Wellington College English Magazine 2017

WELLINGTON ENGLISH 2017

Silence in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

By Lucy W, L6th

I’ve always been drawn to the dark in Literature. Those who have no conscience have always fascinated me. I believe this is reflected in others too. It comes from the positive parts of our brain seeking some kind contrast in the darkness, some kind of fear. That’s why Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind captivated me so much.

This book is a simple concept: the story of a life. The life at which a man called Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is at the heart. He is born with a superhuman level of smell, which in turn forces every person, bar a rare few, to polarise him. Indeed, this polarisation comes due to his lack of any personal scent. However, the loneliness of Grenouille’s life does not particularly bother him, because he has the illustrious, saturated, “fleeting realm of scent” (Süskind, 1985).

From this world, he discovers a fragrance that tempts him past any form of morality lying in him: innocence, and thus he kills in order to capture this scent and make it his own.

The story itself, one must admit, is striking and surprising, and what drew me into it so completely was the calculated, anesthetized manner in which Grenouille spends his whole life and takes life, and how as a reader we never truly know what the man is thinking. This is not common in Literature. Often, writers will try to explain a character’s objectives, make the reader understand and therefore empathise, but Süskind does no such thing; he does not invite the reader to sympathise or understand Grenouille, he simply asks, almost in a Brechtian manner, that we read the story of this man, and accept the silences to be found in the book. The most prominent of which is the silence of the main character himself, Grenouille.

“His story will be told here” (Süskind, 1985), one of the first sentences of the book and one that sets up the third person narrative that continues throughout. Grenouille remains a silent character. Although we are aware of some of his thoughts and all of his actions, we never truly understand fully this complicated, animalistic man. However, this is as the world saw him too, a “tick” (Süskind, 1985). By making Grenouille silent, even to those who are reading his story, Süskind ingeniously invites the world to see Grenouille through the eyes of the society that surrounds him, and therefore he includes us, the reader, in the blame of the polarisation of this man.

This general silence which occupies the character drives him further and further from civility and eventually to a barren mountain where only some insects and snakes can survive. What is interesting, however, is that this silent land creates the loudest outpouring of sound from this man that has been heard yet in the book as Grenouille erupts “with thundering jubilation” (Süskind, 1985), not only is this the most noise that has come from Grenouille, but it is also the first time that he has expressed true, unadulterated joy in the whole book. Yet, even for this character that searches for solitude, silence and complete isolation from humanity, his own presence and thoughts are too much for him.

They echo inside his head, as he discovers, for the first time that he, the man who can smell even wood right to its core fibres, does not own his own scent. This thought drives him back into society after “seven years” (Süskind, 1985) of isolation. Yet, once he returns so does the silent Grenouille.

What is so stark about Grenouille’s silence is that Süskind ingeniously creates a plethora of other characters that surround Grenouille who, themselves are wholly honest to the reader, making every thought and downfall known. The most honest of all being Giuseppe Baldini, the perfumer that Grenouille goes to work for, for several years in Paris. This man, from his introduction to the reader admits that he “has never in his life been… a great perfumer” (Süskind, 1985). He has simply continued to steal and re-use scents, passing them off as his own. This fraud has made a great deal of money on the talents of others, and this does not change when the most talented nose of all time arrives at his doorstep. Baldini takes Grenouille in and creates a perfuming empire with the talents of this young man, and there is no silence of Baldini’s thoughts as he explains his plans to the reader.

It is not only the lack of quietness in others that creates this dichotomy, highlighting Grenouille’s own silence, but it is also those few moments that the character opens up to the reader and through the narrator describes in exact detail what he is thinking.

Yet, when we receive these truths, we are quite surprised of what we find. This man, who has been looked down upon by all, regards himself with a divine quality. Towards the end of the book, the narrator explains that Grenouille was “in very truth his own God” (Süskind, 1985), and that this is how he perceives himself as he masters his creation and extraction of scent. Even his first word is surprising as it takes a great deal of time to come and when it

does it is one word “fishes” (Süskind, 1985). Grenouille exclaims this word not for an advantageous reason or to get something that he wants (this reason being generally why babies first speak), but because he has identified one of the smells that has been prominent in his life. Indeed, from the opening chapter we are made aware that “abstract ideas” like “justice, conscience, God” all remain “a mystery to Grenouille” (Süskind, 1985), because they lack a scent and to Grenouille the only use of words is to communicate to us mere mortals what he can smell.

However, the stark silence that remains an undercurrent throughout the book, and what draws me to the story and Grenouille is the silence of his conscience. There is never a moment where he regrets or questions the 26 murders that he commits throughout the course of his life. He never seems guilty or disgusted with himself and that is what is truly terrifying about this man. For example, often, we feel sympathy for those on Death Row because they seem to contain human emotion which causes them regret and despair at the atrocities they commit, even in Macbeth by William Shakespeare, we almost back Macbeth and his wife, because we understand their motives behind the killings, and they both express serious regret at what they have done later in the play. However, here we find a murderer whose only regret is that, selfishly, he himself does not have a scent. In the end the death of these young women is all for nothing, because although Grenouille manages to capture the scent of innocence as he was so dedicated to do, he ends up killing himself, taking the magical scent with him.

Indeed, his suicide is caused by the realisation that no matter what perfume he creates for himself, his own body will never and has never had a natural scent. Even when he puts on the perfume of innocence that causes a whole village to fall to their knees and see him as God, he admits to the reader that “For once, just for once, he wanted to be apprehended for his true being, for other human beings to respond with an answer to his only true emotion, hatred” (Süskind, 1985). This craving to be accepted, and even more so, simply noticed, and moreover the realisation that this will never happen, drives Grenouille to kill himself.

In my opinion, there is an extended metaphor created throughout the entire book by Süskind as Grenouille’s lack of scent seems to also represent his lack of conscience. This lack of odour is what

repels everyone from him, it is what isolates him and dehumanises him, but I think that via this lack of scent everyone who comes across Grenouille understands that there is an evil that lies within him, or rather nothing lies within him. This complete lack, an abyss of morality, is tangible to all who come into his presence. I don’t believe that Grenouille enjoys the murders that he commits, I don’t even think he ever intended for them to happen, but I also believe that he does not hate doing them. For Grenouille’s one purpose in life seems to be to smell and to create smell, as his nose is the one thing that separates him from other humans. So, Grenouille believes that if he uses this talent he will fit in in this world that so completely rejected him. However, in the creation of this scent there is a sudden, very noisy revelation that it is not enough, that, in reality, this extraordinary life that he has lead means nothing, and so he dies a gruesome death where he is torn limb from limb in order to get the last hit of the one thing he has felt throughout his life, pain.

Through the story of Grenouille Süskind exposes a darkness within all of us via silence, because the silence of Grenouille and his conscience, the lack of silence in the other characters and sometimes in Grenouille himself all lead the reader to fill in the gaps, and by filling in those gaps, we are exposing that perhaps, in all us, a little bit of Grenouille is hidden and waiting to be brought into the light.

Bibliography Süskind, P. (1985). Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. ( J. E. Woods, Trans.) Zürich, Switzerland: Diogenes Verlag A G.

Adlestrop Prologue

By John H, 3rd Yes, when dear Aldlestrop Welcomed train with a toot, The sun pricked every field In a place in England sweet.

With wind the night is brought to life And with morning come people that seek On journeys to sundry lands.

