palimpsest- a definition

A palimpsest is a manuscript page, scroll, or book that has been written on, scraped off, and used again. The word palimpsest comes through Latin from two Greek roots (palin + psEn) meaning "scraped again."

this blog is a place for me to keep the collection of all the my favorite essays that I've written in my college years. As an english major at USC I've written a LOT of papers and almost all of them have been written and re-written and changed and reformed over the years. These are my own palimpsests.

What's In A Name

The Namesake "the movie" came out recently, so it inspired me to re-read the book and and here is the outcome of the re-reading.

My mother got my name from a book she read in her eighth month of pregnancy. Today, as an English major, I can’t help but think that naming me from a book might have had some sort of unexplained influence over my life. I have always believed that names are very powerful things. As the title of the book would suggest, The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a novel whose central theme is the importance and the power of names. Lahiri shows just how powerful names are by encompassing many of the important themes of the entire novel in the ways her characters are affected by names— their meanings, cultural significances, memory associations, ownership implications, and their abilities to bring people together and also to alienate.

The meaning of Ashoke and Ashima’s names represent the trauma’s that have served to shape their characters. “Ashima means ‘she who is limitless, without borders’” (16). And it is Ashima who makes a huge step in her life moving from her homeland to a place she doesn’t know anything about and is not comfortable in, but she turns it into her home and establishes a family. At the same time she works to maintain a connection and a relationship with her family back home in India. In the end she literally lives a life “without borders” as she doesn’t have an official home and will travel back and forth from America and India. Ashoke’s name means “he who transcends grief” (16). Ashoke not only transcends grief but death itself as he survives a horrific train accident and then gains closure with the trauma by naming his son Gogol thereby turning his grief into something positive.

Culture, the embracing and keeping of, is a very important theme in the novel. Names are very important in Indian culture. “In India parents take their time. It wasn’t unusual for years to pass before the right name, the best possible name, was determined” (25). There are also many rules when it comes to name calling in their culture. Indian children are given two names. Their “good name” which they use “for identification purposes in the outside world” (26) and most importantly they are given a “pet name.” A pet name is like a nick-name, it is used by family and close friends in private and personal settings. The very first time that a cultural reference is made in the novel is through the use (or lack of use) of a name. Lahiri explains how Ashima doesn’t ever use her husband’s good name. “When she calls out to Ashoke, she doesn’t say his name… It’s not the type of thing Bengali wives do”(2). It is no coincidence that, through Ashima, Lahiri shows the reader an introduction to Indian culture, because through Ashima the family itself maintains its connection to their heritage. She keeps traditions alive in the home and, often times, even forces her children to celebrate their culture as she organizes celebrations with their Bengali friends and organizing trips back to their homeland.

Not only is keeping culture alive an important theme in the novel but so is keeping memory alive. The name that Ashoke gives to his first son is representative of keeping memory alive through names. The name Gogol encompasses so many memories and experiences of Ahoke’s life. Gogol is the last name of one of the Russian authors that Ashoke grows up reading. It is the name of the author of The Overcoat, the story Ashoke was reading when he had his near fatal accident. And it was a page from that story that saved his life. The fact that his name is so powerful that it can contain all of these important memories becomes apparent to Gogol when his father finally tells him the truth about how he got his name. “And suddenly the sound of his pet name… means something completely new, bound up with a catastrophe he has unwittingly embodied for years” (124). Gogol’s name is also a symbol of the how the loss of memory can affect a life. He reflects on how he had changed his name and that only a few people left call him by the name of Gogol. When those people are gone, so will his name and the memories it embodied. “Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so cease to exist” (289). Lahiri writes about a time when Gogol is little and he takes a school trip to a cemetery where they do grave rubbings. The cemetery also shows how names carry on memory. The names on the graves stand as testaments to the lives of the people buried beneath them. Gogol finds himself drawn to the names. “But Gogol is attached to them… these ancient Puritan spirits, these very first immigrants to America, these bearers of unthinkable, obsolete names, have spoken to him, so much so that in spite of his mother’s disgust he refuses to throw the rubbings away” (71). In this way the memories of those dead people live on for a while in Gogol’s mind as he tucks away their grave rubbings in a safe place that his mother can’t get to.

Ownership is another important idea to the family. Many times in the novel Lahiri makes references to who owns
particular objects or who had purchased what. “…his father was wearing… a gray L.L. Bean sweater vest that Gogol and Sonia had gotten him for Christmas one year” (173). More importantly Lahiri uses names to establish ownership. “…the book had been bought used, a stranger’s name, Roy Goodwin, is written inside” (173). Even people can be owned— “…She wears a plastic bracelet with a typed label identifying her as a patient of the hospital” (4). Another way names are used to connote ownership is through the use of nicknames. Like pet names, nicknames are only used by people who are in intimate relationships with one another. Perhaps the best example of this is when Moushumi is given the nick-name “Mouse” by the man she has an affair with. “The nickname had irritated and pleased her at the same time. It made her feel foolish, but she was aware that in renaming her he had claimed her somehow, already made her his own” (258). To symbolize how Moushumi never actually turns her whole self over to her husband, Gogol, Lahiri writes, “Only she is not Mrs. Ganguli. Moushumi has kept her last name. She doesn’t adopt Ganguli, not even with a hyphen” (227). Moushumi, in a way, looks at taking his last name as giving herself up to him which, it becomes apparent by the affair, she is not truly willing to do.

