#engl211

[englishlitnotes]

Hell Isn't Other People--Hell Is Ourselves: The shadow selves of Inez, Garcin and Estelle

For Carl Jung, “the shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort”. The shadow is the part of ourselves we repress, that we wish to not have see the light of day, and this poses a special dilemma as problems tend not to go away unless you fix them. The shadow, once repressed, can only do harm, and in coming to terms with the shadow self and learning to embrace it, it can be brought to the surface and dealt with effectively.

The repressed nature of the shadow self, and the refusal to come to terms with it, serves as one of the main methods of torture for the inmates locked in a room in Hell together for eternity in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit. The acts of not accepting the shadows, the growing pains of recognizing the existence of the shadow selves, and the frustration of being around others who refuse to come to terms with their dark sides are all means by which our characters are tormented en lieu of the traditional torture devices one typically pictures inmates of Hell would face.

The shadow is “the negative side of the personality”, which we can see Inez has a firm grasp of, Garcin struggles with, and Estelle refuses to believe she possesses at all. Of the three, Inez is the most in touch with her own darkness, but a good portion of Inez’s torment comes from trying to help Garcin and Estelle recognize their own dark sides. Garcin has a sense of his own cowardliness, which wanes and waxes over the course of the play, and is subject to a degree of torture by the suspicion that it is there and the refusal to fully acknowledge that it is. Estelle stubbornly refuses to acknowledge her shadow, and in doing so, refuses to help Garcin acknowledge the existence of his own and holds him back from making progress on that front, contributing to avoidable torment for both of them.

The funny thing about the shadow—especially compared to the other parts of the unconscious, which Jung calls the anima and animus—is that the shadow, relatively speaking, is fairly easy to identify. This speaks further to the level of immorality that plagues these characters—the work necessary to uncover their shadow selves is not particularly difficult work, but they lack the moral character to undergo that process. “With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow—so far as its nature is personal”. Estelle is entirely incapable of engaging in any self-criticism, through her extreme narcissism, and Garcin’s cowardly nature results in his being too afraid to properly engage in such self-criticism. Accepting the shadow, Jung says, goes as follows:

To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.

In this sense, we can see that Inez is actually a perfect embodiment of one who accepts her shadows.

Inez is fully aware of what kind of person she actually is, and she’s fully aware of what she did that was sufficiently evil to land her an eternity in Hell:

When I say I’m cruel, I mean I can’t get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others’ hearts. When I’m alone I flicker out. For six months I flamed away in her heart, till there was nothing but a cinder. One night she got up and turned on the gas while I was asleep. Then she crept back into bed. So now you know.

She is, quite simply, a cruel person who toyed with the emotions of others, who holds no pretensions about being any kind of saint. This does not make her necessarily any better than the other two—her evil deeds are not lessened by her own recognition of it. But because she has acknowledged her shadow self, her torments in hell will be lesser than those of her unwilling companions.

Estelle nicely embodies another one Jung’s statements about the nature of the shadow:

“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.” (147)

Estelle’s narcissism is so engrained into her that she scarcely recognizes herself as one who embodies some pretty nasty vices, pretending at first to not even know why she was in hell. Inez and Garcin, however, figure her out quickly. The others can see through her more readily than she is wanting them too, discovering almost immediately why she is there based on her fear of a man with a disfigured face. They figured this man attempted suicide on her behalf, and shot himself. She becomes extremely distressed after this revelation is made, and we learn she can barely even admit the fact to herself that she murdered her own baby, prompting the suicide of the man she was cheating on her husband for. Her inability to take responsibility for her own circumstances is a clear byproduct of her repressed shadow self.

Estelle is blatantly obsessed with herself on a surface level, and a surface level only, refusing to believe there is anything to her beyond her appearance; and so one of the ways in which she is tortured is that she is not permitted to have a sense of her physical self anymore, which ideally ought to push her farther towards having to embrace her shadow. Upon arriving in the room where she is to spend eternity, Estelle becomes quickly dismayed by the fact there are no mirrors present. She is expected to reflect on the deeper parts of herself, but becomes desperate to bury her fears in the reassurance of her physical beauty, as demonstrated by the scene in which Inez attempts to comfort her by acting as her ‘mirror.’ Estelle’s fragile sense of self is revealed when she has a vision of herself on Earth, and realizes that not only does she have no mirror in Hell, but she cannot see herself in mirrors on Earth as well:

“I can see them. But they don’t see me. They’re reflecting the carpet, the settee, the window—but how empty it is, a glass in which I’m absent! When I talked to people I always made sure there was one near by in which I could see myself. I watched myself talking. And somehow it kept me alert, seeing myself as the others saw me…”

On some level, the loss of her preferred sense of self is likely causing Estelle to begin coming to terms with her shadow. Estelle is so horrified by this process, however, that she doubles down on her efforts to seclude her true self from the others. In the scene in which Inez acts as her mirror, Estelle becomes distressed by having somebody scrutinize her so carefully, as Inez is likely seeing Estelle in such a way she has never seen herself before. Desperate to reaffirm her sense of her own beauty in the last way she can, Estelle turns to attempting to seduce Garcin, the only man around, so that she can escape having to face the parts of herself that do not relate to her appearance. In doing this, she wishes to regain control over the way in which others see her, by forcing Garcin to find her attractive, as she lost control over how she is perceived when Inez glanced into her face so deeply.

