Short Fiction Response II

"The Large Ant" by Howard Fast

Focussing Question: How do archetypes surrounding humanity affect Mr. Morgan's change in self-image?

To begin with, I'm not entirely sure of this specific focussing question, but I know archetypes will be instrumental in explaining the text. Here I want to attempt an archetypal analysis of the whole story, then choose which archetypes motivate the theme most.

From the outset, the archetype of "man" is understood to be critical. The narrator states that "we have never been any good at changing ourselves or the way we behave" and "I am like a great many other men, and do things they would do and just as thoughtlessly". Throughout the story, what it is to be "man" is explored. A great deal of the discussion revolves around how man is violent ("'I saw it, and somehow I knew that I must kill it. I didn't think or decide. I just grabbed the iron and hit it.'") and suspicious ("'They still won't believe you.'") and this would explain Mr. Morgan killing the ant; however, a deeper aspect of humanity is implied as well. The characters are generally in agreement that all humans are alike and would act the same in Mr. Morgan's place ("'I think that any man, black, white or yellow, in China, Africa or Russia, would have done the same thing.'"); perhaps, then, the habit of establishing and believing in a "human nature" is itself an archetypal trait of humanity. Maybe it's the conviction that all men are alike that is really causing the characters so much confusion; if they had more faith that they could change, perhaps they'd find out something useful about the ants. Intuitively, though, Fast seems to be implying that the characters are correct to say humanity is doomed with the "curse of fear", in Lieberman's words.

There are other archetypes present, like the setting; Morgan goes to a fishing shack in the summer. With its lawn and nearby water, the shack carries a number of archetypal connotations; it means Morgan can relax and that "there [is] nothing [he has] to do". Interestingly, Fast chose to set the story in Cold War America ("these nervous times", "since 1943, on my way to Europe", "the bomb", etc.), and that carries impressions about fear, confusion, distrust and the "iron curtain" of uncertainty. These two archetypes combine to make the appearance of the bug more effective; Morgan is astonished by the juxtaposition of such a grotesque creature and the archetypal "safe haven", and this event happening reinforces the impression that unbelievably terrible things of great scope could occur without anyone knowing, which is implied by the Cold War era. I'm reasonably confident that while these archetypes are used with effectiveness for establishing mood, they communicate relatively little about the theme.

Beauty, or its perception, have something to do with the theme. Morgan remarks about the bugs "tools", "they were beautiful the way any object of functional purpose and loving creation is beautiful--the way the creature itself would be beautiful, had it not been an insect and myself a man"; when I read this passage, my first instinct is to examine how the creature is, to Morgan, and object of functional purpose and loving creation. This is his first clue that the creature is something more than an ant. I'm unsure of whether, because the creature is an insect, Morgan's perception of its utilitarian beauty is impeded, or, if the creature were a man, would Morgan still consider it an object of "loving creation"? If so, who is the "creator"? God, presumably. Ironically, I think the creature would not be beautiful if it were a man, because it would be first and foremost a "man" in the sense of the archetype to Morgan; similarly, I realize it is probably an "ant" archetypally before it is a conscious entity in Morgan's eyes, but once he realizes it is capable of using tools, he understands that the "ant" has a certain beauty independent of the "ant" archetype.

Short Fiction Response

"Araby" by James Joyce - Formalism

The short story chronicles how a young boy comes to self-understanding--through an ironic piercing of the veil of his own impressions. The boy is initially at odds with his surroundings because he perceives his ideas to be of greater importance or maturity than the morals he is exposed to, until he acts on his dreams and realizes how immature he has been.

From the outset, the setting is tacitly understood to be hostile to youthfulness, imagination and romance; North Richmond Street described as "blind"--a dead end--and then it is asserted that the logical result of this is that, "being blind, [it is] a quiet street". This is understood to be an obvious, necessary conclusion; that fact strongly establishes the tired, resigned feelings that affect all of the characters and the narrative itself. The paragraph discussing the priest outlines his "charitable" and involved traits and his diverse interests, from his books to his apple tree to his bicycle pump; however, the priest is dead, his books are yellowed and his bicycle pump rusty. The interests and values he represents are no longer present, but the boy is understood to admire them, because he spends his time looking at the priest's things.

Mangan's sister is the exception to the calm, jaded atmosphere, in the narrator's view; she is described dynamically, with active verbs: "Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side" (my emphasis). This contrasts with the indefinite adjectives in "the lamps of the street [lift] their feeble lanterns", or the "dark muddy lanes" and the "dark dripping gardens" and the "dark odorous stables". To the boy, this raises her above all others, to religious heights; while carrying parcels for his aunt, he "imagine[s] that [he bears his] chalice safely through a throng of foes"--the foes being all the people he encounters in the street. While others are foes, Mangan's sister's name "[springs] to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he does] not understand".