One of the powers that names have is their ability to bring people together. Taking a husband’s last name is one way a name can bring two lives together. Also having a general name to describe a group of people is another way. The name “Bengali” refers to an ethnic group. It is the way that Ashima and Ashoke gain support and a kind of second family in America. All these people brought together because they identify with the same name. Another type of name in the novel, an acronym, does this same thing. Gogol attends a talk where he learns the acronym “ABCDs,” “American-born confused deshi” (118). This name is a way to explain a group of people all going through the same thing. “‘Teleologically speaking, ABCDs are unable to answer the question, ‘Where are you from?’’” (118). When Gogol thinks further about this he sees how he too could fit in this category. But he, purposely avoids this group. “He avoids them, for they remind him too much of the way his parents chose to live, befriending people not so much because they like them, but because of a past they happen to share” (119). But when he gets older Gogol feels a special connection to Moushumi because of the fact that she shares that Indian culture he tried so hard as a youth to avoid. At a party one night he feels that bond more than ever when the conversation turns to baby names. As the guest look through a book Gogol thinks about how both he and Moushumi’s names are absent from that book and “for the first time all evening he feels a hint of that odd bond that had first drawn them together” (240). Gogol also feels closer to Moushumi because she knew him when he was still Gogol which is something none of his other girlfriends shared.

As much as names can bring people together they can also alienate them. As mentioned before, Gogol’s girlfriends never knew him as Gogol and this makes it hard for Gogol to every let himself get too close to them. He thinks about how his girlfriend Maxine never really thought about the fact that he was once Gogol, “this essential fact about his life slipping from her mind as so many others did” (156). Because of this and what it represents to him, his relationship with her can not last. Interestingly enough he changes his name because of his sense of alienation he feels that it brings him. He starts to develop this the day at the cemetery. As the kids find last names that match their own “the peculiarity of his name becomes apparent” (68). He starts to feel different from the other kids and becomes embarrassed of his name.

“The sight of [his name] printed in capital letter on the crinkly page upsets him viscerally. It’s as though the name were a particularly unflattering snapshot of himself that makes him want to say in his defense ‘That’s not really me.’” (89)

And because of the embarrassment his name gives him he starts to voluntarily alienate himself from his peers.

Gogol wants to excuse himself, to raise his hand and take a trip to the lavatory, but at the same time he wants to draw as little attention to himself as possible. And so he sits, avoiding eye contact with any of his classmates, and pages through the book. (89)

The way that Gogol seeks to have the confidence to matriculate back into normal society is to change his name. And when he does change it he feels powerful and confident enough to become social again.

In Lahiri’s novel names have all the power to not only change personalities but to encompass all of the themes in her novel. Through the meanings of Ashoke’s and Ashima’s names she shows the central conflicts in their lives, their personal traumas. Through the tradition of naming she shows the importance of maintaining culture and how it can be represented and thrive even in foreign lands. Gogol’s name represents Lahiri’s theme of memory and how it is kept, dealt with and celebrated. Through things like nicknames she shows how names can often signify ownership. And not only proper names, but group names can both bring people together and also serve to make a person feel alienated. I believe that my name coming from a book had a meaningful influence in shaping my love of books. Names are powerful forces and so much can be found in their meanings and their significances, this is what Lahiri wanted to communicated by showcasing names in her novel.

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2005

The Strange Face of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

It is said that eyes are the windows to the soul. If this is true then the face would be the house in which the soul lives. And just as one paints a house, or decorates it for a holiday, a person’s outward facial expression can represent the thoughts contained inside. A person’s face can convey the feelings one has deep in their soul. This is the reason that Robert Louis Stevenson pays such close attention to the faces of his characters in his novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Faces represent more than emotions, they represent the characters at their core.

Stevenson uses people’s faces to describe a lot more than what they look like. The first place in the story that Stevenson discuses faces is an important one. It comes up during the incident in which Hyde is being detained by the angry mob that saw him trample a little girl. “I never saw a circle of such hateful faces…” (8). Stevenson could have said ‘hateful people’ but he chose to describe their faces as hateful instead, as if their faces represent who they are as people. This idea is echoed later on when Stevenson describes Dr Jekyll’s staff as standing together “with faces of dreadful expectation” (39). Again, Stevenson is describing a group of people by the looks on their faces.

The next time Stevenson mentions faces is in the second chapter. This time, by the use of repetition, he establishes the theme, enabling it to continue throughout the story. Utterson begins to develop an obsession with Hyde—

…and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr Hyde.” (13)

From this quote it becomes apparent that he doesn’t necessarily aspire to meet Hyde he just wants to see what he looks like. But more than anything Utterson wants to see Hyde’s face.

And at least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up… a spirit of endured hatred. (13-14)

Stevenson is doing two things here. First, by the repetition, he is establishing the importance of a person’s face in the novella. Secondly, he shows the power of the face. Hyde’s is a face that can, just by being seen, cause a person to feel an immense hatred. And then, of course, when Utterson does finally encounter Hyde one of the first things he says is “will you let me see your face?” (15)

Stevenson makes it a point to include a description of faces whenever describing a character, especially if that person is experiencing any sort of intense emotion. For example, when the maid witnesses the murder on the street below her, she describes the murdered mans face to the police.