The fact of our characters’ eyes being open all the time is surely significant as well. With the act of being closed off to yourself serving as a torture method, there is some profound irony to be found in the fact that they are being forced into this state of complete transparency towards one another. They quite literally cannot hide any part of themselves from each other, which perhaps would expedite the process of not being able to hide parts of themselves from themselves any longer. Garcin appears to be the most distressed by this revelation: “With one’s eyes open. Forever. Always broad daylight in my eyes—and in my head.” His distress is probably linked to the fact that, unlike Estelle, he has a sense that a darker side of him exists, but unlike Inez, he is not fully ready to open up to it yet. His inability to close his eyes, and the sense of transparency this brings about, is especially significant to him because he realizes that all his secrets are about to be let out into the open.

Garcin’s predicament is perhaps the most interesting of the three because of how he flips and flops between the two poles of attempting to uncover his shadow self and be like Inez, and attempting to bury his shadow self even further like Estelle. He is dimly aware of his own cowardliness—the cowardliness that got him killed and, along with cheating on his wife, contributed to his damnation in Hell—and alternately tries to come to terms with it and convince himself that he is not one.While trying to be more like Inez, he declares:

“A thousand of them are proclaiming I’m a coward; but what do numbers matter? If there’s someone, just one person, to say quite positively I did not run away, that I’m not the sort who runs away, that I’m brave and decent and the rest of it—well, that one person’s faith would save me. Will you have that faith in me? Then I shall love you and cherish you for ever.”

Garcin at this point is the closest he will come to recognizing that he needs to bring his shadow self to the surface, so it can be properly dealt with, and requests that Inez help him recognize this part of himself so he can begin the process of reconciling it: “The curtain’s down, nothing of me is left on earth—not even the name of coward. So, Inez, we’re alone. Only you two remain to give a thought to me. She—she doesn’t count. It’s you who matter; you who hate me. If you’ll have faith in me I’m saved”. Inez, the only one who sees through everybody, has to help him see through himself. The revelation of cowardliness is a particularly difficult one for Garcin, who “aimed at being a real man. A tough, as they say. I staked everything on the same horse… Can one possibly be a coward when one’s deliberately courted danger at every turn? And can one judge a life by a single action?” (44). The discovery Garcin has to make here, is that the answer is yes—he could still be a coward.

The progress Garcin made was enough to excite the reader, but alas, as the play draws to a close, he buries himself in Estelle’s arms, as she seeks confirmation of her own beauty that his attention can provide her with, and she reassures him he is not a coward, undoing the difficult work of discovering the shadow self he had tried to begin. In the end, him and Estelle decide to succumb to their vices together, instead of confronting them, and subsequently, as the shadow selves are more repressed, they will find inevitably find themselves in much deeper misery they could have avoided. Inez mocks the scene, as Estelle and Garcin suppress themselves in affection for one another:

“What a lovely scene: coward Garcin holding baby-killer Estelle in his manly arms! Make your stakes, everyone. Will coward Garcin kiss the lady, or won’t he dare? What’s the betting? I’m watching you, everybody’s watching, I’m a crowd all by myself. Do you hear the crowd? Do you hear them muttering, Garcin? Mumbling and muttering. “Coward! Coward! Coward! Coward!”—that’s what they’re saying…. It’s no use trying to escape, I’ll never let you go. What do you hope to get from her silly lips? Forgetfulness? But I shan’t forget you, not I! “It’s I you must convince.” So come to me. I’m waiting. Come along, now… Look how obedient he is, like a well-trained dog who comes when his mistress calls. You can’t hold him, and you never will.” (46)

While the three are there to torture each other, Inez is rendered a special kind of torturer because both Estelle and Garcin find her ability to see the darkness in everybody absolutely repellant. While they are still playing games and lying about the way they are, and trying to project different versions of themselves onto the scene, Inez asserts that she sees their shadow selves—she sees Garcin’s cowardliness that Estelle is claiming she does not see, and she sees Estelle’s shallowness that Garcin is refusing to see, because he is so desperate to not be seen as cowardly. And so, although Inez recognizes the shadows, she is tortured by being the one who can see them.

Garcin drives home this point about Inez when he says,

“And you know what wickedness is, and shame, and fear. There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn’t know what to make of it, you couldn’t interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs. And when you say I’m a coward, you know from experience what that means. Is that so?”

Inez knows evil, and fully understands what it means. She does not try to run and hide from it, or pretend to be less involved with it than she actually is. She sees, knows and embraces her shadows. While clearly she is not troubled with the same amount of inner turmoil as the others, she is differently tortured with the realization that she alone carries the burden of being the only one who truly knows why they are all there, and faces the distress of knowing that she cannot really do anything to help Estelle and Garcin come to terms with their true selves.

