On the right path.

  

Ok.  So I’m really looking forward to May.  Movies, time with the family, gaming, and finishing up the Introduction to Literature class that I’m taking online, which will allow me to focus more on my own writing and reading.  The Intro to Lit class has been illuminating.  So far, I’m getting an A.  The online class format isn’t really my favorite method of learning, but there is something of note to be appreciated in the class.  It’s opened my mind.  Rather extensively actually.  This is especially true after having taken Composition II recently.

Let me go back though, and explain the need for expanding my mind.  Perhaps way back, but sometimes one must begin at the beginning.

When I first started school, I was more often interested in cool things like throwing bugs at my younger sister, crazy stunts on my bicycle, poking gross stuff with sticks, and eating anything sweet that I could get my hands on.  Having to sit in a room and do anything besides finger painting or going to recess was awful.  I wasn’t interested in reading or math, and school was a generally unpleasant experience.  There were girls there, and everyone who’s in the age range of four to nine KNOWS that girls have GIRL GERMS.  On top of that, when you have to wear glasses the thickness of the Hubble Telescope’s lenses, and you’re about as coordinated as a drunken mime on a fast-moving treadmill, social situations are hard.  So, of course, when you’re forced to read aloud in class, life is pretty awful and reading gets some pretty unhealthy associations.

Fortunately for me, third grade happened.  Somewhen (It is SO a word!) along the way, I had achieved a pretty awesome level of nerd.  At the same time though, I was in an environment where teachers were supportive, the librarian was awesome, and Ryan (a random kid in my class who actually treated everyone decently) recommended a book to me when I was FORCED AGAINST MY WILL to not only read a book, but DO A REPORT on it.  Gah!  The inhumanity of it!  The book he suggested was C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  At first, I was reluctant, but Ryan had suggested it, and so I read it.  At first, I read it while pouting quite dramatically (A talent I had at the time.), but as I got involved in the book, suddenly I was walking right beside Lucy as she meandered about a mysterious snowy land.  That first book report was the first reading assignment that ever got me a check plus (letter grades weren’t used when I was in the 3^rd grade).  After that, I found out something amazing.  This C.S. Lewis guy hadn’t written just one book about Narnia, but a whole SERIES.  All of them fantastical and amazing and imaginative and, best of all, an escape from being bullied at recess, feeling stupid in school, and worrying about how much money my family didn’t have.

I began to read quite a bit.  I read Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” perhaps four times in a row.  Each time I saw something new that I loved, and each time, I got better at reading.  I eventually even decided that, just maybe, I liked reading.  The next book I read after that was My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George (Wow!  What a moniker.).  I read it in one sitting, and was taken away.  I could relate to the character, because I lived in an environment similar to what he experienced in the book.  But then, I found out that there was an author that wrote brilliant fantasy and was “a lot like that Narnia guy”.  I don’t remember who told me about Tolkien, but I think my teacher may have actually read The Hobbit to us aloud in class.  Subsequently, I read the book myself, and moved on to The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  This was followed by The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, and a slew of similar materials by Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Robin McKinley, and Grace Chetwin.  I was driven by and addicted to high fantasy, children’s fantasy, low fantasy, sword and sorcery, and such.

All of this was a great and good thing really.  My childhood became much more enjoyable, and my world had expanded.  However; there is a distinct problem when one finds literature at that age, that parents and teachers should be mindful to address.  A child at that age is picky, and “I don’t like that.” is the mantra used to defend against all new things.  So, I never read non-fantasy outside of what was required for school.  Sure, a smattering of Shakespeare got in there along with maybe a touch of other “classical literature.” Still, my mental taste buds were much like my actual taste buds.  I only wanted the sweet decadence of fantasy.  Even science fiction was not acceptable, unless of course there was a spell cast in the process.  I had delineated what I considered fantasy very clearly, and I still feel that way as I categorize reading materials in an almost-obsessive manner.  I’ll get into that some other time though.  My main point here, is that I became closed minded towards anything but my version of fantasy quite early on as a reader.