…the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-worn kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content. (21)

The maid’s assumptions in regards to the man’s personality were brought to her mind, supposedly, from just catching a glimpse of the man’s face. And from that one moonlight glimpse of his face she gathered so much about his character.
Another maid in the text, the one of Mr Hyde’s, is described as “an ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman” (23) and that “she had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy…” (23). This description of the “evil face” makes sense when, pages later, Jekyll describes the woman as a “creature whom [he] well knew to be silent and unscrupulous” (59). This adjective, “unscrupulous,” or lacking in honesty and being oblivious to what is honorable, echoes Hyde’s character. If she mirrors Hyde’s characteristics, in Stevenson’s world, so too would her “evil” face.

This brings me to the interesting juxtaposition of the sight (and description) of Dr Jekyll’s face and that of Mr Hyde’s. Stevenson introduces the reader to Mr Hyde before we get a description of Dr Jekyll. The first time Stevenson uses a facial reference is through Utterson’s thoughts after his encounter with Hyde— “The last, I think; for O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend” (16). This, of course, is the exact opposite description of Jekyll’s face, given a couple pages letter when we first meet him: “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness…” (19). Stevenson’s choice to use the description “smooth-faced” is an interesting one. The word smooth is comforting, conjuring up feelings of pleasantness, it is the exact opposite feeling one gets when looking at Hyde. And, in fact, Hyde is often described as hairy and ape-like, unlike Jekyll who, Stevenson makes it a point to show, is completely without hair on his face. The use of the word “mark” in his description of Jekyll could parallel the word “signature” used in the description of Hyde, showing how both are “marked” by opposing ideas; Hyde, by evil, and Jekyll, by kindness. Moments later we see Dr Jekyll’s “large handsome face” change at the mention of his counterpart, Hyde. Jekyll’s face goes from being “handsome” to “[growing] pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes” (20). This shows how Stevenson uses the strange change in Jekyll’s face to give an allusion to his famous plot twist. Remember the mention of the eyes being the windows to the soul? It is probably no coincidence that Utterson mentions Jekyll’s eyes turning black when thinking about Hyde.

If one reads closely it become obvious that every time Hyde is mentioned to Jekyll, Stevenson makes reference to his face. For example, when Jekyll talks about Hyde in a conversation with Utterson, he (Jekyll) “covered his face for a moment with his hands” (28). Jekyll may be almost unconsciously masking his face to draw illusions to the way that his face becomes “masked” by Hyde’s when he makes his change. This theme of masking is brought up again later in the novella with the character of Poole. Poole explains to Utterson his concern with the odd behavior of his employer, Jekyll. “‘Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?’… [Poole] paused and passed his hand over his face” (41). This time it is Poole who may be unconsciously masking his face, mirroring his own masters disturbing change.

It is no doubt that faces are a crucial theme in the novel. Now we can ask the question, why did Stevenson include this? What can this signify? As I mentioned before, I believe that Stevenson placed such an importance on the face because it is the window to the soul. The soul is a very important theme of the novella. The duality of the soul, the possession of a soul, etc., are important issues brought up by Stevenson. In Carl Jung’s book Man and His Symbols he directly addresses Jekyll and Hyde when discussing “Disassociation,” or “the splitting in the psyche, causing a neurosis” (Jung, 7). Jung mentions the novella saying, “a famous fictional example of this state is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde… In the story Jekyll’s ‘split’ took the form of a physical change, rather than (as in reality) an inner, psychic state” (Jung, 7). I mention this because the word “psyche” can also be taken to mean “soul.” In analyzing the neurosis of Disassociation he hits on what could be referencing in his novella, knowingly or not.

Among such people, whose consciousness is at a different level of development from ours, the “soul” (or psyche) is not felt to be a unit. Many primitives assume that a man has a “bush soul” as well as his own, and that this bush soul is incarnate in a wild animal…, with which the human individual has some kind of psychic identity. (Jung, 6-7).

This “bush soul” could be embodied in Hyde. It would explain why Hyde’s face would be hairy, so as to mimic the features of an ape.
Jung goes on to explain further—

In some tribes it is assumed that a man has a number of souls; this belief expresses the feeling of some primitive individuals that they each consist of several linked but distinct units. This means that the individual’s psyche is far from being safely synthesized; on the contrary, it threatens to fragment only too easily under the onslaught of unchecked emotions. (Jung, 7-8)

This separation of souls could explain why it is that Hyde’s face is so hard to describe. I don’t want to go so far as to say that Hyde doesn’t have a soul but I would suggest that perhaps he has a different kind of soul, one more like the “bush soul” that Jung describes. He can not be described because other human beings can not recognize themselves enough in him to be able to clearly see him. This is rather unlike Jekyll who contains a human soul whose face looks “handsome” and can be clearly seen by the narrator and the reader.

When taking into account the writings of Jung it seems that Stevenson, by placing such importance on the face as representing emotion, feeling, and humanity, was trying to show the state of a person’s soul. It is no wonder then why people who are generally upset by unthinkable acts are described as “angry faces.” Or people who have been shaken to the core by fear are “faces of dreadful expectation.” It also brings great importance to the different descriptions of Jekyll and Hyde’s faces. Jekyll, who contains a soul with a consciousness, has a kind and smooth face, whereas Hyde has one that is satanic or ape-like. By placing emphasis on faces, Stevenson is actually using a unique way to address the importance of the duality of the soul by locating the presence of the soul in the face. Stevenson is literally showing us that the eyes are the windows to the soul and, therefore, they are the windows to our very humanity or, in some cases, the lack there of!

copyright Megan Tharpe 2004

The Overcoat and The Namesake: The Changes

Essay illustrating the paralels between Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake to Nikolai Gogol's short story "The Overcoat."