From this, we can see that No Exit provides us with fascinating grounds for discussion of Jung’s conception of the shadow self, because of the various ways in which both recognizing it, and not recognizing it, can bring us suffering. The shadow self is inherently the part of ourselves that tortures us, and from this, we can also see just how painful and messy the process of trying to reconcile one’s shadow self can be as well. Works Cited

Jung, Carl. “The Shadow.” The Portable Jung. Edited by Joseph Campbell. (Markham, Ontario: Penguin Books, 1971).

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “No Exit.” No Exit and Three Other Plays. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955).

[englishlitnotes]

A flawed moniker of Freud's: Exactly why Oedipus the King does not have an Oedipus complex

Sigmund Freud’s “Oedipus complex” has had its share of critics over the years, with their charges aimed at it typically consisting of an inappropriate sexualization of children and being pseudo-scientific and unfalsifiable. But perhaps one of the most interesting ways in which it can be found to be flawed is that it is so poorly named. While many fictional stories, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Hamlet, and Psycho, can be accurately said to be representations of the Oedipus complex, the play that shares a name with the complex, upon scrutiny, cannot be found to demonstrate one at all.

The Oedipus complex is rooted in Freud’s belief “being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses” that lead to the formation of neuroses; Freud further asserts “this discovery is confirmed by a legend that has come down to us from classical antiquity: a legend whose profound and universal power to move can only be understood if the hypothesis I have put forward in regard to the psychology of children has an equally universal validity”: the Sophocles play Oedipus the King. So clearly, for Freud, Oedipus the King stands in as a manifestation of the child’s latent desire to sleep with the mother and kill the father.

Technically speaking, Oedipus was in love with his mother: she is characterized as his loving partner. And he murdered his father after his father angered him, so it seems we can safely say Oedipus murdered his father out of hatred. However, the chief motivating factor behind the Oedipus complex cannot be found here, as Freud posits the boy wishes to eliminate the father in order to receive greater love from the mother. Oedipus only killed his father out of anger, not because this seemingly random man stood in the way of his receiving his mother’s affections. Any attraction that Oedipus had towards his mother, Jocasta, was also entirely hinged upon the fact of his not knowing who she truly was; for the very moment all is revealed and Oedipus recognizes he has fathered children with his mother, he is moved beyond disgust. He gouges out his own eyeballs, and loses any sense of attraction to her. This cannot, on any level, speak to a secret desire to be with the mother—it speaks to the opposite, that you would lose all attraction to a woman if you discovered she was your mother.

Furthermore, the aforementioned quotation of Freud’s finds itself within a passage concerning the origin of neuroses, which describes “the mental lives of all children who later become psychoneurotics.” Freud’s larger assertion is that early childhood experiences pave the way for what are to become adult neuroses, and the Oedipus complex is one of the events a child might experience that leads to the formation of some of the most severe neuroses. The Oedipus complex, for Freud, is what often produces a child’s earliest sense of shame, as the child faces an impulse which is at odds with what is societally acceptable. The child experiences shame (likely for the first time) stemming from the fact he can never have what he wants, because he would face castration by the father if he attempted to act on this impulse. Oedipus was not raised by his own parents, and did not display these tendencies towards his adopted parents. He committed these acts as a grown man, who was firmly convinced that his parents were Polybus and Merope. So he does not fit the profile of one with an Oedipus complex at all, because the crucial component—its onset in early childhood—is not present.

While in Freud’s eyes, the Oedipus complex springs from an internal source—an innate and inevitable desire—the fate of Oedipus the king was bestowed upon him by external forces that he cannot escape. There is a faint similarity between Oedipus and his namesake complex in that in both cases, there is a sense of inevitability and helplessness. Because the Oracle had declared such would be Oedipus’s fate, and one cannot change their own destiny, Oedipus had no other choice. And in Freud’s eyes, while the boy likely will not act on his impulse, it also cannot be said to be his fault he is experiencing it. But the distinction ends there, as Oedipus had to kill his father and sleep with his mother to fulfill destiny, while the son has no such compelled fate.

In attempt to reconcile the textual details of Oedipus the King with the Oedipus complex, Freud appeals to a quote from Jocasta: “In dreams too, as well as oracles,/many a man has lain with his own mother./But he to whom such things are nothing bears his life most easily.” Freud frames this as a benign comment from Jocasta’s end, which was intentionally inserted by the author to indicate “the legend of Oedipus sprang from some primeval dream-material which had as its content the distressing disturbance of a child’s relation to his parents owing to the first stirrings of sexuality”. A much more obvious interpretation of this comment of Jocasta’s, however, when examined under the context of the play, is she had been merely trying to comfort her panicking son/husband. Additionally, the sentence served a structural purpose of foreshadowing what was to come. The play lacks any textual evidence that in any way, shape or form did Oedipus, secretly or not, desire to sleep with his mother.

From this, we can see that the Oedipus complex, while sharing some similarities to the story of the unfortunate king, cannot actually be used to analyze its namesake. Perhaps Freud would have been better off calling it the equally catchy ‘Karamazov complex’ instead, seeing as that tale featured Dmitri’s intentional violence and aggression towards his father while he was in love with the woman his father was dating at the time…

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd Edition. Edited by Vincent B. Leitch, et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.