When at last the the girl speaks, it is only natural that the boy should take concrete action regarding his fanatical devotion to her, and he promises to "'bring [her] something'" from Araby. Suddenly, thoughts that were once passing fancies about the girl are actual plans of much greater importance than his usual life in the dank oppressive atmosphere previously discussed; he "wishe[s] to annihilate the tedious intervening days", he "chafe[s] against the work of school" and cannot "call [his] wandering thoughts together". He gains purpose from his goal and feels self-important: for child's play was perfectly satisfying when the story opened, but now "the serious work of life which, now that it [stands] between [him] and [his] desire, seem[s] to [him] child's play, ugly monotonous child's play"--childishness is undesirable.

After all of the testing delay, Araby itself is an anticlimax. The bazaar is almost closed, and the building carries "a silence like that which pervades a church after a service"--the church simile is effective because of the previous references to the religious significance of the girl. If the service is over (the bazaar is closed), he has lost his chance to achieve his goal (bringing a gift for the girl). Having lost his purpose and "remembering with difficulty why [he] had come", he wanders about the stall with the young lady and and gentlemen as the realization that his "stay [is] useless" dawns on him. In the final paragraph, he suddenly understands that his entire motivation for coming was baseless and his self-importance was an illusion: he is "a creature driven and derided by vanity"--the vanity to believe, with religious fervour, that his desires were more important than all else.

It is interesting to note that the narrative establishes the boy's youth and immaturity by repeatedly emphasizing his confusion and angst: "I did not know whether I would ever speak to her", "my confused adoration", "already my heart misgave me"; the fact that the narrator is aware of the boy's follies suggests that perhaps the narrator is an older version of the boy who has grown and learned from the epiphany.

Informal Essay

Metacognition

Trichocereus peruvianus, more commonly known as Peruvian Torch, is a South American species of psychoactive cactus containing the active alkaloid mescaline sulfate. Mescaline is a psychedelic drug, supposed to induce distorted sensory perceptions and feelings, altered states of awareness, or states resembling psychosis.

The young man and his friends ordered the cactus in powdered form off the Internet, under the pseudonym "Peruvian Torch incense." A few hours after ingesting the noxious substance, he burst into hysterical laughter.

Whoa. The ride had begun. Mescaline started to teach its lesson; all perception began to warp and garble randomly, but the human brain, constantly hunting for patterns, found significance. A giddiness washed over his soul; he interpreted it as euphoria and blessed the opportunity for this happiness. Objects grew brighter in colour and changed hue; he felt he was perceiving some mysterious, otherwise unknown property of the objects around him. His sense left him, but he saw it as a fundamental change in reality. As the world forgot the rules, he felt closer to the universe and joined in forgetting. Perception and reflection grew confused until observing and thinking were becoming one; his existence was growing more pure and less diluted by the exertion of the human psyche.

There was a curious sucking sensation as his ego expanded to fill the void left by his malnourished id and superego. He became pure immediacy and experience, simply a sentience whose only function was consciousness...

The sentience separately probed the now-independent aspects of the self to which it belonged. Every radiation of thought, feeling or action held infinite significance (that is to say, it was absolute and unquestionable), because it was contextless. Ethos existed still, but was perceived objectively by the sentience, as the two had been separated by the drug's deconstruction of the mind; much the same was true of the anxious worries of the left brain and the wandering fantasies of the right. Beliefs and feelings occurred to the sentience but could not be penetrated and analyzed. Instead all stimuli were cradled in pure awareness: there was no desire or suffering because the mind's thoughts did not belong to itself, but were merely experienced in a way that seemed vicarious. This is the notion of perfect mindfulness.

Every instant of consciousness was like the universe's great orgasm; the sentience was perfectly aware and awareness perfectly defined the sentience so that the mere act of existing dominated the whole self in the same way as sexual ecstasy. At last, no part of the mind impinged on another. The independent parts of the mind lay suspended in mutual reverence for one another (linked through acknowledgement instead of influence), paradoxically becoming a still and indivisible whole, flowing...

He remained in this state for several hours. Considering the experience in retrospect, he realized that what he learned had little to do with where he was, how he felt, or even his particular state of mind. Yes, he had taken mescaline, but meditation, emotional trauma, psychotherapy or even simple maturity could induce the kind of constructive self-analysis he had experienced. The important lesson lay in the realization that it was possible to achieve "perfect mindfulness". When the parts of his mind returned to their normal states, he had a greater awareness of them and the imbalances between them. Experiences with any kind of altered cognition teach us valuable lessons about our minds.