The palmers that have helped the sick, They make the crops holy And with virtue the showers pierce The pilgrims that journey And makes the earth blissful.

For the birds sing And nature is full of bliss On that April day Wherein they went to Adlestrop.

The Allure of the Namib Desert

Extreme Writing Challenge by Charlotte O, L6

It’s difficult to explain the allure of the Namib desert. Selling points include highs of 35°C during winter, thousands of kilometers of barren land, and totally wild animals who make no sacrifices for the whims of humans; all of the above are enough to keep your average British tourist at bay. If previous trips are anything to go by, it seems that Brits go abroad for two reasons: to find other fellow holiday-goers and seek western comforts overseas, or to escape from everything that reminds them of home, and explore the furthest corners of the world. With the exception of the omnipresent pot of marmite in the back of the jeep, we seem to be the latter.

Every few miles or so we’d rumble past a small settlement in a clearing, a broken-off car door or lone Jeep tyre clearly marking the location. We were told by my Aunt and Uncle early on that we were there with the animals’ permission. This was not a safari. The roads were eerily quiet, and especially during the night, the back of my neck would prickle with the sensation of being watched. They

could see us, yet unless they wanted us to, we couldn’t see them.

Despite searching for elephants being the main goal of our days, the evening sunsets were a sight to behold. Only the richest reds and oranges of the African palette stained the sky, and a deep haze settled on the vast expanse of sand and bush. It was transformed from an arid terrain where we sweated under the brutal African sun, to a hushed dreamland. A rare occasion for my far-flung family to gather and reconnect, we’d sit by the fire every evening – sweet potatoes caramelising on the coals – and make the sort of conversation and jokes that seem standard in normal life, but took on unspoken value in the silence of the Namib desert.

The Machiavellian revolution can be signified by the re-interpretation of a single word – virtue. An evaluation of language change.

By Alex S, U6th

The Machiavelli concept of virtue differs from the conventional meaning of the word ‘virtue’ that has been classically referred to as moral excellence. He instead develops his own idea of virtue, which closely parallels the Roman meaning, where being noble, brave and ruthless are qualities of a virtuous person.

In Latin ‘virtus’ refers to manliness; however, this is not the type of virtue equivalent that is referred to by Machiavelli. Instead he uses the Italian word virtú, which translates to the qualities of boldness or cunning. This meaning of virtue – virtú - corresponds much more to Machiavelli’s principle that a ruler must do anything he can to ensure success or greatness, and the actions he makes whilst ensuring this are seen as virtuous.

Machiavelli argues that, with the classical Christian interpretation virtue of moral excellence set aside, Princes should focus on the context and result of an action to determine its value. Machiavelli boldly states that Princes "must be prepared not to be virtuous,"1 and he says that sometimes vices are "necessary for safeguarding the state."2 In his eyes this would be a departure from the classical Christian idea of virtue and an assertion of a more pragmatic view. This return to Roman pragmatism is what I refer to as the Machiavellian revolution – the political revolution that has reconstructed the mind-set of leadership and success.

1 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 44 2 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 40

‘Virtue’ as moral excellence is replaced with ‘virtú’ of total ruthless success, and this work, with the advocation of the latter, greatly impacted European political thinking.

imply that this person is not and could not be virtuous. But with Machiavelli, although some of a man’s actions are immoral, the man can still show some signs of virtú – such as ruthlessness.

In Chapter VIII of Machiavelli, Agothocles from Syracuse, Sicily, can be seen as both possessing and not possessing virtue.

Machiavelli describes Agothocles as possessing great virtue of “mind and body”3 even though he admits that he “hold by violence and without obligation to others the authority”4 , that he obtained. Machiavelli praises Agothocles’ pragmatic leadership, and believes that his undertaking of” many daring and dangerous enterprises”5 can be seen as being virtuous. This aligns with the Roman view that overcoming great difficulty can be seen as virtuous, however, Machiavelli nevertheless does not praise his use of crime and deception. He states that these modes “may lead to power, but which confer no glory”6 , thus accepting that these values cannot be deemed virtuous.

Though, completing them and thus overcoming adversity can lead to virtú, and can lead to being an “excellent captain”7 – how Machiavelli describes Agathocles. The classical Christian concept of virtue would condemn Agothocles’ immoral actions such as “kill one’s citizens”8 and would thus

Machiavelli also appears to value the pursuit of material attainment over the pursuit of moral virtues. A line that summarises this theme comes in chapter XV:

3 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 21 4 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 21 5 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 21 6 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 21 7 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 21

“One will find something appears to be virtue, which if pursued would be one’s ruin, and something else appears to be vice, which if pursued results in one’s security and wellbeing”9 This statement indicates Machiavelli’s belief that it may not be sustainable for people to follow traditional rules about what people intuitively believe to be morally virtuous, as this approach often leads to the sacrifice of material achievements. Machiavelli praises the ability for Princes’ to identify when they must choose between virtue and vice, all with the egotistic utilitarian goal of ensuring their success. As Machiavelli states, a Prince must be prepared to “act in defiance of good faith, of charity, of kindness, of religion”10, and know when to do so.

Other than moral virtú, Machiavelli also

8 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 21 9 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 40 Pp. 46 10 Machiavelli, N. (1992). New York: Dover Thrift Editions.

focuses on the virtú that Princes can obtain by obtaining remarkable political attributes.

Machiavelli very much appreciates Princes that overcome initial difficulties in securing power, but eventually reach a position of security. This is illustrated in Chapter VI as he praises the determination of leaders such as Romulus and Cyrus.11 However another key theme, the role of fortune, plays a significant role in the successes of, these Princes’. Machiavelli explains that there is a certain connection between the serendipity of the individual and the virtú that he displays. Machiavelli uses the example of Theseus, “Nor could Theseus have displayed his great qualities had he not found the Athenians disunited and dispersed”12 – no great leader’s success is solely up to his actions or political virtú – it is intertwined with his opportunities.

Fortune can mean the conditions and opportunities that they encountered with their birth situation, or the help they received from others in achieving success.

Machiavelli contrasts the rise to princedom between Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia in Chapter VII, the former having “singular ability” and rising “from privacy” whilst the latter had “favourable fortunes of his father”13. Sforza shows great virtú, and is thus rewarded by establishing a stable kingdom, even from his humble beginnings.

Although Borgia too demonstrates virtú, through military and diplomatic prowess, he “lost”14 his position in the end to unfortunate circumstances. Machiavelli suggests that a Prince must displays virtú and choose actions that will profit him in the end, as he is always at risk of losing his position due to “the extraordinary and extreme malignity of Fortune”15. Machiavelli has seen Princes act with the Christian attributes of virtue and then lose their positions due to fortune, reinstating the importance of virtú. Fortune could turn against the Prince at any time, whatever his circumstances, and thus he should be determined to make difficult for fortune to dethrone him by striving for personal success.

Starting from chapter XV, Machiavelli begins to discuss more thoroughly the qualities that he thinks successful leaders should aim to possess: their virtú. Although he does maintain that a leader should strive to have

11 Machiavelli, N. (1992). Of New Princedoms Which before Their Acquisition Have Lived under Their Own Laws Are to Be Governed. The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions.