Jhumpa Lahiri includes a quote from Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat” as the inscription to her novel The Namesake but the parallels do not end there. Allusions to the short story can be found everywhere— Gogol gets his name from the author Nikolai Gogol, Ashoke is literally saved by a page from “The Overcoat,” and a brief biography of Nikolai Gogol is given by a school teacher as he assigns the story to Gogol and his classmates. But the most important allusion to the story is the way that Gogol Ganguli changes his name just as Akaky Akakievich changes his overcoat. And the wearing of both of these things greatly change these two characters in very similar ways.

Both of the characters, Gogol and Akaky, are born without a name picked out. As baby’s both of their parents struggle to find the right names. In the end they are both, in a way, named by their fathers. “With a slight quiver of recognition, as if he’d known it all along, the perfect pet name for his son occurs to Ashoke… ‘Gogol,’ he repeats, satisfied” (Namesake, 28). “It’s evidently his fate. If so, better let him be named after his father. His father was Akaky, so let the son also be Akaky” (Overcoat, 395). In both cases of naming the authors suggest that the names were fated. As Nikolai Gogol writes in his story and as Lahiri quotes in her book, in both cases “the reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise, and that to give [them] any other names was quite out of the question.”

The resistance Gogol shows, as a child, to getting a new name parallels the resistance Akaky shows to getting a new overcoat. When it came time for Gogol to assume his “good name” at school and be called “Nikhil” he was upset. “Gogol doesn’t want a new name. He can’t understand why he has to answer to anything else” (Namesake, 57). Akaky acts very similarly to Gogol when the tailor, Petrovich, tells him that his overcoat is impossible to repair and that he will have to get a new one. Like Gogol, Akaky is unable to even understand why this change needs to be made. “‘Why impossible, Petrovich?’ he said almost in a child’s pleading voice” (Overcoat, 403). At this point both of the characters are child-like, resistant, confused and scared to change.

The characters are very comfortable with the things they cling to. Akaky is a character who is afraid of change. He lives his life doing the same things day in and day out, never varying from his routine--

“However many directors and other superiors came and went, he was always to be seen in one and the same place, in the same position, in the same capacity, as the same copying clerk, so that after a while they became convinced that he must simply have been born into the world ready-made, in uniform, and with a balding head” (Overcoat, 396).

Part of that “uniform” is his overcoat, so it is no wonder why Akaky has trouble changing it. Comfort is also the reason that Gogol doesn’t want to change his name at first. “As a young boy Gogol doesn’t mind his name. He recognizes pieces of himself in road signs: GO LEFT, GO RIGHT, GO SLOW” (Namesake, 66).

Soon Gogol starts to believe that his misery might stem from his name, just as Akaky comes to believe that his misery “might perhaps lie with his overcoat” (Overcoat, 400). So they both decide to make the change, believing, for different reasons, that they have no other choice. Akaky gives in because his tailor will absolutely not mend his old overcoat. “Here Akaky Akakievich saw that he could not get around a new overcoat, and his spirits wilted completely” (Overcoat, 405). Gogol, however, believed that he had no other choice because he believed he wouldn’t be happy without making the change. “In spite of his parents’ sanction he feels that he is overstepping them, correcting a mistake they’ve made” (Namesake, 101).

Before both of the characters make the official change they already begin to experiences changes in their personalities just by the thought of making the official change. As a boy “Gogol does not date anyone in high school. He suffers quiet crushes, which he admits to no one” (Namesake, 93). But when Gogol, one night, tells a girl his name is Nikhil he acts very different. “It is the first time he’s kissed anyone, the first time he’s felt a girl’s face and body and breath so close to his own” (Namesake, 96). When his friends notice the change Gogol “shakes his head in a daze, as astonished as they are, elation still welling side him… he doesn’t tell them that it hadn’t been Gogol who’d kissed Kim. Gogol had nothing to do with it” (Namesake, 96). Gogol’s suddenly assertive behavior mirrors Akaky’s very same change when he just thinks of getting a new overcoat. “He became somehow livelier, even firmer of character, like a man who has defined and set a goal for himself. Doubt, indecision- in short, all hesitant and uncertain features- disappeared of themselves from his face and actions” (Overcoat, 407). In both cases the characters have a complete change of personality just by the thought of the actions they could take. These preliminary changes highlight one of the important and similar themes to each story, that a person does not need a change of costume to make a change in behavior.

Perhaps it is this feeling of change that comes over both of the characters that enables them to make the official change. Akaky must have liked the feeling of empowerment that the idea of getting a new overcoat gave him, therefore he decided to go through with the change. And sure enough once he put on his new purchase he was “in the most festive disposition of all his feelings. At each instant of every minute he felt that there was a new overcoat on his shoulders, and several times he even smiled from inner satisfaction” (Overcoat, 409). It is probably because he feels much like Gogol does after his change— “[Gogol] wonders if this is how it feels for an obese person to become thin, for a prisoner to walk free” (Namesake, 102). The two characters are both re-born into their newer, happier, more assertive selves because the changes they each make enable them to have the self-confidence they once lacked.

