Integrated Skills Class Journal 2013B

INTEGRATED CLASS JOURNAL Volume 4(2) Autumn 2013 Contributors: Aiko Takasaki Akiho Segawa Asami Aonuma Chiharu Tateno Chiyori Kenmoku Emi Redmond Hichika Wada Honami Imamura Jun Hiramatsu Kaori Kakinuma Kazumi Itakura Keiichi Ito Koharu Goto Koji Yoshiwara Kosuke Akagi Mahoka Hayashi Mami Hoshida Manami Seto Mayuko Okada Rika Kojima Riko Takemura Risa Furusaka Risa Izumiya Wakana Okita Yuka Omori

Sophia University Integrated Skills Class Autumn Term 2013

Edited by Richard Pinner Front Cover design by Chiharu Tateno, Back Cover design by Hichika Wada

Integrated – Class Journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial ................................................................................................................6 Essays ....................................................................................................................7 In Focus Article Otto Plath: The Man Behind Sylvia Plath’s Life ............................. 8 Manami Seto Dichotomy in Sylvia Plath ......................................................................................... 11 Chiyori Kenmoku The Idea of Resurrection in Sylvia Plath's Works...................................................... 14 Aiko Takasaki Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes ..................................................................................... 16 Mayuko Okada Life of Sylvia Plath and Her Writing ......................................................................... 18 Riko Takemura Two Daddies in “Daddy” ........................................................................................... 20 Honami Imamura Relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes .................................................. 22 Risa Izumiya Trace Article Tolkien’s Smaug and Fafnir in Norse Mythology ............................... 24 Hichika Wada Comparison of superiority between elves and humans .............................................. 27 Asami Aonuma What Gollum represents ............................................................................................. 30 Rika Kojima Samwise Gamgee: the chief hero of Lord of the Rings .............................................. 32 Koharu Goto From a Jerk to a King ................................................................................................. 34 Yuka Omori The Relationship between Tolkien and Birmingham ................................................. 36 Kaori Kakinuma The relationship between Tolkien’s life and The Lord of the Rings ...................... 38 Wakana Okita

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What the Word “Control” Implies in “Ah Pook is Here” .......................................... 40 Risa Furusaka Sal Paradise’s Failure in On the Road........................................................................ 42 Akiho Segawa The Role of the False God, Moloch in “Howl”.......................................................... 45 Kazumi Itakura Influence of Native American and Asian thoughts on Gary Snyder .......................... 47 Mami Hoshida Cuckoo's role in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest ................................................... 52 Emi Redmond The Abnormality of William Burroughs .................................................................... 54 Kouji Yoshiwara The Importance of Beat Movement in Modern Society ............................................. 56 Jun Hiramatsu The Background of Beat Generation .......................................................................... 59 Kosuke Akagi On Feminism .............................................................................................................. 62 Chiharu Tateno In Depth Article Explanation of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction: For the further understanding of deconstruction as literary theory ................................................................. 65 Keiichi Ito

Reaction Pieces...................................................................................................68 Reaction Piece on Beat Generation ............................................................................ 69 Risa Furusaka Reaction piece on “Ah Pook” .................................................................................... 70 Riko Takemura Reaction Piece for The Lord of the Rings .................................................................. 71 Jun Hiramatsu

Reviews ...............................................................................................................72 Review of The Lord of the Rings ............................................................................... 73

Review of Jane Eyre .................................................................................................. 73 Asami Aonuma Pride and Prejudice ................................................................................................... 74

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Editorial

Chiyori Kenmoku

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Riko Takemura Hamlet ........................................................................................................................ 74 Chiharu Tateno What's Eating Gilbert Grape...................................................................................... 75 Akiho Segawa I Am Sam .................................................................................................................... 75 Risa Furusaka The Review of Sylvia ................................................................................................. 76 Manami Seto Review of The Nightmare before Christmas.............................................................. 77 Hichika Wada Review of a film Les Miserables ............................................................................... 78 Rika Kojima Review of Les Miserables .......................................................................................... 79 Chiyori Kenmoku Death of a Salesman and Fences Comparison ........................................................... 80 Aiko Takasaki The Moonlit Road....................................................................................................... 81 Mayuko Okada Reaction to Life of Pi.................................................................................................. 81 Risa Izumiya

Creative Writing ................................................................................................82 Snake .......................................................................................................................... 83 Emi Redmond

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H “

ome is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread

Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight.

Then world behind and home ahead, We'll wander back and home to bed.

Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade!

Editorial

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of The Rings – The Fellowship of The Ring.

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EDITORIAL This has been an exceptional year for me as a teacher, and perhaps one of the busiest years in my life for various personal and professional reasons. Firstly as I mentioned in the Editorial last issue, I became a full-time professor at the English Literature Department and that meant that I became much busier. However, it also meant that I became much more involved in the Department and I now have responsibility for Graduation Theses and other things too, which means I see students from the first year all the way to the final year. So, it’s possible that some of the students who are contributing to this issue of the Integrated Journal will perhaps end up writing their Graduation Thesis with me. For me, this is very rewarding as I am happy to know students and see them all the way through their university career.

This issue is an especially rich offering with some great essays. Despite the fact that this is the fourth issue of this journal there are still some very new and previously unexplored themes being presented here. A lot of originality. There are also some essays which look at familiar themes but bring to them new analysis or improve on them with more research and further academic sources. In fact, this issue is made up almost entirely of essays and there are very few reaction pieces this semester. However, there was a huge number of Film Reviews submitted, so many in fact that I once again had to be very selective in what I could include. We had four reviews of Les Miserables! Also this semester we had only a very few pieces of creative writing. In fact, just one! However, Emi Redmond’s fascinating story really does provide a feast for the creative mind, a wonderful piece.

Usually I select just two essays from the submissions which will become the In Focus Article, this time Manami Seto who looked at Sylvia Plath’s father, and the In Depth Article by Keichi Ito who dug deep into the complex theory of Deconstruction. In Focus is for essays which really are interesting and deal with an important or original theme. In Depth articles are for those essays which show a huge amount of background reading and research has gone into them. However, for this issue I had to create a third award for the fantastic essay by Hichika Wada who traced the links from Tolkien’s dragons to their original sources in Norse Mythology.

For this reason I created a new award category called the Trace Article. Well done to all the students whose work was given an award of special recognition, and well done to all the contributors. There was some truly original and enlightening work and it has been a pleasure to work with this class.

Sincerely, Richard Pinner richardpinner@live.com

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Essays

ESSAYS

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IN FOCUS ARTICLE OTTO PLATH: THE MAN BEHIND SYLVIA PLATH’S LIFE M ANAMI S ETO Sylvia Plath was born in 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, as the first child of Otto and Aurelia Plath. She is a representative of American poets in 20th century, and her sensational relationship with Ted Hughes, who was her husband, a famous English poet and Children’s book writer, is also very famous as much as her great works. Sylvia and Ted loved passionately and married in just four months after they met. Her married life was complicated with love for her husband and jealousy for his success as a poet. Her mental illness caused by strong love and jealousy led Ted to have a love affair with Assia Wevill, and in the end Sylvia committed suicide in the strange way, leaving her beloved two children. Because her life was abnormal and pessimistic, the relationship between Sylvia and Ted has been turned on attention. However, I think that her father affected her gloomy death more than Ted, and we need to consider about the relationship between Sylvia and Otto Plath in order to know about her true way of thinking.

In this paper, I show the effect of Otto Plath on Sylvia’s life hidden behind well-known gossip between Sylvia and Ted. Otto Plath was the professor of Entomology at Boston University. Because he had to write his professional writings at home, he was often away from the daily life of the family.

However, he deeply loved his daughter Sylvia and had fervor for education. He ordered his wife to read books about raising children as many as possible, and he himself often welcomed Sylvia in his study and praised Sylvia when she accomplished intellectual success. “Otto’s approach to raising his children was to involve them in his life, rather than becoming a part of their lives. In some ways, he treated Sylvia as if she were a miniature wife” (Wagner-Martin 24). As a result, though Sylvia was raised strictly, she loved her father and she depended on him. In the late 1930’s, his family life was dominated by Otto’s illness. Though he noticed that it was serious illness and was asked to see a doctor by his wife, he refused to go to hospital. Sylvia felt sadness by watching her father’s change caused by proceeding of his illness. On November 5, 1940, Otto died of an embolus in his lung. When Sylvia was told of his death, she only said “I’ll never speak to God again” (Wagner-Martin 28). For the 8 years-old girl, the death of loved father must be extraordinary grief and the grief remained with her later life (Wagner-Martin 15-30).

However, Sylvia had another reason why she depended on her father even she committed suicide. She had Electra complex, which means that a daughter unconsciously feels sexual desire for her father, and on the other hand she feels a hatred for her mother. This idea was associated with Freudian Psychology, and Sylvia was interested in Freud’s way of thinking.

“When Plath read Freud’s ‘Mourning and Melancholia,’ she called it ‘[a]n almost exact description of my feelings and reasons for suicide: a transferred murderous impulse’” (Ramazani 1144). As Sylvia sympathize with Freud, Sylvia’s works and life matches Freud’s opinion. According to “Mourning and Melancholia”, when people lost their loved ones and become melancholia, there are two actions of suffered people. One action is self-punishment,

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which means that suffered people tend to blame themselves for the loss of loves object. Sylvia sometimes charged herself with the death of her father. “In the early elegies, Plath blames her father’s death on her excessive love for him,” (Ramazaki 1144). Putting the reason of her father’s death on herself, she punished herself with feeling self-hatred. The other action is the circuitous path of self-punishment, which means that the punishment for the dead person by suffered people in the end turns round on the subject’s own self (Ramazaki 1144). This is more complicated than self-punishment because the action of suffered people was mixed with love and hate, and on the surface it seems to be just hurting the lost one because of hatred. In her representative work ‘Daddy’, we can see some parts that Sylvia described her father as negative things and hurt him, and that is the circuitous path of self-punishment. For example, in the lines “Ghastly statue with one gray toe/ Big as a Frisco seal”, her father was deformed. And he was regarded as cruel Nazi and made his daughter scared. At last, he was killed with Ted who was alternative father for Sylvia. “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two/ The vampire who said he was you/…There’s a stake in your fat black heart.” In these parts, Sylvia punished herself by hurting her beloved father. Shortly after writing ‘Daddy’, Sylvia committed suicide. When Sylvia wrote ‘Daddy’, she was betrayed by her surrogate father, which meant she lost her father twice. She might be in deepest melancholic in her life, and the aim of hurting her father was the circuitous path of self-punishment. Therefore, it makes sense that she committed suicide after she killed her father in the poem.

In addition, Sylvia’s husband, Ted Hughes, also wrote the poem about Sylvia’s Electra complex and her incestuous desire. “Hughes’s intimate exposure to his wife’s corrosive father fixation thus often leads him to concentrate and elaborate on incestuous themes with particular force” (Berry 544). For instance, in his last work Birthday Letters, in the poem, ‘The Bee God’, Hughes described Sylvia’s obsession to her dead father. Hughes was distressed because Sylvia suddenly got interested in apiculture, and he thought it related to her fixation on her father who was an authority on the bumble bee. “When you wanted bees I never dreamed/ It meant your Daddy had come up out of the well”. In this part, Sylvia’s psychological incestuous marriage was implied (Berry 543). Moreover, Hughes showed Sylvia’s incestuous desire in his another poem ‘Myrrha’, which is one of the longest poems in his Tales from Ovid. This is the story of Myrrha who has incestuous desire for her father, King Cinyras. She struggles with her irrepressible desire and she became a pregnant by having relationship with her father, but that taboo could not be allowed and she has to be banished from the country (Berry 543-544). From Hughes’s works about incest, we can notice that Otto had strong effect on Sylvia, even after his death. Otto’s existence was in only Sylvia’s mind, but it came up and caught Hughes’s mind through the pessimistic married life.

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Sylvia’s Electra complex led her to incestuous desire and showed the taboo feelings behind her poems. One of the poems is ‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter.’ In that poem, her father was “maestro of the bees”, depicted as a strong ruler, and Sylvia was “sister of a stone”, depicted as passive his daughter. She was enchanted with her strong father. “Father, bridegroom, in this Easter Egg/ Under the coronal of sugar roses”. In this part, we clearly read her passionate desire to get sexual relationship with her father. She called her father “bridegroom”, and it showed that she wanted to marry him (Kimura 254-257).

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Ted Hughes was conscious that Sylvia’s obsession for her father was too strong to separate her from the shadow of her father, and he could not but to accept his existence. In Birthday Letters, in ‘A Picture of Otto’, Ted met Otto in the imaginary labyrinth, and reconsidered how much Otto dominated Sylvia’s mind (Berry 551-552).

Your ghost inseparable from my shadow As long as your daughter’s words can stir a candle.

She could hardly tell us apart in the end.

Your portrait, here, could be my son’s portrait.

I understand – you never could have released her.

I was a whole myth too late to replace you.

This underworld, my friend, is her heart’s home.

Inseparable, here we must remain, (Hughes) Ted may notice that Sylvia chose him as her alternative father, and try to be her husband not substitution of her father. Despite his effort, there remained her father in the center of Sylvia, and Ted finally understood that whatever he did could not change anything and he had to accept her father. As Ted described about the inseparable relationship between Sylvia and her father, we can realize that Otto Plath had extraordinary effect on Sylvia’s life.

Though Sylvia got married Ted and apparently got recovered from fixation on her father, her father’s shadow always dominated her life and stayed on the center of her mind.

Sylvia wrote ‘Daddy’ for the circuitous path of self-punishment and Ted was just a surrogate father in the poem. A lot of works which imply incest between Sylvia and Otto was written by Sylvia and Ted. Ted could not separate Sylvia from Otto in ‘A Picture of Otto’. Behind Sylvia who is famous for passionate, dark, tragic life, her father Otto Plath was hiding and enchanting her.

WORKS CITED Berry, David. Ted Hughes and the Minotaur Complex. The Modern Language Review, Vol. 97, No. 3, pp. 539-552, July 2002. Print.

Hughes, Ted. Birthday letters. London : faber and faber, 1998. Print.

Kimura, Keiko. 『シルヴィア・プラス：父の娘、母の娘』[Sylvia Plath: Father’s Daughter, Mother’s Daughter] Tokyo: Suiseisha, 2005. Print.

Ramazani, Jahan. “Daddy, I Have Had to Kill You”: Plath, Rage, and the Modern Elegy.

PMLA, Vol. 108, No. 5, pp. 1142-1156, October 1993. Print.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath : a biography. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1987. Print.

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DICHOTOMY IN SYLVIA PLATH This paper shows that Sylvia Plath had a dichotomy in her emotions and it was her motive to write a lot of poetry. Her poetry shows her complicated emotions. In her poetry, these complicated emotions show that she had ambivalent thoughts on each subject. Two of her poems and her life show that the thoughts and the dichotomy that I will examine in this paper.

The first example is “Daddy” (222-224). She not only loved but also hated her father and husband in this poem. It can be said that she had two opposite emotions. The second example is “Mirror” (173-174). She rejected her true figure, but she could not escape it because “she” in the mirror showed everything. This shows that she wrote two women using mirror. The third example is her biography and “The Minotaur” by Ted Hughes. She had a great literary ability since she was a child, but she felt pressure from peoples’ expectations. It can be said that she convicted her own great ability, but she feared the possibility of failure. Which is a good example of opposite emotions in her head is “The Minotaur”.

Sylvia’s dichotomy in “Daddy” is love and hate toward her father and husband. Her father, Otto Plath, died of lung embolism on November 5, 1940 and she was only eight years old (Wagner 28). The speaker, “I”, loves and hates her father in this poem, and it reflects Plath’s feelings for her father. The speaker’s father is a Nazi Germany and her mother is a Jew. Actually, Otto Plath was born in Grabow (or Grabowo), Germany (Wagner 17). Her mother, Aurelia Plath, is not a Jew but Austrian immigrant (Wagner 18). His way of child rearing was a little unique because “Otto’s approach to raising his children was to involve them in his life, rather than becoming a part of their (Otto and Aurelia) lives. In some ways, he treated Sylvia as if she were a miniature wife” (Wagner 24). This way gave Sylvia ambivalent feelings. His disciplining of children was strict, but she loved her father because she could learn a lot of things from him. However, he died too early leaving Sylvia without father. She felt grief and waned to mourn his death, but Aurelia did not seem to grieve. She tried to conceal her grief to her children and did not permit them to attend the funeral. She did not want them to see their father’s dead face. However, little Sylvia did not understand her thoughts of course and it turned to anger toward her. She did not know how to get over her grief and no one taught it to her.

After his death, the family finances were tight (Wagner 29). These factors triggered her hate of her father. She hated his early death and even her precious memories with him. These complex emotions are written in “Daddy”. His strict discipline is reflected in Nazi-Jew relationship. For example, “black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot” (222) and “I thought every German was you” (223). Nazi father told harsh things sometimes, but the little speaker thought him as a god and respected him. Therefore, she, half Jew, could not help hating him even if she was put under pressure. There is another ambivalent emotion in the latter part of “Daddy”. Sylvia relates her father with her husband, Ted Hughes (Minami 131-132). For example, “The vampire who said he was you/ And drunk my blood for a year,/ Seven years” (224). They married on June 16, 1956 and Ted left her 1963 which was just before her suicide (Wagner 136). “Seven years” (224) in the poem shows their marriage life for seven years. Their separation was the second lost for her. She thought that she was left two times by the men who she had loved. Same as her father’s death, her love toward Ted turned into the anger and she hated Ted. In “Daddy”, the speaker killed the alternative man and it means that she also killed her Nazi father. It shows that

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C HIYORI K ENMOKU

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the killing of vampire is the killing of her strict past and life. Because of these things, Sylvia loved and hated two men and this dichotomy is her motive to writing.

Sylvia’s dichotomy in “Mirror” is a woman who is seeing herself in a mirror and who is reflected in a mirror. In this poem, the woman has a feeling of awe towards the mirror because there is an expression, “The eye of a little god, four-cornered” (173). The woman is afraid of the mirror because it can reflect everything and she cannot lie in front of it. The first line, “I am sliver and exact” (173), means that the mirror shows not only the appearance but also the inside.

What she does not want to see is her growing old and the darkness inside her. She changes the mirror into “a lake” (174) because the surface of the water reflects her distortedly. She also relies on “the candles or the moon” (174) because their light is weak and they make her figure hazy. This poem was written in 1961 and Sylvia’s mother, Aurelia, visited her to see her family in this time. However, this visit was not happy one because she could not endure Aurelia’s judgment of her marriage life (Wagner 189). Her anger which she felt when she was a child grew. The fear of growing old in this poem could originate in this visit because Aurelia gave her what she wanted to turn away her eyes; they are her father’s death and getting old. In this poem, there are the expression, “swallow” (173) and “a terrible fish” (174). The two words are used in the first part and the last part, but both reminds similar image. The woman is afraid that the terrible fish swallows her and she becomes terrible figure. When the poem was written, Sylvia worried about her role in her family. She had to play “the roles of mother, wife, and homemaker” (Wagner 192) rather than being a writer. This worry is show in the “Mirror” as her inside darkness. There is a word, “pink” (173), in this poem. It also means her darkness because pink has a mean that “the best condition or degree” (Oxford Dictionary). The meaning of best condition in this poem is that there is no corruption or oldness. These various things troubled her and the woman reflected in a mirror is expressed as “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman/ Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish” (174). Because of these things, Sylvia thought about her growing old and youth, lie and truth, and what she wanted to escape and had to accept. This dichotomy is her motive to write “Mirror”.

Sylvia’s dichotomy in “The Minotaur” by Ted Hughes is “The goblin” in her head, and the other dichotomy was made by the frustration in her student life. In “The Minotaur”, she appears “demented” with Ted and she tried to destroy his “heirloom”. However, she calmed down and wrote poetry hard later. Ted says what makes her lead down into the labyrinth and her own doom is “The goblin” in her head and it means her mental illness. Since she was a student, she had suffered from the illness. The mental disorder was perhaps linked to her intelligence and perfectionism. When she was a high school student, she had an idealization of her life.

Therefore, “her talents and capabilities, pushed her to try to excel everything” (Wagner 47) and “the less-than-perfect results depressed her seriously” (Wagner 47). The most serious event during her student life was her attempted suicide taking large amount of sleeping pills. The cause of the event was that she could not enter the Harvard summer school fiction course (Wagner 101). She continued to get high grade till then, so her frustration grew day by day.

Finally, she took a bottle of sleeping pills and fainted for two days at the basement (Wagner 103-104). She wrote a lot of great works since she was a child and many people recognised her talent. She was also proud of her own ability. Therefore, the failure was a great shock for her and she could not accept that she made a mistake. This event made her complex emotions grown because Sylvia who herself thought was perfect person was not accepted by others. As “The goblin” in “The Minotaur”, there are two Sylvia inside her. One is the woman who can do

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everything perfectly. The other is who cannot act as she wants. In this poem, Ted says that she can be the former when she writes poetry or novels. She can manage her strong emotions by changing them into letters. Because of these things, losing the balance between self-confidence, perfectionism, expectations by others, and her failure made “The goblin” inside her and it means her dichotomy. However, the dichotomy was her motive for writing to control her by herself.

This paper has argued that Sylvia has dichotomy and it is her motive to write poetry. In the first section, it has shown that she not only loved but also hated two men and this dichotomy is her motive for writing “Daddy”. In the second section, it has shown that there were two things, what she wanted to escape and what she had to accept, and this dichotomy was the theme of “Mirror”. In the third section, it has shown that her literary ability and great failure made “The goblin” inside her, and this dichotomy was motive of her writing to manage her passion by herself. Because of these things, it can be said that she had dichotomy and was suffered from it, but it made her write a lot of works.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Hughes, Ted. “The Minotaur”, Birthday Letters [1998]. London: Faber & Faber, 2009. Print.

Minami Akira.『詩人の素顔: Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes』 [The True Face of Poets: Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes] Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1987. Print.

Oxford Dictionary of English: Second Edition Revised. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2005.

Print.

Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy” “Mirror”, The Collected Poems: Sylvia Plath [1930]. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Print.

Tokunaga Shouzou. 「お父さん」 [“Daddy”], 「鏡」[“Mirror”], 『シルヴィアプラス詩集』 [The Collected Poems: Sylvia Plath] Tokyo: Ozawa Shoten, 1993. Print.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Biography. London: Chatto & Windus, 1988. Print.

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THE IDEA OF RESURRECTION IN SYLVIA PLATH'S WORKS A IKO T AKASAKI How many people would deeply think of their life? “Living” and “death” is one of the closest things to our life. There was a poet who always face both of “living” and “death.” That is Sylvia Plath. On the early morning on February, she put her head in the gas oven and committed suicide in her apartment in London. Because of her suicide we have strong image to “death” for her. However, comparing her poems, she actually deeply attached to “revival” or “living” by emphasizing “death.” Especially this can been seen from “the surgeon at 2 a.m.,” “Daddy,” which related to her father’s death, and the connection between her poems and myth.

