Illusion

A mirage. A veil covering one’s eyes—concealing the facts behind a façade or hiding the truth by means of reality. This is the essence of the word “illusion.” It’s a word that describes the feeling of being intentionally misled, which does not necessarily have a negative connotation. Often, illusions are used for entertainment. For example, a magician’s job is to create an illusion to trick the crowd that an impossible act is occurring. A television is designed to create the illusion of a fluidly moving picture, even though the image is comprised of thousands of tiny pixels that change 60 times per second. However, an illusion can be malevolent deception to conceal an unwanted truth, or it can be a perception of reality created by oneself to cover up the harshness of reality. It is because of this duality that this word is so captivating: the opposite connotations of this word make this an interesting word to discover more about.

Frankenstein Radical Science

In "Frankenstein and Radical Science," author Marilyn Butler talks about the relationship between Frankenstein and other generally scientific texts, primarily Lectures of Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man by William Lawrence. She also focuses on the public debate between Lawrence and Abernethy. There is not clear thesis tying everything together and her examples are extremely specific so it is impossible to summarize her message. Instead, I will detail a few of her specific examples.

• Butler mentions that Lawrence's opponent, Abernethy, viewed life as something similar to electricity. This agrees with the viewpoint of Frankenstein because electricity can be observed and Frankenstein is able to discover the secret of life through observation. Therefore, life is not an abstract notion, rather a tangible concept. 
• Additionally, Butler talks about the Creature's first moments on the earth and how this relates to both literary examples and real-life instances and studies of the learning process in humans. 
• Butler also speaks of sexual selection, comparing that in aristocratic society with the Frankensteins' relationships throughout the novel. She also notes the relationship between Frankenstein and the Creature and his practically non-existent parenting tactics with the Creature.

A Boastful Hero: Reflecting the Values of Society

A Boastful Hero: Reflecting the Values of Society

Beowulf, being one the oldest example of an English epic poem has greatly influenced other works, including literature, art, and films, both directly and indirectly. Therefore, many similarities can be found between Beowulf and modern works. One work that shares similarities with Beowulf is the film Thor, based on the comic book superhero Thor, who is in turn based on the Norse god Thor. In both Beowulf and Thor, the main hero takes great pride in and is boastful of his glory, honor, and superhuman power. Additionally, in both works, the other characters’ reactions to the hero’s pride serve as a reflection of the values of the society in which the hero’s story was created; while Beowulf’s pride is accepted and even valued, Thor’s pride is not.

In Beowulf, there are many examples that demonstrate Beowulf’s boastfulness and pride in his honor and achievements. One instance occurs when he first arrives at Heorot and speaks to Hrothgar. He states, “Every elder and experienced council man / among my people supported my resolve / to come here to you, King Hrothgar, / because all knew of my awesome strength. / They had seen me bolstered in the blood of enemies/ when I battled and bound five beats, / raided a troll-next and in the night-sea / slaughtered sea-brutes” (Beowulf lines 415-422). Here, Beowulf essentially lists all his achievements as a warrior so that Hrothgar will allow him to demonstrate his strength once again by fighting Grendel. Before he fights Grendel, Beowulf again boasts about his strength when he says that there will be no “weapons, therefore / for either [Grendel or Beowulf] this night: unarmed shall he face me / if face me he dares” (Beowulf lines 683-5). By announcing his intention to fight unarmed, Beowulf makes it clear that he wishes to demonstrate his great strength and power.[1] A final example of Beowulf’s boasting comes when he decides to attack the dragon and he says that he will “pursue this fight / for the glory of winning” (Beowulf lines 2513-4). Beowulf does not says that he will fight the dragon because it is killing a lot of people. Rather, he states that he will fight the dragon because he wants to win. Therefore, as demonstrated by these examples, Beowulf is very boastful and even arrogant of his strength as a warrior.

