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What Should We Do with Henry’s Freedom Box?
We need to persevere, like Henry, to fight for a world where we can all live comfortably without the fear of being oppressed by each other.
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Coping with an Alien Lifestyle
UNCERTAINTY. ALIEN. COPE. Three words float continuously in Lilith Iyapo’s mind when she awakens in a living alien ship: uncertainty, alien, and cope. She struggles to adjust to her new housemates, the Oankali, who claims to have rescued the “best” humans from earth to preserve humanity after a nuclear world war. You may be wondering, other than the fact that Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood, The Xenogenesis Trilogy (1987) is a book series you need to read in a single sitting, why should I care? LILITH IS HUMAN – LIKE US Lilith’s journey to learn to accept her new reality to survive mirrors our current challenge to adjust to the everchanging state of…
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More Than Fairy Tales: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Brilliance of Children’s Literature
C.S. Lewis, the author of the well-loved Chronicles of Narnia, once said that “a children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” There are books that we fall in love with during childhood, which, upon returning to, seem almost lifeless compared to the shining stories from our memories. Discovering that a book you once loved does not hold the same lustre it did for you as a child feels like shedding another layer of yourself as you grow further and further away from the person you used to be. Those books return to their shelves, and are forgotten in the passage…
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“It’s Not Just a Dream, it Could be Our Reality”
The little things make a difference in the bigger picture. Global warming and climate change are not new concerns, but why do some of us continue to treat it as if they are topics not worth being proactive about? In Chris Van Allsburg’s Just A Dream (1990), Van Allsburg places the readers in the position of the protagonist, Walter, who does not grasp the problem about climate change. Instead of continuously telling Walter he needs to be a responsible individual on this planet, Van Allsburg shows Walter the devastating and unappealing outcomes of humans neglecting to care for the environment. Van Allsburg addresses our doubts and the dominant stigma about climate change…
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5 Books to Rejuvenate Your Reading List for the Springtime
A few terms synonymous with spring would include sunshine, bloom, allergy season, and here in Vancouver: cherry blossoms. Along with spring also comes the dreaded (for some) task of spring cleaning. So get out those dusters and open the blinds. Perhaps you’ll stumble upon your bookcase as you power down the vacuum, either well loved or with a thin sheen of fine powder coating it. There are a few books you recognize, and others with their spines still uncracked. Maybe you, dear reader, are like this writer and have a list that extends for miles, detailing every novel you would read if you just had the time! Or perhaps you…
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6 TIPS TO BEAT YOUR WRITER’S BLOCK!
We are approaching that time of the term when we scramble to find the perfect words to use for our term papers. It could also be the moment when you’re struggling to find a way to silence the cursor on your screen that continuously taunts you every time it pulses on the blank page. Fret not! I have gathered a few sweet time-saving tips that will help you push past your writer’s block! 1. Create an Outline If you’re feeling lost but you have a bunch of ideas in your mind, write them down first! Taking all the information out of your mind and onto a page makes the ideas feel tangible. You…
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“Is this your buying China?”: Luxury consumerism and superficiality in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife
Following increased maritime trade and a reliance on foreign goods, the commercial revolution that swept through England in the late sixteenth century resulted in an intensified desire for new and hitherto inaccessible luxury commodities. One such commodity, china porcelain, resulted in a “china fever” that continued well into the eighteenth century, introducing new notions of social refinement and, more importantly, social and economic superficiality. In the infamous “china scene” of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675), Lady Fidget operates within the discourse of “woman as consumer” in order to forward her sexual agency, participating in the surface play that luxury commodities as ultimately empty signifiers afford. England’s commercial revolution not only saw…
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ESA’S AGM: 2020 ELECTIONS UPDATE
Elections will take place at our Annual General Meeting. Due to health concerns and to ensure everyone’s safety, we will hold our Annual General Meeting online. Details to be Announced. Looking for a fun opportunity to get involved with the English undergraduate community while developing leadership skills? We are officially seeking executives for next year’s ESA team. This is a great way to develop new skills, meet new people, and have an influence on campus. The executive team collaborates to plan everything from ice cream cake socials to The Colloquium, supports initiatives like The Garden Statuary, and connects with students, other clubs, and the department. New ideas are more than welcome, and this…
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Writing Might Save Your Life
Why do we watch movies, listen to audiobooks, and write poetry, songs, and stories?! What makes storytelling compelling to all of us regardless of our knowledge, social classes, and our wide variety of interests? In Jen Sincero’s book, You Are A Badass (2013), she shares personal anecdotes reflecting on her journey to finding her “true self” or “higher self” by changing her perspectives of the world we live in (35). Sincero addresses internal battles we may all have with ourselves about feeling overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated, and feeling “not good enough.” Providing many brief and insightful “how-to” lists to tackle each one of the obstacles, the key point that Sincero continuously emphasizes—and does so…
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Analyzing the Fahrenheit 451 Films by Truffaut and Bahrani
Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury is one of my favourite books for a multitude of reasons, such as Bradbury’s use of poetic language and its’ timeless, universal themes. Although Fahrenheit 451 was originally published in 1953, over 60 years ago, many themes are still relevant today; specifically censorship, and the loss of culture through the loss of information distribution and consumption. Bradbury emphasizes the importance of books to aid in the preservation of cultures and knowledge. In my essay, I will respectively explore the 1966 film directed by Truffaut and the 2018 film adaptation directed by Bahrani, analyzing how both films use setting and tone to convey the novel and the writer’s message.…
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“Why Does Everyone Like Joe Goldberg?” – Strangership and Privilege in Netflix’s You