My first attempt at college was deeply affected by this overparticular taste in written works.  My love of reading had done wonderful things for me.  It created a desire to learn more about the English language; which, I like to think have done throughout my life, though I still have much to learn.  In addition, it had inspired me to become a writer.  I desperately wanted, and still strongly desire, to be that person that writes a novel and has a child pick it up and have their world expanded for the first time.  So, I attended Western Montana College (now *ahem* The University of Montana at Dillon – please note the use of radio voice).  At Western, I registered for every class related to English that I could possibly take.  Now, unfortunately, both the college and myself completely dropped the ball when it came to planning out my route to a degree.  When one takes “Intro to Literature”, “Montana Literature”, and “Early American Literature” all in the same semester, and you’re the type to get finicky about your reading, school easily becomes an overwhelming miasma of classical broccoli with a side of liver and onions.  My grades were pretty good the first quarter of the school year, but they quickly declined in the face of so much undelicious reading combined with hot college girls, drinking, and a few other distractions that shall not be named.  (Stupid Final Fantasy III…)  In short, I dropped out of school after my first year, and after a roundabout year or so, ended up on an airplane to Fort Leonardwood Missouri.   Yup, the Army.

It took me fourteen years to get back to school.  During that time I was stationed in Germany for two years, Fort Hood, TX for a little over a year and a half, had been engaged twice, had a son, lost my father, gotten married, had two other jobs that I thought had a future, discovered the awesomeness of roleplaying games (yes, I’m a bit of a geek still) and of course, read a great deal more fantasy.  I learned a great deal about life during that time, or at least I like to think so.  I had left the rural life I grew up with in Montana, experienced different cultures, realized that I was capable of doing important things, and experienced a lot of the practicality of life.  Unfortunately, nothing had led me to expand my reading menu by any stretch of the imagination.  The greatest thing I can say is that I had opened up to science fiction quite a bit more, and had started to devour some Anne McCaffrey and Robert Heinlein along with my Tolkien and Lewis.

When I started school again at Austin Community College (because community college is where the nontraditional – read “old” – student goes to get brave enough for education again) in 2009, I had learned from experience, and ACC guides their students along better than Western did in association with my first attempt at college.  So, I focused on math.  Having avoided math like the plague for well over a decade, I had some brushing up to do, even to get to the mandated Algebra that everyone must take in order to be considered educated.  Unfortunately, I had decided to major in Business Administration rather than English or Mass Communication.  My choice had been pragmatic, rather than impassioned.  I struggled through the math, and actually did pretty well and perhaps I don’t hate it as much as I used to.  (A huge thank you goes to Ms. Oralia Guerra and her wonderful teaching methods.)  However, and doesn’t there always seem to be a “however,” I ended up in “Business Calculus.”  What an ironic tragedy that was.  The professor had immigrated from China perhaps ten years ago, and to quote her, “[Her] English not so good.”  This was an understatement.  After months of frustration, I dropped the class at the last moment and took a withdrawal on my transcript.  Had I continued, my GPA would have gone from a 3.7, to, well, much lower.

On the more positive side, I’ve taken Composition II, with another wonderful professor, Carol Barret.  The class focused on the analyzing of short stories with a very methodic approach that no class I’d ever taken before had used.  I knew in general about plot, setting, and the use of descriptive words.  I’d used them instinctively for a long time.  Pun was a long time friend, ever since I had first picked up a Piers Anthony novel.  But this was different.  There was logic and reason for it all.  The material that we reviewed didn’t catch my attention so much, but the concepts associated with the course itself did.  Long story short, I started thinking about writing again.

In the time between then and now, I’ve started to discuss writing with several friends.  Most notably Bon Steele (www.bonsteele.com) and Lance Lawhon.  Bon will soon be published (again) in an anthology of awesomeness and light, and Lance has written a young adult fantasy novel (no beans shall be spilled here, as he is still submitting it to various folks for publishing, but it’s GOOD.  Like, pizza to a seven year old good.).  These conversations have made me realize how much I like being involved in something creative.  That wasn’t quite the inflatus to get me going completely.  My pragmatic side was still solidly looking at a future filled with suits, meetings, and brokering serious deals of some sort.  To be sure, I was still looking at working in publishing with a retirement into my own book store at some unidentified point in time.  Then I signed up for this class.