Akaky’s new overcoat enables him to become a different person. Gogol (the author) shows this when he at first mentions that after his dinner Akaky would “take out a bottle of ink, and copy documents he had brought home. If there chanced to be none, he made copies especially for his own pleasure…” (Overcoat, 398). Then after he gets the overcoat he writes that Akaky “dined cheerfully and wrote nothing after dinner…” (Overcoat, 410). His change becomes apparent when he makes the significant move of taking his old overcoat out to compare to his new one and finally is able to perceive its shabby state. Akaky even laughs at the coat, which becomes a symbol of his “old” self and then thinks “so far was the difference!” (Overcoat, 410). Gogols change is very similar— “But now that he’s Nikhil it’s easier to ignore his parents, to tume out their concerns and please… It is Nikhil, that first semester, that grows a goatee, starts smoking Camel Lights at parties and while writing papers… It is as Nikhil that he… gets himself a fake ID… It is as Nikhil that he loses his virginity at a party… “ (Namesake, 105).

Just as their changes cause their new personalities to appear, their new changes also cause their old selves to completely disappear, though in different ways. The overcoat causes Akaky’s death. If he hadn’t of gotten the new overcoat he would never have been out at a party late at night and wouldn’t have been assaulted and robbed. It was in order to recover the overcoat that he went to the important person for help, only to have his spirit broken, which caused his ultimate death. Perhaps if Akaky had not changed his “uniform” he would have not died. Lahiri parallels this when Gogol realizes that because of his name change, only a few people still call him Gogol. And when those people are gone, so too will his old name, and its history be gone. “Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved one, and so, cease to exist” (Namesake, 289).

Both characters suffer a “death” of their old selves but live on in new forms. Though Gogol Ganguli ceases to exist, “Nikhil will live on, publicly celebrated, unlike Gogol, purposely hidden, legally diminished, now all but lost” (Namesake, 290). Akaky is also able to live on as a ghost that haunts his town. As the ghost of his former self Akaky continues to get stronger. He is not afraid to be assertive and take revenge on those who have hurt him. Like Nikhil Ganguli, Akaky Akakievich is able to live on in his new form despite the death of his old self.

Gogol wears his name like Akaky wears his overcoat. Both things give them confidence, makes them feel like different people, and gives them the strength to do things they never thought they could do. But hopefully when Gogol finally reads “The Overcoat” he will learn that perhaps what Dostoyevsky meant by “we all come out of Gogol’s overcoat” is that our true selves are deep inside and that sometimes we just need an overcoat to make us feel confident enough to become who we truly want to be.

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2006

Cultural Histories Influences on Narratives

I often feel as if I have no history. That probably comes from the fact that I feel as if I have no culture either. My ethnic friends often call me a “WASP” (white, Anglo-saxon, protestant), which is just the slang term for “ridiculously white.” I don’t really have a cultural identity. There are no clubs or groups for people like me at school. I don’t really face much discrimination and/or problems because of my ethnicity to warrant support from others of my “race.” So reading cultural-based novels really makess me realize how much history a person carries with them, based on their ethnicity or race, and how little cultural history I seemed to have. Most cultural-based novels touch upon the idea of cultural histories- how it is passed down, re-told, remembered and forgotten— and how these histories affect the characters and impact the narratives.

Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire is a book that deals very much with the importance of history. It was one of the only books that dealt with my “WASP” history at all, though not in a very good light. I got to read about how my “history” was shaped by the slaughter of other people’s cultures. Memory of Fire is the perfect example of how history shapes a narrative. In Galeano’s work he uses history to form his linear narrative. Before the narrative even starts Galeano writes a description of exactly how he uses history to shape the narrative of his book (and even the ones to follow) in a section titled “This Book.”

This book is the first of a trilogy. It is divided into to parts. In one indigenous creation myths raise the curtain on pre-Columbian America. In the other, the history of America unfolds from the end of the fifteenth century to the year 1700. The second volume… will cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The third volume will reach up to our times. (Galeano, xvi)

In this way Galeano fashions his novel in an historical chronological order starting from stories about the creation of the world that were, for specific cultures, taken to be historical accounts and, eventually, ending his historical accounts in present day America.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Indian culture-based novel The Namesake, like Galeano’s novel, is arranged in sections according to date. Chapter one is seemingly entitled 1968 and it ends in Chapter twelve which shows that the book has made the journey to 2000. It becomes obvious that Lahiri thought it important to show the time in which this novel takes place. But the narrative is not linear such as Galeano’s. The reader gets glimpses into the past of the characters before the year it starts and even into the future. In the last chapter Lahiri switches from narrating present tense to future tense. “He wonders if he will be married again one day, if he will ever have a child to name. A month from now, he will begin a new job at a smaller architectural practice, producing his own designs” (Lahiri, 289). Lahiri does not stay in the lines of the linear narrative to tell the histories of the characters. She shifts from past to present to future. This is because it takes all of these elements for the characters to come to terms with their cultural histories, new and old.

Toni Morrison, in her novel that deals with African-American culture, Song of Solomon, uses history to shape her narrative as well. In Morrison’s novel the idea of forgetting history or the absence of knowledge in regards to a familial or cultural history shape the events of the novel. Morrison takes the reader along on the same journey as the character, Milk Man, to find the truth of his family’s history. As Milk Man learns things, so does the reader. History does not reveal itself to the reader until it is revealed to a specific character. In this way history, much like in Momaday’s book, is not told in a direct linear fashion. History affects the narrative because the discovery or the recovery of forgotten or hidden stories or histories, pull the novel along. Additions the Dead’s family history and Milk Man’s cultural history serves to drive the narrative further. The best example of this is how Milk Man, from a small child, had a habit of always looking behind him. “It was becoming a habit—this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had” (35). But Milk Man’s future actually exists in his past.