In Thor, Thor is also initially boastful of his strength and power as chiefly demonstrated by one primary event. At the beginning of the film, a few “Frost Giants” break into Asgard, which is Thor’s home, to steal back the Casket of Ancient Winters, which is the source of the Frost Giants’ power. The Asgardians originally confiscated this casket after they defeated the Frost Giants, who were trying to conquer the “nine realms” of the universe. After this group of Frost Giants is defeated, Thor, being heir to the throne, gathers a group of Asgardians to destroy the Frost Giants at their home world against the Asgardian king’s wishes. In this moment, Thor wishes to use his power to defeat the evil Frost Giants once and for all in order to prove his strength and to gain glory just as Beowulf would have done. Therefore, as this example demonstrates, Thor initially is boastful of his strength.

Since both Beowulf and Thor at some point in their respective stories both are excessively proud and arrogant about their strength and power, these stories are similar. However, the ways in which other characters react to this trait are vastly different. In Beowulf, others value Beowulf’s pride since when Beowulf dies, other people “extolled his heroic nature and exploits / and gave thanks for his greatness” (Beowulf line 3173-4). However, in a key difference between Beowulf and Thor, the king of Asgard banishes Thor’s powers before Thor can defeat the Frost Giants. The king only returns Thor’s power when Thor learns not to be arrogant and boastful of his powers. This crucial difference can be attributed to the societies in which Beowulf and Thor were created. In the time of Beowulf, honor and glory were valued above all else. Today, these characteristics are not so highly valued and expressing one’s pride of one’s glory, achievements, and power can often be viewed as arrogance, so humility is of greater value in today’s society than it was at the time of Beowulf. In this way, both Beowulf’s and Thor’s boastfulness and others’ reactions to this boastfulness reflect the society in which these works were created.

Ultimately, Beowulf and Thor are similar because both heroes are boastful of their strength and power. The extent to which the hero’s boastfulness is valued is greatly different between the two stories so they send very different messages to the reader. Beowulf admires glory, honor, and strength, and Beowulf’s bragging about his strength serves as an example of how important these characteristics are. Thor, on the other hand, while it considers these characteristics to be important, significantly diminishes their importance compared to Beowulf, and it preaches restraint of strength instead. Therefore, these stories are similar because of the main character’s views on glory and honor but differ in the message they send about the importance of these traits.

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[1] Of course, it turns out that Grendel is in fact immune to weapons anyway, but Beowulf presumably does not know this at this time (Beowulf line 804). Therefore, he does not wish to fight unarmed because of Grendel’s immunity so he must fight unarmed to demonstrate his strength.

Inflected to Analytic

The change from English as an inflected language to a mostly analytic language occurred over a long period of time. One of the main influencing factors of this change to an analytic language was the interaction between the Anglo-Saxons and other cultures. Since learning all the inflections of English was complicated for non-native speakers, it simplified. For example, Old Norse was analytic and it was easier for the Vikings to communicate using fewer inflections as described in Our Faire Englische Tung.  There are several examples of ways in which the language changed, and I will give a brief overview of these. One of the major evolutions from Old English to Modern English is the simplifying of the verb. In Old English, there were two main categories for verbs: strong verbs, which changed the interior vowel of the stem word, and weak verbs, which added endings to the stem. Strong verbs were divided into seven classes and weak verbs into three. Over time, these inflectional aspects changed, as illustrated by the Old English word “helpan,” which evolved into “help.” The different forms of helpan were helpe, healp, hilpst, hulpe, hilpþ, helpaþ, hulpon, helpen, help, helpende, and holpen. Today, there help only has the forms help, helped, and helping. In addition to verbs, nouns also changed and the plural forms were standardized. Some examples of this are stan/stanas, which turned into stone/stones; nama/namen, which turned into name/names; scip/scipu, which turned into ship/ships; sunu/suna, which turned into son/sons; and boc/bek, which turned into book/books. As demonstrated above, many of the inflected forms of English words have been greatly simplified and standardized, though not all of them such as man/men and foot/feet to name a couple. Today, English cannot be classified as a purely analytic language because some endings do change. There are eight remaining inflected parts (called morphemes) of English remaining, which are plural, possessive, comparative, superlative, 3rd Person singular present agreement, past tense, past participle, present participle. In these ways, Old English has evolved many analytic aspects from its original inflected form.