At first, “the surgeon at 2 a.m.” shows Sylvia had strong interests for being restoring to life. This can be seen from the description of “seven holes” and “pink plastic limb,” the connection between symbolism of patient and her father and expression of death. In first stanza, Sylvia uses an interesting expression, “seven holes,” to describe the dead body (Plath 170).

This seven hole implies eyes’, ears’, nose’s and mouse holes. Also, there is a sentence in forth stanza, “Tomorrow the patient will have a clean, pink plastic limb (171).” From this two description, we can know that there is a connection to burial in ancient Egypt. This is because in the ancient Egypt, after death people put stones into its eyes and they gave it substitute to make up for the part it lost (Otsuki 50). The reason why they make the dead body complete again is to allow regaining its breath. What this poem implies is not just a strange surgeon at midnight but the revival for the future.

Moreover, this patient seems like her father who died when Sylvia was little. In this poem Sylvia tried to help her late father by surgeon. The image of this poem at the beginning is dark and strong intention for only death. However, reading through this poem it can be seen that the image changes from death to revival.

Also, Sylvia shows her deep attachment to living in order to emphasize the expression for death. Readers can notice this from this sentence “This is the lung-tree. These orchids are splendid. They spot and coil like snakes. The heart is a red bell-bloom, in distress (Plath 170).”

In these sentences she describes lung and heart as orchids which is a beautiful, luxury and delicate. In ancient Greek, orchids are associated with the “birth (Zulkifli).” According to these, Sylvia emphasizes death with putting some grotesque expression into the image for living flower, which makes the image of “living” stronger.

Secondly, judging from the idea of mythology and some descriptions, “Daddy,” written in 1962, also shows her strong idea of death and revival. From these lines, “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die,” “I” tried to revive by committing suicide to meet with her late father in the land of dead (Plath 222). In addition, as “I” said “In which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, poor and white, barely daring to breathe or Achoo,” she is thirty years old (222). These years shows the cycle of death. It comes every ten years. From her determination to kill her husband, substitute for her father, and herself, readers can feel the strong volition for recovering and being set free from her father’s death (Otsuki 49).

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Also, from the line six, “Daddy I have had to kill you” by using the image of death she expressed the way to recover from her father’s death (Plath 222). As Nance and Jones mentioned in their essay, "Daddy" expresses "the solution suggested in the making of the model seems to occur as a consequence of its association with the speaker's own reconstruction after her attempted suicide (Nance, and Jones 127)."

Thirdly, her poems relates to myth, such as Osiris and Adonis, which is the story of resurrection. Reader can know this from her poems, “Edge,” “Lady Lazarus” and “Electra on Azalea Path.” According to the title of her last poem, “Edge,” readers get her image of resurrection. The story is about the dead woman putting her child back into her body to prepare for death (Otsuki 50). The title, “Edge,” implies the edge of living and death in this poem. Also, it shows preparing not only for death but also for resurrection. Furthermore, to put her child back into her body again seems like a reformation.

Moreover, “Lady Lazarus,” the woman who resurrect again and again, also shows the idea of revival. Lazarus is a one of character that is resurrected by Jesus in Gospel of John. By using this example from the bible, Sylvia makes this poem universal like myth.

Furthermore, as she wrote for her “Dying is an art, like everything else” and “death” is just the beginning of trip for resurrection (Plath 244).

Also, the sentence “The day you died I went into the dirt, Into the lightless hibernaculum,” in “Electra on Azalea Path,” implies the mythological revival (Plath 116). “I” went into the dirt, implies the world after death, musing over memories of her father and woke up. This process has both ideas of death and resurrection. By reading these poems with the image of myth, we can feel her expectation for resurrection or living.

Thus, from these evidences, readers can know that many of Sylvia’s poems show that she has deep attachment to revival and living. She had never overcome her father’s death. That is why there are always some descriptions of living in her poems. She tried to revive her father in her poem. Judging from her main poems, Sylvia has strong intention for revival by emphasizing death.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Nance, Guinevara A., and Judith P. Jones. "Doing Away with Daddy: Exorcism and Sympathetic Magic in Plath's Poetry." Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath. Ed. Linda Wagner-Martin. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1984. 124-29. Print Otsuki, Naoko. "Images of Death in Sylvia Plath's Works." Tokyo PolytechnicUniversiy. 32.2 (2009): 48-51. Web. 29 December. 2013.

Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems. Ed. Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Print.

Zulkifli. "OrchidCraze." : Meaning and Symbolism of Orchid. N.p., 26 Dec. 2011. Web. 27 December. 2013.

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SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES M AYUKO O KADA Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are the famous writers. They married in 1956 and they had two children. Although they could not get along very well and Sylvia Plath suffered from depression, it seems that the existence of Ted Hughes influenced to Sylvia Plath’s works and also the existence of Sylvia Plath influenced to Ted Hughes’s works. In other words, the existence of each other was very important in their life. They supported each other and learned from each other. In this essay, I would like to write about how they met and how the existence influenced to the works by analyzing the Ted Hughes’s work Birthday Letters.

First of all, I am going to write about the biography briefly. Sylvia Plath was born in 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. She studied at Smith College. In 1956, she married poet. Ted Hughes and they lived together first in the United States, then went to England. They had two children, Frieda and Nicholas. But Sylvia Plath was overcome by depression because her works was not so good or her relationship with Ted Hughes was not good in her marriage life, and in 1963 she committed suicide. She is very famous for her two collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel and also famous for The Bell Jar, which was published just before she died. After her death, in 1982, she won a Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. (Poetry) Her husband, Ted Hughes was an English poet and children’s writer. He was one of the best poets in his generation. He is famous for his poetic work Birthday Letters. How did they meet and why did they marry? In a 1961 BBC interview, Sylvia Plath talked about how she met with Ted Hughes. “I happened to be at Cambridge. I was sent there by the government on a government grant. And I’d read some of Ted’s poems in this magazine and I was very impressed and I wanted to meet him. I went to this little celebration and that’s actually where we met… Then we saw a great deal of each other… we kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on.” (Guardian) After her death, because they were legally married, Ted Hughes inherited the Sylvia Plath’s property, including her written work. He was blamed by his relatives for burning Sylvia Plath’s last journal and also there were many speculations and criticism, such as he did not want their children to read her works. In spite of these criticisms, he published Birthday Letters in 1998, which was the collection of his 88 poems about his relationship with Sylvia Plath. (Bildir) Next I will examine how the relationship influenced the works by analyzing the Ted Hughes’s work Birthday Letters. He wrote about the chronological table of their relationship over twenty-five or thirty year period, which included first sighting, dating period, marriage, their life in the United States, birth of their two children, their separation, the suicide of Sylvia Plath and his life after her death. For example, the poem Daffodils described their early years when they were poor but very hopeful and unsuspecting. The poem The Beach or Rabbit Catcher were written about their discord. One of the most debatable aspects in this book is that Ted Hughes believed that in spite of his effort to understand or to ease the depression of his wife, he was finally a helpless witness. Moreover he said that their relationship was fated by her depression, her father’s death or her obsession with it and he was caught by Sylvia and her father. What he said is perhaps true, but this has an effect of losing objectivity or responsibility to the relationship. However, over the years, many people have tried to think about what would

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be the distinctive voice of Ariel or Winter Trees, evaluate their relationship and find that there is a proof that Sylvia and Ted might have learned the new field of their poet from each other. Ted Hughes said that “our minds soon became two parts of one operation. We dreamed a lot of shared or complementary dreams. Our telepathy was intrusive… throughout our time together we looked at each other’s verse at every stage-up to the Ariel poems of October 1962, when we separated.” (Bere) However, their writing style was different. “Hers were to collect a heap of vivid objects and good words and make a pattern; the pattern would be projected from somewhere deep inside, from her very distinctly evolved myth…My method was to find a thread and draw the rest out of a hidden tangle. Her method was more painterly; mine more narrative, perhaps.” (Bere) Ted Hughes was more impressive when he attacked his themes in words that seemed to appear from some natural source, while Sylvia Plath was more accurate and wanted her poet to be explored from her chosen filed in direct, economical language.

Although their writing style is different, they learned and understood each other.

Finally, I would like to summarize my ideas. From the points that Sylvia suffered from depression after she had married Ted or she committed suicide, Ted could be one of the cause of her death, so the image of him may not be good. However the image is changed by Birthday Letters. He wrote about their marriage life in it, not only good thing but also bad things. Of course, there were many criticisms to his ideas about the relationship between him and Sylvia, but also there is a proof that is they learned from each other and might have found their new poetic field. Their writing style is different, but they understood their writing style and evaluated them. Their relationship seems not to be good, but actually as a same poet, their relationship is very important and it also influences to their writing styles, makes their works better.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Bildir, Hata. Biography of Ted Hughes. Poem Hunter. 2013.12.26. Web accessed. <http://www.poemhunter.com/ted-hughes/biography/ > Ted Hughes. Biography. Class Text: Sophia University Literature Departure, Integrated Skills Class. 2013. Print Carol Bere. "'Owning the Facts of his life': Ted Hughes's The Birthday Letters". The Literary Review, Vol 41, No.4, pp.556-561. 1998. Print Poetry Foundation. Sylvia Plath. 2013.12.26. Web accessed. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sylvia-plath > Guardian Audio. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes talk about their relationship. BBC. 2013.12.26.

Web accessed. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2010/apr/15/sylvia-plath-tedhughes>

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LIFE OF SYLVIA PLATH AND HER WRITING R IKO T AKEMURA Sylvia Plath is one of the most dramatic writers in which spent her life which contains many surprising events. Poems of Sylvia Plath are strongly connected to her own life. Her life contains full of tragic events with her father and her husband, Ted Hughes who is also a writer.

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932. Although she spent fruitful time with her family, Sylvia’s father Otto Plath died in 1940 when she was only eight. She mentions that this time of her life is her happiest moment in an interview. As she grows up, she was absorbed in writing and when she was 21, she won the prize at Writer contest in magazine called Mademoiselle. All of a sudden, she committed first attempt to suicide because she could not get into Harvard Summer School Writing Course. However, her mother rescued her so that she just got injuries. In 1955, she finally graduated Smith College with highest honors and at the same year, she entered Cambridge University where she met her future husband Ted Hughes. They first met at the party in 1956 and they fell in love immediately. What is surprising is that they got married after 3 months. In 1957, Sylvia and Ted moved to US then back to England again to focus on their writing. No sooner, their first daughter Frieda and their second child Nicholas was born in 1960 and 1962. Although it seems she had good time with her husband and new children, Ted left Sylvia right after Nicholas was born and Sylvia became unreliable to him that she could not control her psychological feeling of herself. Loss of Ted brought Sylvia loneliness and strong anger towards him so that she was started devoting herself in writing a poem. On February 11th, 1963, Sylvia ended her life only when she was 31 by putting her head in the oven.

As it mentions, her life was full of the bustling events, two biggest moment of her life which influenced her way of thinking and writing style are death of her beloved father and marriage with Ted Hughes. In her poems, she uses lots of symbols to describe her feelings. This paper describes three main things which her life had influenced on 1) way of thinking, 2) Writing Style, and 3) Symbols.

Sylvia’s way of thinking was strongly connected to some of her life events. For example death of her father and marriage of Ted Hughes brought her big effects towards her ways of thinking. It is easy to find the influence in her poem which she wrote just four months before her death called “Daddy” which was published in Ariel in 1965. In “daddy”, she suggested that she had difficult time getting overcome death of her father and complicated relationship with him. For instance, she mentions father as a Nazi and herself as a Jew and she describes that she was attacked and persecuted by him (Plath). What is more, she also confessed that she considered her husband Ted Hughes as a surrogate father. This shows her strong rejection towards man rooted from her father’s death which she could not get over it. These feelings towards all man and family made her think of rejection of herself which lead commitment of suicide (Phillips). In her case, her love towards someone easily changed to hate and rejection.

Use of “Theory of Bipolarity” in Sylvia Plath’s poetry makes her poem very impressive for readers. “Theory of Bipolarity” in her poem contains two techniques; the double and Juxtaposition (Inoue 59-61). The double is clearly explained in her graduation thesis of Smith College titled “A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoyevsky's Novels.” She especially insisted duality such as truth and falsehood, good and evil, and so on. She often uses completely

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opposite meaning of themes in her poems. For example, she used it in series of poems The Colossus and Other Poems, Ariel, and Winter Trees. She also uses juxtaposition in her poem as well. By putting two different contexts in one poems, reader can see the clear difference of contexts. This technique is used so that readers can see more clear difference by putting two different contexts in one poem compared with that without. She succeeded using this technique in “Two Views of a Cadaver Room” from The Colossus and Other Poems however she failed to make effective use of it in “Aftermath” from The Colossus and Other Poems (Inoue, 60-61).

Therefore, she intentionally used these two techniques which she learned throughout studies in Smith College for readers to interpret messages in her poetry more obviously.

While reading her works of poems, there lies lots of symbols which contain her own various experiences. Since religion has been denied, poetry has taken a role as alternative of the religious belief. Poetry became one of the tools to give a lesson to people. English poet T.S. Eliot and Sylvia’s husband Ted Hughes is example of writers who used poetry as alternation of Christian belief and Classicism, Greek anthropology. Instead, Sylvia Plath created her own system of symbol language which associates her own experience and feeling. Since she was very sensitive and passive towards her surroundings, she was very talented at turning what she felt into symbols. She was not considered as solipsistic because she did not represent anima which is feministic view point. Therefore, symbols which are used in the poems make her work more attractive to readers because it contains lots of her lifetime experiences.

In conclusion, her biography and her literary works cannot be separated because her main experiences such as death of her father and marriage with Ted Hughes made her way of thinking like it mentioned in a poem “Daddy”. Also, experiences let her established writing techniques called the double and juxtaposition. Sylvia Plath came up with her own system of symbol language by reminiscences of her past. Therefore her life events influenced her way of thinking, writing style, and symbols shown in the series of her poem give reader tremendous impressions.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Inoue, Akiko. シルビア・プラスの愛と死 [Love and Death of Sylvia Plath] Tokyo: 南雲堂 [Nanundo], 2004. Print.

Phillips, Robert S. The Dark Funnel: A Reading of Sylvia Plath. Modern Poetry Studies, 1972.

Print.

Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy” Ariel. 1965. London: Harper Perennial, 1999. Print.

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Integrated – Class Journal

TWO DADDIES IN “DADDY” H ONAMI I MAMURA In these days, women have succeeded in getting power in social situations. Before this age, there was patriarchy society. Women were hidden behind men. Furthermore, women were pressed by men. In 20th century, there were some women who tried to overcome such uneasy complex toward men. One of such woman was Sylvia Plath. Sylvia was a woman poet.

She is one of the most famous poet in 20th century. She was also famous for her stormy life.

There are many core fan of her still in these days. She was a pioneer of feminism. After she died, there became the age of the woman movement. Sylvia wrote many poems about herself.

She was said to be a confessional poet. In her poet "Daddy", she wrote her anger for "daddy".

In her life, she had two complex toward two men. The one is for her father, Otto Plath. He died when Sylvia was very young. She thought she was betrayed by him. The other is for her exhusband, Ted Hughes. He also cheated her by having an affair with another woman. In this poem, “Daddy”, Sylvia told her anger for the two daddies.

Sylvia Plath was an American poet. She was born in Massachusetts in 1932. When she was eight years old, her father died. She was very smart and beautiful. She studied at Smith College. When she was twenty, she committed a suicide. However, her mother found her and she could survive. Then she got a scholar ship and entered Cambridge University. At the university, Sylvia met Ted Hughes, a poet. She had fallen in love with him, and married him in 1956. Though Sylvia and Ted started to live in England together with their two children, their marriage life was not happy. Because they were poor, Sylvia had to work as a teacher. Because she had to take care of her little children, she had no time to write poems. She was in a slump as a poet. What was worst, Ted cheated on Sylvia and had an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill. After Sylvia and Ted separated, Sylvia started to write many poems. She wrote “Daddy” in 1962, just before she kill herself in an oven. She tried to kill herself more than four times. The first time, She committed a suicide to go where her father exist. The last time was because of her ex-husband, Ted Hughes. The two men, her father and her ex-husband, had huge effects on Sylvia Plath.

One “daddy” in “Daddy” is Sylvia’s real father. Sylvia commented about “Daddy” that “the poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra Complex. Her father died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze allegory once before she is free of it.” (Riebe) Sylvia is a confessional poet and it is clear that she wrote about herself in “Daddy”. Written in the first stanza, she was almost thirty years old when she wrote this poem. And as the twelfth stanza, she was almost ten years old when her father, Otto Plath, died and was buried. Also she committed a suicide when she was a student of Smith College.

Clearly she confesses her life in this poem. Otto Plath was a professor of Biology and German in Boston. (Steinberg) It is not strange that his daughter Sylvia had a photo in which he stood “at the blackboard.” (Plath) There are some German words and other words which associate German and Nazi in this poem. Otto Plath was born in German. Sylvia use many German words such as “Ich”, “German”, “Jew”, “Dachau”, “Auschwitz”, “Belsen”, “Luftwaffe”, “swastika”, “Meinkampf”, “Fascist”. (Plath) Though Otto Plath was not a Nazi neither Jew, many of these words which

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Sylvia used to express her father associate Nazism. Because she worshiped her father, Sylvia thought that she was abandoned by her father when he died. Actually, after Otto’s death, Sylvia and her family’s life became poorer. She felt bitter about her father and made selfish image of him. In her mind, Otto Plath was a Nazi and cruel daddy. She also use the word “black” seven times to describe her father. Black also expresses her negative image of her daddy. In this poem, she calls her real father “daddy” and complain her frustrations which she had had for more than thirty years.

The first ten stanza there only exist one story teller (Sylvia) and one listener (Otto).

However in the eleventh stanza, there appear “the black man”. (Plath) This black man “Bit my (Sylvia’s) pretty red heart in two,” and “said he was you (Otto). And drunk my blood for a year, Seven years.” (Plath) She also called this man “vampire”. This black vampire is Sylvia’s exhusband, Ted Hughes. (Sylvia Plath Forum) Ted had an affair with another woman, cheated Sylvia and broke her heart. Some people say Sylvia was a green eyed monster, however, she just loved him deeply. She was completely hurt by his insincere behavior. She even called him “devil” in this poem. In fifteenth stanza, she says “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two---“.

(Plath) It means if she has killed her father, she has killed Ted. She thought Otto and Ted as a same person who are to hate and kill. After this line, the word “daddy” means both Otto and Ted. Sylvia and Ted had two children between them. After the divorce, the children lived with Sylvia and were taken care of by her. They lost their father like former Sylvia. For them, Ted Hughes was “daddy”. Sylvia might saw herself in her own children. And also saw Ted in her daddy, Otto Plath. The “daddy” also means Ted Hughes.

This poem “Daddy” is full of negative images of daddy. Sylvia was really angry for daddy. She was betrayed by two familiar men, her father Otto Plath and her ex-husband Ted Hughes. Otto died and leave her when she was really young. Ted cheated and had affair with another woman. Sylvia was deeply hurt by the two daddies. Through this poem, she try to her struggle with this two daddies come to a settlement.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Connell, Elaine. Sylvia Plath Forum. 1 January 2008. Web. 6 January 2014.

Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy” Ariel.1965. London: Harper Perennial, 1999. Print.

Riebe, Bernd. “Sylvia Plath’s Poem ‘Daddy’”. Der Obsidian. 18 November 2014. Web. 6 January 2014.

Steinberg, Peter K. “Biography”. A celebration, this is A website for Sylvia Plath. January 1999.

Web. 19 January 2014.

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RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES R ISA I ZUMIYA Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are one of the most famous married couple all over the world. This couple is not only famous but also miserable. However, I think, the misery of this couple attracted public attention. Also I am attracted by this couple too. Therefore I choose them as a main theme of this essay. In this essay, I focus on their relationship divided into three periods of time; the beginning of their romance, their married life and Ted’s life after Sylvia’s death.

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston. Her father was a professor of Boston University and her mother was a first-generation American of Austrian descent.

However her father died after Sylvia’s eighth birthday. Her father’s death was a very shocking event to young Sylvia. She grew up and entered Smith College. Sylvia was a brilliant student in that college and she also dated many boys. She might be easy lover as she said Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars-to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording-all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night (Plath 30).

However she was suffered from dipolar disorder and she came to think of suicide as she said in her journal like this “I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb.” (Mondragon) She actually committed suicide by taking 48 sleeping pills when she was 20 years old but she failed. After that, she was absent from college to enter a hospital. However she finally graduated from the college. Also she entered Cambridge University to study literature with a Fulbright scholarship. In England, she attended a party held to celebrate the launch of a new Cambridge literary magazine. In this party, Sylvia finally met Ted Hughes. Sylvia express the day when she met Ted Hughes like this Then the worst thing happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me, came over and was looking hard in my eyes and it was Ted Hughes (King).

Ted Hughes was called the biggest seducer in Cambridge. That day is the beginning of their romance.

About only four months later since the day they met, on June 16 in 1956, Sylvia and Ted get married secretly in the Church of Saint George the Martyr in London. They spent the summer writing in Spain. Also they have two children. It sounds like happy married life, but actually Sylvia had some problems in her own mind. Firstly, she was troubled with managing to work and keep house at the same time. Many women who are married and also have her own

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job may have this kind of problem today. In this case, ordinary women can solve this problem by giving up her job and devoting themselves to keep house. However Sylvia could not give up her job because, I think, writing is the only way to fix her mental problems. Secondly Sylvia gradually came to feel jealous of Ted for his brilliant praise. Ted is the closest person to Sylvia.

Therefore she felt jealous everyday but she could not escape from such a miserable feeling. Also, I think, to feel jealous of someone is equivalent to be disgusted oneself. Thirdly, Ted had an affair with Assia Wevill. It is the most hopeless thing to be cheated by her lover who was supposed to support her. As a result of these problems between Sylvia and Ted, they are separated. She gassed herself to death on 11 February, 1963. She was 30 years old. “We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.” (Sylvia Plath quotes) This quote by Sylvia is my favorite one.

After Sylvia’s death, Ted became the heir to her estate because when Sylvia died they were still married. Also he published Ariel and Other Poems in 1965. This is the poems from Sylvia’s last complete manuscript. He lived with Assia Wevill in Devon house after Sylvia’s death. Tragically Assia killed herself and their daughter Alexandra in March of 1969. In August 1970 Ted married Carol Orchard who was a nurse. They were together until Ted’s death because of cancer. Unfortunately the son of Sylvia and Ted named Nicholas Hughes committed suicide on March 16, 2009. He was 47 years old. After Sylvia died, the works of Sylvia gradually came to be admired. However the more her works were admired, the more Ted was criticized. 29 years later since Sylvia’s death, her work gained Pulitzer Prize.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes spent such a stormy and miserable life. However, I think, the uniqueness of their life may be many people who spent ordinary life. Their works and uniqueness must keep attracting many people all over the world.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Steinburg, Peter. "Biography". A celebration, this is Sylvia Plath. Info. January 1999. Web. 20 January 2014.

Koren, Yehuda. "Ted Hughes's wife, Sylvia Plath, famously killed herself. But what of his mistress, who four years later did the same?" The guardian. 19 October 2006. Web. 20 January 2014.