It wasn’t true what he’d said… that it wasn’t important to find his people. Ever since Danville, his interest in his own people, not just the ones he men, had been growing… Who were they, and what were they like? …why did she want to keep that awful name? To wipe out the past? Slavery? His slave past? And why didn’t his own father, and Pilate, know any of their own relatives? (293)

He has to find out his history, familial, personal and cultural before he can become a man and deal with his future. The book mimics this idea by constantly moving forward aided by details of the past.

N. Scott Momaday’s autobiography The Names: A Memoir is also a story that is concerned with coming to terms with ones past cultural histories. The Names is created from his personal history as a Native American, and not (as in Galeano’s book) concerned with retelling the history in a linear fashion. This is because Momaday is not concerned with the actual order of how things happened historically as much as he is concerned with how he remembers, or even imagines, it. “In general my narrative is an autobiographical account. Specifically it is an act of the imagination… This is one way to tell a story. In this instance it is my way, and it is the way of my people” (Momaday, i). Momaday is explaining that, to re-tell a history in a non-linear fashion as he does in his novel, is to remain true to and to fully represent his culture. And as far as history is concerned in his narrative, Momaday believes that his history is shaped fully by him and not, as Galeano is concerned with, by the specific placement in time an event actually occurred. Therefore, there is no true linear version of history neither in his mind nor in his book.

I invented history… The past and the future were simply the large contingencies of a given moment; they bore upon the present and gave it shape. One does not pass through time, but time enters upon him in his place… Notions of the past and future are essentially notions of the present. In the same ay an idea of one’s ancestry and posterity is really an idea of the self. (Momaday, 97)

Since Momaday feels that history doesn’t just exist in dates, rather in memories and are as much in the present as it is in the past, so then does his narrative. Momaday is the perfect example of cultural histories shaping a narrative. His Indian culture doesn’t follow traditional, linear patterned narratives. Rather they allow their stories lines to flow and intermingle the present with the past.

As a person with a feeling of disconnect from a particular culture, I find myself being drawn into the various re-tellings of cultural histories from various novels. In Memory of Fire Galeano uses actual events to form his linear re-telling of history from a particular culture’s perspective. In the The Namesake Lahiri follows a linear narrative in her chapters, but within those chapters the narrative slips from present to past to highlight the journey her characters take to find their cultural identities. The narrative of Song of Solomon is guided by the discovery of cultural/personal history. And then, of course, N. Scott Momoday’s autobiography The Names follows his cultural idea of history by not retelling his story in any sort of linear fashion. Culture has a profound effect on the telling of a person’s history. As I feel stripped of culture I also feel stripped of history. But, if Momaday is correct and we, as individuals, can make our own history I am not without hope of one day having my own history to discover and then, hopefully one day, to narrate for future generations.

Body Worlds: The Artistic Exhibition of Real Human Bodies

Short essay on the Body Worlds exhibit by Dr. Gunther von Hagens.

I have never had a very strong stomach, a fact which led me to fail Biology in high school because of a marked number of absences on days in which dissections were to take place. So right before I entered the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center (described to me as “a biology textbook come to life”) I took a deep breath and reminded myself that, this time, ditching was not an option. My only hope was that I would find this exhibit to be more artistic than disgusting. I was more than happy; I was relieved to find that Dr. Gunther von Hagens’ “Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies” exceeded my hopes. Dr. von Hagens did an excellent job of introducing and exhibiting works of a new style of Anatomical Realism.

As I came face to face with my first dissected body I found that von Hagens’ plastination process had hardened all the normally soft and squishy human parts, which made the bodies look comfortingly fake and also hauntingly beautiful. I was delighted to find that, not only was I not passing out from horror and disgust, but that I found the entire body quite aesthetically pleasing. The bodies I was dreading were more like works of art that filled my imagination and piqued my curiosity— each body drawing me further and further into the exhibit and touching me on so many different levels, as all good works of art should do.

I attended the exhibit with my best friend who, like me, is an art history student. So it wasn’t too unlikely that we both found ourselves drawn to the artist renderings of human figures that were hung on the walls surrounding the plastinated bodies and body parts. We seemed to be the only two people in the over-crowded room who could tear their eyes away from the physical exhibits to appreciate the artwork on the walls. We stood in front of the oversized banners that hung from the ceilings and stared at the beautiful detailed sketches of limbs, muscular structures, and nude bodies. The effect that these banners was two-fold—they were aesthetically pleasing but also worked to give a nod to the artists of the past whose works, that bridged both art and science, were the stepping stones that made this exhibit possible many years later. I especially liked the addition of the drawings to the exhibit because it was nice to see wonderful examples of the two styles of Anatomical Realism intermixed, the old amongst the new.

The first style of Anatomical Realism had, until the opening of Body Worlds, been the only style for a very long period of time. The most famous of all Anatomical Realists was Leonardo DaVinci whose most famous anatomical drawing is the “Vitruvian Man” (see Fig. 1) which was one of the artworks displayed in the exhibit. As you can see by the drawing, this style aimed to show a higher reality of dissection by displaying beautiful, idealized bodies and body parts that float in the air with no reference to any one dissected person. These drawings were beautiful and always strived for perfection. The early anatomical illustrations began to achieve greater technical precision as knowledge about the boundaries and surfaces of the human body, due to scientific studies (and grave robbing), became more sophisticated.