Long story short, or perhaps really long as I sit at 1851 words at this point, I discovered some things through this course, which were subsequently confirmed by my wife, Bon, Lance, and some coworkers whose opinions I have reason to put value to.  The first thing, is that Edgar Allen Poe is known for being the father of the modern short story and the modern detective story.  (Yes. Bon, I know.  I should have paid more attention to him earlier.)  The second is that poetry is much more enjoyable than I used to believe.  I’ve dug around in sonnets, haikus, free form, and several other forms of poetry, and found a little something to enjoy in each of them.  I’ve even seen a few Robert Frost poems that I hadn’t read before.  Finally, all of those ideas that were started in my Composition II class a few semesters finally connected, and I feel that I grok (read R. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land if you don’t know the word) the concepts.  As a result, I’ve started reading a lot of things which were previously out of my scope.  Poe has shown me a bit of horror and macabre.  Hughes has shown me that getting over it is a possibility.  And Hemingway…well, he sucks still, but hey, at least I gave him a try.  He was kind of like the liver and onions of literature.  Dry yet slimy, and made me want to retch.  I’m eating a more balanced diet now.  Well, ok, once I finish up with some more Roger Zelazny.  But a man has to start somewhere.

And oh yeah.  I changed my major back to Journalism.  I haven’t been so happy about my direction in a long time.  Life is good.

The Shadows I have Wed
When I was young, I opened a Wardrobe.
Inside that evening, I found a snowy wood.
Drawing Excalibur, I courted doom and rescued the land.
When a dragon threatened, my lance erupted from it’s gaudy chest.
My best adviser was a druid, who came from a land of Brooks.
As I continued down that road that carries on from my front door,
I remembered that creativity is like a ring.
At once beautiful and never ending.
When I was young, I opened a Wardrobe.
And such a difference it has made.

*Thank you to Frost, Lewis, Brooks, Weis, Hickman, Tolkien, Anthony, Zelazny, and all the rest.

To dabble in the sonnet comedic

Kobold

Monster not so ferocious I
Debt of height yet in evil delight
In danger deficient do I lie
Only wee children doth I fright

The Worship of low gods
Intrepid in the shadows wrought
Some short manlike creature clods
Which time hath not forgot

Impertinent adventurer who myself seeks to slay
I shall fight and thrash until the light leaves mine eyes
Beware my wroth kin, on my dying day
From the cracks and the crevices shall they arise

Cousin Jabberwocky, with sword oh so keen
Shall lick your blood from his blade in a crazy sheen

Mmmm… Tasty.

I’ve been reading today about poetry, following having read about short fiction, because, as my friends might say, “It’s what you do.” Especially, when one is taking Intro to Lit.

This course comes across as though it were a trip through a warehouse store on sample day. Sure, they’re trying to hawk their wares so you’ll buy, and not everything is stupendously delicious as they might say, but then you take that one sample. The one with the melted and golden-brown cheese upon it, and you find it to be as delicious as that first bite of the Wardrobe, or as refreshing as that bit of Frost that one Snowy Evening.

These are the days that make life good.

Intro to Lit Paper on Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”

Ernest Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”

Ernest Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” is the story of Santiago, a Cuban fisherman, and his struggles to end an eighty-four day long span in which he catches no fish. The central idea of “The Old Man and the Sea” is that, even though a man may be defeated and destitute, he can still maintain his dignity.

The story begins with Santiago and his former apprentice, Manolin, discussing preparations for the next day’s fishing. Manolin provides various assistances to Santiago. The following morning, Manolin helps Santiago to his skiff with various fishing supplies. Once under way, Santiago ventures further out to sea than usual, watching a man-of-war bird to guide him where he might find good fishing. Eventually, he catches a tuna, which he uses for bait, and after a long afternoon of fishing, finally hooks a marlin.

Santiago is at sea four days, using strategy and endurance to bring in the marlin, drinking sparingly from his one bottle of water and eating only raw bait fish, as the marlin drags him out to sea in the skiff. On the fourth day, Santiago has his final struggle with the marlin, and wins, then lashing the enormous fish to the side of his skiff.

Exhausted from his ordeal, Santiago begins the return trip home. Santiago battles sharks on the way, eventually exhausting all of the weapons he has with him, and losing all of the usable meat on the marlin. He makes it back to port at night, and painfully works his way home with his few remaining supplies. Manolin comes to check on him the next morning, and finds him sleeping. Manolin feeds Santiago, then lets him sleep. As the story closes, “The old man was dreaming about lions.” (127)