Wilson, Andrew. "Sylvia Plath in love: A mesmerizing portrait of the tragic poet as a young, sexually uninhibited sun-loving party girl - told by the lovers she discarded for Ted Hughes". Mail Online. 19 January 2013. Web. 20 January 2014.

Plath, Sylvia The Journals of Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough (Eds.) New York: Anchor Books. 1982. Print Mondragon, Brenda C. "Sylvia Plath". Neurotic Poets. 1997. Web. 20 January 2014.

King, Steve. "Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes". Today in LITERATURE. 26 February 1956. Web. 20 January 2014.

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TRACE ARTICLE TOLKIEN’S SMAUG AND FAFNIR IN NORSE MYTHOLOGY H ICHIKA W ADA J. R. R. Tolkien had a thorough knowledge of Norse mythology and loved it very much (Gough 2). When he was six or seven years old, he read a story of Norse mythology for the first time and started to be interested in Norse legends (Lazo 194). Moreover, while he was in the King Edward’s School in Birmingham, Tolkien studied Old Norse by himself and read the texts of Norse mythology in Norse language (Lazo 195). In 1962, he founded the group named “Coalbiters” where he read the texts in Old Norse and translated the Eddas and the sagas (Lazo 191). Norse mythology had a great influence on Tolkien’s works. One of the ideas which Tolkien had borrowed from Norse mythology is the idea of dragons. He said in his letter that the model of Smaug, the famous dragon in The Hobbit, was the dragon in the Norse legend, Fafnir (Gough 2). Tolkien’s Smaug and Fafnir in Norse mythology have common features in several points. Smaug is similar to Fafnir in the points of his treasures, his speaking with a man, his vulnerable spot causes his death, the feature of his killer and his character.

Firstly, both of the dragons guard fabulous treasures. In The Hobbit, Smaug attacked one of the kingdoms of dwarves and robbed all of the treasures in The Misty Mountain (Tolkien 29). When Bilbo Baggins stole into the Mountain, Smaug was sleeping on numberless of gold and jewels (Tolkien 249). In the dwarves’ Mountain, Smaug guarded his treasures and remembered what he had so exactly that he noticed when Bilbo stole his great two-handed cup (Tolkien 252). In the same way, there is a dragon guarding fabulous gold in Norse mythology.

The legend of Sigurd the Volsung is one of the famous legends appearing a dragon. In this legend, the greedy dwarf Fafnir killed his father, Reidmar, and robbed all of his gold (Morris 86). After killing his father, Fafnir went to Glittering Heath and hid his gold there (Morris 88).

Fafnir changed himself into a dragon and guarded his fabulous gold (Morris 88). Not only both of the dragons guarded their treasures, but also their treasures brought misfortune to their owners. Thorin Oakenshield, the King under the Mountain, became greedy after he got back his treasures from Smaug. He would not give a portion of treasures to even Bard who killed Smaug (Tolkien 307). Finally, he was fatally wounded in the battlefield and lost his life (Tolkien 333).

Fafnir’s gold also carried a terrible curse. Sigurd, the hero killed Fafnir, and all of the later owners of Fafnir’s treasures are killed because of the curse put on the dragon’s treasures (Lee 111). In this way, Smaug in The Hobbit and Fafnir in the legend of Sigurd are common to guard fabulous treasures which had caused of misfortune to their owners.

The second common feature between Smaug and Fafnir is their conversations. In The Hobbit, when Bilbo was asked his name by Smaug, he did not answer his real name (Tolkien 258). He talked in riddling way because he had known that dragons were often attractive to riddling talks (Tolkien 259). Dragons liked to waste their time on challenging to understand what the talks meant (Tolkien 259). Moreover, it is not wise to tell the real names to the dragons and to refuse telling them directly, so Bilbo tried to talk in riddles and make fun of Smaug (Tolkien 259). The conversation between Sigurd and Fafnir is also riddling. When

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Sigurd was asked his name by Fafnir, he did not answer Fafnir’s question firstly. The hero talked in riddling way and avoided to tell his real name to the dragon (Morris 111). In addition, both of the dragons tried to sow the seeds of discord between their enemies and enemies’ parties.

In The Hobbit, Smaug told Bilbo to stay away from dwarves (Tolkien 259). He also told Bilbo not to believe dwarves (Tolkien 260). These Smaug’s words made Bilbo doubt his parties for a moment. In the same way, Fafnir told Sigurd that his treasures were going to cause of misfortune (Morris 111). Fafnir tried to make Sigurd uneasy and make him betray his party by saying these words for several times. After all, Smaug’s plan ended in failure, but Fafnir’s suggestion influenced Sigurd successfully. Sigurd killed his adoptive father, Regin, and took all the gold for himself. Thus both of the conversations between dragons and their enemies are riddling and dragons tried to make mischief between his enemies and enemies’ parties.

Smaug and Fafnir have same weak points. Tolkien’s Smaug’s weak point is his belly which is not covered with hard iron scales. He had lain of a mountain of his treasures for a long time in order to arm his soft belly with gems and gold (Tolkien 250). However, his left breast were not covered with hard things and his soft skins were appeared (Tolkien 263). Bilbo found that weak point and Bard, the captain of a company of archers in Lake-town Esgaroth, pierced Smaug’s uncovered left breast by his arrow. An evil dragon Smaug was killed by being pierced his vulnerable spot deeply (Tolkien 290). Fafnir’s weak point is also his soft skins of belly.

Sigurd dug a ditch and hid himself in it while he was waiting for Fafnir. When Fafnir crossed the ditch, the hero stuck up his sword and pierced dragon’s soft belly deeply (Morris 110).

Furthermore, the heroes who killed dragons also had a common feature. Both of the heroes are descended from royal families. Bard, the hero killed Smaug, was a descendant of Girion who was a Lord of Dale (Tolkien 289). After Dale was ruined by Smaug, Girion’s wife and her child escaped to Esgaroth, so the royal family of Dale survived. Another hero who killed Fafnir in Norse mythology, Sigurd, was also a descended from royal families. Sigurd’s grandfather, Volsung, was one of the most powerful kings of Hunaland (Evans 131). The third common feature between Tolkien’s Smaug and Fafnir is their weak points, soft skins. Both of the heroes who are descended from royal families killed dragons by piercing deeply dragons’ vulnerable spot.

The characteristics are another common feature of Smaug and Fafnir. Both of the dragons are very greedy. Smaug is greedy enough to remember all of his numberless treasures (Tolkien 252). When he noticed that one of his treasures was stolen, he got terribly angry and raged so violently (Tolkien 252-254). Fafnir is as greedy as Smaug. Before Fafnir became a dragon, he killed his father because he desired to have numberless gold for himself alone (Morris 86). He changed himself into a dragon and allowed nobody to come near to his treasures (Evans 135). Both of Smaug and Fafnir are not only greedy but also terribly fierce. In The Hobbit, when Smaug breathed fire, everything burned out. He could break rocks into pieces by lashing them with his large tail (Tolkien 269). Fafnir was also very fierce and no one could come near to him and his treasure (Evans 133). Even before he changed into a dragon, he killed his father and tried to kill his brother Regin (Morris 86). In this way, Smaug is similar to Fafnir in his greedy and violent character.

Tolkien’s dragon Smaug was influenced by Fafnir in Norse mythology in many points.

Both of Smaug and Fafnir guard their fabulous treasures. In addition, these dragon’s treasures cause of terrible misfortune to their owners. Conversations between Smaug and Bilbo are similar to the ones between Fafnir and Sigurd. Smaug asked Bilbo to tell his name, but Bilbo

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Essays

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Integrated – Class Journal

spoke in riddling way not to tell his real name to the dragon. Sigurd also tried not to tell his real name to Fafnir firstly by riddling speaking. Moreover, both of the dragons tried to make their enemies get into a dispute with their enemies’ parties. Smaug told Bilbo to have nothing to do with dwarves anymore and not to believe them. Actually, Bilbo was near to lose his trust in dwarves. Fafnir also told Sigurd that his treasures would cause of misfortune to their owners and tried to make the hero uneasy. Fafnir’s plan succeeded and Sigurd killed his adoptive father Regin after he killed the dragon. Furthermore, Smaug and Fafnir have the same vulnerable spot.

Their belly’s skins were soft enough to be wounded, so they were killed by being pierced that vulnerable spot. Their killers, Bard and Sigurd, also had a common feature that both of them were descended from royal families. Tolkien made Smaug to have greedy and fierce character like Fafnir in Norse mythology, which he had been interested through his life.

WORKS CITED Evans, Jonathan. “Dragons.” Trans. Nana Hamana. Tokyo: Shufusha, 2009. Print.

Gough, John. “Tolkien’s Creation Myth in The Silmarillion – Northern or Not?” Children’s Literature in Education 30. 1 (1999): 1-8. Print.

Lazo, Andrew. “Gathered Round Northern Fires: The Imaginative Impact of the Kolbítar.”

Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader. Ed. Jane Chance. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. 191-226. Print.

Lee, Stuart D., and Elizabeth Solopova. “The Keys of Middle-earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien.” New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.

Morris, William. “Sigurd the Volsung.” Intro. Jane Ennis. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Hobbit or There and Back Again.” London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006. Print.

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COMPARISON OF SUPERIORITY BETWEEN ELVES AND HUMANS A SAMI A ONUMA Elves are regarded to be the superset of all tribes in Middle Earth because of their beauty, power and eternal lives, which means they could be superior to humans. As the reason of having been selected as one of the fellowship, Okada says “Legolas is from the oldest and the wisest of the races in Middle-Earth. He has great physical and mental strength and he is a powerful and experienced person.” (Okada 52) Here is the meaning of the word “superior” itself in order to remind what it originally means.

better than someone or something else in quality or skill. seems that it should be valuated more highly than others.

(Practical Japanese Dictionary)

When we focus on the definition 1, it seems that elves are better than humans in beauty, powers, intellects and eternal lives, and they are regarded opposite to evil. On the other hand, definition 2 says “it should be valuated more highly than others.” It is questionable that in what point we can regard something or someone as “more valuable”. To be valuated highly, they should be perfect like they have never made a mistake and their strong points should never have negative aspects, and then from the structure of the story, we may possibly be able to know which tribe J.R.R. Tolkien himself thinks superior. Considering these three points, it may happen that the collapse of superiority of Elves to humans. Moreover, its structure might turn opposite. Now we will look at whether Elves are really superior to humans through these three approaches above such as the points of never mistakes, good aspects and the structure of the story.

Generally speaking, it seems that elves have never made a mistake as they are perfect.

According to Lawson, this myth is turned over by the two points. One is their wrong action in Silmarillion. They fight each other to get the Silmarils and fail, murder members of the same tribe and betray and rebel against gods, so they have bloody sinful past. That is, although being absolutely smart, beautiful and knowledgeable, they have the same emotions as we, human, have and make a mistake as we, human, do. （Lawson 21）Akai says “Even Galadriel, who possesses elvish beauty and is the greatest rival of Sauron, has the latent possibility of changing in to the Dark Lord. Galadriel and Sauron are no doubt twin principles opposing each other”.

(Akai 54) Second is Orks, what is called, which are the basic evil creatures. They, with ugly faces and long sharp nails, do nothing but killing and hate sunlight. Such terrible creatures are originally elves. Evil Morgoth captured elves, put them in jail with no sunlight and tortured them. Humiliation and hatred they had changed their figures to ugly ones. (Tolkien) It is true that eternal lives are fascinating to some people. However, it does not have something to do with whether Elves are happy or not. In the last scene of Lord of the Rings, Frodo and other elves leave Middle Earth for new world “Aman” by ship. This suggests that

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Tolkien has a longing for The Kingdom of Heaven. (Okada 49) Aman is thought to be the next world, but strictly speaking, this is another world, which is different from this world, Middle Earth. Elves lead their lives forever unless they get killed by others. Therefore, even though wherever they go, their eternal lives are to be continued, so they voluntarily leave over the ocean by themselves, but their fates never change. On the other hand, humans will just disappear from the world after their death. Although even though elves pass away, they keep on being tied to this world including Aman, human, after his or her death, will be released from the restraint of this world and gods. This is regarded as a special privilege that not Elves but human have. Akai illustrates this with Table1.

Table1 Elf—under control of godsーimmortal in this world—bounded Human—come back to gods lastーimmortal in next world—above (Akai 99) Eternal lives are fascinating in appearances, however, it has a negative aspect that it means bounded. There is a typical love structure in Middle Earth that a human man with limited life and an elvish woman with unlimited life love each other (Lawson22) ,which has two aspects of beautifulness and sadness. For, this cannot avoid containing sad incidents and a separation from a dearest person. Taking an example of human, Aragorn（He is the heir of Isildur who brings the Ring as evil power. (Okada 55)）and half elf, Elrond’s daughter, Arwen, she decided to have limited life to marry Aragorn, which means she has to leave away from her father forever. Luthien, queen of elf, and Beren, hero of human is also the same. Moreover Tuor and Idril is as well. However, these three loves are different from that of Romeo and Juliet that ends tragically, although they have the some tragic elements on their base. These three loves go to happy ends by the essential task of marriage. As Okada says “Arwen gives up her undying life to perish alongside her beloved Aragorn. (…) Arwen becomes happier than before with Aragorn.” (Okada57). Elvish women become happy changing their eternal lives to mortal ones.

Influences in Middle Earth change from the first generation to the third generation.

Aragorn finally comes to be the king of Gondor and the king of Middle Earth. Elvish Arwen, as his wife, comes to support him. Elvish who were strong in the fist generation turn to be weak, on the other hand, humans turn to be strong in the third generation. This makes a strong impression. Elves lose their paradise in spite of the eternal lives. (Lawson 21) Tolkien tells us that human being is the main character in new generation and thinks of we humans’ powers as the strongest ones.

In conclusion, although we tend to think elves are superior to humans because of their high nature, but, they actually have a dark past of killing each other and a weak aspect that they easily submit to evil and even the immortality as their strong point, from another view, can be an element of sadness. In addition, the structure of the story leads to human country in the end.

These points suggest that elves are not perfectly superior to humans. Humans rather try to make the most of their limited power with limited lives and lead brilliant lives. J.R.R. Tolkien may want to teach this to us.

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WORKS CITED

Essays

Akai Toshio. “The Lord of the Rings as a Mythical Narrative” St. Andrew’s University.

1985.

Akai Toshio 「 ト ー ル キ ン 神 話 の 世 界 」 (The World of Tolkien Myth) Kobe University. 1994.

Okada Rika. “Theology in The Lord of the Rings” Kogakuin University.

Tolkien J.R.R. “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume. Book Two Chapter 5” 2012.

Practical-Japanese Dictionary http://www.practical-japanese.com/ Lawson, Ian World of the Rings: The unauthorized guide to the world of JRR Tolkien [仁保真佐子・訳]（trans Masako Niho）East Press. 2002. Print.

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WHAT GOLLUM REPRESENTS R IKA K OJIMA Tolkien scholar and critic Jane Chance states that The Lord of the Rings is a rich fantasy story . The main character, Frodo who is Hobbit go for a quest to destroy a Ring and beat enemies with his fellows including other species such as Elf, Dwarf and human. In their way to the place where enemies live, Frodo meets Gollum, who chase for the company. He is addicted to the Ring and tries to steal it. I will focus on, at first, how his pity is described through the character’s attitude toward him and action of Gollum himself because of the power of the Ring which changed Hobbit-like personality into cunning and savage. Secondary, I will show that Frodo could be like Gollum because miserable looking of Gollum is due to the greed for wanting the Ring.

Thirdly, I will focus on the ring power which makes the Gollum split personality. I will argue that Gollum is a character who expresses pity and greed of men.

This paragraph points out that Gollum is described as not just evil character but pitiable creature. When Frodo and Sam meet Gollum, Frodo remembers “his earlier reaction to Gandalf’s recounting of the meeting of Bilbo and Gollum, when Bilbo’s pity stayed his hand” (Chance 82). Moreover, as he acting with Gollum, now that he “‘sees’ (read, understands) Gollum, Frodo does in fact pity the degenerate Hobbit” (82). He sees Gollum’s situation that he sticks to nothing but the Ring, which was caused by the strong power of the Ring. So “Frodo tries to assimilate Gollum in order to recover him from the grip of the Ring” (Croft 262). He decides and tries to save him because he felt pity to him. Even after Frodo was betrayed by him leading where big spider, Shelob lives, “neither Frodo nor Sam can bring himself to kill Gollum” (Pienciak 23). This is because they show mercy to him. At the last scene, Gollum takes an important role for destroying the Ring. He is “a cowardly and a corrupted hero who, through his intense desire to possess the Ring, ends up destroying both it and himself” (Harvey). He can take a hero role, for he is not completely evil existence but the pitiful person who was addicted by the Ring.

Frodo is also addicted to the Ring. “What Frodo and Gollum share, it appears, is a desire to prevent the Ring (‘Precious’) from falling into the power of Sauron” (Chance 82). Frodo tries to keep it from Sauron to destroy it, while Gollum wants it to possess.

“Gollum’s connection to Frodo is through the Ring” (Pienciak 23). Frodo also accepts the Ring for greed because he cannot throw the Ring into the fire. Therefore “Gollum represents what may happen to Frodo if he succumbs to the Ring’s power” (23). Frodo would be like Gollum in looking and cunning personality if he had completely yielded to the Ring. In the same way, “Gollum sees what he might have been, had it not been for the Ring” (23) through Frodo. After the Ring is destroyed, “Gollum’s grief at the loss of the Ring foreshadows Frodo’s own pain and unhappiness” (23). This shows that Frodo is possessed by the Ring as well as Gollum and he can be like him. Frodo at last does not want to let go of the Ring because he longs for it and wants to possess. Gollum became ugly and cunning because he wants and pursues the Ring. Accordingly, Gollum himself represents men’s greed.

Moreover, the showing of Gollum’s greed can be seen in another perspective. He lived calmly as well as the other Hobbits but when seeing his friend find the Ring, he

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kills him and steals the Ring. The more he treasures and desires it the more he sticks to it and becomes terrible looking. The situation the Ring’s power influences on him “is just the way an addiction can destroy who a person is because after a while all that matters is the addiction” (Sauceda 279). His personality splits into two; original one, Smeagol is coward but has conscience, the other, Gollum is rough and sly. This Gollum side was “created by the Ring’s power over him” (Harvey). The power of the Ring is so awful that it captivates him and makes him split personality. In other word, he lives only for the Ring. “This is much like those who live only for their addiction, and satisfying that intense desire, compelling them over and over and over again to do whatever it is that addiction represents” (Sauceda 279). This is similar to withdrawal symptoms. The Ring can be replaced for drug. Once he desires it, he cannot escape from the addiction, the power of the Ring. His desire for the Ring expresses the greed of men.

Not only Bilbo but also Frodo and Sam feel pity to Gollum as they going the way together even though they are betrayed by him. Especially Frodo understands him so he tries to save him from the Ring’s addiction. Gollum, at last, takes the role of hero who destroys the ring because he is not evil existence but pitiful creature the Ring makes. Moreover Frodo and Gollum are common in greed for possessing the Ring.

Gollum, who lose his greed shows what would happened if Frodo gives in the Ring. The power of the Ring makes Gollum split personality and captivates him like drug. He cannot escape from its power of desiring it. The way he longs for it indicates men’s greed. I can say that the character of Gollum shows pity and greed of men.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Chance, Jane. Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2010.

Print.

Croft, Brennan Janet. Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language.

Jefferson: McFarland, 2007. Print.

Harvey, Greg. The Origins of Tolkien’s Middle-earth For Dummies. Hoboken: John Wiley& Sons, 2011. Print.

Pienciak, Anne. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, 1986. Print Sauceda, T Carol. My Journey with Grief: A Mother’s Grief Revealed in Her Journals. Salt Lake: American Book Publishing, 2009. Print.

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SAMWISE GAMGEE: THE CHIEF HERO OF LORD OF THE RINGS K OHARU G OTO J. R. R. Tolkien built The Lord of the Rings around Frodo Baggins. Frodo faces the heavy task that determines the destiny of the Middle-earth with support of his fellow ship. Just all the same, there are many heroic character in this story; Frodo the brave Hobbit, Aragorn the great king, Legolas the dauntless elf, etc. Therefore it is very difficult to say who the best hero is; Tolkien said “Sam is the chief hero” (Drout 588). His image and ideal of hero, which is deeply influenced by Old English Literature Beowulf, is related to this word.

In a letter to his son Christopher, Tolkien said: Sam is the most closely drawn character, the successor to Bilbo of the first book, the genuine hobbit. Frodo is not so interesting, because he has to be highminded, and has, as it were, a vocation. The book will probably end up with Sam. Frodo will naturally become too ennobled and rarified by the achievement of the great Quest and will pass West with all the great figures but Sam will settle down to the Shire and gardens and inns” (Tolkien, Letters 65-66).

Tolkien has less appreciation of Frodo than for Sam. However, although Frodo is always helped and cannot fight by himself, he has a strong mind and pure heart that common men cannot have, and bore the evil power of the ring. This strength is shown by the contrast with other characters. Isidur and Gollum are completely fascinated with the Ring, and even Gandalf is afraid of touch it. He understands the fate, and has courage to carry it. This is typically heroic part. In fact, Frodo cannot carry the ring by himself, and he almost fails to destroy the ring. He is blinded with desire, and the ring and Gollum fall to the crack of the Doom accidentally. Yet he is still a hero of the story, he is the man who faces ones destiny.

Frodo Baggins is a hero, and also it is agreeable that Samwise Gamgee is the chief and real hero in the whole story. Actually, who carries the Ring and Frodo to Mount Doom is Sam. However, Sam cannot be on the Frodo’s side. He knows that he cannot bear the responsibility of carrying the ring. Like Frodo, Sam knows his role too. In the Return of the King, “'Come, Mr. Frodo!' he cried. 'I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he'll go'” (940). He keeps on encouraging his master, and never steps away. There is a master-savant relationship between Frodo and Sam. He often carries more weight than Frodo, eats less food, and stays awake longer. (Drout 587) However, he is not just a servant. Sam is one of the fellowships of the ring, and most reliable friend of the main character. His loyalty is already found in the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. “I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm coming with you.”(406) His loyalty and love is most evocative one in the story. As a reward, He marries Rose, inherits Bag End, and becomes a mayor of Shire.

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“Loyalty” is key part of Tolkien’s story. In The Lord of the Rings, two types of loyalty are described. One derives from love of their family and friends, which is showed by the fellowships. The other derives from greed. Gollum and Saruman are example of this. An old English epic poem, Beowulf, is one of the elements of Tolkien’s heroism. This poem has great influence in heroism later, and Tolkien is the leading person of Beowulf study. He wrote Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. Tolkien criticized the heroic desire for fame, and said there are fierce competitions for honor consisted within group solidarity and an ideal of mutual loyalty between leaders and followers in the heroic age (Clark and Timmons 40). Tolkien tried to create new heroism in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, but Clark and Timmons say that Sam unconsciously models his intended course of action on the heroic death of the heroes remembered in the song or poem Maldon (46). One of the central themes of Beowulf is “loyalty”. Loyalty is shown by so many characters in the Lord of the Rings, but Sam’s one is described more particularly. The most useful explorations of this bond have detailed the relationship between the World War I officers and their batmen. Tolkien said that "My 'Sam Gamgee' is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself." (Wiker 257) Tolkien’s real experience in the War is constituent of Frodo and Sam’s story.