The second style of Anatomical Realism is a direct result of the knowledge gained by those anatomical illustrations. Body Worlds is a perfect example of that newer style which aimed to show the reality of dissection— the cutting open of a particular body with all the furniture of the dissection. It shows the ugliness of anatomical mutilation (see Fig. 2). Until plastination this art style has not been able to be offered for mass viewings by the general public.

There are many people who viewed this exhibit with disgust. There are many people who questioned the ethics behind it. There are many people who were outraged and upset over the very existence of it. I am not one of those people. In fact, I had a hard time trying to see the exhibit any way other than a highly stylized art exhibit. I did not encounter one negative feeling while walking from one art piece to the next and, in fact, found the much-debated “Pregnant Woman” to be the most artistic of all the pieces.

Many of the people around me exclaimed how “sick” it was that von Hagens had her “posing” like a “sexual object.” I understood that viewers were taking issue with the position of her arm, slung up over her head in a way that could be taken to be sexually suggestive. Later that night, as I was lying in bed, that particular piece stayed with me. I began to wonder if there was another way von Hagens could have displayed her body that would have been less controversial. I shifted onto my side and played with that idea as I played with the position of my arm. No matter where I placed it, my arm interfered with or blocked the sight of my stomach. It became obvious that her “pose” was the perfect way to display the beauty of her pregnant stomach. Even more, it was a uniquely feminine position that displayed the deeper meaning and entire point behind this particular body— a woman who had the ability to create and sustain the life of a child.

Dr. Gunther von Hagens is not only a scientific pioneer, but also a very talented and groundbreaking artist. I have sat in many Art History classes and walked through hallways filled with artwork in all kinds of museums of all kinds of genres, and this exhibit was unlike anything I had ever seen. Because of “Body Worlds” I got the chance to experience a new style of Anatomical Realism that enriched my mind and helped me experience a style of art in a brand new and exciting way. Von Hagens’ exhibit should not only be celebrated for its scientific advancements but also for its undeniable artistic value.
fig. 1 fig. 2

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2005

The Recurring Themes of Edgar Allen Poe

Essay exploring the common themes of Edgar Allen Poe by comparing The Fall of the House of Usher to many of his other popular works.

There are many thematic similarities in the works of Edgar Allen Poe. These themes are of mostly darkness and sickness and death. This is not so surprising considering his life experiences had many of the same themes. He was born in 1809 to actors. Two years later his father disappears and soon after his mother dies leaving him orphaned. He is never legally adopted but lives with the Allen family where he starts attending many different schools. First he is sent to a boarding school, then Manor House School, then enters the school of William Burke, then attends the University of Virginia where he incurs gambling debts. He asks his foster father for help, but receives none; this isn’t the first time this happens. After joining the army he asks for his foster fathers consent to withdraw but the request remains unanswered. When Poe is court-martialled and dismissed from a military academy he moves in with his aunt and his cousin Virginia. As he struggles with poverty he marries his younger cousin and has moderate success as a writer and editor. When Virginia dies Poe falls ill. He dies in 1849, after suffering hallucinations from excessive alcoholism, destitute and suffering from a brain legion. The experiences of his tragic life is the reason his stories are all so dark and foreboding with themes of eerie doublings, obsession with heads and the mind, sickly female characters, death and entombment. The story that shows of all of these themes together is Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. This one story embodies all of the common Poe themes (that can be found in his other popular works such as William Wilson, Ligeia, The Purloined Letter, Berenice, Ulalume and Annabel Lee) and gives the best representation of Poe’s unique literary world.

In the first paragraph of The Fall of the House of Usher the narrator rides up to the house of Roderick Usher. “But with a shudder even more thrilling than before” (Poe, 91) he is unnerved by the sight of the reflection of the house in the “black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling” (Poe, 91). This brings to light one of Poe’s most prominent themes in his stories and in this one in particular. Reflections, mirrors and doublings are important in analyzing any of Poe’s stories. In The Fall of the House of Usher this theme is seen in the beginning with reflection in the lake and the ending where the house crumbles down into the reflection in the lake as if it’s falling into itself; “-and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the ‘House of Usher’” (Poe, 109). Roderick Usher himself is a twin. Poe writes that “A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention… I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them” (Poe, 102). And, to the experienced Poe reader, there is the possibility that the narrator is Usher himself. Perhaps the best example of Poe’s eerie twinning themes in the other stories we read in class is in his story William Wilson. Throughout the whole story it seems that this narrator is being trailed by a person who very closely resembles him.

“The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance, moral or physical, between my rival and myself. I had not then discovered the remarkable fact that we were of the same age; but I saw that we were of the same height, and I perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour of persona and outline of feature” (Poe, 117).

At the end of the story it becomes apparent that William Wilson the narrator was also William Wilson the tormentor the whole time. To drive this twinning theme even deeper William Wilson is confronted with the truth when he looks into a mirror; “as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait” (Poe, 130). Poe uses this theme of conversing with ones self in his poem Ulalume. The narrator writes about the experience he had one night while he was walking with his soul. “Here once, through an alley Titanic/ Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul-/Of cypress, with Psych, my Soul” (Poe, 34). Another example of the twinning or mirroring theme is in the story The Purloined Letter where there are several doublings. But the best example is when the detective says that in order to get into the mind of someone else he “fashion[s] the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or hear, as if to match or correspond with the expression” (Poe, 291). Thereby becoming the mirror image, or twin, of the person he is looking at.