Sophocles. “Oedipus the King.” Sophocles I: Three Tragedies. Edited by David Greene and Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.

[englishlitnotes]

An aging double ends up being confused with the real thing: Dorian Grey's precession of simulacra

For Jean Baudrillard, “to simulate is to feign to have what one hasn’t… simulation threatens the difference between ‘true’ and ‘false,’ between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’”; this sentiment, paired with Lord Henry’s declaration love and art “are both simply forms of imitation” can be viewed as an interpretation of the source of Dorian Gray’s ugly descent into depravity. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the titular character, upon being made aware of his own charm and beauty for the first time in his life, develops a terror of aging and dying, and begins an attempt to transform into pure simulacra instead of organic man in order to escape death and decay. His precession towards a simulation of pure beauty and perfection begins by his seeking to surround himself with individuals who also live as imitations, severing ties with anybody who he finds to be grounded in reality. When these friendships begin to turn sour, he continues his precession by building a world for himself of beautiful material objects and symbols of greatness passed. But as his sins increase in number, he develops an acute sense of guilt, and his world of symbols is no longer enough to protect him from the reality that he is not just a piece of artwork but a real, living man, whose actions had very real and devastating effects on others.

Three people Dorian is acquainted with mark his story by serving as artists living in various stages of simulacra: Basil, the painter, Sybil, the actress, and Harry, who exists as performance art. Dorian aims to surround himself exclusively with others who are as separate from reality as he wishes to be, and so, these friendships are terminated once Dorian observes a human or detached element from these individuals. The first casualty of Dorian’s precession is his friendship with Basil; Basil whom, of all characters, observes the greatest separation between his life and his art. As he is a painter who captures the essences of real things and people, Basil has the most distinctive boundary between his life and his creations; compared to Sybil, who becomes simulacra temporarily every night, and Harry, who lives as an imitation or parody of life and whose words blur the boundary between truth and provocative half-truth so constantly one ceases to be able to take him seriously at all; rendering him exclusively valuable insofar as he is entertainment. Furthermore, the art produced by Basil is far from simulacra; it captures real things but, to the exception of Dorian’s portrait, does not replace them.

Basil’s art is inspired by things he loves and finds beautiful. He attaches special reverence to the painting of Dorian because it captures what he perceives to be the essence of this beautiful man—it is as close to Dorian as he can get with art. In turn, Basil recognizes himself within his artwork, because when he is successful in realizing his artistic goals, he feels that his true passions are represented in their portrayal. In painting and finding beauty in the existence of another, Basil reveals his own soul to himself: “I know you will laugh at me… I have put too much of myself into it." As the story progresses, Basil begins to work against Dorian’s interests in two ways: by not being a simulation, by saving as an unwanted symbol of Dorian’s past. Dorian needs to eliminate all traces and memories of his organic form in order to become simulacra. Dorian disposes of Basil first by fading him out of his life, progressively spending less time with him when Dorian realizes Basil cannot do more to help him achieve his fantasy; later, he murders Basil to assure his secret concerning the painting can remain his forever, so the creator of the painting cannot be made aware that the painting has become the real man. And such is also why Dorian’s painting transforms from his source of inspiration to something he abhors: after Basil is gone, it is to remain the one thing tethering him to the organic world, the one symbol of his true self it seems he cannot rid himself of, that proves his whole world is not as beautiful as he wishes it to be.

We meet Sybil as Basil’s prominence in Dorian’s life is beginning to fade; Sybil, who is only capable of producing work of artistic merit to alleviate pain and suffering. She may be read as almost a satirical portrait of the notion, held by many, that art is necessarily a byproduct of miserable circumstances. Theatre for Sybil was a means of pulling herself out of her own tragic life and poverty: she was given the opportunity every night to lose herself, transforming temporarily into simulacra, repeatedly performing the roles of women who never existed. Sybil perhaps represents the notion of simulacra the most accurately to Baudrillard’s original conception; as acting is a process of becoming a character who is already a mere simulation of a real person to begin with. She is effectively simulating what is already simulacra. Dorian falls in love with her when he sees her in this simulated state, declaring “.the only thing worth loving is an actress”. He decides she, as such a beautiful symbol, must hold a place in his own increasingly simulated life, and he views her as an abstraction in lieu of a person independent from the roles she plays: “I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth”. He takes no interest in learning anything about the real her, stating her manager “…wanted to tell [him] her history, but [he] said it did not interest [him]”. Furthermore, Dorian’s desire to maintain a superficial and artistically constructed relationship to Sybil is reinforced by the fact he is reluctant to even share something as real as his name with her, allowing her instead to conceive of him and to refer to him symbolically as ‘Prince Charming.’ Sybil, while discussing her marriage with her mother, even has to confess that “‘he has not yet revealed his real name’”. (Fortunately for Dorian, she thought it was ‘“quite romantic of him’”).