Cause and Effect

Prime Numbers

Most of us know that a prime number (often referred to as simply a "prime") is a whole number which can only be evenly divided by itself and unity; famous examples include 2, 3 and 5. Some of us may even know that there are infinite number of primes, but it is assured that most of us don't know why. The answer is an example of some of the most beautiful mathematics in the history of the subject; the proof is short and simple, but requires a highly imaginative and non-intuitive tool. We owe it to Euclid of Alexandria, the "father of geometry" and one of the greatest minds in recorded history. First of all, we must familiarize ourselves with the method of logic used. Technically, all mathematical proofs employ deductive logic, but there are a number of varieties; this particular example is called proof by contradiction, or reductio ad absurdum ("reduction to an absurdity" in Latin), in which the opposite of the desired result is assumed or imagined. Then a deductive argument, starting with this initial and opposite claim, is built to show a contradiction (an absurd statement establishing the falsehood of some obviously true fact), which would imply that the original assumption was false, and therefore that the opposite statement (the desired claim!) must be true. For Euclid, this means assuming there are not an infinite number of primes; so there must be a prime such that all numbers larger than it are composite (mathematicians call non-primes "composite numbers" because they are always products of primes; they are "composed" of primes). Euclid then employs his genius and obliges us to imagine a special number; we are to imagine the result of multiplying all of the primes (since there are a finite number, according to our assumption) together and adding 1 to the result. Consider this special number: if we try to divide it by any number on our (finite) list of primes, there will always be a remainder of 1. This is because the product of all the primes is itself a multiple of each prime, so adding 1 will simply create an extra remainder (because 1 isn't divisible by any of the primes). However, this number also must be composite since it is (much) larger than the largest prime; that was our assumption. So this is a composite number that is not divisible by any primes? Ridiculous! The definition of a composite number is one that is divisible by at least 2 primes. Here lies the contradiction. Suddenly, all of the deduction falls into place, and the desired result comes out: there must be an infinite number of primes. Elegance radiates from the "special number" step: mathematics is, to most, a sort of reasoning which includes starting from the most general principles and thinking in the abstract to create a giant "tree of truth" which includes all possible combinations of the fundamental principles. Instead, Euclid uses one very specific and very powerful example to quickly and easily prove much more general and beautiful results. Who would think that the simple and specific could so greatly influence the truths of infinity?

Prose Analysis

"Science and Beauty" by Isaac Asimov: Qs 1 & 3, 4

1.a) The thesis occurs in the penultimate paragraph: "All of this vision... was made possible by the works of... astronomers".
b) The essay is organized inductively: the topic is introduced using Whitman's poem, all the facts are stated (from the argument about leaves and pebbles to black holes and the expansion of the universe), then the thesis is presented and explained in relation to the supporting information.

3.a) The sentences "Should I stare at a single leaf and willingly remain ignorant of the forest? Should I be satisfied to watch the sun glinting off a single pebble and scorn any knowledge of a beach?" are rhetorical questions. The answers make up Asimov's thesis, and they clearly illustrate the ignorant aspect of Whitman's arguments.
b) Most of the essay is imagery -- all of the body paragraphs from "Those bright spots..." to "...perhaps a trillion years long" include it. Asimov's purpose is to bring others to appeal to the beauty in science, so he creates compelling images directly related to astronomy, like "quiet pock-marks of craters", "crisp and sere and vaporize into a gas of iron...", "expand and redden until they swallow up their planets", and "the whole universe is exhaling and in-haling...".
c) Metaphors, like "pulsate endlessly in a great cosmic breathing", "a wild death-scream of X-rays", and "form an enormous pinwheel", serve much the same purpose as imagery in Asimov's essay: they create beautiful, artistically appealing impressions of scientific results.
d) Personification is used to "humanize" and make artistically relevant the discoveries of science, with examples like "Some [stars] are of incomparable grandeur", "rotates about its center in a... stately turn" and "dead worlds".

[NB: Mr. Hindley, should I be specifically explaining how each example of each rhetorical device achieves the purpose I've identified, or is it okay to talk more generally?]

4. The paragraph discussing planets is well linked to the following paragraph which regards stars. A good transition is obvious from examining the introductory sentences: "Those bright spots in the sky that we call planets are worlds" and "Those other bright spots, which are stars rather than planets, are actually suns", respectively. Their topics are related through their similar appearances and the second paragraph directly refers to the first. Use of the words "bright spots", in turn, intimately connects both paragraphs to Whitman's references to stars and their beauty, a theme which threads through the whole essay. This creates cohesion in the work as a whole.