In the Lord of the Rings, we can see some kind of heroism. The fellowship except Hobbits shows typical image of hero, with weapon, and Frodo embody more modern heroism (Sale 119). Above all, Samwise Gamgee shows most ideal heroism for Tolkien by his strong loyalty. “We cannot carry these loads alone; we all need a friend like Sam who will carry us in life. Every hero needs a sidekick and every sidekick is a hero.” (Cole 128) As the best friend of Frodo Baggins, Sam takes the most important role in this story.

Clark, George andTimmons, Daniel. J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. Print.

Cole, Neil. Ordinary Hero: Becoming a Disciple Who Makes a Difference. Michigan: Baker Books, 2011. Print.

Drout, Michael D.C. J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopaedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment.

Routledge, 2013. Print.

Harvey, Greg. The Origins of Tolkien's Middle-earth For Dummies. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print.

Sale, Roger. Modern Heroism; Essays on D. H. Lawrence, William Empson, & J. R. R. Tolkien.

California: University of California Press, 1973. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien on Fairy-stories. HarperCollins, 2008. Print.

Wiker, Benjamin. 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read: Plus Four Not to Miss and One Impostor. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2010. Print.

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FROM A JERK TO A KING Y UKA O MORI The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien is an engaging and exciting tale of a little hobbit called Bilbo Baggins finding courage in him through the toughest challenges on a long and harsh journey to the Lonely Mountain and, as the wizard said, becoming “not the hobbit that you were” (Tolkien, 347). However alongside to the Bilbo’s remarkable transformation there was also another consequence of the adventure that deserves attention; it is of a dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield. Thorin is not just any dwarf but one whose father and grandfather were kings under the Lonely Mountain long ago. Although Thorin is described as “an enormously important dwarf” (Tolkien, 14) and is from a family of kings his character is not so king-like or honorable in the beginning of the tale. This paper will illustrate how Thorin’s character develops through the events of their journey and what kind of person he will become in the end.

Readers can see his un-kingly personalities and actions throughout the story. Shortly after the party set off to the Lonely Mountain, they discovered lights in the forest near a night’s campsite (Tolkien, 39). Although they were aware that it could be dangerous they decided to go find out more about the lights (Tolkien, 40). Unlike for the dwarves’ it was Bilbo’s first adventure. He had lived most of his life in his home and yet, Thorin ordered him to go (Tolkien, 40 - 41). As Bilbo failed on the inspection the whole troupe was caught by trolls and were almost eaten (Tolkien, 45 – 48). Here it is clear that Thorin could not make a proper judge considering Bilbo’s ability and the mission’s difficulty. Furthermore he is stuck up and snooty as can be seen when his companions put away the dishes after a meal he remains seated at the table and chatting because he thinks he is important enough to get himself out of chores (Tolkien, 15). Thorin also was awfully greedy and had much pride. Although dwarves themselves are not heroic creatures and instead with a “great idea of the value of money” (Walker, 22), Thorin was a kind of dwarf who was taken over by his ego and greed, making it unable for him to appreciate his conquest and treasures (Thorin).

Even though he never appeared very noble and more like a selfish fool, the readers’ impression on him will still fall abruptly after an event. When the company finally made it to the Lonely Mountain with help from the people of the Lake-town Bilbo is sent into the mountain to see the current conditions of the ruined city of dwarves and of Smaung the dragon.

When he encounters Smaung he cleverly escapes the dragon’s attack but by ill luck he had given Smaung the idea that Bilbo was from Lake-town or the people of Lake-town had helped Bilbo and the party (Tolkien, 246 - 259). Smaung then went down to Lake-town, destroying everybody and everything, until he was shot by a brave young man, Bard, on one hole on his diamond waistcoat just above his heart (Tolkien, 285 - 290). The dwarves and the hobbit were informed of the dragon’s death by an old raven Roäc, who also told them that Bard and his troops were coming up the mountain for the unguarded treasures with the wood elves, thinking that Thorin and the company were killed by Smaung (Tolkien, 299, 300). That news drove Thorin mad. Before the party’s arrival they barricaded the front gate, which was the only way in or out (Tolkien, 301, 302). The party of the Lake-men and elves arrived to the front gate and as they learned that the Thorin’s party was still alive Bard claimed a share of the treasures instead of fighting it by force, and also for the most reasonable reasons (Tolkien, 303 - 308).

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Bilbo thought that Thorin would take in his parley for it was indeed decently fair (Tolkien, 308).

However Thorin refused it (Tolkien, 308). He would not reward Bard for slaying the dragon or pay him for the damage that the dragon cost, who would not have come down to his town at all if it were not for the Bilbo’s interruption. Because of the refusal the dwarves and the hobbit were besieged while the Lake-men and the elves camped merely in front of the front gate with fire, songs, and food (Tolkien, 308). Even some of the dwarves and of course the hobbit were getting sick of the dragon-stank, sun-less, fire-less cave and wished to parley but Thorin never did consider their pain (Tolkien, 308). He fails to respect his own fellows’ state of mind and to value peace properly between the neighbors who have been nothing but decent and fair. Instead he chooses to selfishly and unequally try to defend all of his treasures.

However there actually was a change in Thorin. It was when the army of the dwarves led by the lord of the Iron Hills Dain, who were called to the Lonely Mountain by Thorin, the Lake-men, the elves, was fighting against goblin and wargs (Tolkien, 324). The army of the dwarves, Lake-men, and the elves were outnumbered and just when it seemed impossible for them to win Thorin came out from the front gate and joined the charge, bringing everybody’s hopes back up again (Tolkien, 328). He drew the army toward himself and fought the foes and with helps from the eagles and Beorn they managed to win over triumph (Tolkien, 328).

Although they had achieved victory, Thorin was fatally wounded and passed away shortly after the battle (Tolkien, 333). He had paid for his former ill deeds with his life and for this he was deeply appreciated and honored. It was in fact very heroic; heroic enough to erase the mistakes he had made in the past (Helms, 23). Also Thorin is now freed from his greed. He has learned the value of food, songs, and cheer (Tolkien, 333). Although he started as a selfish mean dwarf he had earned honor and respect by his most noble death.

Just like Bilbo Baggins, who is quite often considered as the main protagonist of the story, Thorin goes through great changes. The Hobbit is an engaging and exciting tale of a stuck up and snooty dwarf king, learning to dispose his greed kingly pride through his death, becoming, in the real sense of term, a King.

Essays

WORK CITED Helms, Randel. Tolkien's World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. Print.

"Thorin - Tolkien Gateway." Thorin - Tolkien Gateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2014.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2012. Print.

Walker, Steve. The Power of Tolkien’s Prose. New York: Martin’s Press LLC, 2009. Print.

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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOLKIEN AND BIRMINGHAM K AORI K AKINUMA How did Tolkien make his unique world in The Lord of the Rings? John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892. His father died when he was young, so his family went back to England, their homeland. Tolkien spent much time living a life in the suburb of Birmingham. Birmingham is an industrial city in west central England and also the second largest city in the United Kingdom. It was the dirty industrial city in which cars were made those days. Birmingham had an influence on Tolkien’s works, especially The Lord of the Rings because there are many scenes in which the smoke-stained towers appear and which shows the typical rural landscape in England. This paper first examines how the image of the Shire was created, then explores where the image of the old forest came from, and finally discusses how the two towers in Birmingham had an effect on The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien created the unique world in the Lord of the Rings. In his world, there appear the Hobbits, which are small and live a peaceful life. They live the place which is called the Shire. Tolkien made the image of the green and peaceful country of the Shire from his hometown, Birmingham. His family lived close to Sarehole. Tolkien and his brother spent a lot of time playing around there. For Tolkien, this place was memorable, so he was inspired to describe the place similar to Sarehole in his work.

Arne Zettersten comments, The home area of Hobbits, the Shire has often been compared with the country idylls in Worcestershire, which Tolkien met as a child in Sarehole. It has been suggested that Sarehole Mill gave Tolkien the ideas for the mill at Hobbiton where the hobbits lived. (62) His favorite place was Sarehole Mill, which stands on River Cole. Ted Sandyman, one of the characters in The Lord of the Rings is based on the miller in Sarehole mill. He and his brother were scolded by the miller when they played in the yard. This fact was the nostalgic recollection for him. Birmingham had an effect on his writing.

At the end of the 19th century, his family lived on Wake Green Road. His house was close to Moseley Bog and Joy’s Wood Local Nature Reserve. This place was his playground.

Tolkien was the boy who liked the adventure, so Moseley Bog was so ideal place for him. From this place, he created the image of adventure in The Lord of the Rings. The image of the old forest which Frodo Baggins cut through in this work came from Moseley Bog. George Beahm observes, “Moseley Bog’s, now a nature’s reserve, is believed to be the inspiration for the Dead Marshes through which Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins crossed on their journey to Mordor (204).” As he said above, Moseley Bog gave him the image of the old forest in his story. Moseley Bog is the place which is filled with his young memories in Birmingham. He wanted to visualize his childhood in his story.

Tolkien’s mother died after a few years they moved to England, so Tolkien and his brother lived with his aunt in Edgbaston. In Edgbaston, there were two distinctive towers, Perrot’s Folly and the Victorian tower in Edgbaston Waterworks which is the engine house.

Perrot’s folly was built for the water supply plant from Victorian Age.

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Tolkien lived a life while he saw two towers, so he used these for the image of two towers of Gondor, Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith in the Lord of the Rings. Angela Youngman and Karis Youngman comment, “Tolkien would have been very familiar with these unusual structures. It is believed that they influenced his descriptions of Tower building in his books” (16). Tolkien had been influenced by not only two towers but also the clock tower at Birmingham University. He used this tower’s image for the image of Orthanc, the fortress of the corrupted wizard Saruman. These three towers also gave him the image of the dark world in his works. In this age, he sometimes went to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and he was impressed with many famous pictures. His memory of the past is described in the world he created. Birmingham is so special and influential city for him. It is not too much to say that Tolkien could not create the unique world without living a life in Birmingham.

Birmingham had a great influence on The Lord of the Rings. Sarehole, the place near his house gave the image of the Shire the Hobbits lived in the story. Moseley Bog, where Tolkien spent much time exploring also gave the image of the old forest Frodo and Sam strike through in The Lord of the Rings. From three towers which Tolkien lived after his mother’s death, he produced the tower which was necessary for his story. Every event and every element in his life in Birmingham makes up his long and wonderful fantasy. If he did not grow up in Birmingham, he could not produce the fantasy which the world received. Because of his experience in this city, he is still called a father of fantasy. It is not an exaggeration to say that he would not be famous without his Birmingham life. Tolkien made the imaginary world and made the language and the literary theory in his fantasy, so he is a real genius, but the beginning of imagining the fictional world is in his experience in Birmingham. In conclusion, Birmingham had so influenced Tolkien and his writing. That influence is immeasurable. Tolkien relates to Birmingham and Birmingham also relates to him forever.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Beahm, George. The Essential J. R. R. Tolkien Sourcebook: A Fan's Guide to Middle-Earth and Beyond New Jersey: Carrer Press, 2004. 201-205.

Caldecott, Stratford. The Power of the Ring The Spiritual Vision Behind the Lord of the Rings New York: A Crossroad Book, 2005. 2-13.

Walter, Hugo. Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature: Magnificent Houses in Twentieth Century European Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 180-213.

Youngman, Angela, and Youngman, Karis. In the Footsteps of Tolkien's The Hobbit Collca e books, 2012. 5-18.

Zettersten, Arne. J.R.R. Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process: Language and Life.

Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 60-64.

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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOLKIEN’S LIFE AND T HE L ORD OF THE R INGS W AKANA O KITA The Lord of the Rings is said to be the combination of several folklores. For example, Middle Earth is inspired by Midgard in north myth, and the idea of the Ring, which makes people invisible, is based on The Legend of King Arthur. However, the most important element of The Lord of The Rings is not these folklore but Tolkien’s life, such as his childhood, experiences in World WarⅠ, and his faith in Christianity. This paper explores his childhood in Sarehole , then describes how his memories of war links The Lord of the Rings, and finally shows the effect of Christianity on the story.

After his father’s death, Tolkien’s family moved to Sarehole, Birmingham, which is said to be the model of the Hobbit’s Shire. Sarehole was a beautiful rural district, so Tolkien and his brother were comforted by nature, even though they had a hard time. Tolkien loved trees especially; he sketched them and even talked to them (Carpenter 33). His love for tree can be seen in Ent, a giant who looks like a tree. Besides, Tolkien modeled people in Sarehore into some characters of The Lord of the Rings. For example, Tolkien named the son of a flour dealer “White Orc”, because he was scary and covered with flour, and always frightened children (Carpenter 31). For Tolkien, Sarehole was his favorite place and the source of inspiration.

In The battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings were based on Tolkien’s experience in the World WarⅠ. In 1916, right after his marriage with Edith Bratt, he joined the Battle of the Somme, which is the greatest battle in World WarⅠ. The battle was more horrible than he had expected, because new weapon, such as machine-gun and poison gas, were invented at that time (Coren 56). He lost his best friends, Rob Gilson and Geoffrey Smith, in the battle. When he describe evil place, such as Mordor, his wartime experience are expressed the most. For instance, the landscape of Mordor and the Dead Marshes, where there are a lot of dead soldiers, is directly inspired from the landscapes of the trenches and No-man’s land of World WarⅠ(Ott).

Dreadful as the Dead Marshes had been, and the arid moors of the Noman-lands, more loathsome by far was the country that the crawling day now slowly unveiled to his shrinking eyes. … Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails on the lands about. (The Two Towers, “The Passage of the Marshes”) Ott suggests that the horror of these landscapes in that they are not naturally produced but are a product of man’s destructive misuse of technology. World WarⅠstands for everything Tolkien hated; it destroyed nature, abused industrial power, and deprived his friends of him.

However, Tolkien was also deeply impressed by ordinary British soldiers’ humor and patience in adverse circumstances. They were optimistic and believed in old common sense. Thus, in Tolkien’s books, ordinary people, such as Bilbo and Frodo, achieve great things. Based on his experience of trench, he imagined a hole, in which imaginary characters live. This idea became The Hobbit.

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Tolkien was a devout Catholic Christian because of his mother. Since Protestantism was the mainstream in Britain at that time, she was disowned by her family. However, she did not give up her faith and raised her children by herself. After his mother’s death, Tolkien regarded Catholicism more important, because it was her memento (Coren 37). In fact, his novels are full of Catholicism. For instance, some characters in The Lord of the Rings resemble Jesus; Gandalf cames back to life again, Aragorn becomes a merciful leader, and Frodo carries the Ring, which is the burden like the Jesus’ cross (Okada). In particular, Gandalf’s way of thinking is based on Jesus. Gandarf tells Frodo to forgive Gollum even though he is vulgar and a murder.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. (The Fellowship of the Ring, “The Shadow of the Past”) Okada suggest that Gandalf takes pity on Gollum, which is based on Jesus’ commands; “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). Frodo follows this advice and appoints Gollum as a guide to Mordor. He is faithful to what he believes and tries not to hate Gollum. This attitude can also be Jesus’ idea (Smith 109). As a result, Gollum destroys the Ring at the Mount Doom and this idea is proved to be right.

In conclusion, The Lord of the Rings is a compilation of Tolkien’s ideas, which is based on his own experiences. His childhood in Sarehole gives him inspiration of the world of Hobbits.

The battle scenes and the landscape of Mordor shows how Tolkien hated War and how he respected ordinary people’s patience. Moreover, The Lord of the Rings has a lot of elements of Christianity, which was very important for Tolkien. Okada insists that the quest of The Lord of the Rings is similar to human life itself, because Frodo and his friends fight against evil, grow up into maturing, and finally reach the goal in the story (61). Tolkien also grew up through various experiences, which includes both wonderful and hard time, as Frodo does. This leads Tolkien to his goal, The Lord of the Rings.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Carpenter, Humphrey (1987). J.R.R.Tolkien- Aru denki [J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography].

Japanese Trans. Keisyu Sugawara. Tokyo:Hyoronsya.

Coren, Michael (2001). Tolkien: Yubiwamonogatari wo Tsukutta Otoko [J.R.R.Tolkien:The man who created The Lord of the Rings] Japanese Trans.Akemi Itsuji.

Tokyo:Gensyobou.

Smith, Mark Eddy (2002). Yubiwamonogatari no Shinjitsu [Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues:Exploring the Spiritual Themes of The Lord of the Rings]. Japanese Trans.

Yumi Mitani. Tokyo:Kadokawa.

Okada, Rika(2008). Theology in The Lord of the Rings (p.49-62).

Ott, Nancy Marie (2004). JRR Tolkien and World WarⅠ. Greenbooks.theonering.net.

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WHAT THE WORD “CONTROL” IMPLIES IN “AH POOK IS HERE” R ISA F URUSAKA As Phil Baker mentions on the cover of his book “William S. Burroughs,” “Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) is an iconic figure of the Beat generation,” Burroughs is one of the famous members of Beat Generation in 1950s and 1960s. He wrote his work with literary technique which is called cut-up. He folded a paper, found an original expression which people do not use basically and then used it in his work.

That is why his work became crazy. As Kathryn Hume says in her work, “Readers not totally alienated from their culture must struggle to understand his values” (110). His less known work “Ah Pook is Here” is a typical example of his crazy work. For example, at the beginning of “Ah Pook is Here,” we can see “When I become Death, Death is the seed from which I grow…” in the text. The expression “I become Death” is not usual.

There are other eccentric characteristics in this poem; we can see a lot of words which is not English such as “Itzama” and “Ixtaub” and also we can see some words such as “Control” and “Death” repeated in the text. Words “Itzama” and “Ixtaub” are both Yucatec Mayan words.

“Itzama” is the name of a god and creator which was thought to live in the sky. “Ixtaub” is the name of a goddess of suicide. Burroughs used a word “Control” again and again in this poem but his intention of using “Control” is not clear. For example, we can see in the text: Who really give that order?

Answer: Control.

Answer: The Ugly American.

Answer: The instrument of Control.

Question: If Control’s control is absolute, why does Control need to control?

Answer: Control… needs time.

Question: Is Control controlled by its need to control?

Answer: Yes. Why does Control need humans, as you call them?

In this part “Control” means that the power to make decisions about a country, an area, an organization, etc. is run. However we cannot see his implication of the use of the word “Control” clearly. In this poem the word “Control” implies computers from several reasons.

First of all when Burroughs wrote the poem “Ah Pook is Here,” it was the time of competition of making new computer programs; in 1970s some countries tried to make better computer programs, so once a certain country made a new computer program, others tried to produce more progressive one. If someone had a power of control, others wanted stronger power of control. For instance in 1972 Dennis Ritchie who is American invented the C programming language. This invention was such a great success that the C programming language is still used even now. Other countries felt shame because they lost the competition concerning with new and innovative programming language. They were controlled by the computers and tried hard to make a new power of control. Burroughs wrote the poem “Ah Pook

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is Here” in such time and the situation around him must have influenced his idea of computers’ power of “Control.”

Second, there was a computer called “Control” and Burroughs met two people who knew the computer. As Phil Baker mentions in his work, The folie a trois that was Burroughs, Gysin and Balch embarked on another interplanetary adventure around 1968 when they encountered two people named Willy Deiches and Brenda Dunks, who claimed to be in touch with a computer on Venus named Control (159).

Burroughs came to know about a computer called “Control” and this experience made Burroughs regard computers as a ruler for human. He chose the word “Control” to express computers in his poem because of the computer which was named “Control.”

Third, Burroughs noticed both the advantage and the disadvantage of 20th century’s media not only film, television and video but also computers. He had an ambivalent opinion about social media, as Douglas G. Baldwin mentions in his work, “all of Burroughs’s writing reveals his bipolar response to the rapid cultural ascendancy of the uniquely twentieth-century media of, primarily, film” (64). Social media such as computers, video, TV and film has a very huge power which influences those who are involved in it. People who take advantage of the social media frequently will be controlled by it unconsciously in terms of their opinion or ideas.

That is why we can see that Burroughs implied computers by using a word of “Control.”

Finally, Burroughs was famous of his drug addiction, and he described drug addiction as image addiction in his fiction. As Douglas G. Baldwin mentions in his work, “In Burroughs’s fiction, drug addiction mirrors image addiction,” Burroughs thought people tend to be addictive to visual images such as video, film, TV and they can be seen by computers (65).

He also regarded word as virus and described the concept of control mechanisms through addiction in his writing. He regarded computers as a kind of virus. People use computers and then they become dependent on computers. At last, computers control people. Thus he used the word “Control” in his poem to imply that computers control human.

From above reasons we can see that Burroughs used a word “Control” with implication of computers. Because of the time he wrote the poem, the knowledge of the computer called “Control,” his ambivalent feeling about social media and his way to appreciate visual images, he thought computers had a power of control and people in those days were influenced and controlled by the computers.

“Ah Pook is Here.” Dir. Hunt, Philip. Perf. William S. Burroughs. 1994. Video.

Baker, Phil. William S. Burroughs. Reaction Books, 2010. Print.

Baldwin, Douglas G. “Word Begets Image and Image Is Virus: Undermining Language and Film in the Works of William S. Burroughs.” College Literature. 27. 1 (2000): 63-83.

Print.

Burroughs William S.. “Ah Pook is Here.” New York: J. Calder, 1979. Print.

Hume, Kathryn. “William S. Burroughs’s Phantasmic Geography.” Contemporary Literature.

40. 1 (1999): 111-135. Print.

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SAL PARADISE’S FAILURE IN ON THE ROAD A KIHO S EGAWA Speaking of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac’s masterpiece On the Road is always listed among other famous contemporary works. The Beat Generation is the term coined by Jack Kerouac to describe himself, his literary fellows and their associates, and On the Road expresses resistance to established norms in the culture of the United States during the nineteen fifties (Cresswell 249, 253). On the Road has remained an influential and popular book as a central symbol of the youthful rebellion and the young were against the orthodox religion, the family image and the international ambitions of the United States, that were believed by the most American people at that time (Cresswell 254). Thus, Kerouac’s novel played an important role in the appearance of the Beat Generation. Sal Paradise, the main character of On the Road, looks for something new and real and can be said to lead a beatnik life. He has many interesting friends who are described based on Kerouac’s real friends. Especially influenced on Dean Moriarty, he travels all over America back and forth and has alcohol, drugs and sex as much as he wants to. In On the Road, roads mean not only material ones but also symbolic ones that lead from big cities and restriction to nature and freedom (Sasaki 61-62). Apparently, he seems to be a perfect beatnik. However, he is actually conservative because of the separation from his most influential beatnik hero Dean Moriarty, his sense of belongings to his family and the blinded white audience’s awareness.

