit. They died her hair a deep black, straightened out her imperfect curls, painted her discolored skin with snow white foundation, evenly outlined her sunken eyelids with dark makeup, and drew red on her lips, as if they were painting a picture. Sooner than she expected, Isabelle saw her face right next to Caroline Dupree's in the magazines that she used to buy. Her appearance matched what she once dreamed of, but that did not matter to her at all anymore. She did not feel alive. She realized that she was now just death in disguise. As the world praised the beauty of Isabelle Rose on the outside, she herself only grieved the true Isabelle Rose that she lost on the inside.  

                                                         Art by: Gabriela Mendez Ibarra

   
   

Disturbing Experiences Always Lead to What's Not Expected (Except When They Don't) by Aubrey Chick

     Every time you read a story, you can easily look at it as simply just a construction of experiences into writing. However, these experiences are not only simple statements to make up a plot, but specific events that make up the "quest" in a story, as stated by Thomas Foster in chapter 1. If you have a different insight and read between the lines, you will find that almost every story has a quest. In order to discover the quest, the reader has to read between the lines of the plot. Through doing this, the "disturbing experiences" that occur along the way are the causes of the quester's change in emotions and actions, which strays them away from the intended plot of the story in the beginning. So the realization of the reader is to not focus on the stated plot, but what lesson or message comes along with their trip, referring back to the point of reading between the lines.
     To me, it is almost obvious as an experienced reader, to know that the character whomever he/she is, is not going to simply go on a trip. I know and expect that the character is going to experience a tragedy, or get into a conflict that will deter them from that expected trip. This "tragedy" or event is what brings excitement or drama to the book. I can give examples of almost every novel I've read where this has happened. Foster is just acknowledging this as a "quest" and the parts that make up the quest for that character.  I can agree to Foster's realization of the quest in most novels, but also when he states..."Except when it's not".
     Foster also contradicts his first belief by saying that not all trips are quests. I can agree with this because not every book is written to analyze the meaning behind the character's actions. Some stories are not meant to be picked apart and annotated, but are written to simply state facts and true situations that occurred in their lives. A lot of non-fiction novels depict this idea. For example, the novel "The Glass Castle", by Jeannette Walls, is the written childhood memories of Walls herself. As a child, she travels across the United States with her parents, struggling to survive in harsh conditions. Yes, many disturbing experiences come her way, but these experiences are purely just facts. They do not distract the character from the main plot or change the moral of the story and are not written to be deeply analyzed. There is no "Holy Grail" in the book like there is for Kip in the story analyzed in chapter 1. Yes, there was self discovery in "The Glass Castle", but the point was not to seek or go out on a quest. Therefore, trips are not always quests.
     This leads to Foster's statement about how the words "always" and "never" do not mean much in literature. He states how writers will refute another's argument once they read those words. Based on this idea, I can see how in the future writers are going to see Foster teaching how to read this way and they will begin to write in a different way to not follow the typical pattern. Although authors are now using the technique of reading between the lines and creating a quest, this writing style may change with time.