12 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 13 13 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 15 14 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 15 15 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 16

moral standards, his argument for these to be upheld are always tempered by their efficiency in controlling and being beneficial for the state. The quotation “no quality so self-destructive as liberality; for while you practise it you lose the means whereby it can be practised” and become “hated”, summates Machiavelli’s principle16. A Prince should seek to be generous in his daily life, as it is a virtuous act, however, bringing this into his political life can lead to negative consequences, and thus he should refrain from doing so. Machiavelli praises the deception used by Pope Julius the Second and others, through acting liberally and charitably in their rise to power in order to win over the public, then lessening their benevolence after securing their position of power.

Machiavelli argues that the knowledge of how to manipulate the public’s sentiment toward them is an important quality, and a Prince must do what he can to maintain control. The striking phrase, “Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved”17, encapsulates Machiavelli’s approach to leadership and princedom; if fear better controls a population than love, then this is what must be pursued. Machiavelli defends the use of cruelty on some occasions, as it could be beneficial to the future of the state and is therefore justified, although he does not support an unwarranted use of cruelty.

Qualities that facilitate personal success and power are promoted, although they are often against the Christian virtues. These qualities are consistent with his virtú – acts that present the Prince as powerful and respected, and this is powerfully expressed in this phrase:

his followers, contrasting the fortitude shown by Scipio, which lead to his public renunciation.19 A Prince can justifiably undertake any action under the basis that he expects his opponents to do the same unto him, reacting to his severe Stalin-esque anxiety. This will lead to pragmatic qualities that Machiavelli argues are necessary for a successful Prince to contain, such as duplicitousness, narcissism and braveness, which form his interpretation of virtú.

The classical Christian formulation of a type of communal virtue is utterly reinterpreted by Machiavelli, and using a conversational-style demotic Italian he forms a linguistic revolution in the way theories are presented. This definition is not universal, as leaders’ cannot follow it whilst also ensuring their success and survival. Thus ‘The Prince’ offers a different type of virtue that is required for total success and survival, and this borrows many attributes from the Roman pragmatic idea of virtú. The following of the Christian virtue can lead man to destruction rather than conservation, and only once a man learns "how to do evil, if that is necessary," can he attain his desires.

"How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and live with integrity rather than by craftiness, everyone understands; yet we see from recent experience that those princes have accomplished most who paid little heed to keeping their promises” 18 Machiavelli’s ideal qualities of a Prince are subsequently established in chapter XVIII, where his hard utilitarian approach to morality is presented. He takes the example of Hannibal, where his qualities of bravery and controlled cruelty inspired

16 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 42 17 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 43 18 Machiavelli, N. (1992). The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. Pp. 45

19 Machiavelli, N. (1992). How Princes Should Keep Faith.

The Prince. New York: Dover Thrift Editions.

In at least two works of poetry you have studied, compare how images convey the thoughts and feelings of the speaker.

IB SL timed response by Ben H, U6th Both Carol Ann Duffy and Thomas Hardy use vivid imagery to convey their intense thoughts and emotions. Duffy, in particular use imagery and nature to portray the joy she feels during the relationship, but also to portray the pain she endures. Hardy, on the other hand, uses light imagery alongside nature in a melancholic tone to convey the heightened emotions of his wife’s death.

Heat imagery is of significant importance in conveying intense emotions, both of joy and of suffering. Throughout her collection, Duffy uses metonymy of heat to provide a further dimension in conveying emotions. In the poem ‘Rain’, Duffy opens with “Not so hot as a hundred years”, which immediately provides heat imagery. The trochee of the line adds a regular rhythm, which suggests regularity and hence positive, warm emotions. In addition, the inverted sentence structure emphasises ‘not’, which puts further emphasis on ‘hot’, which is part of the internal half rhyme.

This is complemented by a “century’s heat” in ‘Rain’ as well. The notion of heat provides the idea that to Duffy the relationship is warm and welcome. Furthermore, the heat is a metaphor for her positive feelings for her lover; with it being hot, her emotions are so elevated. Further to the notion of heat being omnipresent in the relationship, the heat can also have negative connotations on Duffy’s feelings. Despite Duffy using heat imagery to convey joyful emotions, heat also comes back to create pain and suffering for her.

In ‘Row’, Duffy depicts an argument in media res. The heat, which prior to this was positive, comes back to literally hurt her. Duffy describes an argument and hence the heat of the relationship, in which the heat damages her through “burning like verbs”. The plosive ‘b’ in “burning” is unpleasant and conveys further pain for Duffy. Furthermore, the heat has come to hurt her. Conveying that she is now feeling sad and painful emotions from the relationship.

The simile of comparing ‘burning’ to being like ‘verbs’ further suggests that she is familiar with the heat, as she has knowledge within the lexical field of literary techniques. The heat is also present in ‘Over’ by Duffy, in which it ‘burns’ her again, thus alluding that the heat is unbearable for her and causing immense suffering.

Hardy, on the other hand, conveys heat imagery in an opposing manner. Hardy describes the scenes in his poems as being “as cold as winter”. In ‘Where the picnic was’, Hardy creates a solemn overall tone through the harsh imagery of ‘winter mire’. By opposing Duffy’s heat to convey painful, burning emotions, Hardy creates solemn imagery of frost and cold hardship. In particular, in ‘Where the picnic was’, the poem started with a “fire on a summer’s day”.

The fire is a metaphor for joy and a happy relationship between

friends whilst being warm. The juxtaposition of having the scene in a cold winter creates a Volta in which Hardy’s hear has frozen and are sad after the death of his wife.

Natural imagery is used to create ideas of joyful emotions, but also can be used to convey death and painful feelings. Both Hardy and Duffy use grass to convey the connection between them and their lover. Initially, Duffy uses the imagery of grass as being a fresh, bright feeling of the joy she feels in the relationship. In ‘Hour’ Duffy and her lover are in a ‘grass’ field experiencing passionate love, in which the grass aids creating erotic imagery. However, this soon demises.

In ‘Over’, Duffy describes a “ring of grass”. This accentuates the notion that the relationship was easily broken, since the ring is a metaphor for the relationship. The notion that it is made out of grass that it was always weak; it was ominous that the relationship would end. Hardy also uses this natural imagery of pain through grass in “Where the picnic was”. Hardy conveys the “grass is grey”, in which it has died. The alliteration suggests the sudden nature of this, as well as how powerful his emotions are. The nature is such that his feelings are so melancholic and sad that nature can die.

Duffy uses the death of nature to convey her feelings of anger and distress once the relationship has broken up. In ‘Over’, the garden is described as being “dead with bines, grown from the dead”. The bones here are a metaphor for the relationship in which it has died completely. This is reaffirmed by being ‘dead’ in which it cannot be resurrected. Furthermore, the notion of Duffy’s feelings being so powerful that they can kill nature is conveyed by trees “loosing their leaves”. The alliteration adds a melancholic tone to this, especially since the trees are another metaphor for Duffy without her lover; bare and withered. This notion of negative natural imagery is contrasted by earlier poems such as ‘Rain’ in which the “garden” was seen as a place of joy and hope; especially as it was conveyed as being ‘hot’.

Imagery of birds are used to allude the death of relationships. In ‘The Darkling Thrush’ by Hardy, the bird sings a “death lament” which creates a sound image of death looming in the air. This is also present in Duffy’s poem ‘Over’, in which the bird sings at a “Piercing hour”. The plosive ‘p’ suggests an unpleasant noise. Here the bird is singing a “death lament” and signifying the death of the relationship.