The popularity of the Netflix thriller You is garnering increasing media attention from critics, theorists, and fans alike after the second season was released at the beginning of January 2020. Falling under fire for the obsessive attention that the psychopathic protagonist, Joe Goldberg, has gotten from young fans, the depictions of stalking, violence, and murder from the narrative perspective of the perpetrator himself is an intriguing – if not a risky – narrative angle. Reactionary criticisms aside, I argue that the series proffers a wealth of subversive discourse critiquing the presentation and acceptance of violent behaviour by privileged folks in a platform easily accessible to a wide-ranging, diverse audience. The main question asked…
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Creating a Story Without Words: Parallels in Story and Music-making
Music and writing have a lot in common. You may have even heard stories themselves be described in terms of music- like beats of action, the rhythm of words, and the melody, or a voice, of an author. Throughout the years, these two disciplines have helped each other to both become powerful outlets of creativity and expression. When polyphony, or music with more than one independent voice, became common, there was also a rising interest in composing music with a story plot. Many techniques were developed, particularly in the Romantic Era, where extramusical art forms such as books and plays were used to help musicians find an emotional truth in…
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“Such dread as only children can feel”: Childhood trauma in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
“For me,” Jane begins, following the incident in the red room, “the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel” (Brontë 20). Saturated as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is with unnerving or unsettling sensations, what is fascinating is how these sensations and images work in conjunction to articulate trauma—particularly trauma as it is experienced by a child. There is a striking poignancy to Jane’s specification that the dread she feels in this moment is “dread as children only can feel” (emphasis mine). A closer reading of red room incident reveals that the text corresponds to two…
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The Power of Texts and Images in My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade
NB: The metaphors are shown in capital letters as indicated by Barbara Dancygier and Eve Sweetser’s Figurative Language (2014) text. For every song a musical artist publishes, the artist creates an album cover art to represent the theme and messages conveyed in the music. In The Black Parade (2006) album, written and sung by the American rock band My Chemical Romance, the artwork produced for the vinyl copy of the album captures and communicates the artist’s message through multiple inputs blended together. The message the album is addressing is the mental health obstacles that the lead singer of the band, Gerard Way, was combatting when they were writing the album. Gerard’s ‘battle’ is represented through the…
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Be Still: Slowing Down to Savour Life
“When we lose our sense of wonder we become dissatisfied with who we are,” Madeleine L’Engle says in her book on creation and human identity (Madeleine 51). When I came back to her words this month, I connected just as strongly to them as I had the first time I read them. Madeleine L’Engle is right, on many levels. Losing our sense of wonder not only prevents us from seeing and appreciating the blessings in our lives, it also makes us disillusioned with reality, and with ourselves. Our world goes at such a fast pace that we sometimes find it difficult to catch our breath, much less give ourselves time…
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The Polar Express: The Train You Need to Ride Every Year
Many of Chris Van Allsburg’s books have been projected into a motion picture film such as Zathura (2005) and Jumanji (1995). Van Allsburg’s most memorable book to film project is The Polar Express(1985) which has gained the status of being a Christmas film played each year like Frosty the Snowman (1969) and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). But why? The Polar Express (1985) is structured for young children to understand the gist of the plotline easily in addition to the simple, yet magical illustrations Van Allsburg creates himself. The story appeals to children with elements of magic and wonder and to adults as a form of nostalgia reminding every adult of their imaginative days as a child. The…
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“You, Who Have Devastated the Souls of the Living”: Heroes, Hubris, and the Victorian Gothic in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Although Christmas time and ghost stories seem to us strange bedfellows, the two were commonly found lying together in the nineteenth century. Ghouls and ghosts, seances and mystics, changelings and revenants were all immensely popular among the Victorians – and their presence was felt year-round in high society. Christmas was especially fraught with the souls of the dead, as the Victorians were well-known for spending their Christmas Eves telling spooky stories around the fire amidst the gifts, candles, and cakes. Considering the majority of our current western Christmas traditions were founded in the Victorian era, it stands to argue that contemporary tales merging the uncanny with the holly-jolly would be second-nature to us,…
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Transgressive social mobility in Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood”
“Once upon a time, deep in the heart of the country,” begins Charles Perrault, “there lived a pretty little girl whose mother adored her, and her grandmother adored her even more. This good woman made her a red hood like the ones that fine ladies wear when they go riding. The hood suited the child so much that soon everybody was calling her Little Red Riding Hood” (33). Since its inception in Perrault’s “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge” (1697) and its rapid proliferation by the likes of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm with their adaptation “Rotkäppchen” (1812/15) or James N Barker’s “Little Red Riding Hood” (1827), the iconographic legacy of the eponymous…
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LITERATURE TO LIFE: WE EAT TOO MANY PAPER PLATES
Thinking beyond ourselves has become a dominant theme in my Canadian Environmental writing course that influences my decisions on a day-to-day basis. It is annie ross’ collection of poems from Pots and Other Living Beings(2019) that inspires me to reflect on my consumption of food, clothing, and other materialistic items. I am not insisting to start living a minimalist lifestyle, but to become more mindful about buying another pair of shoes and thinking twice about purchasing another tube of mascara. With the holiday season coming up, almost everyone, including myself, will be in the gift-giving spirit. Before we fumble for our wallets, I want to discuss the significance of annie ross’…
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Literature to Life: Three Timeless Must-Know Gift-Giving Tips You Need
From my previous post “Literature to Life: We Eat Too Many Paper Plates,” I analyzed annie ross’ Pots and Other Living Beings (2019) to continue ongoing discussions pertaining to recent climate strikes. With the upcoming Black Friday sale and holidays next month, I want to suggest a few alternatives for everyone to think about when planning their purchases. Since many of us are students and want to ensure we are making a valuable investment in the items we find for our friends and family members, I have a few tips to help you make valuable purchases that are friendly to the environment and your bank account! Note: I am using…