At first, Sal Paradise is gradually separated from his hero Dean Moriarty because Sal’s way of thinking comes to differ from Dean’s. This happens because Sal can no longer regard Dean as the hero when Dean is turned out of doors by Camille and get injured his hands (Takemoto 52). In addition, Dean leaves him and goes back to Inez in New York when Sal gets dysentery and becomes very ill. Sal recovers and eventually returns to New York. Then, Sal sees Dean one more time when Dean comes to visit him in Manhattan. However, Sal is more involved now with his New York friends. We can say Sal feels disappointed with Dean somehow because Dean did not help Sal and betray the friendship between them. At first, Sal is fascinated by Dean because of his uniqueness and firm identity. He applauds Dean by saying that “the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars” (Kerouac 8). Dean is one of such longing heroes for Sal, and he also admires about Dean, saying that “A western kinsman of the sun” (Kerouac 10). However, the scar of their friendship makes Sal disbelieve Dean and his way of life. He actually experienced beatnik way of life, but he changes because of his new companionship in New York and a little disappointment with his greatest hero.

Secondly, he has a strong sense of belonging to his family such as his aunt. Sal Paradise is always be back to his home where his aunt lives after long wandering, and then he recollects memories of his journey with friends (Larson 38). By comparison with Dean Moriarty, who has no home to go, Sal’s returning shows that he is not completely infected the bohemian life style which keeps going from somewhere to somewhere. That means his spiritual foundation is not his crazy friends but his home. In addition, Sal Paradise cares his aunt unnecessarily. When he is with Remi Boncoeur, he gets a job as a special policeman at a

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barracks for overseas work. According to text, he sends his aunt some money from his payment.

He says, “I was making fifty-five bucks a week and sending my aunt an average of forty” (Kerouac 71). Forty dollars are high proportion for him, however, he seems not to be told to do so by her. He also says that “I was through with my chores in the cotton field. I could feel the pull of my own life calling me back. I shot my aunt a penny postcard across the land and asked for another fifty” (Kerouac 83), when he is with his girlfriend Terry in California. The reason why he has continual contact with his home is that he cannot completely escape his ordinary and existent way of life which beatniks often criticize. The model of Sal’s aunt is said to be Kerouac’s mother Gabriel, and she strongly influenced him after his father’s premature death.

For that reason, Kerouac had conservativeness surprisingly in order to meet his mother’s expectations while he felt antipathy toward the established society (Takemoto 51). It is true that we cannot place Sal and Kerouac in the same category because Kerouac replaces his mother with the aunt, whose relationship between Sal is slightly weaker than between Kerouac and his mother. However, we can say both Sal and Kerouac emphasize the bond of their own family from the whole story. Therefore, he cannot put beatnik life before his family unlike Dean Moriarty.

Lastly, he fails to have his ideal family and lead a brand new life in the West and different cultures. During his wandering, women always appear in nearly every city, they show his idea of home (Cresswell 258). For example, he says that “I couldn’t meet a girl without saying to myself What kind of wife would she make? I told Dean and Marylou about Lucille, she wanted to meet her… ‘I want to marry a girl,’ I told them, ‘So I can rest my soul with her till we both get old’” (Kerouac 116). However, he repeatedly separates from such women, so he fails to marry and make them his wife. Most evident example is one of his temporary Mexican girlfriends, Terry. Sal says that he had always dreamed of becoming “a man of the earth,” and Terry is the very woman who materializes his dream by showing her family’s lives as hard laborers in California (Richardson 225). The reason why he loses the life with Terry is he still looked her family and way of life from a White person’s standpoint even though they lived under the same roof. Not only Sal’s way of dreaming about Mexican-American and Black laborers is an eminently White and dreamy way, but also it is white Americans who make Mexican-American and Black farm workers poor, saying them with suggestions that their lives are rustic and attracted, free of white worry, white responsibility white suppression, in a word with suggestions that they are natural (Richardson 225). He seems to sympathize MexicanAmerican and Black laborers by living them. However, he only understands the surface and never sees the bitter reality that they struggle against poverty (Richardson 227). He says that, “It was always mañana For the next week that was all I heard ― mañana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven” (Kerouac 79). Spanish word mañana means “tomorrow,” and he does not really appreciate such a lazy behavior leads to the poverty as well as he does not try to know the meaning of the word. Because he only keeps dreaming, his resolution to become “a man of the earth” is very fragile. Therefore, the relationship between Terry and him is beaten.

At last, he cannot get rid of the former situations he used to be in and accept new ones in California. This blinded white audience’s awareness makes On the Road a conservative novel.

As I mentioned above, Sal Paradise is actually not a beatnik even though On the Road is said to be the masterpiece among the beat generation. It is true that he did tries to escape previous conventional way of life. However, he failed to be a beatnik but still has a conservative way of thinking because of the separation from his most influential beatnik hero

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Dean Moriarty, his sense of belongings to his family and the blinded white audience’s awareness.

WORKS CITED Cresswell, Tim. “Mobility as Resistance: A geographical Reading of Kerouac’s ‘On the Road.’ ” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 18.2 (1993): 249-262. Web. 23 December 2013.

Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. Kyoto: Rinsen Book Co, 1987. Print Larson, Lars Erik. “Free Ways and Straight Roads: The Interestates of Sal Paradise and 1950s America.” What's Your Road, Man? : Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

Ed. Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. 35-59. Print.

Richardson, Mark. “Reading On the Road.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 43.2 (2001): 218-242. Web. 23 December 2013.

Sasaki, Takashi. 『意識への序章 ―ビート・ジェネレーションと 1960 年代―』. [“A Prelude to ‘Consciousness’: The Beat Generation and the 1960s”]. 「同志社アメリカ 研究」. [Doshisha American Studies]. 19 (1983): 17-70. Web. 23 December 2013.

Takemoto, Noriaki. 『楽園（パラダイス）の在処 ―ケルアック試論―』. [“The Paradise’s Whereabouts ―The Essay of Kerouac―”]. Strata. 3 (1988): 48-62. Web. 23 December 2013.

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THE ROLE OF THE FALSE GOD, MOLOCH IN “HOWL” In America in the 1950s, Beat Generation emerged for rebelling against the American society, where conformity is the preferable action, and seeking freedom and self-expression.

The movement had an enormous impact on the field of literature and Allen Ginsberg was one of the central members of Beat writers, who revealed the approval to it. Particularly, “Howl,” published in 1956, describes his protest against the society, which tried to get rid of madness, and his admiration for “the best minds” with the religious words (Suwa). In the second section of the work, the god’s name, Moloch, is repeated many times, which may have some massages.

This paper shows what roles it plays in expressing Allen Ginsberg’s feeling.

Moloch was one of the false gods, who demanded children as a sacrifice to give the power. He has associated with something bad or brutal because of his cruelty. Moloch is a term used in modern days as something that requires sacrifice (Calynbana). Therefore, this word has the meaning of a person or thing to which extreme sacrifices are made. Allen Ginsberg uses Moloch as a symbol of American society and emphasizes the darkness, strength, and materialism of the society.

One possibility is that the word, Moloch, emphasizes the darkness of American society.

“Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!”(80) This stanza depicts Moloch as something horrible, which harasses the people at all age. In 1950s, when “Howl” was published, a peaceful time came to American society as people all over the world longed for. It was called “American dream” or “the Golden Age.” However, Allen Ginsberg criticized the aspect that is not visible to other countries. He suggested that American society abandoned some people, even if they were children and elderly. Furthermore, he described in his work, “Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river”(90). These things look like something good but they vanished in American society. Allen Ginsberg claimed that there is no longer hope he or Beat writers seek although it achieved the improvement of lives and economic growth. “Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch smokestacks and antennae crown the city” (84). This description of Moloch contained the irony between American society seen from inside and from outside. Jehovas is a Yahweh, who is the supreme god of Israel in the Old Testament. Allen Ginsberg compares Yahweh to American society seen from outside. Also, “dream” and “crown” were used as ironies to embellish it. By using the opposing two gods, Moloch and Yahweh, Allen Ginsberg might want to clarify the contrast between American ideal society seen from outside and real one seen from inside. He suggested the dark side of the society.

The second possibility is that Allen Ginsberg emphasized the strength of American society. In the first line of the second section, “What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?”(79) Moloch wrested the imagination of the beat generation because it made the people conform to its institutes. The people lost their brains to disagree with American society, and Moloch put into “the incomprehensible prison,”

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people who rejected to become a part of it. Allen Ginsberg suggested that each person had no power to resist American society. Therefore, he emphasized its power and presence, compared to each person.

He depicted how he was a part of the powers of Moloch, “Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body!” (87) It was with the people from an early age, so it was difficult to be aware with that they already became a part of American society. However, beat generation showed their frustration and rebellion against post-war American society. Allen Ginsberg protested against the society through the literature because he “saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”(1). They also protested against American society, but the huge power destroyed the protestants. Beat generation was the minority in America, so they could do nothing to change the society. As a result, Allen Ginsberg used Moloch as a foe for which they were no match.

The final possibility to use Moloch as a metaphor of American society is that Allen Ginsberg emphasized its badness of the materialism, which was a trend in post-war period in order to pursue a good life by buying, spending and accumulating material wealth (Cincotta).

Materialism led the gap between poor and rich and the poor were sacrifices of Moloch. This work says, “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!

Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!” (83) Allen Ginsberg associated Moloch with the words about materialism and mixed the negative words, such as “cannibal.” Moreover, he put the words concerned with war. It is likely that he indicated that materialism led the war and distraction of the society. In addition, Allen Ginsberg says, “Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all!”(93) He suggested that “best minds” did not conform and escape from Moloch. “Real holy laughter” came from the people who disagree with conformity. In short, Allen Ginsberg indicated that people cannot see the real things in the materialistic society and Moloch oppresses the nature of human by letting them become a member of it.

In conclusion, the word of Moloch plays an important role in expressing that Allen Ginsberg considered American society as what corrupts people. By associating Moloch with sacrifice, power, and materialistic, he criticized not only American society but also the people conforming to it and materialism. His reference to Moloch was a severe criticism of the society and people, and a deep grief for the neglect of sacrifices, or people who did not conform to the society. In other words, Allen Ginsberg used Moloch as a symbol of some dark aspects of American society.

WORKS CITED Cincotta, Howard. "Outline of American History - Chapter 11: Postwar America." Outline of American History - Chapter 11: Postwar America. The United States Information Agency, n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2014.

Ginsberg, Allen. "Howl." 2003. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. New York: Norton, 1979. 2737-738. Print.

HubPages. "What Role Does The False God Moloch Play in Ginsberg's Howl." Calynbana on HubPages. N.p., 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 05 Jan. 2014.

Suwa, Yu. "Howl." アレン・ギンズバーグ. 1st ed. Tokyo: 弥生書房, 1988. 101-07. Print.

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INFLUENCE OF NATIVE AMERICAN AND ASIAN THOUGHTS ON GARY SNYDER In the first paragraph I will explain how Snyder first became interested in Native American thought. First, when he was a child he became aware of Native American called Coast Salish who lived near his hometown. He learned how Salish people lived with nature.

Since he also loved nature, he and Salish people had same value system. Therefore, when he was a college student he learned anthropology and mythology of Native American. For these reasons, he came to have Native American thought.

In the second paragraph I will explain how Snyder became interested in Eastern thought through his exposure to Chinese literature and his travels abroad. First, he studied anthropology and literature then he encountered Chinese thought. This is because he was interested in poems with a relationship with mythology. He first read translation of Chinese poems, and then moved onto a study of Chinese itself because he 'was amazed to discover that China had a high civilization, with centuries of literacy, which has a different view of nature than that commonly held in the West' (Mother Earth News). Secondly, he also encountered Buddhism thought through which he also saw Eastern attitude toward nature. Thirdly, he went on studying Zen Buddhism in his third university and got a chance to study in Japan. He stayed in Japan for 8 years. He once even decided to become a monk. Because of these reasons, he got very familiar with Eastern thought.

In the third paragraph I will explain how he viewed three thoughts: The indigenous thought, the Western thought, and the Eastern thought. First, in an interview of Gary Snyder by Mother Earth News, he stated that the indigenous thought and the Eastern thoughts are similar because human activity is incorporated in nature. Contrary to these two thoughts, Snyder said that Western thought separates human beings from nature. Second, in an interview of Gary Snyder in Portland he said he is not a Western person and Western thought is a new thing to him.

For these reasons, his thought is the indigenous thought and the Eastern thought rather than the Western thought.

In the fourth paragraph I will explain overall writing styles of Gary Snyder. First, according to one website ‘Snyder's writing focuses on environmental concerns and Zen Buddhism. He is an environmental activist who is known for his simple, clear style, as well as his first-person descriptions of his experiences in the natural world.’ (biography.com) Also it says that ‘Snyder's poetry is influenced by Japanese haiku and Chinese verse, in addition to his knowledge of anthropological factors like oral traditions.’(biography.com) For these statements we can see that his poems have something to do with the Eastern thought and the Eastern style of poetry. Also, as for environmental concerns I will in advance assert that it is also from Native American indigenous thought. For, as mentioned earlier, the Eastern thought and indigenous thought have something in common, which is oneness with nature. I will prove these opinions.

In the fifth paragraph I will find the evidence of reflections of the indigenous thought and the Eastern thought in his poems. I will actually cite four poems in Gary’s Pulitzer Prizewinning Turtle Island. First one is a poem called Prayer For The Great Family.

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Prayer For The Great Family Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing though night and dayand to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf and fine root-hairs; standing still though wind and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain in our minds so be it.

(Snyder 24-25) Every stanza starts with a word ‘gratitude’. In this poem he thanks many natural objects which are necessary to life. Gratitude also goes to Air, Wild Beings, Water, The Sun, and to the Great Sky. He also seems to love them. This trait is very similar to Native American thought.

They believed ‘Everything is sacred from the largest mountain to the smallest plant and animal.’

Also this source goes on to say a lesson can be found in all things and experiences and everything has a purpose. To sum up Native Spirituality; it is about honor, love, and respect. Not only do we love, honor, and respect our Creator and our Mother Earth, but also every living thing. It is about being in touch with ourselves and everything around us. It is about knowing and understanding that we are part of everything, and everything is a part of us. We are all One.’ (earthlink.net) This thought is what is expressed in this poem in that he respects and treasures natural objects hoping human beings follow nature’s good traits and behaviors. Also this more or less coincides with the Eastern thought in that it also emphasizes oneness with nature. The next poem is called Mother Earth.

Mother Earth North America, Turtle Island, taken by invaders who wage war around the world.

May ants, may abalone, otters, wolves and elk Rise! And pull away their giving from the robot nations.

Solidarity. The People.

Standing Tree People!

Flying Bird People!

Four-legged, two-legged, people!

How can the head-heavy power-hungry politic scientist Government two-world Capitalist-Imperialist Third-world Communist paper-shuffling male non-farmer jet-set bureaucrats Speak for the green of the leaf? Speak for the soil?

(Snyder 48)

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The first part of this poem is examples of human exploiting nature and endangering animals. Above is a part of the latter part of this poem. Snyder apparently treats natural objects and animals equally as human beings by giving suffrage to them. This idea can be again traced back to Native American thought because they ordered to themselves to: Treat the earth and all of her aspects as your mother. Show deep respect for the mineral world, the plant world, and the animal world. Do nothing to pollute our Mother, rise up with wisdom to defend her.(earthlink.net) From their point of view where Snyder also has, human beings’ act of destroying nature is intolerable. The third poem is the uses of light

The uses of light It warms my bones Say the stones I take it into me and grow Say the trees Leaves above Roots below A vast vague white Draws me out of the night Says the moth in his flightSome thing I smell Some things I hear And I see things move Says the deerA high tower On a wide plain If you climb up One floor You’ll see a thousand miles more.

In Zen Buddhism thought nature is considered process. For example, ‘Though we use a noun called "rain" which appears to denote a "thing," rain is nothing but the process of drops of water falling from the skies. ‘[6] Like this, every natural things are just process and always change their forms. Also Buddhism has compassion toward every living creature including tiny insects and microbes in water. In this poem light goes through many entities and activate them

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to start each ‘process’ as its own beginning. Zen is to find an inner part of a nature of an object and he finds it even in a plant and in a moth. He also treats them as they have spirits. Then the last poem is Avocado .

Avocado The Dharma is like an Avocado!

Some parts so ripe you can’t believe it, But it’s good.

And other places hard and green Without much flavor, Pleasing those who like their eggs well-cooked.

And the skin is thin, The great big round seed In the middle, Is your own original NaturePure and smooth, Almost nobody ever splits it open Or ever tries to see If it will grow.

Hard and slippery, It looks like You should plant it-but then It shoots out thru the fingersgets away.

(Snyder 61)

Dharma means true nature in Sanskrit. In Zen Buddhism one can find his/her true nature through meditation, which cannot be done by anyone else. It is not even explicable in words. In daily lives we forget our true natures but through Zen we can find it and get enlightenment by stabilizing and integrating our minds. This is what exactly Snyder tries to say. He says how good, important, but difficult to get Dharma based on his own practice in this poem.

In conclusion he got inspired by both Native American and Asian thought. Because, in his poems, he cherishes nature, treats it as equal entity as human beings, and pays attention to inward nature of both natural objects and himself.

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WORKS CITED

Essays

Snyder, Gary. Turtle Island .New York state: New Direction,1974 Mother Earth News Staff Gary Snyder: Poet and Naturalist. <http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/gary-snyderzm0z84zhun.aspx?PageId=3#axzz2pPOW5kHO> Biography.com Bio.true history Gary Snyder Biography <http://www.biography.com/people/gary-snyder-21370343> Earthlink.net #Secret_Paths Native American Beliefs <http://home.earthlink.net/~tessia/Native.html> Lily de Silva The Buddhist Attitude Towards nature Nature as Dynamic

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CUCKOO'S ROLE IN ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST E MI R EDMOND ''One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'' is a novel written by Ken Kesey, who is one of the famous Beat Generation writers, and had a big effect on the young generation in U.S.A... The story is about a mental hospital which is controlled by a big nurse who is called Miss Ratched.

One day a man named McMurphy comes to the hospital as a patient and finds the circumstance in the hospital is not normal because the patients fear the big nurse and never resist, though the big nurse is always trying to make the patients believe that they are useless. McMurphy tries to escape from the hospital but he fails and becomes a disabled because of the operation called lobotomy. But there is a Native American called Chief who is the closest man to McMurphy in the hospital and he takes over the will of McMurphy. He escaped from the mental hospital in the end. This novel had been made into a movie also and the movie was quite successful. In this story, there are many descriptions about birds, especially the cuckoos, which is also in the title. Ken Kesey used cuckoo a lot in the story because cuckoo fits the story in many ways. For example, cuckoo's nest is representing to mental hospital, motherless nest, and also cuckoo has a meaning of "cuckold".

First, cuckoo's nest is related to mental hospital. This comes from cuckoo's habit.

Cuckoo doesn't make their own nest. They deposit their eggs to other specie's nest. (Gilmore) Therefore, it can be said that ''cuckoo's nest'' in the title does not exist. This is one of the reasons the writer used cuckoo in the novel. To use ''cuckoo's nest'', which does not exist in a real world, the writer had succeeded to give the atmosphere of illusion novel. In this story, Chief, the narrator of the story, is a patient of the mental hospital and he often sees illusion.

He's talking to the reader all through the book, but sometimes his story is unbelievable and it is hard to tell whether the story is really happened, of just Chief's imagery.

Second, cuckoo's nest also has a meaning of motherless nest and it fits the situation of the mental hospital in the story very well. In the story, McMurphy always said to the patient in the hospital that they should go out because they're not for this hospital. If cuckoo's nest means the nest which is laid eggs by cuckoo, the nest is not a real nest for cuckoo's baby, and also their caretaker is not a real mother. In the story, one of the patients called Billy had a trauma of his mother, and the big nurse exploit the trauma to control him. The big nurse herself was far from person who is full of material affection, and controlling the whole mental hospital. She was the tyrant of the patients, like the mother of the nest which disposed eggs by cuckoo. A song of Indian is sung in the novel. "Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes, she's a good fisherman, catches hens, puts 'em inna pens... wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock... one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest... O-U-T- spells out... goose swoops down and plucks you out....I like the game and I like Grandma. I don't like Mrs. Tingle Tangle Toes, catching hens. I don't like her. I do like that goose flying over the cuckoo's nest. I like him. (239, Kesey)" It's sung by the protagonist Indian and it tell that Indian had been the victim of their oppressor, like the baby cuckoos in a nest. (Masuda, 48, 49) The title is also comes from the poem of Mother Goose.

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" Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn; Wire, briar, limber lock, Three geese in a flock.

One flew east, And one flew west, And one flew over the cuckoo's nest."

Third, the writer choose cuckoo because it also has the meaning of cuckold. Cuckold is an insult made from cuckoo. Because this story is written by a person from Beat Generation, it takes wildness as a good thing. McMurphy is taken into the mental hospital because he sometimes becomes very violence. He fought a lot in the past and even has a scar on his face.

He also very free to talk about intercourse. McMurphy likes to laugh and sing. Both actions are done by him when he really wants to do them. He is a kind of person who always follows his desire. When McMurphy attack big nurse, he calls her ''ball-cutter''. On the other hand, big nurse hates her well-developed breasts and she's always pretend to be calm and cool, and act like a machine. From this contrast, reader can easily see that this novel takes wildness as a good fact. Native American is associated with wildness because they live in nature, mountain and river. On page 12, reader will see Chief's past, life with his father, which is about shooting birds with the cooperating of their dogs. It is not only a memory but also what Chief's always wants during the stay in the mental hospital. On the other hand, one of the patients called Harding was always suffering from the idea that his wife may be sleeping with other man. And all the other had no courage, no close lover like Harding. The word cuckold is come from cuckoo because female cuckoo visit other bird's nest secretly, and lays her eggs in the nest.

This novel use cuckoo a lot because its nature fits the story very much. Ken Kesey used a very suitable symbol for the novel. Movie of this novel is a bit different but it is also a historical masterpiece.

WORK CITED

Essays

Gilmore, Albert Field, R. Bruce Horsfall, and Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Birds of Field, Forest and Park. Boston: Page, 1919. Print.

Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, a Novel. New York: Viking, 1962. Print.

Masuda, Takahiro. Birds in English Literature (Eibeibungaku no toritachi) Osaka: Yugen company kyouwa, 2004. Print.

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THE ABNORMALITY OF WILLIAM BURROUGHS K OUJI Y OSHIWARA The purpose of this paper is to show the abnormality of William Burroughs who is one of the most famous writers in the Beat Generation and to show why William Burroughs became abnormal. This can be explained at three steps. Firstly, this paper will show that the relationship of his abnormality and drugs, and why he became addict. Secondly, this paper will explain his abnormal object of romantic, and the reason of he became so. Thirdly, this paper will tell about the accident that he killed his wife and his abnormality.

First, William Seward Burroughs is one of the addicts in the beat generation.