Further building in the natural imagery in ‘Rain’ by Duffy, religious imagery is of significant importance in conveying powerful, positive

emotions of love. In ‘Rain’ Duffy uses the rain as a Volta for the connection in the relationship. The rain “coming down” suggests a connection between Duffy and her lover, whilst creating erotic imagery. Furthermore, the rain coming down is a biblical reference from the book of Matthew. The notion of biblical references conveys the relationship is so divine it is on a spiritual level and conveys ultimate feelings of pleasure and happiness.

A final area that is important to consider is the use of light imagery to reflect heightened emotions between the lovers. In ‘Rain’

by Duffy, a ‘rose’ is used as a metaphor to convey the intimacy between Duffy and the lover. A significant point in the relationship is demonstrated through light imagery when the sun’s light “flares” back off the rose. The onomatopoeia of ‘flare’ conveys ultimate feelings of joy and bright images of connection. This Volta of the sun flaring back represents the lover conveying her feelings back at Duffy and therefore reaffirming their passion for each other.

The passion for each other is further exemplified in ‘Hour’. Duffy describes erotic imagery of their time of intimacy as being in the “Midas Light”. The mythopoeic light imagery of this is a reference to the Greek myth of king Midas, who sought for everything he touched to turn to gold. This mythical connotation therefore conveys the level in which Duffy values the relationship; it is equitable to hold the most precious metal there is.

Hardy similarly uses pleasant mythical images of light to convey powerful, joyful emotions. In ‘She, To him I’, Hardy indirectly conveys his feelings of passion in the relationship through a young girl. She describes her eyes as “stars” which are “shining”. This alliteration provides regular rhythm thus creating pleasant imagery for the reader. This pleasant light imagery is much like Duffy’s; it is used to convey passionate feelings and value between the two in the relationship.

Thus, to conclude, both Duffy and Hardy use vivid imagery to convey passionate feelings of intimacy, but also intense feelings of distraught. Heat imagery is used primarily by Duffy to convey heightened emotions of joy but also of suffering which ‘burns’ her emotionally. Hardy uses natural imagery of grass to contrast previous emotions of the melancholic feelings he now endures.

Furthermore, light imagery is used by both Duffy and Hardy, but particularly in ‘Hour’ to convey passionate and intense emotions of solitude and love for both Hardy and Duffy.

Banquo’s Dying Speech from ‘Macbeth’

by Ramarni W, 4th

What are these vultures that circle above Me now? Two, three, four. More and more again And still they fly. What boundless horizon Would keep them back? What stretch of time would stay Their beat of wings and bring them to the ground.

And now vipers among the flowers three, Cloaked in garments of petals to hide their Slip'ry underneaths. Fie and fie again.

They too circle, and sing in voice and rounded tongue above hiss. Deception twice over And so much more, a lifetime's worth, a Brotherhood's worth. And yet, who'd have thought that My gentle companion would become a Vulture such as these. Still the sing of the Snakes, still the sting of the scorpions, and a Bite more mortal than this. How my son flees, On legs like the wings of the vultures above, And gentler, so gentle, like the air that Carries them to me now. But he flees to Another end, something far brighter than These bleak visions. The snakes are upon me.

Out foul equivocators, out wretched Wraiths! How these adders must hound my friend so Alike them. Whence must they have crawled? What dank Bog or barren plain would have birthed them? So Much power. Of word. Of tooth. Of silver Tongue that lets man fall to their knees in blank Harkness. Hark! A voice above their singing.

Hark! A voice above the vultures. The crow croaks His call from the bough. The raven beside Me roosts. Hark! The voice again, and a name On its awful tongue, Tells me to not think on what has been done.

The villain of villains portrays this death To hang on but one neck and name: Macbeth!

Stops

By Olivia C, 3rd The glittering light bombarded the room, That cold Monday morning of which nothing we knew, Those crumpled up flowers were just starting to bloom, Only to live and die again when the wind blew.

The red in the west ceases to burn, Only the star, shining more brightly now, Fills me with hope that my love will return, That the walls I built, would come crashing down.

The great loved we shared was all I had, No money, no life, no one single penny, Before you I was always so mad, But now, all I feel is cold and empty.

If only the light could reach a few more feet, To touch the face of a man who knew of defeat, Who sits to watch the tick tock of a clock, The passing months go by, until the wind stops.

Divergent

Transactional Writing by Milly T, 3rd In Divergent, the society created by Veronica Roth is divided into five factions: Abnegation (selflessness), Erudite (intelligence/pursuit of knowledge), Dauntless (bravery), Amity (kindness/peace), and Candor (honesty/no secrets). You are born into the faction of your parents, and you learn their faction's ways until you are 16, when you take a sort of personality test to work out which factions you have an aptitude for. You then choose your faction from that, though you don't have to follow your aptitude. This whole process works pretty smoothly for the main character until she finds out she has aptitudes for three different factions, not the normal one single faction, thus spawning a whole storyline of being hated, cast out, fighting for her society as she is the only one who can change things. Now this is all well and good if you want to take it as a classic superhero, Hollywood action film, but it also throws up some salient points about our culture and society.

The most obvious issue thrown up by Divergent is how being 'different' is bad. In our society, being different is not always encouraged - the cut-throat world of high school is portrayed by hundreds of teen books and films as a haven for cliques, stereotyped groups and people who will judge you for not following the crowd. Things like having an iPhone are so mainstream that you're seen as 'uncool' or 'behind' if you don't actually own one. People assume that if you don't have one, you wish you did, and refute the idea that you might be doing it on purpose or just genuinely might not care. The 'different' people in Divergent are physically assassinated because they are dangerous to the ones who are mainstream and therefore create and circulate the 'right' ideal for their culture. So it could be seen as a celebration of being individual, since the ones who are eventually shown to be better (ie the undamaged and more beneficially evolved "different" ones), are actually the Divergents who were seen as bad before. The film reflects society's habit of chasing widely accepted ideals, following the crowd and being afraid of stepping out of line, and represents the much-parroted line that 'being yourself is all you can do'. As much as you roll your eyes whenever these cheesy lines are benignly delivered by blankly smiling teachers, there is some value in the thought, and Divergent delivers this message throughout the film. However, there are some negative undertones- the Factionless technically are the most 'different' there, as they're the ones who didn't conform to their faction's rules, but they live in poverty and helplessness, relying on food donations from Abnegation and undesirable jobs like sweeping the streets, so maybe conformity is good to a certain degree.

Going deeper down, the book also says something about stereotypes, 'desirable' characteristics and only improving the excellent. The factions are probably the most obvious representation of stereotypes possible: the aptitude test practically says 'You're kind, off you go to Amity' or 'you're clever, Erudite's for you'. Of course, there is the necessary element of self-choice, but that is furtively discouraged.

No-one anywhere in the film says "I'm already pretty clever, so instead of going to Erudite I'm going to go to Amity and work on my kindness". Seeing as the whole purpose of the film's society is to improve those five key values as much as possible, this is slightly peculiar.

This also reflects our own habit of expecting you to be good at or bad at certain things, just based on your looks, heritage or personality.