Santiago, the main character, is round and dynamic. Hemmingway provides a detailed background for Santiago. The story’s first statement helps describes Santiago as, “an old man who fished alone in a skiff.” (9) His hands have, “deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords.” (10) Thus, we see that Santiago is both old and worn out by a life working at sea.Hemmingway shows Santiago as a man with dignity and wisdom. Santiago’s eyes are, “cheerful and undefeated.” (10) When Manolin offers Santiago aid, Santiago at first declines, then acquiesces realizing that he is, “too simple to wonder when he had attained humility.” (13) The descriptors “simple” and “humble” bring to mind someone grown wise through their experience, and both are often associated with dignity. At the beginning of the story, Santiago is characterized as, “salao, which is the worst form of unlucky” (9) by the people of his village, and has lost his apprentice due to his reputation. This changes at the end of the book; most prominently in the Manolin’s actions when he decides that he will fish with Santiago again, and says of luck, “The Hell with luck…I’ll bring the luck with me.” (125)

The main conflict of the story is between Santiago and his sense of self worth which he has been losing because of his status as “salao.” (9) This conflict is internal, and Santiago faces it when he uses all of his skill to overcome the marlin, catch it, and defend his catch from the sharks which later come to feed on the marlin’s corpse. It is finally concluded when Manolin shows his never-waning respect and love for Santiago and declares that he will rejoin Santiago as an apprentice, and, “bring the luck with” (125) him. We also see the end of the conflict when Santiago is again able to sleep and dream about lions, which to Santiago represent a time when he was young and able-bodied and deserving of respect. Additional conflicts are between Santiago and nature, as represented by the sea, marlin, sharks, and weather; between Santiago and the society he lives in, as represented by his reputation as “salao.” (9) These are resolved when Santiago finally manages to bring his catch home (though it is mutilated), and thus earns the respect of his village again.

The point of view in “The Old Man and the Sea” is third person, omniscient. The point of view describes those things happening to or around Santiago, as well as sometimes entering his mind to reveal his thoughts. The narrator describes the events from the perspective of an unnoticed observer. For instance, when describing Santiago’s actions in the boat, the narrator uses “he” phrases, such as, “He felt the line carefully with his right hand and noticed his hand was bleeding.” (55-56) The narrator also reflects Santiago’s thoughts on his environment when he says, “You did not stay long, the man thought.” (56) The only variance in the point of view comes at the end of the story. While the story remains third person, omniscient, it shifts focus to Manolin for the last few pages. The story’s point of view is important because it allows us to enter Santiago’s mind and see how he faces his struggle with the marlin. At the same time, the point of view allows us to turn to Manolin when necessary and see the shifts in others’ impressions of Santiago.
The book’s settings are a small fishing and tourism village in Cuba, and Santiago’s small skiff as he fishes on the Atlantic Ocean. The environment of the small fishing village is important, because it allows the types of social interactions that occur which would lead to Santiago having the reputation of being unlucky. In a more urban setting, his reputation would not necessarily matter as much because it would be drowned out by the large population, but in a rural area such as a small village the gossip and opinions of others are focused by the population rather than diffused by it. The oceanic setting allows the narrator to focus on Santiago’s actions and thoughts so that we see him face his life with dignity and determination without society interfering.

Language devices shown in the story include dialect, symbolism, and simile. Specific uses of dialect are when the narrator uses Spanish words to convey cultural ideas. These words, such as “salao”, “Gran Ligas”, (67-68) and “Un espuela de hueso” (68) characterize Santiago by making him a member of a Hispanic culture. There are several examples of symbolism, but the most prominent are the marlin, which stands as a symbol of Santiago’s self respect and dignity, which he finally catches and brings home, though only the skeleton; and, Joe DiMaggio, who represents the dignified way Santiago himself faces challenges in his own life. Simile is used in multiple instances to increase the drama of Santiago’s seemingly simple fishing expedition. When Santiago’s hand cramps, “as stiff as rigor mortis” (59) or when Manolin looks at Santiago’s scars which are, “as old as erosions in a fishless desert.” (10) The images brought to the readers mind are focused, and Santiago is focused upon in a way that allows the reader to see him as a fleshed out individual.
The tone of the novel is reflective and humble. Much of the book focuses on Santiago’s reflections as he faces the challenges of his time at sea. He thinks of Joe DiMaggio and how he would face the challenges that Santiago himself is facing, and then humbly concludes that he, “must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.” (68) Santiago’s thoughts are also consistently directed towards the marlin that he eventually catches. Throughout Santiago’s struggle against the marlin, he consistently thinks of the fish as an equal, and the reader gets the impression that Santiago thinks of the fish as a part of himself. When combined with the further symbolism of the lions, which represent Santiago’s self-respect, symbolism is the most significant aspect of the story.

Works Cited
Hemmingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York, New York. Scribner. 2003. Print.