Why did he use the drugs? One reason is because of his family background. In his childhood, he tends to catch sickness, and he was nervous and inward. By this time, he had a will to become writer. This environment made him strange. He got frustrated little by little. This environment made him full of curiosity. His curiosity made him to want stimulating things, drugs. Another point his environment made him addict is due to his family. He was the grandson of the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine. His grandfather gave him much allowance, and it could fulfil his wishes in his childhood.

He got what he want, so he wanted to get more stimulating things. This background made his character wilful, so his wilfulness made him addict. Therefore, his background, his character and his family, is one reason why he used the drugs. (Heroin Helper) Another reason why Burroughs used drug can be found in his environment, such as his job and acquaintance. After graduating his collage in 1936, he did not work for some time; moreover he did not need to work. The reason is that he received allowance from his father. By this allowance, he could get drugs easily. Eventually, after he had used drugs many times, almost all money had been spent, so he began to work. He changed his job many times, and he got a job of receiver's shop. In the job, he could easily get drugs. To get drugs easily made him addict heavily. This is one reason why he became an addict. Also, his acquaintance made him addict. This can be explained by this example, It was during this time (in 1944) that William Burroughs would meet his second wife Joan Vollmer (who Burroughs would later shoot in the head) and the male hustler Herbert Hunker (who introduced Burroughs to drugs.) Herbert Hunker would be the inspiration for the character Herman in junkie. (The European Graduate).

By this example, we can understand that his acquaintance also influence his use of drugs. Therefore, this can be explained that his environment of his job and his acquaintance made him addict.

Second, William Burroughs had different sort of view of romance. Ordinarily, the man falls in love with the woman, the women falls in love with the man, but this is not the case with him. This can be showed by this example, "William Burroughs (19141997) was more than just a homosexual."(The European Graduate). As this example, this can be said that William Burroughs was homosexial. Then, why he became

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homosexual? One of the reasons why he became homosexual can be seen in his school days.

During this period, Burroughs kept a journal in which he described his erotic feelings to another student. In the repressive social and familial environment, William Burroughs destroyed this journal and hid his sexual orientation until he was already established in his literary career."(The European Graduate).

We can understand by this that his sexual habitat was already abnormal when he was a student. Also, his homosexuality can be found in the relationship of him and Allen Ginsberg who is one of the writers in the Beat Generation. This can be found in this sentence," A product of the pre-gay liberation era, he had a physical passion for Ginsberg that was mostly unrequited, and for most of his life relied largely on hustlers for sex."(Band of Thebes).By this quotation, we can understand that he was so abnormal that he fell in love with Allen Ginsberg. Although Ginsberg refuses to accept, his abnormality can be seeing. Also, his abnormality is not only the fact that he was homosexual, but the fact that he had object of romantic interest for women. To be able to love two sexes make his abnormality remarkable. Therefore, his abnormality can be explained by his homosexuality.

Finally, his abnormality can be found in the accident that he killed his wife accidently. In 1951, he respected for William Tell who demonstrated a show that he shoot an apple which was on one's head. William Burroughs loved guns, and he was capable of using. One day, he caught the horrible accident. "On September 6, after the consumption of much alcohol and speed--and who knows what other drugs--they decided to do the demonstration again. This time, however, things did not go well.

Whether it was due to the large quantity of drugs consumed, a problem with the gun, or just plain bad luck, no one can say. Not a lot is known about that night. What is known is that Burroughs did not hit the apple; instead, he shot Vollmer in the face, killing her instantly." (Heroin Helper). He killed his wife accidently, but his abnormality is that he killed his wife by only yearning. Of course, he was sad with this accident, but his abnormality can be explained by this certainly. Accordingly, his abnormality can be confirmed by his accidently shooting for his wife because of yearning.

In conclusion, William Boroughs' abnormality can be explained in three steps. First step is his use of drugs. Second step is his abnormality for romance, especially homosexual. Thirdly step is his unbelievable accident of shooting his wife. As follows, we can say he has abnormal character that makes his writing attracted.

WORK CITED

Essays

The European Graduate "William Burroughs - Biography ",Web.4 January 2014.

Heroin Helper "William S. Burroughs",3 January 2011.Web.4 January 2014.

Band of thebes "William S. Burroughs Documentary Includes His Gay Relationships",17 November 2010.Web.4 January 2014.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEAT MOVEMENT IN MODERN SOCIETY J UN H IRAMATSU Over half a century ago, one of the best known writers of Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, used the term “Beat Generation” for the first time, and added the new positive meaning “upbeat” and “beatific,” instead of usual negative one, “tired” or “down and out.” This is kind of a beginning of the age of Beat Generation and their movements.

Beat Generation is a group of people who appeared after the Second World War, like Lost Generation who showed up during and after the First World War. The main cause of such kind of phenomenon is the sudden changes in short term of the two World Wars and some other historic events, like the Great Depression in October 1929. Those abrupt changes made them feel uneasy and question about their conventions and culture. Therefore they started to strongly assert themselves as the representatives of the age at that time in non-conformity with the traditional custom and thinking, through writing, music, or some other movements.

In spite of their distinctive and strong messages, a lot of scholars in an academic society tend to think light of their importance in the history of American literature or other cultural fields. This is because majority of Beats have controversial backgrounds. As a matter of fact, many of them were addicted to drug and alcohol, and used drug to inspire their imagination and creativity. In addition, William S. Burroughs killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, shooting in her head.

However, although their activity did not last so long period of time, after the Beat Movement, a lot of people and groups were affected by their thinking and activity. Even now, Beat Generation has great influence on various activists and fields in not only America but also all over the world. In this paper, I will focus on the importance of Beat Generation and the ongoing effects on modern society.

There are mainly three significant effects which remain and make up present culture and movements even now. In the beginning, Beat Generation gave great influence on the aspect of philosophy, especially on Western culture. At that time, America got even stronger and came to stand at the center of the world stage both politically and culturally, winning the last great war. This was a great threat for many of culturally or religiously minor people like, Buddhists, Judaists, and so on. Just at that moment, it was the Beats who cast a doubt upon that kind of unbalanced trend, and instead, they paid attention to Eastern region, like Japan.

In fact many of the Beats like, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder, were greatly inspired by the philosophy of Buddhism. In particular, as the leading member of Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac played major role to make the teachings of Buddhism spread in America. Scholar Matt Theado also positively states, ‘One cannot overstate the significance of Kerouac’s Buddhist studies on his life and his writing.’(123) Jack Kerouac himself is neither originally from Buddhist family nor school, but after encountering A Buddhist Bible by Dwight Goddard in 1953, he was soon attracted the idea of it which is rather different from that of Catholic he used to know. It was also the start for him to spread new philosophy of Buddhism not only to other Beats but also non-Buddhist Westerners.

As a matter of fact, he eagerly shared his enthusiasm with other Beats, especially with Allen

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Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. After knowing the world of Buddhism, Snyder, who translated some of Japanese literature into English, visited Japan, and stayed in Kyoto to actually experience and study Zen Buddhism, for over ten years.

In addition, as one of Beat writers, Kerouac translated French version of Buddhist sutras into English. Most importantly, he wrote The Dharma Bums, which is about the relations with some other Beats, and there he dealt with Buddhism as main subject. Later it could have great influence on not only Beat Generations but also Westerners who is unfamiliar with such kind of new philosophy. Therefore, as the author of Emerson's Contemporaries and Kerouac's Crowd: A Problem of Self-location, Bradley J. Stilles says, Kerouac did not directly introduce or propagate Buddhism into America, his writings strongly impressed many of them and gave some effect on their culture. (87) It can be said that this inspiration of new philosophy or religion leads to the present society of multiple cultural nation like America.

The other influential movement Beat Generation gave to the present society is for socially disadvantaged people. Those days, socially minority people were in more serious situation than today. In particular, sexuality minority people, like bisexual or gay people tend to be thought as unallowable and be in more difficult situation than now. In regard of Beat Generation, almost all of the main activists of Beats are either bisexual or gay, and experienced those hardship. Again, they took action to show their will of resistance against the trend of regular-based society.

Each Beats claimed their identity as bisexual or gay in their own way. Among them, the most significant and sensational event was made by Allen Ginsberg. What attracted attention was one poem Howl, which is firstly published in the name of Howl and Other Poems in 1956. Soon this book was regarded as problematic by San Francisco police, and Ginsberg was taken to the trial. This is because, many of his poems contained in the collection clearly described gay sex, which was taboo at that time. However, the result was beyond expectation, and Ginsberg was sentenced not guilty. This sensational event attracted people’s attention, and gave them chance to read the book. This event offered a lot of Americans opportunities to know or think about socially minority people like, bisexual or gay people. Professor of the University of Nottingham, Luca Prono, says ’These opening lines [‘about the power of middle-class values to destroy the best minds of Ginsberg’s generation’] became a common cry of protest for the 1960s counterculture which demanded more freedom of choice for individuals and less state control on personal lives.’(30) Even now, his book has strong effect on the present society which arguing about rights for social minority people.

The last indispensable effect which Beats gave to future generations is their America came to have greater power as a superstate, and people could see growing trend of mass production and mass consumption. At the same time, there were greater concerns about new environmental issues like, desertification by too much destruction of forests, sea pollution by oil leak accidents, or global warming. Many of Beat Generation people questioned about this situation, caused by excessive materialism with human egoism, and took action.

In regard of environmental movement, Gary Snyder is one of most prominent activists among other Beats. As is explained before, one of key figures among Beat Generation, Gary Snyder was attracted by the philosophy of Buddhism, through Kerouac’s writing and talk with him. After that, he went to Kyoto, to study Zen-Buddhism, which inspired and gave Snyder a lot of teachings and enlightenment. Among what he learned during his stay at Kyoto for about ten years, the most remarkable one which led him to take action is about environment.

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Zen-Buddhism stresses nature with established view of life and environment, like abstinence from taking life which Japanese priests actually practiced. Seeing the situation, Snyder found great difference from that of America, and he, as the professor at Durham University, Simon P. James, says, felt that people may think that ‘humans are conceived as being superior to nature and hence justified in putting it to whatever use they want.’(27) In the process of his studying and experiencing Zen-Buddhism, Snyder came to think this kind of attitude is problematic and doubtful.

Therefore, after about a decade of training, Snyder returned to his homeland and started his activity as an environmentalist. He took several ways to protect nature or share his idea about it, and the most effective and important one which made a lot of people know his name was writing books. Among what he wrote after practicing ZenTurtle Island is a book of poetry published in 1974, and awarded the Pulitzer Prize next year. There Snyder shares ‘his vision of a new society based on indigenous and primitive cultures living lightly and harmoniously on the earth.’(81) This is kind of a Utopia for him where people can live with nature and other lives harmoniously.

Surprisingly, in this book, Snyder has already suggested several environmental issues, such as population growth, energy shortages, and pollutions which is still one of the primary concerns all over the world. Therefore it can be said that his book has enough lessons or information for us to think about the present situation and issues even now.

These three influence what are mentioned before have still great power and effect in various ways, but these are just parts of Beat Generation’s great achievements on modern society. Even though their ways of life have been unallowable and controversial, it is sure that those influence make up the American culture and world society.

WORKS CITED Hart, George, and Scott Slovic. Literature and the Environment. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. 2004. Print.

James, Simon P. Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2004.Print.

Prono, Luca. Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Popular Culture. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008.Print.

Stilles, Bradley J. Emerson's Contemporaries and Kerouac's Crowd: A Problem of Self-location.

Hackensack: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2003.Print.

Theado, Matt. Understanding Jack Kerouac. Columbia: UP of South Carolina, 2000.Print. .

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THE BACKGROUND OF BEAT GENERATION Beat Generation is originally a literary movement generated by several authors, such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and so on, after Second World War in 1950s in America. The ‘beat’ in the Beat Generation was originally slung term and means ‘down and out, or poor and exhausted’, but ‘Kerouac went on to twist the meaning of the term "beat" to serve his own purposes, explaining that it meant "beatitude”, not beat up’ (Janssen).

The influence of Beat Generation never stayed in terms of literature. The representative authors in Beat Generation, such as William S. Burroughs, were addicted to alcohol, drug, and sex.

Seemingly, they were helpless people, but their depraved life strongly influenced on the life style of the people at that time. Today, people may regard such action as bad habit with a single glance. Nevertheless, why their action was admitted and accepted? There were some reason for it. In this paper, I am going to focus on what influenced on the Beat Generation and how it change the society, considering social background.

Firstly, the influence of jazz on the Beat Generation. In addition to the use of “Beat”, ‘The Beat authors borrowed many other terms from the jazz/hipster slang of the '40s, peppering their works with words such as "square," "cats," "nowhere," and "dig."’, and ‘they used the principal ideas of bebop playing and applied it to prose and poetry writing, creating a style sometimes called "bop prosody."’ (Janssen). From these using of words, and writing style, it is sure that the Beat Generation was affected by jazz music.

Now, let us think about the influence of war on the Beat Generation to understand the authors’ behavior. In 1945, two atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Second World War was ended with numerous number of the dead people including private citizens. All country recognized how powerful the atomic bomb was. It frightened not only Japan but also America itself, the country dropping the atomic bomb, because even after the Second World War was ended, as the Cold War between capitalism countries and communism countries began, the possibility that the atomic bomb would be used again was very high and America was in danger of atomic bomb this time. In such tensed situation, the authors might search for something they could escape in. Thinking that way, the reason why they were addicted to drugs, alcohol or something like that, and interested in Buddhism seems to be understandable.

However, the fact is not so simple.

Facing the tragedy of the war and fear of the atomic bomb, after the war, that was the era of imbalance and sense of powerlessness about individual, and people came to like the group and uniformity, as if they became “Good German” (Tytell 12). In that situation American tradition that respects individuality gradually changed into the climate that required uniformity (Tytell 15). After the Second World War, ‘Americans wanted to take up life where it had left off before the war years with secure jobs, happy marriages, nice families, well-deserved retirement and a wide variety of consumer goods’ (Huddleston). It seems really happy life that everyone dreams of. It was very natural that everyone tried to take steps forward to reconstruct their previous lives after the tragedy of the war. people were required to pursue happiness like ‘The young generation was expected to go to school, get jobs, live moral lives, marry and have children, then take the torch of a prepackaged-life from their parents and pass it onto their progeny ‘(Huddleston). However, as the tens feeling rose up because of the Cold War, it made the atmosphere that full of oppression and intrigue (Tytell 15). At that time, while people

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pursued such happiness established by the society, feeling the danger of the war, longing for uniformity, some people tried to rebel against the oppression, and that was the authors of the Beat Generation. Now, let us turn our eyes on Materialism in America after the War. After the Second World War, as the economy of America were recovering, people came to buy and possess a lot of things. Such kind of tendency, materialism, spread among the people at that time. In materialism, people put the high priority on the things that exists in real, like money, car or something like that, rather than something spiritual, or that cannot be seen with eyes. Surely, people cannot live without money, or production. However, when such tendency goes way too far, people only pursue wealth, and come to evaluate life only in materialistic way.

People were recommended only to consume, and not to make a decision, and also the education became only a tool to gain money, not a way to cultivate the sensibility (Tytell 16). In terms of material, people, certainly, might feel filled, but their inner mind never filled with material. In that situation, the authors of Beat Generation, refusing the uniformed happiness, and the oppression established by the society, sought happiness in their way, following their primitive desire without hiding, like their sexuality, though at that time the oppression as to sexuality was very strict and people thought that ‘frank discussions of sexuality were seen as unhealthy and possibly damaging to the psyche’ (Rahn). In that point, we can say the authors of Beat Generation did not simply escape from reality, using drugs or alcohol, but reject to follow the way, rule established by someone, and cut open the way by themselves.

It was not only the authors but also some people came to have doubt about the situation, ‘students in universities were beginning to question the rampant materialism of their society.

The Beat Generation was a product of this questioning. They saw runaway capitalism as destructive to the human spirit and antithetical to social equality’ (Rahn). For those people, Beat Generation and the authors’ behaviour might seem very stimulating. In fact, Bruce Cook said, ‘I felt the same keen sense of identification with them that thousands of others my age did, and I had the same feeling that I was lucky to be in on the beginning of something big, if only as a spectator’ (3). That is why people are strongly influenced by Beat Generation.

As we can see from this sentence, ‘The Beat Generation was never a large movement in terms of sheer numbers, but in influence and cultural status they were more visible than any other competing aesthetic’ (Rahn), the Beat Generation gave strong power in many ways.

After the Second World War, even though the economy seemed to be recovered and people seemed to get richer, actually ‘there was a poverty, racism, and alienation in America that was rarely depicted on TV’ (Independence Hall Association). Especially, poverty rate of African American was 2 times higher than that of white people. At that time, ‘While mainstream America seemed to ignore African American culture’, but ‘the beats celebrated it by frequenting jazz clubs and romanticizing their poverty’ (Independence Hall Association). Beat Generation was influenced by jazz music, and in return, the Beat shone a light on it.

The Beat Generation, with their openness about their sexuality, won the liberty of sexuality, and of publication against censorship. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, were taken to court because of its obscenity. However, after all, it was admitted to be published and it was unbelievable in time when sexuality, especially, homosexuality was regarded as something bad. What is more, according to Bruce Cock, by including the excerpts from the testimony of Mailer and Ginsberg at the trial in most edition of the book, Naked Lunch, conversely, utilizing the trial, gathered attention (168). The win had very big meaning in sexuality and publication as rebellion against the society at that time.

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Even after the Beat Generation itself gradually faded away, its mind are taken over to Hippies, though actually hippie is different from the Beat Generation, for example, ‘The hippie movement of the 1960s also owes a great debt to the Beats, though probably the Beats would not be quick to own that claim (Rahn). Though the Beat Generation was not so long period, but its mind was taken to posterity.

The authors of Beat Generation were addicted to drugs, alcohol, and sex. When we know about them for the first time, we may feel they were helpless, and bad image towards them as the “beat” originally means. However, behind their behaviour, we can see their struggle against the society at that time. Their free and bold life-style broke rules strictly restricting themselves, and many walls standing in front of them. The power of rebellion in Beat Generation was strong and without their power, our present society might not be like this. They were the beatific people as the “beat” truly means.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Cook, Bruce. The Beat Generation. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994. 3, 168. Print.

Huddleston, Diane M. "The Beat Generation: They Were Hipsters Not Beatniks." Department of History seminar paper, Western Oregon University, 2012. Web. 05 Jan. 2014.

Independence Hall Association “53f. Voices against Conformity” U.S. History. Web. 05 Jan. 2014.

Janssen, Mike “Jazz” Literary Kicks. 30/10/1994. Web. 05 Jan. 2014.

Rahn, Josh. “The Beat Generation” The Literature Network. Web. 04 Jan. 2014.

Tytell, John. Naked Angel: The Lives & Literature of the Beat Generation. Trans. Kiyohiko Murayama, and Kenzaburo Ohashi. Tokyo: Kinokuniya Book Store, 1978. 12, 15-6.

Print.

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ON FEMINISM C HIHARU T ATENO In this paper, I will explain feminism with historical aspect. To understand several feminism definitions will help us to know more about the works. There are several kinds of feminism; liberal feminism, radical feminism, and cultural feminism. I will explain these topics in turn.

Firstly, the oldest and may be the most common feminism is “liberal feminism.” It started from 18th century and in late 20th century (Childers and Hentzi,169). In 1966, the National Organization for Woman (NOW) was founded in order to get equal rights and payment.

About 500,000 participate in this organization, including 550 chapters in all 50 states of the U.S. (The National Organization for Woman). Famous female writers, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (in 1972) is considered most influential text of this category. …the female, in general is inferior to the male. The male pursues, the female yields—this is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favor of woman. This physical superiority cannot be denied—and it is a noble prerogative! (Wollstonecraft, 24).

Wollstonecraft’s the most famous work, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was written to response to Reflections on the Revolution in France (in 1790) by Edmund Burke (Wollstonecraft, Mary). It helped to impress the necessity of female’s education. People in this group united the woman-centered organization, and tried to get the same treatment and the right for the education for women.

The second one is called “radical feminism”. As the word radical shows: “advocating thorough political or social reform; politically extreme” (COD), this group tried to commit revolution, and act the mass movement. The most active year was from 1967 to 1971 (Childers and Hentzi, 253) and Miss America contest held in 1968 shows the thinking of this group well.

That is, feminists, who thought it nonsense for women to seek almost impossible beauty demanded by men, did a protest on that day (Curtis, Charlotte). People in this group opposed to the idea of sexual difference and mainly tried to remove it sometimes by radical way.

Radical feminists coined the term “sexism” and “sexual politics” to express the idea―novel and even shocking in the contemporary American context, though in fact it had ample historical precedent―that sexuality, family life, and the relations between men and women were not simply matters of individual choice, or even of social custom, but involved the exercise of personal and institutional power and raised vital questions of public policy. Sexism, the movement contended, was neither the natural expression of sexual differences nor a set of bad attitudes or outmoded habits but a social system― … child reading, the domestic division of labor, and everyday social interaction―whole intent and effect was to give men power over women (Echols and Willis, ix-x) This suggests that women have less power than men in many aspects in whole society.

They were vividly aware of the differences between men and women, and sometimes had an effect on political aspect.

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Essays

The third type of feminism I mention is called “cultural feminism” (late 1960s- early 1970s). This originates in radical feminism and praises women’s culture and community (Childers and Hentzi, 62). In this category of feminism, Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) is known to people that she emphasized the necessity of a “woman-centered university” provides childcare. She was American poet, as well as an essayist (Adrienne Rich biography).

In several of Adrienne Rich’s essays on education, she identifies the cultural customs and traditions that have resulted in women’s uneven contributions to intellectual and creative knowledge. The expression that women are involved in helping, assisting, serving, and guiding―meaningful and noble activities ― interferes with their intellectual growth and exploration. … While altruism is one of the most formidable impediments to women’s intellectual work, the other barrier Rich cites is the lack of affordable high-quality childcare on American campus. (Hogan,72,5-7) The idea of this group is not revolutionary as the radical feminism. However, they have strong opinion that the trend of the society made the unfair educational treatment for women and also university in the U.S. was lacking in childcare. It was Adrienne Rich who firstly claimed the need of a “woman-centered university”. She believed that by constructing it, women will be able to grow their own inner mind, and there will be more chance for women to involve in the front lines of the community. Cultural feminism has some in common with lesbian culture. To be precise, the definition of the lesbianism is still vague. Rich used the word lesbian for wide ties between women, including families and friends as well as original meaning.

Cultural feminists believed that by celebrating women’s special qualities, sexism and male domination will be eliminated.

In conclusion, the word “feminism” includes some definitions such as: liberal feminism, radical feminism, and cultural feminism. Firstly, beginning in 18 century and to late 20 century, the oldest and may be the most common feminism is called liberal feminism. A Vindication of the Rights Woman (1972), is the famous work of Mary Wollstonecraft, because she explained how important it is for women to receive education in the text. Secondly, radical feminism is the feminism that sometimes acts extremely way in order to take away differences between men and women. The most active year was from 1967 to 1971, and in 1968, some radical feminists tried to cancel Miss America contests, because they thought it is wrong for women to obey men and try to be beautiful as to reach excessive standard. Thirdly, cultural feminism, which grew out in late 1960s to early 1970s, is originates in radical feminism. This group’s idea is to praise women’s culture and community and it is known that Adrienne Rich is the woman who claimed to build a “woman-centered university” that provides childcare. Different kinds of the feminist groups acted to solve the problem or to improve the situation in different way as I mentioned above.