Comparison and Contrast

Schubert and Beethoven

Piano music has two (of many) great turning points in history: the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. This is made particularly evident by their piano sonatas, of which Beethoven wrote 32 and Schubert 11. It is important to note that for Beethoven, the sonata was the primary means of creative output when writing for the piano; this is born of his "Classical" roots inspired by the compositions of Haydn and Mozart. Schubert composed a greater variety of (non-sonata) forms, but the same patterns we hear in Beethoven are certainly present in Schubert, showing the same respect for earlier works.

Between the output of these two there is a great difference, yet an intimate similarity. Both were prolific around the beginning of the 19th century, as the "Romantic" movement in music was taking full force, and the characteristic aspects of personal expression and introspection are evident in the piano works of both. Their virtuosity and playing ability at the piano made them both well-recognized, though Beethoven is more famous for this.

When considering the entire output of both composers, there is a broad difference: It has been said that Beethoven's music is more "varied"; certainly his sonatas are more flexible in form towards the end of his career (Schubert's are mostly in the standard "Sonata-Allegro"), and one performing Beethoven is required to execute many diverse technical challenges and broad range of emotions. However, this is not to discredit Schubert: his music is in every way as varied as Beethoven's, but his personality makes it much more difficult to penetrate.

Once Schubert was composing full-time, he lacked the benefit of the rich patrons Beethoven had. Beethoven is known for his distracted walks about town and his fiery personality in performance and rehearsal; his forthrightness of personality is reflected in the clarity and magnitude of the emotions in his music: the contrasts between the first and third movements of the "Moonlight" sonata are devastatingly obvious. Schubert, instead, was terribly shy, rarely performing in public but only for friends; he wrote over 600 songs in his short life because he loved the intimacy of a human voice. In Schubert, it is difficult to make interpretive decisions because he must have had such a particular experience of his own in mind; the emotions are not always clear from reading the music, which sometimes makes the notation seem poorly thought out. Often, Schubert's music becomes dissonant and harsh and confusingly resolved, where in a similar situation, Beethoven would likely exaggerate through dynamics or phrasing why the harmonic oddities were there. Aspects of Schubert's music are often described as demonic or self-pitying, where Beethoven is nothing if not stoic. This difference could be attributed to their parallel experiences with illness: Schubert contracted syphilis (clearly from a "personal" experience) and experienced a variety of strange weakening illnesses as a result, whereas Beethoven became deaf, a handicap so glaringly obvious that dramatic changes in routine were required even to live, let alone continue to compose. Overall, there is no doubt that both men made Romantic and expressive music, but the difference shows through in their lifestyles; in Schubert one can imagine the homelessness, sickliness, fear and inner "Romantic" confusion, but Beethoven must have been the majestic "Classicist" titan he was to create what he did.

Classification and Division

Vectors

What do map coordinates, airplanes, stock values and rabbits have in common? They can all be represented by vectors. Despite being pure-mathematical abstract constructs, vectors constitute one of the most useful and influential human inventions ever. Geometric vectors are the ones most familiar to us: we recall countless arrows on a blackboard from high-school physics classes, and the important lesson that speed is different from velocity because the latter has two quantities: magnitude and direction. Geometric vectors can also be understood in terms of perpendicular components: points on a Cartesian plane or on a map are therefore all geometric vectors; these have affected all of modern physics and are used in nearly all technology today. A natural extension of the idea of representing something in terms of multiple one-dimensional components is the algebraic vector, which in its purest form is merely an ordered n-tuple or a collection of real numbers which can be represented horizontally in parentheses or vertically as a matrix. Experimenting with these new vectors led to the invention of linear transformations and matrix operations. Converting what was once two-dimensional geometry into higher-dimensional math allowed mathematicians to use other sophisticated techniques from calculus and algebra in understanding these vectors. Every piece of data in a computer is an algebraic vector, and in the Theory of General Relativity every point in the universe throughout the history of time is an algebraic vector (instead of two quantities, they have four: length, width, depth and time); the usefulness of these is undisputable. Even higher-minded mathematicians then developed abstract vectors: anything meeting an unbelievably broad, abstract set of conditions is considered part of a vector space. Depending on your conditions, anything from elephants to colours to 19th-century poets to your own thoughts can be considered abstract vectors. Ultimately the brilliance of the vector, whether geometric, algebraic or abstract, is that one object can represent multiple pieces of information; objects like these have become so much a part of our thoughts that we never pause to consider or appreciate them.