For example, if you were a rugby coach picking a team of boys to develop, it would probably be logical in your mind to go for the ones who are big, strong and look pretty tough, preferably with past experience, no matter if their attitude is a bit questionable. You aren't exactly going to be jumping for joy if your interview room is full of little weedy boys who play the flute but have an attitude to learn, and if there are a few of each you're sure to pick the former. You'll just think 'Oh, we can fix their attitude' instead of 'Oh, we can fix their playing'. This is fairly normal practice in the modern world- you pick the top ones in Harvard Law School for the big firm jobs, you choose the clever bright students for extension work and extra activities, you push the less academically advanced ones into DT or sports as it is 'better if they can keep up'. This is a trend gaining more and more traction - improving and exploiting the skills that are already excellent.

This makes sense from a pragmatic point of view- why wouldn't you do more of something you're good at? - but it leaves your other skills neglected, meaning you get worse and worse at them. Grammar schools were a commonly quoted exacerbation of this - you pick the already-bright poor kids to train them up and send them to big universities, while you leave the dumber poor kids languishing in state schools, because what's the point of wasting government money on kids who are never going to make the top jobs, or make their own multinational corporation, or become the next PM? There's no point in training the bin-men of the future in higher art and the fine points of writing an amazing essay on The Battle of Quebec. But these views miss the main ideal of our culture, the main thing we're meant to be about- equality and inclusiveness. So a dyslexic kid can't write a paragraph without at least five spelling mistakes, and gets the bottom mark for every essay - maybe he could be the next big thing in abstract art forms, as they require no set patterns. So a girl can't do maths to save her life, and messes up even the simplest calculation - maybe she could be the next CEO of Google, since she can think outside the box and not conform to given structures. Our society has some fundamental flaws, and books or films like Divergent can be the perfect thing to help us express these, and raise awareness so we can change them.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art; the other being the eternal and the immovable. – Charles Baudelaire

By Veronica V, L6th

The second half of the Nineteenth Century was pervaded by a slow and gradual infiltration of the popular, a desire of renewal that had blossomed after the cultural shock of the first world war with the longing for redemption. From an ashen pale (p.135) city, rises Modernism, a movement which, rather than dealing with the physicality καλοκαγαθία of the Ancient Greek ideal of men, tackles what everybody has: an inner self and consciousness. This consciousness is scrutinized and exposed by, arguably, one of the most innovative and influential writers: Virginia Woof, in her novel Mrs Dalloway, first published in 1925.

At the beginning of the novel, as Clarissa buys fish from a fishmonger on Bond Street, when asked if she would like something else, she replies that is all (p.8), an ordinary remark illustrative of the clumsiness of factual realism. However, Woolf’s ability resides precisely in going beyond these superficial convictions and as Clarissa, pausing for a moment (p.8), repeats the second that is all (p.8), we plunge into Clarissa’s thoughts and are brought to a time before the war (p.8). It is the pause and the ability to see beyond and behind that makes Woolf capable of exploring the core of the human essence. We enter the era of abstractions and fantasies other than what is real. Evidence of this is found in Peter Walsh’s recollections of Clarissa, that stem from deep emotion… extraordinarily clear, yet puzzling (p.37) rather than the place or the event: … what room? What moment? (p.37). It is in this novel that Woolf uses the flow of consciousness, a modality of expression almost more than it is an abstraction, to enter the minds of her characters and portray cultural and individual change. Such a change was portrayed in art through the distorted dimension of Cubism that contributes multiple perspectives but adds an extra dimension, and by painters such as Cézanne and, further on, Manet. This technique of infiltrating the character’s minds not only depicts individual change in different shades but exposes the stark contrast in the way through which the different characters’ cope with the war. Baudelaire is the first author to explore the source of the intangible dimension of realism whose irony resides in it’s very subjectivity. The irony of the fleeting realism is characterized by Woolf in Rezia’s struggle to make her shell-shocked husband see real things and as she points them out: look…look…look… look…Oh look (p.19), Septimus looks but doesn’t see for he believes it is unseen that bade him look (p.19). In England, TS Eliot follows with the Wasteland (1922), Joyce with Ulysses. Modernism isn’t, however, a literary movement. It is a development of consciousness and it stems from the common sentiment. Mrs Dalloway is a break with reality because it deals

with the realest reality of all: that of our minds. It isn’t only the novel of modernism, it is the novel of change; a change that is explored through consciousness, gender, time and setting.

This consciousness is dealt with through the powerful narrative voice of the ordinary housewife and hostess Mrs Dalloway. Externally she is perceived as superficial and described by Miss Kilman as a fool and simpleton, who has known neither sorrow nor pleasure and has trifled her life away (p.91). Her identity is submerged and eclipsed by that of her husband and by that of the city, of London’s crowd. Gender is explored through Woolf’s portrayal of Mrs Dalloway in a curiously normal way, a woman slightly out of place in a society in which she wonders if any man could understand what she meant either? About life? (p.89) Mrs Dalloway condemns a society that judges superficially and never knew what people thought (p.115), their past, the pleasure of the thought of it (p.125) and the past of the people around them whose lives they have touched. She gives us knowledge of people not through width of vision but depth of it: Peter…was overcome by his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day (p.31). The use of a simile to compare grief to the moon is evocative of the distance of feeling from the trivial terrain things. The use of the oxymoronic expression ghastly beautiful to describe moon as a symbol of grief, is used to convey the dichotomy between the atrocious and overwhelming yet thrilling feeling of feeling more deeply, more passionately, every year (p.141).

Vision and depth lead us to the most important dimension of knowledge and distorted perception: that of time; both as context and unit of development of the plot. It is the “borrowed time” Clarissa’s class is living on, and which is getting shorter minute by minute (p.70), and the fleeting values that have built the unsteady columns that stand on the crumbling base of the British empire. Mrs Dalloway is a powerful novel that affects the future by stemming from the past. So to understand the effect it had on the future let us first understand the past. A past that was clearly not understood by Mrs Dalloway who had got through her life on the few twigs of knowledge Fraulein Daniels gave her…a Mrs Dalloway whose fatal flaw or blessing came from the knowledge that in some ways, she knew nothing (p.7). The novel takes place in June 1923, and even though five years have passed since the war ended, the emptiness left by the war is still lingering. Every day’s beauty, sense and color (p.10) is stifled by the

nonsense, nonsense (p.10) of this superficial dimension that the pistol shot in the street outside (p.10) reminds us of. People are left with a sense of dismay and drift in search for something, the only thing that brings them back to reality being the inexorable passing of time Big Ben reminds them of. The clock began striking (p.135), the clock striking (p.135), the clock was striking (p.135), is evidence of the Clock’s role of anchoring humanity to reality as the consciousness attempts to escape the present time, trading it for the past.

A past Virginia Woolf recognizes as irretrievable through the realization that she could not bring back the victims of the First World War, but could only commemorate them. Woolf does this through the evocation of traumas and mourning as this late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears (p.8) and as Woolf reminds us of what we owe to the dead (p.93). Humanity had trouble, however, filling the emptiness left by the war and so it was fear that crept in and slowly occupied the stillness of a warm June day as the sound of the plane can still ‘ominously’ bring to mind the German planes (p.35). Along with the void, there is the war. No longer a happening but a presence, an onlooker, a member of the crowd that walks through St James’s street with orphans, widows, the War (p.17). Through the portrayal of this broken society, Woolf condemns militarism and war (Men must not cut down trees) and throughout the narration almost obsessively reminds us of the dead, haunting humanity with the ghosts of the war victims. Victims that we can’t see but that we can hear: A patter of leaves in a wood came from behind, and with it a rustling, regular thudding sound, which as it overtook him drummed his thoughts, strict in step, up Whitehall…Boys in uniform, carrying guns, marched with their eyes ahead of them… (p.4).