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WORKS CITED Adrienne Rich biography, poetry foundation, n.p., 2012, Web. 16 January, 2014 Anne, Mellor. “On the Publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web. Childers Joseph and Hentzi Gary general editors, The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, New York : Columbia University Press ,1995, Print.

Curtis, Charlotte. "Miss America Pageant is picketed by 100 women." New York Times 8 (1968): 81.

Echols Alice and Willis Ellen, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America,1967-1975, 1990, Print.

The National Organization for Woman, n.p. n.d., Web. 2 January, 2014 Hogan Katie, The Critical Pulse: Thirty-six Credos by Contemporary Critics, Columbia University Press, 2012, Print.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: Penguin, 2004.

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IN DEPTH ARTICLE EXPLANATION OF JACQUES DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION: FOR THE FURTHER UNDERSTANDING OF DECONSTRUCTION AS LITERARY THEORY This essay will show what Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction is briefly and accordingly will also show what deconstruction as literary theory is, comparing to Derrida’s one. According to “Deconstruction” in Glossary of Literary Theory, Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown explain: “A method of reading and theory of language that seeks to subvert, dismantle, and destroy any notion that a text or signifying system has any boundaries, margins, coherence, unity, determinate meaning, truth, or identity…Deconstruction's central point is that total context is unmasterable.

Though meaning is context-bound, context is boundless. A double bind is thus produced, for meaning is contextually determined, on the one hand, and context is infinitely extendable and thereby indeterminate, on the other”.

It might be valid definition for the definition of deconstruction as ‘literary theory’.

However, the idea of seeing works as “indeterminate” is different from Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. Derrida’s deconstruction is not satisfied with leaving the meaning of text ‘undecidable’. It is true that deconstruction utilises undecidability as one step for its own strategy, but it does not necessarily mean that deconstruction is equal to undecidability and therefore that deconstruction ‘dose not decide’. On the contrary, it demands decision under the circumstances of undecidability.

As Takahashi Tetsuya, John D. Caputo, and Nicholas Royle explain, the purpose of deconstruction for Derrida is to emphasise the openness of the predominant point to the other.

Deconstruction insists the existence of the other and it demands the responsibility for the calling by the other, which is the subordinated point in the binary opposition. Deconstruction incessantly demands decision. It needs decision under ‘undecidability’. As I have said, the purpose of this essay is to introduce what Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction is briefly. By comparing to that, the difference with Derrida’s one will deepen the understanding of deconstruction as literary theory. The explanation of deconstruction in this essay is divided by three parts: one, the widespread and common structure of binary opposition with hierarchy, two, the impossibility of perfect presence of the predominant point or the subordinated point, and three, deconstruction as pointer of the trace of the other, which means the trace of the subordinated point.

As Derrida himself says in Letter to a Japanese friend, in a sense deconstruction cannot be defined. He says: “All sentences of the type ‘deconstruction is X’ or ‘deconstruction is not X’ a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false” (Derrida 26). He also says: “As you know, one of the principal things at stake in what is called in my texts ‘deconstruction’ is precisely the delimiting of ontology and above all of the third person present indicative: S is P”

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(Derrida 26-27). Deconstruction cannot, in a sense, be defined because behind the sentence “S is P” there is binary structure with hierarchy and such a structure itself supports the impossibility in the complete presence of the predominant point. First, the structure “S is P”, the basic way to recognise something, has binary opposition with hierarchy e.g. what deconstruction is/what deconstruction is not, good/bad, reason/emotion, male/female, spoken words/ written words and so on. For instance, through his works about Plato, Derrida points out the superiority of spoken words over the written words in Western Metaphysics. As Derrida for Beginners by Jeff Collins explains, through Western metaphysics there has been superiority of spoken words. The written words are thought to merely represent the spoken words and the spoken words are rather nearer to the truth, the speaker’s thought (Collins 51-52). Although such a binary opposition (spoken words/written words) seems stable, Derrida reveals some feature of written words inside the spoken words and shows the impossibility of absolute superiority of spoken words over the written words. Here, amongst various terms used by Derrida, I focus upon the term “iterable”, which means “repeatable-with-difference” (Collins 101).

In order to be as predominant point, it needs the being of the subordinated point and consequence of that the perfection of the predominant point is incessantly delayed. The term “iterable” shows such an impossibility of the pure presence by the predominant point.

According to Derrida by Takahashi Tetsuya, for the spoken words, which has been thought to be nearer to the thought and over the written words, it is necessary to be repeatable because if there is no repeatability in the spoken words, it does not make sense. In order to make sense, at least it can be used in other contexts. However, being “iterable” is the very feature of the written words. To exist as spoken words, it relies upon the nature of the written words, which is the subordinated point. It is one example about the impossibility of the perfect presence of the predominant point (Takahashi 140-168).

As the complete presence of the predominant point is impossible, so is the subordinated point. The feature of the written words revealed in the spoken words can also not be presented.

It depends upon the structure of binary opposition and the predominant point. The subordinated point only lives as a parasite of the predominant point. Therefore, in binary opposition, it is impossible to be perfect presence and impossible to exclude the other point.

As the spoken words rely upon the written words, which cannot be presented perfectly and purely, the other always appears as “trace” and deconstruction is, in a word, to open to the other as trace. As Collins explains, “trace” is out of the binary opposition (Collins 82). It is neither ‘being’ nor ‘not being’ because the things itself always out of the structure either/or. The other as trace always exists inside the predominant point e.g. self, male, spoken words, reason etc. As John D. Caputo says in Deconstruction in a Nutshell: “Nutshells enclose and encapsulate, shelter and protect, reduce and simplify, while everything in deconstruction is turned toward opening, exposure, expansion, and complexification (Points 429), towards releasing unheard- of, undreamt-of possibilities to come, toward cracking nutshells wherever they appear” (Caputo 31). Here, the predominant point is described as “Nutshell”. By showing that the perfect presence of the predominant point is impossible, deconstruction reinforces the move of the other in the text. In this respect, deconstruction can be defined as the opening to the other. Derrida himself has once wrote that deconstruction is “the opening of the future itself, a future which does not allow itself to be modalized or modified into the form of the present…”

(Derrida qtd. in Deconstructions 11). The future is not being presence and accordingly the future means the subordinated point, comparing to the present. Deconstruction makes the stable

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predominant point open to the other. Thus, the purpose of deconstruction is to open to the other and to reinforce to free the predominant point to the other. It never settles in ‘undecidability’.

As I have shown so far, deconstruction depends on the structure of binary opposition. It is impossible to be present as perfection in binary opposition. Neither the predominant point nor the subordinated point can be independent in the light of its structure. Deconstruction is not a form of criticism or method. It is on the move because of its inevitable structure: binary opposition. It cannot be methodised. It cannot be foreseen, as Derrida says. The purpose of deconstruction is not just pointing out undecidability but, through pointing out it, to open to the other which has not yet been present. By opening to the other, it demands response. The being of the other inside the predominant point always demands decision. It never allows the predominant point to ignore the other. While showing the necessity of the being of the subordinated point, deconstruction challenges the predominant point’s stability and its exclusion to the other.

Comparing to Derrida’s deconstruction, deconstruction as literary theory has difference.

From the definition I show in the first paragraph, it is harder to know why deconstruction should be done. Deconstruction is sometimes criticised as thought that ‘anything goes’. However, it misses the point. Originally, the aim of deconstruction is not to bring disorder. It aims at revealing the responsibility to the other, which always demands the response and decision.

WORKS CITED

Essays

Collins, Jeff. Derrida for Beginners. Trans. Suzuki Keisuke. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 2008.

Print.

Derrida, Jacques. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. Ed. John D. Caputo. New York: Fordham UP, 1997. Print.

---. “Letter to a Japanese Friend.” Deconstruction: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. vol. 1. Ed. Jonathan Culler. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Henderson, Greig E. and Christopher, Brown. “Deconstruction.” Glossary of Literary Theory.: U of Toronto, 31 March 1997. Web. 10 January 2014.

Royle, Nicholas. “What is Deconstruction?” Deconstructions: A User’s Guide. Ed. Nicholas Royle. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Print.

Takahashi, Tetsuya.デリダ：脱構築. Derrida: Deconstruction. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998. Print

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REACTION PIECES

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REACTION PIECE ON BEAT GENERATION We have studied Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes, Tolkien and Beat Generation in class, but I think the most exciting one is Beat Generation. Beat Generation is a name of group that indicates some authors mainly in 1950s and 1960s. They wrote their work in a strange way.

For example, William S. Burroughs who lived from 1914 to 1997 was one of the big three (others are Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and his work “Ah Pook is Here” has been called a crazy work. It was written in 1970 with Macolm Mcneill. He wrote in “Ah Pook is Here,” Who really gave that order?

Answer: Control.

Answer: The Ugly American.

Answer: The instrument of Control.

Question: If Control’s control is absolute, why does Control need to control?

Answer: Control… needs time.

Question: Is Control controlled by its need to control?

Answer: Yes. Why does Control need humans, as you call them?

Answer: Wait… wait! Time, a landing field. Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.

Here we can see how crazy his writing is. Burroughs used a writing way which is called cut-up technique or fishbowling. He folded pieces of paper and looks for interesting word connection and expressions. He used such an original word in his work and that’s why his writing became crazy. We can see his good writing style in his work “Ah Pook is Here,” too.

We can see in the text, Ah Pook, destroyer.

Hiroshima, 1945, August 6, sixteen minutes Past 8 AM. This part he used very simple writing way, but I got very impressed when I read it for the first time. I’m interested in not only William S. Burroughs’s writing style and his crazy work but also his whole life. He was born in a rich family and spent his youth fishing, hunting and reading many books. He entered Harvard University and his major was English Literature, because he had no interest in other subjects. After graduating his university, he did not work, because his family was so rich that he could live without earning by himself. He married a woman, but he is said to be homosexual. His famous crazy episode is that he accidentally shot his wife while they were playing and imitating William Tell. He is famous of his addiction to drug, too. His late life, he moved to Tangier in Africa to get drug easier. I think this decision is also crazy. He died mainly because of drug addiction. I think he should have stopped it when he was young.

He wrote many work, so “Ah Pook is Here” I wrote about before is just one example of his crazy work. I think to read his work and understand what he meant is difficult but I’m interested in his crazy work, so someday I would like to read other work, too.

WORKS CITED “Ah Pook is Here.” Dir. Hunt, Philip. Perf. William S. Burroughs. 1994. Video.

Burroughs William S.. “Ah Pook is Here.” New York: J. Calder, 1979. Print.

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REACTION PIECE ON “AH POOK” R IKO T AKEMURA It was my first time listening to poems that I felt very strange. At the same time, it was my first time that I had no idea of the themes written in the poem. This poem was written by William S. Burroughs, who is one of writers in the Beats Generations. William S. Burroughs wrote it collaborating Malcolm McNeill, who was an illustrator. I focus on one of his famous work, Ah Pook because I got huge impact at first sight in the class.

What was interesting to me was that he used a name of god in the title, Ah Pook. Pook is believed as a god of death and it is been said as a destroyer of the Mayan Codex. Burroughs mentions eight names of Mayan god at the beginning of the sentence then he suddenly writes Hiroshima nuclear bomb explosion in end of second stanzas. I believe William Burroughs wanted readers to realize the irony of a control in Mayan codex which it applies to impersonal events happened in Hiroshima 1945. Irony of control insists that the more control it has, the less greedy it get and the less control it has, the more greedy it get. I realize that this irony shows the irony of atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Although Japan thinks an atomic bomb killed ordinary citizen who were there, U.S. often claims that dropping atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki managed to finish WWII. This sort of irony between two nations was similar to those existed in Mayan codex. Therefore, I could see the clear common ironies between Mayan codex and Hiroshima atomic bomb attack by U.S.

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REACTION PIECE FOR THE LORD OF THe RINGS J UN H IRAMATSU

Reaction Pieces

This semester, I learned and got to know a lot of things, studying various fields of English literature in the classes of Integrated Skills, like a sensational life of famous writer, Silvia Plath and his husband, Ted Hughes, and controversial, but so important people in American history, Beat Generation. Each of the topic is really impressive and rich experience, but if I have to decide one which I think is the most impressive and exciting, I positively choose The Lord of the Rings series.

The Lord of the Rings is long high fantasy novel, originally written by famous English writer, J. R. R. Tolkien, who also wrote The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. From 1954 to next year, Tolkien published first edition of all the three stories, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. A lot of people, not only children but also adults, were attracted and inspired by the well-built construction of the story and the view of the imaginary world. It was not the end. About half a century after the first publication, the novels, “The Lord of the Rings,” were made into live-action movies. Even though the complicated story and psychological portrayal, appearing a lot of imaginary creatures and scenery, a prominent director Peter Jackson successfully led his films to a smash hit all over the world, getting some awards in Academy Awards 2003. This great success made this series widely known by large number of people in the world, and gave eagerness to start a new project of creating “Hobbit” series now going on.

The Lord of the Rings is a story of long and tough journey of two main characters of small people, called “Hobbit.” They head for an evil country “Mordor” where they can destroy a dangerous and cursed ring. On the road, Frodo Baggins and Sam face many trials, and suffer a lot, but they go on to march, helping each other, and helped by their fellows and friends.

As for me, I got to know the story by watching movie series, not reading books. It was about 5 years ago when I saw them for the first time. I remember, at that time, I got an impression of a little bit gloomy atmosphere that movie series has. Besides, there are some points what I cannot understand, like Gollum’s curious mentality and action. But recently, again I watch them to prepare for my class, then I was surprised that my impression was rather changed. Now I can realize how profound the story, characters, and the world created and planed. Also, though it has been over ten years since the release of the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, I can still see the enough high technology of VFX and battle scene.

Especially, I was so excited to see the active and cool motion of evil monsters, like Barlog.

That is, there are numerous numbers of attractions in The Fellowship of the Ring even today.

I do not know much about The Lord of the Rings series. However, through studying the series and life of author J. R. R. Tolkien, I realized the attractive feature of the world by Tolkien, and the movie series are just the tip of iceberg. I would like to know more about his world.

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REVIEWS

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REVIEW OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS C HIYORI K ENMOKU I had never seen The Lord of the Rings until I studied at this class. I had also never read the book written by J. R. R. Tolkien. To be honest, fantasy is not my favorite genre, but the thought changed after I watched this movie.

Tolkien’s stories are complex and difficult to understand completely because there are many characters and they have unique names. Many plots move on at the same time in the movie, so it is also difficult for me. However, these complex plots did not make me bored but try to understand. After I watched, I thought that Tolkien’s world exceeds the category of fantasy and it constitutes one culture. It has own language, creatures, countries and history. It can be said that his world has one steady foundation seen from any point of view.

I was really surprised that many things made by Tolkien are taken over today’s movies or novels. Especially, there are so many similarities between The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Here are the examples; the kings of the dark world, Sauron and Lord Voldemort; the boys who fight against the terrible power, Frodo and Harry; the special injury, that Nazgul cut Frodo in the breast and which is in Harry’s forehead; the ring, which is the center of The Lord of the Rings and which is one of the Horcrux in Harry Potter; those who bend over the power of the dark, Saruman and Death eaters; the men who have special power and help the main character, Gandalf and Albus Dumbledore; the main character’s brave friends, Sam, Pippin, Marry and Ron, Hermione; the creatures which show their loyalty to their masters, Gollum and Dobby; the dark creatures which attack them, Nazgul and Dementor; the spiders, Shelob and Aragog; the tree which can moved freely, Ent and Whomping Willow; the water which show many things, Galadriel’s Water mirror and the Mirror of Erised; the birds which help main characters, Gwaihir and Phoenix. These are the similarities that I remember and we can see that these characters not only play the same role in both stories but also have similar appearances. I think these similarities are not coincidence. It can be said that today’s writers are influenced by Tolkien and he is a really important person in the world of fantasy.

If I compare The Lord of the Rings with other fantasy stories (for example, The Chronicles of Narnia, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ), I could find more similarities between them. I am happy to know the interests of fantasy. I want to read other Tolkien’s novels.

REVIEW OF JANE EYRE This is written by Charlotte Bronte. I like this book the best of all love stories in 19 century because this story does not have love but also a gothic atmosphere in that Mr. Rochester confines his insane wife. After reading Jane Eyre, two points interested me. First, there are a lot of red fire descriptions in every scenes. I guess these are used in order to express Jane’s strong will and desire or they probably contains more meaning. Secondly, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester are both far from attractive faces and figures. Heroine and hero mostly tend to have beautifulness in their appearances, however, they do not. That is why I can sympathize them easily. Their appearances also help their gentle personalities to be emphasized.

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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE R IKO T AKEMURA The Movie Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen was broadcasted in 2005. This movie originated by Jane Austin’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice which was written in 1813. I decided to write movie review about this movie because 1) I am a big fan of the original novel Pride and Prejudice 2) I really attracted the atmosphere which movie created based on the novel, and 3) I really like the Elizabeth Bennet’s contradiction of feelings towards Mr. Darcy. I will explain my two favorite scenes in the movie.

Firstly, one of my most favorite scenes is that when Elizabeth Bennet finally met Mr. Darcy and confesses her feelings towards him. I really like this scene because it created the same atmosphere of the scene in the novel as well. In my opinion, setting and atmosphere of this scene in the movie was exactly the same as what I have imagined when I read the novel.

Secondly, the scene when Elizabeth and Darcy met for the first time was impressive.

Since Elizabeth did not have positive impression towards Mr. Darcy at the Party even though her mother Mrs. Bennet wanted either one of Bennet’s sisters to marry him, I really like Elizabeth acted so mean to him in order to keep her pride and showing that she has a prejudice towards Mr. Darcy because he is from rich family in the town.

Overall, I really like the movie because it shows the atmosphere of the original novel and I think this movie shows Elizabeth feeling so clearly by her facial expressions that audience can follow the plot easily.

HAMLET C HIHARU T ATENO I will introduce British movie Hamlet, directed by Michel Almeida. I think this is what is called ‘modern Hamlet’. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the stage of this movie is changed to New York from Denmark. Secondly, Denmark is substituted Denmark Corporation, the huge multimedia company. Also, when Hamlet and Laertes (the son of Denmark King) fight a battle, they used guns or fought fencing in this movie compared with the original scene was fighting with a sword. Moreover, diplomatic message dispatched by a messenger was written electronic mail, which made me think the most modern. I thought these changes make this movie quite different from the original one, but can enjoy as the Hamlet in this period.

In the movie, Hamlet made itinerant actors act in the play and watch it with Claudius (Hamlet’s uncle/ King of Denmark after Hamlet’s father died) in order to check whether what ghosts said was right. That means Claudius himself killed Hamlet’s father. If it was true, the King would become upset by the sense of guilt. The name of the play written on the screen was “The Mouse Trap A Tragedy By Hamlet Prince Of Denmark”, and this is different from the original name. I thought this is interesting metaphor.

I found there are some differences between the original text and this movie. However, the subtitle (lines) remains almost as they were, so I think people who don’t know much about Shakespeare’s Hamlet can enjoy Hamlet, by watching this. Also, Ethan Hawke, who played a role of Hamlet is very handsome. For these reasons written above, I strongly recommend you to watch this movie.

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WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE A KIHO S EGAWA What’s Eating Gilbert Grape was released in 1993 and based on a novel by Peter Hedges of the same title. Main character Gilbert Grape is 24-year-old man and lives with his family in Endora, Iowa. He seldom goes out of the town because of his family. He has to earn money instead of his bedridden mother whose weight is 180 kilograms due to her husband’s premature death. In addition, he takes care of a little brother with a mental disability and has a quarrel with two sisters. Gilbert is happy with such daily life, but he also has unsatisfied feelings. Now his family becomes a kind of the burden for him because all of them rely on him and disturb his freedom. At that sort of time, Gilbert meets Becky, who travels all America with the camper and stops at Endora to repair broken components. They are gradually attracted to each other, and Gilbert to get a chance to go out of the town at a certain time.

Because I write a research paper about On the Road written by Jack Kerouac, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is interesting for me due to the symmetry between them. That is, one is the story about a man who keeps “traveling,” and the other is about a man who keeps “settling down.” I think “movement” in the east and west direction and the north and south direction means a lot for the American people because the history of America is related to the movement of people. America began by the movement from the Britain of Pilgrim Fathers and expanded in the west at the western frontier period. For this reason, I guess that the theme of “movement” penetrates American literature.

I AM SAM R ISA F URUSAKA

Reviews

“I Am Sam” is a film about a father named Sam and his daughter named Lucy. They are not usual family, for Sam is mentally disabled and has only 7 year-olds’ intelligence. His wife was gone after she gave birth to Lucy, so he has to raise Lucy by himself. He is working at a coffee shop and his salary is not very good, but he leads a happy life with his daughter and his friends. They enjoy talking about The Beatles, watching movies and having a dinner together.

Sam’s neighbor, Annie, also helps him with taking care of Lucy. However, when Lucy is about to become 7 years old, a social worker takes her away from Sam because he thinks Sam is not appropriate for being a father. Sam loves Lucy and Lucy loves Sam, so they decide to challenge to a social worker in order to live together again. To fight at a court, Sam needs a lawyer, but of course, he does not have enough money to hire a lawyer. If he cannot find a lawyer, he will not be able to win at a case and Lucy will have to leave Sam’s side even though they love each other strongly. He tries hard to get Lucy back from a social worker! I love this film because Sam is innocent and he just wants to live with Lucy. Even though Sam is disabled, Sam and Lucy is the happiest family.

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Integrated – Class Journal

THE REVIEW OF SYLVIA M ANAMI S ETO First of all, this movie is very interesting for us students who major in English literature.

As we know, learning the life of famous authors is important to study English literature. And we can know the biography of Sylvia Plath by just enjoying watching the movie, what a fantastic thing!

Moreover, it is also grate as a movie itself. It describes well her complicated, mysterious and painful life. She was conflicted about her life as one woman and also as one poet, and struggled for a successful life in both aspects, as a woman and a poet. However, she didn’t have such a capacity to do well both at the same time, and her life had gone to collapse.

The first scene of Sylvia begins with impressive lines implying her conflicted life.

“Sometimes I dream of a tree, and the tree is my life. One branch is the man I shall marry, and the leaves are my children. Another branch is my future as a writer and each leaf is a poem. Another branch is a glittering academic career.

But as I sit there, trying to choose, the leaves begin to turn brown and blow away until the tree is absolutely bare.”

I think that the braches show important elements for her life; happy marriage, success as a poet and academic career. She tried to choose one, but she couldn’t because she was ambitious.

Then, everything went away from her. There remained only the bared tree, it means her life losing everything.

And one more remarkable point is that the movie shows Sylvia’s mental suffering by containing some scenes which describe her anguish indirectly. For example, at first her hair was medium, but it changed to very long hair after she had not been able to get along with Ted. Of course, it shows passing the time. However, I think it also implies the change of her mind.