Dorian’s plan deconstructed itself when she fell in love with him and faced the prospect of securing a happy life: marriage, property ownership, children, financial stability. Facing an escape from the life of misery that created this desire to escape, she has no more need to escape through her art. As she represents this notion one can only be a good artist if they are in pain, the cessation of her pains entails the cessation of her talents. Not only has she ceased to be a simulation, she has developed a sense of pride in herself and expresses excitement for her own future, demonstrating she is excited to enjoy her life as something beyond just being a piece of art: “The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a radiance about her. Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own”. This reclamation of her self confidence and pride is startling in comparison to the meek and frail girl we are introduced to earlier: “‘Oh, she was so shy, and so gentle. There is something of a cild about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her power’”. When Dorian sees she is more than a simulation, she, too, can no longer serve his needs, and he releases her in disgust. He had loved her because “‘one evening she [was] Rosalind, and the next evening she [was] Imogen. [He had] seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover’s lips. [He had] watched her wandering through the first of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy'”. He now recognizes Sybil as a complex person, not a mere emulation of others; and she does not belong in his world of carefully curated representations divorced from reality. Perhaps most insultingly to her memory, Harry and Dorian do not even lament Sybil’s passing to the same extent they lament the termination of her acting career: “‘Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don’t waste your tears over Sybil Vane. She was less real than they are.’” Here, we see the symbols Sybil represented being observed as more real than she was. Dorian even had the gall to request of Basil a portrait of Sybil, so he can preserve a literal simulation of her likeness: “You must do me a drawing of Sybil, Basil. I should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic words’”. Sybil, clearly, possessed value to others only as simulation and not as a human.

The only significant friend Dorian has left after Sybil exits his life is Harry, as Harry lives in such a way that twists the nature of reality to serve his own ends exclusively, and has firmly severed most his ties to the world the rest of us inhabit. With Basil, the art and the artist were always distinct and separate; with Sybil, she was only a simulation when she chose to be so. Harry, on the other hand, simulates truth all of the time. He is a relentless provocateur, who spews senseless pseudo-intellectual observations which distort the perceptions of reality of those who take his words to heart—as exemplified in his relationship to Dorian. Prior to meeting Harry, “…one felt [Dorian] had kept himself unspoiled from the world”, and Basil recognizes the horrible potential somebody as manipulative as Harry could have on somebody as manipulatable as Dorian when he pleads to Harry not to “‘…spoil him. Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad’”. But immediately after hearing Harry’s words, “…a look [came] into the lad’s eyes that [Basil] had never seen before,” and Dorian’s downwards spiral is officially triggered. Harry expresses world views which glamorize living as simulation, instead of producing art: “The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize”. Through Harry’s influence, Dorian begins to acknowledge himself solely as a piece of art, and strives to develop the same detachment from reality as Harry. This friendship is now solidified in a way his other relationships could not have been: he can count on Harry to always help him towards his goal of detachment, for Harry is decidedly detached. While the reader watches the conflation of art and life in Dorian's eyes progressing, he begins to attempt to turn not just himself into a work of art; he tries to transform everything else around him into art as well.

Dorian’s obsession with fine interiors and the collection of rare and beautiful goods immediately follows the dissolution of his relationship to Sybil; it can perhaps be interpreted as a result of the tremendous amount of guilt that is starting to build up inside him, as he acknowledges some degree of responsibility for what happened to her, and the portrait begins to transform, displaying this guilt. Now, he wishes to become simulacra not just to evade death, but to protect himself from his own sins. Dorian “collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact with Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them”; he “would often spend a whole day setting and resetting in their cases the various stones that he had collected”, and begins frequenting the opera, but only in his own company or Lord Henry’s. He has become almost completely closed off from the rest of society at this point, socializing with extremely few people and devoting more time to admiring beauty. He develops an unhealthy fascination with deceased royalty as symbols of pure greatness, most likely because they represent what he wishes to be seen as: “How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous its pomp and decoration! Even to read the luxury of the dead was wonderful” He prefers objects representing dead people to alive ones; perhaps because he has become an object representing a dead person himself.

As his infatuation with his self as a symbol grows, the line between human and symbol becomes progressively more blurred, until “…something [has] disappeared: the sovereign difference between them that was the abstraction’s charm. For it is the difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real”.Towards the end of the novel, Dorian’s life has become all but pure simulacra; to the exception of the unfortunate portrait that serves as the final thing tying him to the reality of his organic nature, after Basil’s murder. His simulation, however, has clearly ceased to be enough to protect him from his own sense of guilt. Basil’s murder also takes both a visible toll on the picture of Dorian, and on his psyche, and his retreats to the opium dens become a necessary release from his guilt: “There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new”. For there is no state in which one is closer to experiencing a more perfect simulation of reality than in a drugged dream state, in which the individual is not even physically capable of distinguishing the real from the dream anymore.

Ironically, the sketchy venues Dorian begins to frequent represent a different kind of escape from the life he has built from himself, as “memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away”; they represent an absolute absence of anything artistic and beautiful. “Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy Shadows of Song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness”. As he used art to escape life, he is now using life to escape art.