Along with his obsession of doublings is his obsession with people’s heads. It often seems that Poe’s characters exist only in their heads because of the attention he pays to describing this part of the body more than any other parts. In The Fall of the House of Usher Poe goes into a detailed description of Ushers head. He describes his skin, his eyes, his lips, his nose, his chin, his hair, his brow and the expressions they all portrayed (Poe 94-95). He does all this to show how much Usher has changed from the boy he once knew. This is very reminiscent of Poe’s description of the female character Ligeia in Ligeia. He describes just her head for over a page in length. He again describes her skin, her lips, her nose, her nostrils, her chin, her hair, her forehead, her dimples, her teeth and most importantly the paragraph devoted to describing her eyes (Poe, 63-65). In his story Berenice Poe takes his head obsession to new levels. The narrator seems to be living in his imagination; he locks himself up in his library like he locks himself up in his mind. “In that chamber was I born. …-into a place of imagination- …that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie…” (Poe, 141). And like in Poe’s real life, his narrator falls in love with his cousin and becomes obsessed with her head, more specifically her teeth. He describes her head in detail as well, the same way as before; her forehead, her pale skin, her hair, her eyes, her lips and more importantly her teeth.

Another thematic similarity between Berenice and The Fall of the House of Usher is the introduction of a sickly female character. Poe has a common theme of creating a female character that is both sick and dying with a strange illness or is already dead and haunting the story. Usher’s twin sister Madeline is suffering from a disease that “had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis” (Poe, 97). Then she “succumbed… to the prostrating power of the destroyer…” (Poe, 97). In Berenice the object of the narrators desire also has a strange illness. “Disense- a fatal disease- fell like the simoom upon her frame… Alas! The destroyer came and went…” (Poe, 142). In Ligeia the narrator first wife “grew ill” (Poe, 67) and then finally dies of an undisclosed illness. Poe’s poem Annabel Lee is about a boy who is in love with a girl who has died. Ulalume is another poem about a man who has lost his love to death. Both of those poems do not mention the cause of death and if the cause of death to these young beautiful women is mentioned it is some strange and rare illness. But it is a very typical theme of Poe’s to include the deaths of young beautiful women in his stories.

It is not only the women that die in Poe’s stories but men as well. There is a major theme of death in most of his stories. In The Fall of the House of Usher not only does Ushers sister die but it is assumed that Usher dies as well when the house falls down. As I mentioned before the poems Ulalume and Annabel Lee both deal with the death of close loved ones. There is a theoretical death in William Wilson where the narrator kills the person he thinks is harassing him, which Poe describes as killing a part of himself. He ends the story with the talk of how the narrator himself is dead- “Yet, henceforward art thou also dead- dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist- and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself” (Poe, 130).

The death theme is often corroborated with his theme of entombment. Entombment plays a big roll in The Fall of the House of Usher. Usher’s sister Madeline dies and the narrator “personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment” (Poe, 102). The narrator goes on to describe in detail exactly how and where they entomb her- “The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it… was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light…” (Poe, 102). This mention of the small confined space without any light highlights just how confined and enclosed this tomb is. Then the narrator goes on to explain how they not only enclosed the sister in a tomb, they “screwed down the lid,” and “secured the door of iron” (Poe, 103). Then at the end of the story Usher is entombed by his house as it crumbles and falls down on top of him and his sister. This theme is carried over in Berenice. In the beginning the narrator describes the library in which he spent most of his childhood. “The recollection of my earliest years are connected with that chamber… Here died my mother. Herein I was born” (Poe, 141). The chamber is like likened to a tomb not only because he is constantly enclosing himself in it but also because his mother died in it. Later in the story the narrator encounters more tomb-like rooms as in The Fall of the House of Usher. For example the bed-chamber in which his cousin’s body is laying. If you take the description of the room out of context- “The room was large, and very dark, and at every step within its gloomy precincts I encountered the paraphernalia of the grave” (Poe, 146) it sounds very much like a description of a tomb. Upon entering the bed-chamber the narrator goes even further into the depths of the “tomb” when he pulls back the drapes around the coffin and lets them fall around him enclosing him in with the coffin like a tomb.

“Gently I uplifted the sable draperies of the curtains. As I let them fall they descended upon my shoulders, and shutting me thus out from the living, enclosed me in the strictest communion with the deceased. There very atmosphere was redolent of death. The peculiar smell of the coffin sickened me… I would have given worlds to escape- to breath once again the pure air of the eternal heavens” (Poe, 146).

In his poem Annabel Lee the narrator explains that his love was entombed by her family; they “shut her up in a sepulcher” (Poe, 42). And then at the end of the poem he is constantly visiting her “In the sepulcher there by the sea/ In her tomb by the sounding sea” (Poe, 43). In the other poem Ulalume the narrator unknowingly comes upon the tomb of his love.

“But [we] were stopped by the door of a tomb-
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said- ‘what is written, sweet sister,
On the door or this legended tomb?’
She replied- ‘Ulalume- Ulalume-
‘T is the vault of thy lost Ulalume!’” (Poe 16)

Poe was very true to his writing styles, motifs and themes, using the same themes in almost all his works. Doublings/mirrorings, detailing the importance of characters heads, sickly female characters, death and entombment are all important and inescapable themes of his and are all featured prominently inThe Fall of the House of Usher. Most of these themes were also important and inescapable themes of his life as well, thereby it is not a total coincidence that one can see these themes repeated through all of his writings.

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2004