English 021 Creative Reading

Weblog - Entries for bellwang
Haroun’s Stories + Alice’s Anti-Stories = Khattam Shud!
E3 Haroun Alice
by bellwang

Both Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There weave well-known children’s tales into their own child’s tale. Each novel strews its compilation of tales, epics, and accounts with elements such as mischievous word play, puns, and themes, but...
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May 18, 2005, 05:42 PM
contrary titles
8 Carroll
by bellwang

The knight’s poem would best be titled its real name in Alice’s world: “I give thee all, I can no more.” The narrator of the poem keeps asking the aged man how he lives, but is not satisfied with the old man’s answer, because every time the old man answers...
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May 05, 2005, 02:34 PM
Alice is a Goose
7 Carroll
by bellwang

In “Wool and Water,” the Sheep frequently cries “Feather!” (202-3) as Alice incorrectly drags her oar into the water. Alice assumes the Sheep is bleating meaningless remarks and continues rowing. The Sheep continues, “Feather! Feather! You’ll be caching a crab directly.” Alice, oblivious that the Sheep is using rowing slang...
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April 28, 2005, 01:58 PM
Haroun IS happy
6 Rushdie
by bellwang

Towards the end of Salman Rushdie’s “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” a victorious Haroun suddenly becomes depressed as he looks around him at his once sad city and sees everyone overjoyed. He believes that this happiness is a fake ingredient, like the clichés which compose different stories in the...
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April 21, 2005, 02:24 PM
"Possession": Not a Love Story
E2 Possession
by bellwang

The subtitle A. S. Byatt gives “Possession” is “A Romance”. Superficially, the story may be a magical weaving of lives with the binding ties being sempiternal love. From the moment Randolph Ash sees Christabel, he knows “that she was for him, she was to do with him” (302). Whenever Roland...
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April 14, 2005, 04:59 PM
Parallel Between Maud and Poetry
5 Byatt
by bellwang

Both Ash and Christabel “savour the phrase” (187) ‘telluric conditions’. The imagery of something being submerged underground recurs throughout Byatt’s “Possessions”. The prince in Christabel’s fairytale “The Threshold” correctly chooses not the sun-sister, nor the moon-sister, but the earth-sister. The prince does not want to choose the earth-sister because...
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April 05, 2005, 02:25 PM
Maud's Possessions
4 Byatt
by bellwang

Doctor Maud Bailey adds to the title of A.S. Byatt’s romance by adhering to the second definition of “possession”: “something owned, occupied, or controlled : PROPERTY” (Merriam-Webster). Maud controls her image the same way she controls her immaculate apartment. Because Maud’s doll-mask face has “nothing to do with her,...
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March 29, 2005, 02:59 PM
Interlude Between Life and Death
E1 Pale Fire
by bellwang

“Man’s life as commentary to abstruse / Unfinished poem” (l. 939-40) sketches the outline of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”. John Shade struggles to discover “what doom / [awaits] consciousness beyond the tomb” in his autobiographical poem comprising the first section of the novel. In the second section of the novel,...
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March 08, 2005, 02:44 PM
freedom
3 Nabokov
by bellwang

Although John Shade’s poem and Charles Kinbote’s commentary are frequently unrelated because each person speaks respectively about himself, they both experience a common fear. Shade feels “artistically caged” (l.104) by literature and questions his freedom (l. 102). Shade “loved the taste” (l.103) evoked from his harmonious unity with nature...
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February 17, 2005, 02:47 PM
Disconnectedness
2 Wallace
by bellwang

“Pop Quiz 8,” in David Foster Wallace’s Octet, details X’s struggle with what he suspects must be “some horrific defect in his human makeup, some kind of hideous central ice where his heart’s nodes of empathy and basic other-directedness ought to be” (117) because he cannot wait for his...
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February 10, 2005, 12:27 AM
Erskine is a Nutcase
1 Wilde
by bellwang

Erskine’s lugubriousness, which becomes ever more apparent as “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” progresses, makes me hesitatant to agree with any statement he “gravely” (195) proclaims. After all, he holds such ridiculous statements like, “it is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is...
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February 03, 2005, 12:35 AM
"blog" - what a funny word
Test
by bellwang

Hi everyone! I’m so glad Mark wrote very detailed steps as to how to post stuff on the blog because I’m one of those computer illiterate people… hopefully I’ve followed directions and this posting will work! Tah-tah for now....
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February 01, 2005, 02:36 PM