The death of James Vane proves to be the last reminder of Dorian’s real implications on the people around him that he can tolerate, and finally, he realizes he no longer needs a escape from reality, but a total escape from the pseudo-reality he has manufactured for himself. In a desperate attempt to save himself from his sins, Dorian stabs the portrait, but unfortunately “… it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them”. Facing the portrait for the last time, Dorian thought to himself “…he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already”. But alas, the attempt to annihilate the last trace of the original completed Dorian’s precession. The portrait of Dorian Grey is now “…no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody.” The portrait “substitut[ed] signs of the real for the real itself,” and fully and finally became the actual Dorian, in its final form. Baudrillard speaks specifically of the need for the original to perish in order for the symbol to become ultimately real: “Nothing changes when society breaks the mirror of madness… nor when science seems to break the mirror of its objectivity… [E]thnology in its classical institution collapses… in order to conceal the fact that it is this world, our own, which in its way has become… devastated by difference and death”. The novel ends on a final note of irony: the deceased Dorian, organic again and rendered ugly by sin and time, is unrecognizable to anybody who knew him well. His own servants were only able to identify him through one last symbol he left behind for them: he was wearing his rings. “Lying on the floor was a dead man in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they realized who it was”. The beautiful things he admired were more identifiable as Dorian Gray than his actual body. Now, “only the allegory of the Empire remains”. The man has become the simulacra, and the simulacra has become the man.

The moral of the story, once analyzed from this perspective, is hard to decipher. Perhaps it is, as it has been said before, that life is more important than art. Or that, as much as art gives life meaning, art is not a substitute for a meaningful life. One can live in an artful way, but when one ceases to differentiate between real and unreal, it does not appear much good can follow. [2882]

Works Cited

Beaudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd Edition. Edited by Vincent B. Leitch, et al. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010).

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2006.

[englishlitnotes]

The Line Separating Dionysian from Apollonian Runs Through Every Human Heart: Chaos and Order in Goblin Market

There is probably an argument to be made that any piece of literature can be interpreted according to Nietzsche’s theory all art springs from two primal energies: the divinely structured and intentional Apollonian, and the unrestrained, unpredictable Dionysian. Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market, however, makes for a particularly intriguing instance of a Nietzschean analysis as the two energies can be detected in this story as both a strict physical binary, and as inherent personality traits our characters grapple with from within. The horror element of this story arises once our protagonist crosses the internal and external boundaries between the two, finding herself in the horrible no-man’s-land outside of both.

In the physical sense, the Apollonian is embodied as the world of humankind and the Dionysian as the Goblins’ world. Our human characters are well aware common sense dictates the line is never to be crossed. In the personal sense, the duality of both forces exists in all humans, and it is the Apollonian’s duty to keep the Dionysian impulse in check. When a human physically crosses the boundary between their world and that of the Goblins, it is due to weakness on the part of the Apollonian that cannot sufficiently counter Dionysian curiosity.

Laura’s lapse in Apollonian judgment transpires when she descends upon the Goblin’s fruit “like a vessel at the launch/when it’s last restraint is gone” (85-86). As she consumes the forbidden fruit, she is pushed over the divide between worlds in a spiral towards a Dionysian hell; with the first symptom of her Dionysian illness being her “longing for the night” (214) while her ascetic sister “[warbles] for the mere’s bright daylight” (213). Because she failed to appreciate the separation between human and goblin, between night and day, she is now neither and she is all alone in what she suffers. Subsequently, she finds herself outside of the laws of nature as she is outside the natural state of humanity. As these laws cease to apply to her, she begins to age rapidly and wither away; made to pay for her sin of blurring the boundary by being punished with unstoppable yearning for the same temptation she yielded too. As she would not restrain herself from consuming the goblin’s fruit, the desire for the Goblin’s fruit consumes every waking second of her life as it consumes her physical form. The natural force of time is now unable to control her aging process, and her Apollonian individuated body deteriorates as she withers away, racing towards the Dionysian state of the abolition of the individuated self in the death that follows the disintegration of her physical form.

What saves Laura from her impending demise is her sister, Lizzie, who echoes the presence of another Nietzschean archetype, the Ascetic Priest. Lizzie’s constitution is dominated by Apollonian asceticism, allowing her to resist what her sister could not. In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche wrote the spiritually ‘sick’ needed doctors and nurses who were ‘sick’ themselves; however, these figures in addition to being sick also needed to be strong enough to lead the weak to salvation. In order to help save humanity, Ascetic Priests take the suffering of others upon themselves. The Dionysian exists within Lizzie, as it exists within all of us, and so she is ‘sick’ in part too; but is stronger and more capable of resisting it than her sister. And so, she ventures to the domain of the Goblins, convinced she is strong enough to resist temptation to bring to her sick sister what she so desperately desires.

Because the Apollonian remains strong within Lizzie, she is able to walk down the line between human and goblin without falling to the wrong side of it. While Laura sells the Goblins a part of herself, her hair, in exchange for the fruit because she has no money on her, Lizzie wisely pays the goblins with cash. This maintains the physical separation between herself and them. Wary of her ploy, the goblins ask her to “take a seat with us/Honour and eat with us” (368-369), hoping she will fall prey to their spell as well. When she resists, the Goblins become violent with her, forcing the fruit against her mouth, while “White and golden Lizzie stood” (408), distinctly emulating Apollo himself, stoic and unflinching. When they realize they cannot affect her, she is released, and returns to her sister with the fruit.