Masculine a declension
	armr (arm)		hamarr (hammer)		hęrr (a people)		hęllir (cave)
Case	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	arm-r	arm-ar	hamar-r	ham'r-ar	hęr-r	hęr-jar	hęll-ir	hęll-ar
Accusative	arm	arm-a	hamar	ham'ra	hęr	hęr-ja	hęll-i	hęll-a
Genitive	arm-s	arm-a	hamar-s	ham'ra	hęr-jar	hęr-ja	hęll-is	hęll-a
Dative	arm-i	ǫrm-um	ham'r-i	hǫm'r-um	hęr-i	hęr-jum	hęll-i	hęll-um

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Norse_morphology#Strong_nouns 

The Strong Noun Declension
Case	Masculine		Neuter		Feminine
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	–	-as	–	-u/–	-u/–	-a
Accusative	–	-as	–	-u/–	-e	-a, -e
Genitive	-es	-a	-es	-a	-e	-a
Dative	-e	-um	-e	-um	-e	-um

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar#Strong_nouns 

http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?D1=17&T1=brenna&H1=117 
http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?T1=helpan&D1=23&H1=123&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French#Nouns 

In the Mind of a Sociopath

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is a novel like no other. The story takes place in a dystopian future of the 1960s where “ultra-violence” reigns on the streets at night. It is a disturbing story in which teenage kids roam about the streets at night robbing stores, assaulting innocent people, raping women, and committing other heinous crimes. Yet, the story manages to be captivating because it contains many elements of excellent storytelling. A Clockwork Orange is an example of excellent writing because of its writing style, which includes a fabricated slang and descriptions that develop the characters and their motives, and because of its main message to the reader about the dehumanization of a person to prevent violence, which invites the reader to learn something about his or herself and about humanity.

Burgess’s writing style, specifically his fictitious slang dialect, Nadsat, plays a critical role in both developing the setting of the story as well as the characters, which are closely intertwined with the setting since the characters are representative of the large amount of teenagers that commit “ultra-violence” every night. One example of this slang is “milk-plus,” also called “moloko,” which according to the main character and narrator, Alex, is milk infused “with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrowshow [good/excellent] fifteen minutes” (Burgess 3). This essentially means that it is milk laced with drugs, but since this invented slang is used, the setting seems much more realistic and has more depth. This slang is also used when Alex and his fellow “droogs” (gang-members) gang rape a man’s wife and force him to watch:

So he [one of Alex’s droogs] did the strong-man on the devotchka [woman], who was still creech creech creeching away in very horrorshow four-in-a-bar, locking her rookers from the back, while I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw haw still, and real good horrorshow groodies [breasts] they were that then exhibited their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got ready for the plunge. Plunging, I could slooshy [hear] cries of agony… (27)

Through the use of Nadsat slang, this passage illustrates and exposes Alex’s sociopathic nature, including his and his gang’s complete indifference to and, in fact, enjoyment in all forms of violence. Furthermore, Alex’s use of language to describe the woman he is raping dehumanizes her, foreshadowing the theme of the novel. Additionally, Alex’s continuous use of the phrase “O my brothers” throughout the novel, serves as both another aspect of Alex’s disturbing pathology and as means to glorify Alex’s crimes and violent behavior. In these ways, the writing style of A Clockwork Orange effectively develops both the characters and the setting; thus it is an example of excellent writing.