When her hair was medium, she had still hopeful future. And the long hair might mean many painful experiences she had in her life, and at the time she was losing her hope. If we don’t watch the movie carefully, we will not realize the connection between her hair and her suffered mind, and I was fascinated with such hiding techniques.

I’m sure that you will enjoy the movie because you can get the knowledge of grate author, get moved by the tragic but interesting story and get surprised the movie techniques.

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REVIEW OF THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS H ICHIKA W ADA “The Nightmare before Christmas” is the movie which had been released in 1993. The original story of this movie was made by Tim Burton. He wrote the picture book titled “The Nightmare before Christmas” before he was engaged in the production of the movie version of it.

In this movie, Jack Skellington, who was a skeleton and the leader of Halloweenland, got tired of unchangeable his town.

Every resident in Halloweenland liked to make people be scared and everything in that town looked horrible. One day, he went to Christmas Town and came to think that he became Santa and spread cheer in his town. Jack captured Santa Claus and tried to do Santa’s job on Christmas Eve. However, all of the people were frightened his horrible presents. Only Jack was unaware of peoples screams of terror. Suddenly, he was shot down by a missile. He fell into a graveyard and he became sad because of his failure of his job as Santa. In the graveyard, Jack remembered what he was and recovered from his sadness. He got back his identity as the leader of Halloweenland and saved Santa Claus who was near to be killed. Santa did his job and people got back their joy and happiness.

Finally, Santa brought snows and Halloweenland was charged with enthusiasm of Christmas.

One of the attractiveness of the movie version of “The Nightmare before Christmas” is its music. This movie is a musical fantasy film, so characters mostly sing songs instead of speak. All of the songs have attractive melodies and simple lyrics.

These songs seem to be one of the features which make this movie attractive for children. Another attractiveness of this movie is the high quality of puppets and sets. All of the puppets can be shown subtlety and finesse in performance. The sets of this movie are also made elaborately. Audiences can be involved in this movie because all of the puppets perform as they have life.

The scale of the movie version of “The Nightmare before Christmas” is larger than picture

book version of it. There are also many differences between movie version and picture book version.

One of the clearest differences is presence of heroine.

In the movie version of “The Nightmare before Christmas,” there is a heroine named Sally, who falls in love with Jack. She had important role in this movie. She was afraid of the failure of Jack’s Christmas plan and advised him not to do Santa’s job.

However, in the picture book, there is no heroine.

The picture book focuses on Jack throughout of the story. Compared with picture book version of “The Nightmare before Christmas,” this movie has more scenes focusing on characters other than Jack. In this movie, there are also some parts of the stories changed from picture book version. For example, in the picture book, Santa Claus said to Jack, “I hope you realize Halloween’s the right place for you,” and Jack got back his identity (Burton). On the other hand, in this movie, Jack realized that Halloween was the most suitable for him and got back his identity as the leader of Halloweenland by himself. Moreover, he saved Santa Claus and Sally who were captured by Oogie Boogie. This scene is not in the picture book version of “The Nightmare before Christmas.” In addition, in this movie, Santa Claus was called “Sandy Claws” in the Halloweenland. This is the original setting of movie version.

One of the important messages of this movie is that there is the most suitable place for everyone. Jack tried to change himself and to be different from what he had been ever before, but the best place for him could not be changed. Another important massage of “The Nightmare before Christmas” is that it is important to listen to people who are close to us. Sally, who always watched over Jack, was the only character who realized the strangeness of plans of Christmas in Halloweenland.

Her advice for Jack was always right. Sally also the only character knew the real feeling of Jack. Finally, Jack realized how she was clever and gentle and her love for him.

Burton, Tim. “The Nightmare before Christmas.” Illust. Tim Burton. New York: Disney Press, 1993.

Print.

Selick, Henry, dir. The Nightmare before Christmas. Prod. Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. Perf.

Chris Sarandon, Danny Elfman and Catherine O'Hara. Touchstone Pictures, 1993. Film.

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Reviews

WORKS CITED

Integrated – Class Journal

REVIEW OF A FILM LES MISERABLES R IKA K OJIMA I’m going to write about the movie, “Les Miserables” because it is certainly one of my favorite movies. I saw it four times last year; three times in a theater and one time at home. At first, I decided to see it when seeing commercial saying it ranked No.1 for popular movie ranking. I was so impressed by the movie that I repeated several times.

The main character, Jean Valjean was imprisoned for steeling only bread for saving his sister and her family. When he was released from prison temporarily, he stole silverware from one Bishop. However the Bishop stood up for him and gave them. He was moved by the Bishop’s state of mind and determined to be an honest man. Several years after that, he became a mayor for his pleasant personality. He ran a factory where a one woman, Fantine worked. He unconsciously ruined that woman indirectly, so when she was going to die, he accepted her wish and decided to nourish her daughter, Cosette. While he ran away from a police man, Javert, he kept loving her and brought her up all by himself. The background of this movie is French revolution.

I was really impressed especially by the music and Valjean’s selfless love and personality.

I’ve seen a musical movie such as “Moulin Rouge”, but wasn’t moved by the music.

Therefore, I tried not to expect about it too much when I saw “Les Miserables” at first. However, I got goose bumps as the movie finished. Each cast had powerful and beautiful voices as if I saw the live musical. Not only the music but also its lyrics matched the atmosphere of the movie.

For example, “The People’s Song” was sung when people resist against imperial government. It encourages the motivation of them and I can feel their anger, hope and braveness from lyrics even though they are in severe conditions. Since many people sang this song together, it was so powerful like their song shook the ground.

As for Jean Valjean, he might have a feeling of mistrust in other people because he was imprisoned so many years for only steeling bread. However he had been loving Cosette. We can understand he dedicated love to her, for she grew up to be a sincere and kind girl and she loved him too. We can see Valjean’s personality in the scene of him and Javert. He had a chance to kill Javert, who desperately chased him and tried to kill. But he didn’t shot him. He let him go with generous heart, in other words, it can be said he had a selfless love to people. At the very last scene, he was about to die alone in a church, then Cosette and her lover came there and even the ghost of Fantine appeared to say thank you for raising her child up to him. He cries and passed away happily. In this scene, there was one lyrics I certainly remember in a song by Fantine. That is, “To love another person is to see the face of God”. I really cried because I thought this line expresses Valjean himself. To love someone may be the power to live and those who loves other people without condition becomes happy. I’d like to follow his example and be a person who can shed beautiful tears.

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REVIEW OF LES MISERABLES C HIYORI K ENMOKU

Reviews

It was my first time to watch the musical type movie. When Les Miserables was released about one year ago, I would not see it because I liked common lines movies better than musical type movies. I had never seen musical or opera. However, my friends and professors strongly recommended me to watch this movie. I knew that it was really famous French literature written by Victor Hugo and translated into many languages. Even people who study English literature interested in the novel, so I watched the movie recently.

My candid opinion is that I should have watched it when it was released. I want to watch it with a large screen at a movie theater. Almost all lines are musical type, and they make the movie more exciting and impressive. I am really surprised that the actors and actresses sang actually, not singer’s dubbing. There are two impressive scenes. One is that Jean Valjean changes and regrets his way of life. His song, “Bishop Myriel calls me brother, forgives me and gives me a chance!” is really impressive. I was moved by this song. When Bishop Myriel tries to give Jean Valjean another silver candlestick, I think how important to forgive others are. This scene shows one of Jesus’ teaching, love of our neighbors. Another scene is when Javert dies.

He sings his complex emotion at Pont Nortre-Dame. He was helped by Valjean unexpectedly.

He realized that his lifetime purpose, to arrest Valjean, was no longer vain and meant nothing.

To commit a suicide is his way of changing his mind, but I want him to choose another way.

The scene that he is swallowed up by the Seine River is really shocking. In two scenes, Valjean and Javert sing similar song. Both are powerful melody, so we can feel how strong their new decisions are. I thought it was strange that the songs were similar though Valjean would live with hope and Javert would die. However, it shows that the two men’s opposite life. We can realize that their lives are two sides of the same coin by using similar songs in the opposite scene. Valjean is the villain’s role at the beginning of the story, but Javert become it at the middle. The two scenes show human’s hope and tragedy at the same time. It is not showed in the movie, but Javert was born in the prison and his father was a criminal. His hidden origin makes him stick to arrest Valjean who committed a crime. However, Valjean, who has similar past that Javert wants to conceal, helped Javert and he decides his death.

This movie is shows many peoples’ exactly miserable life. The songs make the scenes more moving. The novel may have different impression from the movie. I want to read it and compere them.

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Integrated – Class Journal

DEATH OF A SALESMAN AND FENCES COMPARISON A IKO T AKASAKI The Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller describes salesman whose name is Willy Loman recognizes the emptiness of his life and tries to fix it. . Willy is in a crisis. He is about to lose his job, he can't pay his bills, and his sons Biff and Happy don't respect him and can't seem to live up to their potential. He wonders what went wrong and how he can make things up to his family. Fences written by August Wilson is a play that plays the many roles of an African-American family that lives during a difficult period of time when Africans were being segregated. There are likely as many similarities between these two plays as there are differences.

Death of a Salesman and Fences has similar themes of conflict between fathers and sons, conflict between husbands and wives. Both Willy and Troy cheated their wives Linda and Rose. Willy met his mistress in Boston. Troy had a baby between him and mistress. Both fathers Troy and Willy are both intrusive in the lives of their children because they want their children to reach the success that they have always dreamed of. Troy refuses to see Lyons play music and does not let Cory play sports. Troy wants his sons to have more financial freedom and success, and he feels they will do so by getting real jobs. Willy is the same way with his kids.

Willy puts so much faith into his boys and their ability to be more successful than he was. He is disappointed with their current jobs and dependence on him, and he is excited by the prospect that they are going to finally live out the American Dream.

There are also many differences between two books. Willy keeps trying to kill himself but Troy fought death. In Death of a Salesman, Linda told her sons Biff and Happy about their father’s attempted suicide. “And behind the fuse box ― it happened to fall out ― was length of lubber pipe ― just short. There’s a little attachment on the end of it. I knew right away. And sure enough, on the bottom of the water of the water heater there’s a new little nipple on the gas pipe.” (pg. 59) At the end of the story, he commits suicide. Instead of Willy, according to Fences, Troy said to Mr. Death “Come on! It’s between you and me now! I be ready for you… but I ain’t gonna be easy.”(pg. 89) Rose is stronger than Linda. Rose always finds herself battling between the decisions that her husband, Troy, makes and with what she thinks is right.

She always holds her head up high and waits for better days. This play teaches us that being able to forgive and go on with your life portrays a lot of who you really are inside. But Linda is not like Rose. Linda does not want Willy to kill himself but she can’t tell him that she knows he is trying to. So she can’t stop Willy. She can just take care of him.

These two books, Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman and Fences by August Wilson, describes how they believes in what they considers the promise of the American Dream. Willy always talks to his brother Ben who is his brother and got an American Dream. Fences also describes coming of age within the cycle of damaged black manhood. In act one, Troy relate stories of their childhood in the south and tales of their relationships with difficult fathers. Their painful memories provide a context for understanding the similarities and differences of the generations separating Troy from Lyons and Cory.

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THE MOONLIT ROAD M AYUKO O KADA This story was written about the death of the mother and told by three people. One is the son who did not know the real facts of the case, second is the father who was amnesia after the death of his wife and third is the mother who was died in the case and told the story by using the power of a psychic medium. All three people can be unreliable narrator because each of them has unclear point, for example the son told the story in spite of not knowing the facts. Especially, the point that the mother told the story by using the power of the psychic medium is the most interesting one and also the most unreliable point for me.

Although the three narrators told the same story, we can feel that each person told different statement about the story, so it seems that the statement has no connection. However, as we read the story, the real facts of the case become obvious gradually and finally, the real facts proved. The statements of the first narrator, the son, who the murderer was and where the father disappeared after the case are appeared. The statement of the second narrator, the father, the facts that the murderer was him and what happened after the day of the case are proved. The statement of the last narrator, the mother, the fact that the father had a misunderstanding is proved. As this, the real facts can be seen gradually. This can be expressed because of the unreliable narrators, not the reliable narrators. This point is the good one of this story and we can feel interesting point and the originality of this story.

REACTION TO LIFE OF PI R ISA I ZUMIYA

Reviews

I watched Life of Pi. Life of Pi is the movie directed by Ang Lee. This movie became famous by its beautiful screen images. Firstly I will explain the plot summary of Life of Pi. One day, a boy called Pi and his family boarded a ship to move to America because of his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business. His father was owner of a zoo. However the ship they boarded encountered a storm and wrecked. Although he fortunately escaped from that ship, his parents and his brother could not. Pi escaped by taking a board. However in that board, there is a tiger named Richard Parker.

The board Pi and Richard Parker road drifted for a long time. All that long while, Pi was in danger of death of starvation and death by eaten by Richard Parker. Finally the board reached at Mexico. This is the simple plot summary of Life of Pi. Before I actually watched this movie, I imagined this movie as a very fantastic story filled with dream and wish. Also I thought in the end of the movie, Richard Parker would be tamed like a house cat. However this movie is more realistic and severe than I thought. Richard Parker was never tamed. Moreover I was shocked at that this story might be a made-up story by Pi. Pi might be replaced real story that he drifted with monstrous captain with fantastic story that he drifted with a tiger. I was shocked at the gap between my image of this story and actual story. However I love this movieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s screen image. I really regret I did not watch it at theatre.

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Integrated – Class Journal

CREATIVE WRITING

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Autumn 2013

SNAKE E MI R EDMOND

No one noticed when it first appeared.

Smoothing through an unseen rail, indifferently, with no sound.

The ruby eyes were watching, with only one aim.

It seemed to be playing with its own tongue, black and long.

I pulled the door in a flash. A pure white world was spread out. It was Jun’s house. I went through the cotton candy carpet surrounded by milky wall, passed through the silver beadwork curtain. The room out there is still full of white.

Jun, wearing forest green dress, stopped toying with her maroon hair in front of the dressing table and turned her face in my direction. “Koma.” Jun beamed with her apple cheeks. “How was the meeting yesterday?”

“Meeting?” Oh yeah, that was the excuse. “Ah…good.”

“Was Mr. Takahashi still angry at you?” She inclined her head. It reminds me of the canary.

“Ah...Yeah.” I watched the silky white wall prudently. Flower patterned.

She chuckled (why she’s always smiling? It’s a long time mystery) and started to pick a book from her faint blue book shelves next to the dressing table with humming. “Penguin do fly” “Studies Of Threskiornithidae” “Is the crow really bad?” “Wild Bird Picture Book –revise version-”… Watching Jun with contented mind, I wondered what tune she was humming.

Jun and I were members of the Bird Watching circle while in university. I hadn’t been a “believer” of my circle, but it is needless to say that after Jun joined our circle when I was in third year, I found myself eager to hand down my wide knowledge to the next generation as a senior. She was the cutest kitten I had ever seen.

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Creative Writing

“What kind of bird you like the best?” I’ve asked once. A few years ago.

“Every kind. But for rising, I would prefer canaries.”

“Why canaries?” I was a bit surprised because the choice was too general.

“Because they’re cute.” She raised her eyebrows. “Because they’re too universal as a pet, everyone tends to forget their beauty. You won’t be harmed by treasuring the small but happiest bird.”

For her, anything can be a positive existence. For me, she was the only positive existence. Now it’s changing. I’m poisoned by her.

Integrated – Class Journal

For our first date, I took her to Inokashira Park for bird watching, and in which date, I had realized how my recognition of her was overoptimistic.

She walked all over the woods in the park, and I was curious where she hid such energy inside her small build. I should admit that she was more tiger than a kitten. I couldn’t suggest resting for even a few minutes because I am a man, and I was fatigued as a stretched out rubber at the end of the day. It was quite impressing. And what was more, it turned out that her knowledge about birds and bird watching was already beyond that of mine.

“Look that’s a Rustic Bunting!”

“Yes yes.” I wanted to preach about Rustic Bunting but it seems that I know nothing about them.

“And look!” She was full of joy.

I looked at the place she pointed to found some kind of green bird. “Aha!” I nodded as if I knew it well. In fact, it was quite a pitiful first date.

“Helloooooo!” I remember the shop manager had a bald, round face, and always hopping. I met him yesterday.

“Oh you’re looking for a canary?” He’s stepping after me.

“You gonna give a present for someone? Hohoooo!” My face goes pink. Somehow he had a good intuition.

I gazed at Lemon yellow and flamingo pink-orange canaries and compared them. To tell the truth, during the six years of our relationship (not with him, I mean, with Jun), the number of my presents had been very small. I tried, but once I saw the necklaces and bracelets and pierced earrings and... I just didn’t know what to give. Gold? Pink? Star? Hearts?

What if she doesn’t like it and doesn’t wear it for whole her life? Isn’t it a waste of money? It is better for her to buy one for herself.

But this time. I had to buy. This plan had been warmed for even years. I though it’s very suiting to give her a canary when I proposed. Jun will give the canary a name.

A nice opening for our happy family. I decided to buy the flamingo one.

“You wanna buy that flamingo? I thought so! It’s the best decision to give pink canary to a cute, cute girl! Hohoooo!” I lost my words. Who on the earth is he? And at the same time, I remembered another important thing. A very important task. I must buy a ring.

Strong wing beat for three four times.

But now, it was buried in a cold marble ball.

From a crack, you’ll see bleeding pink.

Silence.

“Miiister Saakamotooo!”

A high pitched tone, peculiar for child voice.

A silky mushroom cut. A balanced face. Eyes which look down on everything.

I am reminded of what happened on Wednesday.

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Autumn 2013

So here he is. The silky Mushroom boy. Walking with me.

“Does your mom cut your hair?”

“No.” He looks up at me as if he is watching a strange thing.

“I go to a salon every month.” OK, I give up.

He takes me to a park which by chance is next to Jun’s apartment.

“Elaphe climacophora usually appears in a park, sometimes near a river. And the last time my Max was seen was in your house, so we are gonna look around this park today, near your apartment.” He took a map and a pencil case out from his rucksack. I leave him there and look up at Jun’s apartment. The sixth floor…

“What you’re doing? Peeping?”

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Creative Writing

I just left my apartment for work in the morning. Five or six school students, wearing the uniform of a well-known elementary in this aria were walking in front of me.

Among the boys and girls, there was a boy with a mushroom haircut, lecturing to the others in a bossy way which is a tendency of people who have silky hair (you should know these people if you are a kind of person whose hair is always rumpled).

“It is called Elaphe climacophora.” He must have practiced the words many times. He pronounced it very fluently.

“And it’s special because it’s white. Their common color is green. I’ve got it as a present for my entrance gift. It’s about two meters now.” All the parasites seemed interested as well as scared.

“But Max, which is the name of the snake” Snake? I gave him a stabbing glance. “had escaped.” Escaped? “Escaped?!” A plump girl with double chin screamed. The mushroom looked exultant.

So his snake killed the canary in my room. I tried not to remember the scene. I was very upset after the murder. My plan was ruined. I was also scared. I hate those eyes, and its shape… Then the boy suddenly turned to me.

“What’s the matter?”

“W-what?” Had I watched him too long? “Nothing, nothing.”

“What is it? What is it?”

“Umm…It seemed that my canary was killed by your snake.”

“Max did that?” The boy round his eyes. “I’m sorry to hear it.” He bowed, but his excitement was lifted by hearing the violent aspect of his snake. I found his eyes flashed in ruby red.

“So you have seen Max! Will you please hunt for my snake with me? You don’t look busy.”

“I am busy.” I clutched my business bag and made a busy face immediately.

“No, I’m busy too today.” He pointed the direction of his school. “But on Sunday, I believe you won’t have any work to do.” He opened his school backpack and took out his notebook. “Ten o’clock at this place, OK?” He stopped his glance at my name card which hung from my neck. I use it at work place. “Mr. Sakamoto.” He wrote my name down in his notebook. What a boy!

“What is your name?”

“No one tells their name to a stranger. The teacher told us.” He looked amazed but in fact, it was I that was scared to tell my name.

Integrated – Class Journal

“No.” I reply gently.

“You’re girlfriend lives there? Even though it’s you girlfriend, peeping is peeping.”

Oh, he’s just a child. Ignoring him would be good.

The mushroom talks again after a brief silence.

“What is your girlfriend’s name?”

I take a glance down to find an evil grin in his face. Isn’t the mouth splitting from eye to eye?

“Is she at home? Take me to her apartment!” The whisper of a devil. I looked at his mouth carefully. It’s normal size now.

In fact, I’m quite at a loss. What should I do with him? I closed my eyes and imagine what Jun will say.

Now the glittering marble string is smoothing on a rail again.

In triumph.

To the window.

A flamingo feather is floating in the air.

“Hello!” With her apple cheek smiling, she walks to the boy. I called her to the park.

“Hello!” The boy straightens his back.

“Wow, so cute!” She’s gullible. “What’s your name?”

“Yata Mistuhide! What is your name?” I look at the boy. Since he has a balanced face, it looks pretty cute when he smiles. The shiny hair reflects the sun on me.

“Call me Jun.” Seeing her patting Mitsuhide’s head, I want to raise a hue and cry over something but I don’t know what for.

“How old are you?”

“Eight!” He threw out his chest.

Since they had become very good friends, we moved into Jun’s apartment.

“Why it’s here?” In this clean, peaceful world?

A white thick snake was wiggling on her amethyst purple bed. Clammy and glittering.

How did it managed to get there?

Jun is kind of twisting her body in the same rhythm with the snake. Then she suddenly looks back at me. Her pupils are bigger and the white of her eyes are barely shown. I gazed her round and black lustered eyes.

“It came here the day before yesterday.” She hisses, flashing her knife-like teeth.

I shut my eyes and opened it again.

She is now sitting in front of the dressing table. “I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just kept it in my room. It did no harm on me so far.” After finishing checking her hair and makeup condition, she raises her eyebrows and threw a glance to the evil being. She simply looks worried.

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Creative Writing

“Max.” Mitsuhide grumbles. “You know this snake?” Jun blinks. I can tell that she’s purely surprised.

The snake seems to have no interest to us. I have an illusion of the snake as the master of this room. Knotting its body and untying, then knotting again and untying … It’s endless like the wave of the sea.

Mitsuhide comes around to himself. “Maaaaaaaaaax!” He skips forward and sits on the bed. The snake gives no reply. I could feel something in my hand. “Wow! Cold!” Jun laughs.

“I have something to tell you. Why don’t we go out?”

Out? Now? “Haha, lots of sweat.” She wipes my face and leads me out.

I take a deep breath and Jun breathe deeply too.

I look at Jun’s apple cheeks and find myself released from the spell gradually.

“You said you want to say something?”

“Oh yes.” She cocks her head on my side. It reminds me of the canary.

“I never thought that I would say this line…but I’m pregnant.”

In spite of her words, she doesn’t look so worried.

“Oh really.”

I looked at her stomach and imagined a mini-Jun swimming in there. I kneeled and grabbed out a classic navy blue box from my pocket.

“Will you marry me?”

A nice opening for our happy family.

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