The fruit appears to have taken on a different meaning. In the wake of Lizzie’s self-control and her sacrifice for her sister, the fruit loses its Dionysian power and assumes Lizzie’s Apollonian influence. Lizzie tells Laura, “Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices/Squeezed from goblin fruits for you/Goblin pulp and Goblin dew/Eat me, drink me, love me” (467-471). The Ascetic Priest’s suffering for the sake of another caused the fruit to become a cure and not disease. As Laura consumes the fruit, her strength and health return; she assumes the Apollonian once again and becomes well.

Some consider it to be the case that it is unlikely the story would have ended well for Laura at all had it not been for the author’s intent of “Goblin Market” being a children’s tale, and therefore, could not have featured an ending as dark and depressing as one entailing the protagonist’s death. This may very well in fact be true; however, a lot more than just a palatable ending is achieved by allowing Laura to live. The story is transformed from a simple fable into a much more complex piece to unpack and interpret. By resolving the conflict this way, with Lizzie facing torture and torment in what appears to be a helpless attempt to save her sister, motivated purely by love alone and not concern for her own wellbeing, the story ceases to be a simple cautionary tale advising children to resist their temptations. The morality is expanded from exclusively stressing the necessity of restraint to encompassing the power and value of sisterly love and sacrifice for one another as well.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Frederich. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by Clifton P. Fadiman, Dover Thrift Editions, 2016.

Nietzsche, Frederich. Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Hackett, 1998

Rosetti, Christina. “Goblin Market.” From The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, One-Volume Compact Edition. Broadview, 2018, pp. 1615-1622

[mblaschum-blog]

Annotation #10

A. (2011). Rodeo: The EPA Needs To Slow Down. Retrieved April 26, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xheNqLlhhFc

This video is a commercial arguing against EPA regulation. In the 30 second clip it is stated that EPA regulations will cause higher energy costs and put Americans out of work. It relates trying to get a job to staying on a bull in a rodeo. The video calls for the EPA to “slow down.”

This is a good source for research. It shows that most Americans are affected by EPA regulations and that they can often cause negative effects. Commercials such as these do a great job at taking a complicated issue and simplifying it for those who do not understand what exactly is occurring. 

[dopexdom93-blog]

Annotation #5

For my last annotation I would like to discuss Tupac Shakur’s political views on not only Hip-Hop but also his society, his lifestyle, and his California culture. As I was researching to conclude a voice for the West-Coast people, I ran across an article titled “Keepin’ It Real in Hip-Hop politics”. I felt as if this article would give me a clear insight on what exactly Tupac was rapping about? Besides talking about all the money he had, all the women, cars, clothes and jewlry. Tupac was discussing racism in his community, poverty, and the overall term for War on Drugs. Here is a brief summary from the article “ Outside of his most incendiary critics, Tupac Shakur is generally perceived as a socially conscious artist whose political credibility is located in his lyrical critiques of racism and his mother's membership in the Black Panther Party. Popular and academic writers have failed to examineTupac's distinct political ideas and identifiable activism. This article serves as a prolegomenon to the necessary dialogue on the politics ofTupac Shakur. Drawing from interviews, public statements, and lyrical analyses, the author expands the discourse on Shakur's contribution to the African American fight against racism and injustice.  Tupac shared the experiences of many young Black men during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the administrations of President George Bush, Sr., and Bill Clinton, elected, respectively, in 1988 and 1992. Through lyrics, he spoke directly to the office of the presidency (Shakur, 1999a): Uhh . . . dear Mr. President Whas happening? . . . Ain’t nothin changed All the promises you made, before you got elected . . . . . . they ain’t came true . . . Everybody’s doped up, ni*ga what you smoking on? Figure if we high they can’t rain us Downloaded from jbs.sagepub.com at OLD DOMINION UNIV LIBRARY on April 23, 2016 12 Journal of Black Studies 42(1) But then America f**ked up and blamed up I guess it’s cause we black that we targets . . . I know you feel me cause you too near me not to hear me So why don’t you help a ni*ga out? Saying you cutting welfare That got us ni*gaz on the street, thinkin who in the hell care?  Tupac incorporated Revolutionary Nationalism in his lyrics and writings. In “Words of Wisdom” from the 2Pacalypse Now album, Tupac (Shakur, 1991) raps, This is for the masses the lower classes The ones you left out, jobs were givin’, better livin’ But we were kept out Made to feel inferior, but we’re the superior Break the Chains in our brains that made us fear yah Pledge allegiance to a flag that neglects us Honor a man that who refuses to respect us Emancipation, Proclamation, Please! Ni*ga just said that to save the nation These are lies and we all accepted . . . The war on drugs is a war on you and me And yet they say this is the Home of the Free But if you ask me its all about hypocrisy The constitution, yo, it don’t apply to me Lady Liberty still the bi**h lied to me”

APA Citation:  Stanford, K. L. (2011). Keepin' It Real in Hip Hop Politics: A Political Perspective of Tupac Shakur. Journal of Black Studies, (1). 3.