Woolf recursively alludes to fallen leaves, a powerful symbolic imagery from Ancient Literature for the dead, to remind us of what we can’t see that is there. The war, however, can be said not to have had entirely negative consequences for the consciousness of humanity. With the fallen leaves, it brought a grief-stricken and hallucinating Septimus Smith to the realization that leaves were alive, trees were alive…the leaves being connected by millions of fibres with his own body (p.19). Even though delusional it recalls humanity’s shared values and burdens and reminds the faces in the crowd that they are not alone in their isolation.

Concrete allusions and references to the war are found in the novel in Septimus’ mention of Evans’ death, who was killed, just before the Armistice, in Italy (p.73). Furthermore, the whole of the novel is permeated with military language and use of words belonging to the semantic field of warfare as Clarissa plunged at Burton into the open air (p.1), Richard Dalloway comes back home bearing his flowers like a weapon (p.99) and Peter Walsh thinks of London thrusting her bayonets into the sky (p.137), the bayonets metaphor for the electric street lights.

Further proof of military language is found in the attribution of cannonlike qualities to the emblem of post-war London: Big Ben. A suspense… before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable (p.1). The use of the words strikes, boomed, and irrevocable, could be interpreted as painting the picture of a tyrannical and unjust time. A time that just like the war, takes away-irrevocably.

This is almost paradoxical if compared to the time lapse covered by the novel: that of one day. This author’s choice creates the illusion of a long time, but the brain has to wake now (p.119). The 141-page novel takes place during a single day in the middle of June. The author’s choice of compressing all of the action in the duration of one day can be seen as innovative at a time in which novels used to span over a period that went from months to decades. However, in literature, the choice of limiting the action to one day, is not an original one. This concept was, in fact, present in Ancient Greece with the Aristotelian unit of time, that allowed a representation of plays in real-time. Once again, the innovation introduced by Virginia Woolf is called into question. When dwelling on a way to separate her flow of consciousness, one of the options considered by the author was that of having a Greek chorus speak at intervals. It is interesting to notice how this quasi revolutionary figure is deeply rooted and fed by a classicist tradition. The truly innovative measure taken in this case, I believe, was that of marking off sections with a double space. 12 spaces, like the hours of a clock. This punctuation of time in the narrative is further underlined by the striking of Big Ben. This clock is not only clock

of the day but is also interpretable as biological clock that reflects the female life cycle.

Big Ben - one of London’s landmarks. This is precisely the next area of our focus: that of the setting in a foggy and not only wrecked but mentally abused post-war city, yet nonetheless mesmerizing for its possibilities. As Big Ben shatters the fragmented thoughts of the London strollers, so the various landmarks in the modern city serve as association to the widespread interest in sensibility and as a reminder of a city-brutally indifferent. It is the London of Virginia Woolf, that alongside James Joyce’s Dublin generates the feelings common to Baudelaire’s flâneur: shock, exhilaration, isolation, confusion, and thrill. It is the feeling of the dismayed wayfarer drifting in the stream of people in a liquid London of liquid time. This type of visual imagery is also heard and seen in Igor Stravinsky’s music as the ballerinas’ bold and flowing movements in the Sacre du printemps visually mirror the form of the river of thoughts that traverses the minds not of the simply great man but of the greatly simple ones. Woolf’s characters become the men described by Baudelaire: kaleidoscopes equipped with consciousness.

To understand the characters and the thoughts, however, we have to start by understanding their element: the crowd, the city. A city made of prominent landmarks and labyrinthine streets: Big Ben, Strand, Westminster, Chancery Lane, Piccadilly, Fleet Street, St Paul’s, the Tower, Bond Street, Royal Park, Tottenham Court Road, Kensington Gardens, 22 Hyde Park, 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, Greenwich, Hampton Court, the River Thames, Oxford Street, and of disorientating fogs that mirror the opacities of modern life and create a city that is alive, in continuous flux and mutation. This city that paradoxically welcomes all different people and yet whose impossibility to belong to results in a menacing and encroaching amorphous setting that alienates. There is a disjunction between the same London that produces anxieties and the London that Virginia Woolf calls a “beloved city”, absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life (p.119).

This London offers, through its fog and anonymity, the much sought after exhilaration arising from freedom of the individual in a bustling city. The flow of consciousness is here used by the author to float, as does the pioneer, stray, venturing and trusting Mrs Dalloway, through the streets of London along the ghosts of the war and in and out of people with some sort of lapse in the tides of their bodies (p.83), letting surface an isolationism which stems from the bewilderment of loneliness. Ultimately this sense of estrangement is woven to the sense of wonder and part of the lure rests in the uneasiness and possibility of fear. And as we swim in the Oxford Street tide of the submerged city (p.117) and London morphs in the River Thames, we observe with the cold stream of visual impressions (p.119) and remain untouched by other people’s stories. It is the impalpability and fleeting quality of the frenetic city that has made our conscious self unconsciously indifferent and it is this acceptance and indifference that Virginia Woolf is condemning.

Virginia Woolf was an extremely innovative writer. She was not, however, innovative for her ideas, essentially common even though unspoken.

She wasn’t even original in her train of thought; she was original in her flow of it. She was original in her decision of challenging the status quo.

Woolf’s tone was innovative not because of the extraordinary voice of the superhuman but the common voice of the ordinary one. Courageously abandoning literary conventions to portray thought in its purest form in its search for meaning, Woolf reaches the conclusion that it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning (p.76) but that nonetheless beauty is everywhere. …all of this was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now (p.113). In her writing we see a projection of human consciousness and its reflection in the reality of everyday life with the background of a thriving city. We are ultimately left with the metaphor of a London that mirrors our dichotomy, as humans, of being faced with the negative capability between the anxiety and the bliss of life.

Extreme Writing Challenge

by Tara S, 4th

Pushing through towering fronds, the raw smell of burning curled inside my nostrils and made my face distort. It was the first indication of life. I’d arrived.

The crude tent materialized through the foliage, squatting on the only patch on forest that vegetation had not zealously encompassed.

Animal skulls spun towards me, dangling from string. Their leering cavities and mocking half-smiles are the only recognition I received. There was exuberance; the floor was encompassed in pelt, from enough deer to support by tribe through the bitterer months. Bear skin was stretched taunt around sticks to form a shelter, and sunlight squirmed through the material, casting a sepia glow inside. One face of the tent was bestowed with swirling charcoal drawings, created utilizing fingertips. The images recounted experience, honored the beasts that roam here. Fear resonated from the elk’s eyes, whilst the bear’s hunger pulsated from the drawing.

He was an artist. And survivor. I walked over to him, past the snarling deer skull, perching on its horns, and crouched next to him. Despite the sunlight, there was an undertone of winter to the air. I nodded when I noted his boots: lined with fur and therefore suitable guardians against the chill. His trousers were patchwork, with pools of deer hide merging with bear.

Fangs embellished his leather headband, jewels glinting in the light, each one a tale of survival, a victory against the perils of mortality. Like moss, his beard clung

to his face. His eyes, colour of grey fog, were squinting at strips of tendons in his hand, hypnotically twisting to create string.