            In addition to the writing style, the main theme of the novel contributes to its status as an example of excellent writing since it provides a meaningful message to the reader. However, the delivery of this message is one of the weak points of this novel since the novel directly states this principle to the reader rather than allowing the reader to discovery the theme for his or herself. The theme first becomes apparent after Alex goes to jail for his crimes and endures “Ludovico’s treatment,” which renders him incapable of committing violence without experiencing immense pain. Later on, Alex arrives at the house of the man’s whose wife he raped though the man does not recognize Alex and takes care of him in his house. At this point, seeing what the treatment has done to Alex, he remarks that he has been turned “into something other than a human being. [He is] committed to only socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good” (174) While this message offers insight into the proper ethical treatment of sinful human beings, the novel’s presentation of this idea is not strong since the idea is practically forced onto the reader. However, the novel also discreetly offers a second viewpoint on this message, which comes from the same man, who states that if he found the person who raped his wife, he would “tear him. [He would] split him, by God” (184). By this statement, Burgess points out that while idealistically people should not be tortured to remove violence from the world, realistically, when people that a person knows are victims of the violence, a person wishes for the criminals to endure harsh punishment. Through the themes about humanity that A Clockwork Orange conveys to the reader, it is an example of excellent writing even though the message is sometimes somewhat ineffectively communicated.

            Overall, A Clockwork Orange is an example of excellent writing due to its characters, its setting, and its fundamental messages about the human conditions. Its well-developed characters are despicable though contain intricate “shades of grey,” so that at times, even the villainous Alex is pitiable. The novel’s believable setting is further enriched with its fabricated slang. Finally, its fundamental message about human existence to the reader leaves the reader with something to ponder after the novel is over. Thus, truly A Clockwork Orange is great literature.

My Top 7, In No Particular Order

1. Truman, David McCullough—This was the first biography I read and at over 1,000 pages, I was not particularly looking forward to it. However, the writing style was very good and the length instead made the book more detailed, interesting, and involving instead of boring.
2. 1984, George Orwell—With its great insights into political philosophy, this book is one of my favorites, especially because of the way Orwell integrates the theme into the plot.
3. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger—To be honest, when I first read this book I absolutely hated it. I did not like the character of Holden Caulfield and did not really understand what the book was trying to do. However, after analyzing the book in Mrs. Driscoll’s class, I gradually began to understand the book, and it opened a whole new way of looking at literature for me.
4. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess—This book’s use of an anti-heroic protagonist really made the story involving for me. Even though the main character was evil, the way he told the story diminished the repulsiveness of his actions, which was both fascinating and creepy in a way. The fabricated Nadsat slang also made the book more interesting.
5. Sphere, Michael Crichton—This book is memorable to me simply because of the plot. It also presents a somewhat cliché perspective on human nature in a creative way.
6. The Road, Cormac McCarthy—Cormac McCarthy’s diction and writing style simply brings this novel to life. Also, the character development is extremely good and I was really able to feel and understand the relationship between the father and the son.
7. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card—Overall a good sci-fi novel though the twist-ending really makes this novel. I read the rest of the series also, but none quite matched the quality and excitement of Ender’s Game.

1984, A Vision of a Story

A book containing good story telling that I recently read was 1984 by George Orwell. This was in part due to Orwell’s lucid and descriptive explanations of the pervasive tyranny of the socialist regime, Ingsoc. One passage that exemplifies this trait is as follows:

“The mutability of the past is the central tent of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It also follows that though the past is unalterable, it never has been altered in any specific instance. For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed. This holds good even when, as often happens, the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now.”

This passage not only illustrates George Orwell’s writing style, an important characteristic in good writing, but also the novel’s insight into philosophical issues, in this case political philosophy. This attribute is critical in good writing because it permits analysis of a particular facet of human existence relating to the philosophical idea being discussed. Without such discussion of the human condition, novels tend to fade away because with society’s ever-changing fads, values of the society during the time when the novel was released may not be important to a society ten years down the road. Novels with philosophical discussion, however, tend to be valued for considerably longer periods of time since such philosophy is often still applicable for many years into the future. For example the political philosophy in 1984, which cautions the reader of a government (socialist in the novel, though the philosophy can be applied to any type of government) yielding too much power over its subjects, is still important today because this scenario remains a potential threat in today’s world.  (In fact, certain predictions in 1984 have been realized, such as complete government surveillance over its people through tactics such as satellite imagery, email monitoring, and wire-tapping.) Because 1984 contains principles and insights applicable today and likely for many years into the future, it is an example of great writing.