[dopexdom93-blog]

Annotation #4

How could I talk about East Coast and West Coast Hip-Hop without mentioning one of the greatest that ever changed the sound of Hip-Hop? In case you were wondering who exactly I’m talking about, maybe the name Notorious BIG should ring a bell. As I was doing my research it was so hard trying to find a peer reviewed article on the two celebrities, until I found a perfect biography on both of the artists, which of course was on the Old Dominion University database. This biography had a brief summary that discussed some of the goals that Notorious BIG had accomplished. These goals were, “ By the early 1990s, rap had migrated from its native East Coast to the West. The hyperbolically violent street narratives of N.W.A.’s “Gangsta” rap, along with its slightly more subtle offspring (at least in terms of tone), Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “G-Funk,” had wrested the rap world’s national focus from its roots in New York and placed it firmly in California. Not to be outdone, though, New York fired back with the 1993 album, Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers, by the rap ensemble the Wu-Tang Clan. It was not until the 1994 album, Ready to Die, by the Notorious B.I.G., however, that the East Coast could again legitimately claim itself as the epicenter of the rap world. Also known as Biggie Smalls (a moniker taken from the film Let’s Do it Again), Christopher Wallace matched the stylized violence of popular rap with gritty realism, and countered anger-infused end rhyme with highly structured and layered lyrics delivered with his trademark laid-back and often lisped grumble. Despite recording 668 Book Reviews only two albums over his short career (notably titled Ready to Die and Life after Death), Wallace, almost single-handedly, brought rap music back East and to its New York home. This feat did not come without fallout however. Wallace’s popularity led to a grand-scale coastal rivalry in rap music that divided its culture and fans and eventually claimed his life, along with that of his friend-turned-bitter-rival Tupac Shakur” ( Kishbaugh,)

APA Citation: Kishbaugh, J. R. (2009). The Notorious B.I.G.: A Biography. Popular Music & Society, 32(5), 668-670. doi:10.1080/03007760902786157

[dopexdom93-blog]

Annotation #3

Since I’m discussing the Authenticity between the East Coast and West Coast sounds of Hip-Hop, I decided to find an article that gave the West Coast a reason to create the term “gangsta rap” . Police brutality was one of the main reason’s that aggravated many of the blacks in the community. The police in the urban areas of Los Angles would repeatedly beat and assault the blacks only because, of the color of their skin, and the clothes that they wear. Most police officers would also beat them because, they feel as if all the blacks are constantly involved with negative activity such as, gang violence, selling drugs, or being on the wrong side of town. After awhile it gets aggravating, from dealing with the same situations over and over again. As I was stating before, I could really find an article based on this information but I did find an example due to this physical and mental abuse that the blacks faced from the cops. From the Old Dominion University library database, I found an article titled “1992 Los Angles Riot”. This article was a perfect example for me to use. The article discussed that, “In Los Angeles, California, four Los Angeles police officers that had been caught beating an unarmed African-American motorist in an amateur video are acquitted of any wrongdoing in the arrest. Hours after the verdicts were announced, outrage and protest turned to violence, as rioters in south-central Los Angeles blocked freeway traffic and beat motorists, wrecked and looted numerous downtown stores and buildings, and set more than 100 fires.On March 3, 1991, paroled felon Rodney King led police on a high-speed chase through the streets of Los Angeles County before eventually surrendering. Intoxicated and uncooperative, King resisted arrest and was brutally beaten by police officers Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno, and Timothy Wind. Unbeknownst to the police, a citizen with a personal video camera was filming the arrest, and the 89-second video caught the police beating King with their batons and kicking him long after he was capable of resistance. The video, released to the press, caused outrage around the country and triggered a national debate on police brutality.Rodney King was released without charges, and on March 15 Sergeant Stacey Koon and officers Powell, Wind, and Briseno were indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury in connection with the beating. All four were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force. Though Koon did not actively participate in the beating, as the commanding officer present at the scene he was charged with aiding and abetting. Powell and Koon were also charged with filing false reports.Because of the uproar in Los Angeles surrounding the incident, the judge, Stanley Weisberg, was persuaded to move the trial outside Los Angeles County to Simi Valley in Ventura County. On April 29, 1992, the 12-person jury, which included 10 whites and no African-Americans, issued its verdicts: not guilty on all counts, except for one assault charge against Powell that ended in a hung jury. The acquittals touched off rioting and looting in Los Angeles that grew into the most destructive U.S. civil disturbance of the 20th century.Violence first erupted at the intersection of Florence Boulevard and Normandie Avenue in south-central Los Angeles. Traffic was blocked, and rioters beat dozens of motorists, including Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was dragged out of his truck and nearly beaten to death by three African-American men. A news helicopter, hovering over the street, recorded the gruesome event. Los Angeles police were slow to respond, and the violence radiated to areas throughout the city. California Governor Pete Wilson deployed the National Guard at the request of Mayor Tom Bradley, and a curfew was declared. By the morning, hundreds of fires were burning across the city, more than a dozen people had been killed, and hundreds were injured.” (Nopper) As you can tell this article gives you a more broader detail of why the people couldn’t take the police brutality anymore.

APA Citation: Nopper, T. K. (2006). The 1992 Los Angeles Riots and the Asian American Abandonment Narrative as Political Fiction. CR: The New Centennial Review, (2), 73.