Scattered around him were discarded flint stones, the outside eggshell cream. Many were shattered spear heads.

I pulled out my wax tablet, tapping my nails against the wood. Finally, he looked up.

100 Word Story

Imaginative writing by Iris T, 3rd The man said that it had probably lived in the dark, mildew-ridden corner of the cellar for hundreds of years. Tucked away in the black, he had forgotten that it even existed. A boy, who was frightened by the dark, discovered it, thick with dust and limescale and he carefully cleaned it. In the light of his house, it looked less frightening than the looming little monster that it had been in its black underground hole. Whatever-it-was, was made of metal and plastic, bonded and twisted into an unearthly shape. You can find strange things in a car boot sale.

NiCu for AuAg

By Sophie L, U6 Tasting of Nickel and Copper, dried glue rims the bands of navy, black threads 95% COTTON the plastic tag reads what’s the other 5 percent? tongue tasting, salivating, the metallicallica of numbers which aren’t just numbers don’t you get it? as you spin faster and faster they all blur together we all have labels and tags just to define what we are because of course we don’t know who we are needing the clarification, verification to know if we’re 100% or 95 and 5 percent or ninety and five percent which doesn’t quite add up right.

Blackberries

By Lottie H, 3rd Green, to red, to glossy purple, Blackberries stain our lips like henna, The wicked thorns leave our hands Pricked. We pass sweet flowers, painting The fields, cornflowers and delphiniums, Daffodils bending in the warm sunlight.

Dandelions lie among the hayfields, Left for children to pick, to give as yellow bouquets.

The puddles upon the hill keep Me hoping for the summer not to stop, Though the tinkling highway of water Through the trees, with green frogs bending lily pads, And the cornfields covered in tumbling buds of butterfly Weed keep summer's leaving hanging Over us, with the trace of school Always darkening in late August.

A Short Story

By Omer B, 5th

“Another bourbon on the rocks, please” he grunted.

It was a stressful day at work, and, with stocks plummeting and colleagues quitting, even he started losing hope. As his eighth glass of impure liquid arrived, he noticed another man, wearing an odd worn-out hat, sitting alone. They made unintentional eye contact several times, until the rugged man gestured at Tom to sit next to him.

Interested about his story, Tom rose from his seat and stumbled across the bar.

“So, what’s a man like you doing all alone at a sombre little bar like this?” Tom asked colloquially.

“My life’s done. I have nothing left to do anymore” said the man. He was tall and well-built with a thick, bushy beard, long, wild hair and he reeked an air of nature.

“Huh... Yeah, man, yeah. I get where you’re coming from. My company’s going bankrupt, my marriage’s hanging by a thread and my friends are backstabbing bastards so... Yeah, I get you,” blabbered Tom, half-drunk.

“No. You don’t understand. I have literally done all I wanted to do. I’ve completed my bucket list. You know what that is, yeah?” asked the man with a deep, gravelly voice.

“Yeah, yeah, obviously mate,” he giggled.

“You look like one of those hippie people, you know the ones who are like obsessed with nature, so I’m interested. What kind of things have you done that’s so impressive then?” mocked Tom. But the man was serious. He prompted his hunched back up, cleared his throat and began speaking.

He spoke relentlessly for over an hour with a constant exchange, both ordering the other more liquor. The more the man listed, the more interesting his adventures got or maybe that was their ever-increasing intoxication. He spoke of many things, most of which almost every man would dream of experiencing one day - like sky-diving and swimming with sharks. However, none of these generic tales intrigued Tom - until the man’s final story.

He told Tom of his most dangerous and absurd adventure. He said he had promised himself that if he completed this challenge he laid before himself, he would be free to die; a primal survival in the wild for six months with no extra supply other than his father’s wood-and-steel knife.

He hunted for his own prey; he found his own water and cooked his own meat; and he fought for his own land. He said sometimes he would starve for days, sometimes he would black-out due to dehydration and

sometimes he would get so awfully injured, whether by falling or by wildlife, that he would have to lie in the same spot of soil for weeks, eating only plants and insects passing by, until his recovery.

This troglodyte had forced himself to adapt in a primitive environment for months, just for fun. He had risked his life purely for experience and wisdom. And yet Tom sat there silently, his drunken confidence crumpled by the strange man’s tales, having not taken a single risk in his life - and he just smirked.

“Well played,” he said.

RED IS RED IS RED

BY ALIENOR T, 5TH

To paraphrase the famous line by Gertrude Stein: “A Rose is a Rose is a Rose”, which is often interpreted as meaning “things are what they are”, the phrase conveys how simply using the name of a thing already invokes the imagery and emotions associated with it. This can be explained using the prototype theory, which thanks to the works of Berlin and Kay, was later applied to colour. I will elaborate on this discovery and attempt to seek a hypothesis for the order in which colours appear in a language.

Stage I: Dark-cool and light-warm (this covers a larger set of colors than English "black" and "white") Stage II: Red Stage III: Either green or yellow Stage IV: Both green and yellow Stage V: Blue Stage VI: Brown Stage VII: Purple, pink, orange, or gray The different stages above represent the chronological sequence in which evolving languages acquire names of colours, discovered by Berlin and Kay (1969).

In the book titled "Basic Colour Terms: their Universality and Evolution", Berlin and Kay noticed that the names of colours, in the languages of the world, range from two to roughly fourteen and that each colour occupies the same position in the range.

For example, if a language has two colours, these are always black and white, if it has three, the third is always red etc....

In addition, it was observed that when subjects were asked to indicate a definite colour (eg red), they always pointed at the same point, while when asked about

identifying its different shades, they struggled to agree. This demonstrates that colours belong to prototypic categories, at whose centre one finds a prototype, characterised by specific properties, and at its periphery, shades of the same colour which share some, but not all of the prototype's qualities. Their linguistic studies provided evidence that supports and reconfirms the prototype theory, devised by Eleanor Rosch in the 70's.

Every word designates not only the centre but also the periphery of a prototypic category. For example, the term "bird" designates the sparrow, which flies, has wings and lays eggs, but also the chicken, which has wings and lays eggs, but does not fly. This theory can then similarly be applied to the grammatical categories.

In the phrase "Caesar was emperor of the Romans", the imperfect indicates the past and the non-actuality, but in the phrase "My fiance was 6 ft tall" the imperfect indicates only the non-actuality. Caesar was emperor of the Romans, but is now no longer, while my fiance was and remains 6 ft tall (if we assume that he wasn't mutilated). In this case, the imperfect used in the first phrase is the prototype and the one used in the second is its periphery.

The names of colours in Greek, and Latin 1. λευκός = white These are the prototypes. μέλᾱς = black 2. ἐρυθρός = red γλαυκός = blue-green, gray These are names at the periphery of the above. πολιός = greyish white, bright ξανθός = golden yellow, pale yellow, red yellow, chestnut, auburn (κυάνεος = dark blue) Here one notices that while the prototypes have only one meaning, the remaining names of colours have several. There is the exception, however, of the colour "κυάνεος", but it's a metonymic adjective derived from "κυάνος", whose translation is " a dark blue substance used in the Heroic age to adorn works in metal" (Liddell and Scott). The prototypes are at the centre of the macro-prototypic category of colour names, and the characteristics which they share with the non-prototypes are: they are both colour names, but they have a different graduation of both luminosity and wavelength.

1. albus/candidus = white These are the Latin prototypes.

ater/niger = black 2. ruber = red 4. viridis = green & flavus = yellow 7. canus = grey fuscus = dark brown, yellow black (caeruleus= dark blue) Here, again, the etymology of "caeruleus" is uncertain, but the suffix "-eus" demonstrates that it is an adjective like the Greek "κυάνεος" , (deriving from an unknown nominal base "caelus"= sky?).

Stage I allocates two different names for both black and white: dark, cold colours and light, warm ones. This then explains the need for two words describing white, "albus" meaning dull white and "candidus" meaning shiny white. Similarly, "ater" translates to dull black and "niger" to shiny black. Compared to Greek, Latin represents a more advanced phase since it designates with specific names also green and yellow, following the scale of Berlin and Kay. In this, Latin anticipates the neo-Latin languages that nominate every basic colour with a specific name, and thus have every prototypic stage. In Italian: "bianco", "nero", "rosso", "giallo", "verde" etc.... In French, "blanc", "noir", "rouge", "jaune", "vert" etc.....

In the same way, in English: "white", "black", "red", "yellow", "green" etc....

The reason for the scale of Berlin and Kay is unknown; the fact that it is universal seems to indicate a neuro-biological reason. One could think, however, that the order of the succession depends on the frequency. The "Word Frequency List of American English" (Mark Davies and Dee Gardner, 2010) gives the following sequence of frequency: black (150,718), white (126,760), red (66,217), blue (47, 622), green (44, 673), yellow (22,452), brown (21,975), and grey (19, 408). Apart from the position of blue, which could depend on its metaphorical meaning of sadness, the order of frequency corresponds exactly to the scale of Berlin and Kay. An examination of the frequency dictionaries of other languages can confirm our hypothesis.

So why is all of this useful? Why should we care that the colour name blue appears before brown? Language is the way in which humans (or even animals) communicate and organise their thoughts, so if we understand how language works, we understand how beings communicate and organise their thoughts. If this knowledge is combined with the knowledge we have acquired in the fields of philosophy, psychology and biology, we can perhaps avoid wars or bad habits. This would allow us to actually use

our research to help an individual change the way he thinks by himself. For example, imagine stopping the harms ISIS inflicts on the world, not through persuasion, compromise or violence, but simply by altering how they subconsciously think.

This does not mean that scientists are going to go over there and conduct scientific experiments, but that simply through a conversation between a researcher and them, their negative thinking could be transformed into positive, through their own subconscious choice. Imagine, how many lives we would save and how much sorrow we would prevent. This can also be applied to, for example, the ever-growing problem of obesity.

Of course, my research is very small in comparison to the big picture, but it is a step in the right direction. And that is why I believe that instead of wasting our resources on weapons, armies and destructive thoughts, we should be placing many more resources into linguistics, philosophy, psychology and neurology.

This is why blue coming before brown should be of vital importance to us!

Verba vana aut risui apta non loqui: the structural significance of laughter in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose

By Felix S, U6th

Laughter is a central theme in this novel, and perhaps surprisingly the object of much controversy. In fact, it becomes the centre of a ‘mortal conflict’ on the survival of Christianity.

The two sides of this argument are put forth by Jorge of Burgos, the elderly blind monk, and William of Baskerville, a Franciscan monk sent to the Abbey by the emperor. From the very first encounter, Jorge is open about his view of laughter as sin. When some monks in the library laugh heartily in response to some verses Adso has recited from a humorous poem, Jorge chastises them with the words “verba vana aut risui apta non loqui,” (p.85, Vintage 2004) Latin for “do not speak useless words so as to provoke laughter”.

Jorge has a very concrete understanding of knowledge; he sees there as being knowledge that is true – in line with God’s commands as disseminated by the Church – and knowledge that is false – in that it attacks or condemns or ignores God. To laugh at a true statement is to disrespect the sovereignty of God. To laugh at a false statement is to suggest that the reversal of God’s will is humorous. Jorge argues that false images, or reversed realities, such as “rivers flowing upstream,” “the sea catching fire” or “hens fertilizing cocks,” (pp.86-87, Vintage 2004) and the laughter they provoke, in fact make God the subject of laughter.

William expresses his opposing opinion that such “marginal images often provoke smiles, but to edifying ends,” (p.86, Vintage 2004) meaning the use of false statements is a powerful tool in educating people about what is true and false. He believes that to laugh at something false is to mock the idea that something so ridiculous could be true, rather than to approve of it and thereby mock God. One could liken this to the frequent use of satire in modern culture, to mock offensive, blatantly false statements; the fact that one laughs at them is a sign of one’s rejection of them.

Moreover, William believes that “because our reason was created

by God… whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason” (p.143, Vintage 2004) – if our reason suggests that a proposition is not acceptable, and our reason has the backing of God, who created it, we are free to use laughter to denounce this proposition. This is similar to the idea that laughter is acceptable simply because it is proper to man, implying that God specifically gave man the ability to laugh, and therefore presumably would not be opposed to man exercising this ability.

Despite acknowledging this line of reasoning, Jorge is not convinced.

He argues that he who reveals the “things of God per speculum et in aenigmate,” (p.87, Vintage 2004) Latin for “through a dark glass,” meaning in a distorted or reversed fashion, will eventually come to enjoy the nature of the falsities – the ‘monsters and portents of nature’ – he creates, and to actually see the world through these.

Jorge sees this as a corruption of the mind by Satan. He points to the first death, of the young illustrator Adelmo, claiming that the latter “took such pleasure in the monsters he painted” (p.88, Vintage 2004) that he failed to remember that their purpose was in fact to illustrate ugliness and falseness. Jorge claims his death was God’s punishment.

William also sees knowledge as much more complex and unstable than Jorge. He believes there are forms of knowledge beyond what is categorically true and false; he appreciates that human interpretation of the scriptures allows room for ambiguity. He also believes that not all things are necessarily in relation to God. As a result, a true statement does not necessarily reflect God’s will, and a false statement is not necessarily disrespectful of God. Therefore, laughter does not necessarily insult or reverse that which is true in the eyes of God. For most of the novel, Jorge proposes that it is laughter with which he has a direct problem, as laughter can be used to insult God. But his central argument is not revealed until the inevitable encounter with William in the finis Africae. “For a few moments,” Jorge argues, “laughter distracts the villein (sic) from fear.” (p.508, Vintage 2004) Laughter is a polar opposite to fear, and it rids people of their fear.

What makes this so dangerous is that the law of the Church is imposed by fear, “whose true name is fear of God.” (p.508, Vintage 2004) Without this fear, the Church loses its grip on people, and its ability to force them into worshipping, believing and living a certain way. Without this fear, the sinful nature of man is no longer supressed.

The novel’s final major revelation is that Jorge has been behind the mysterious deaths at the Abbey, through his poisoning of the pages of Aristotle’s second book on Comedy, the existence of which he denies until the very end. When asked by William why this book specifically “filled him with such fear,” Jorge answers “because it was by the Philosopher,” with which he means Aristotle.

Jorge understands the immense power of Aristotle’s writings in

influencing the thoughts and beliefs of society. He acknowledges that “every book by that man has destroyed a part of the learning of Christianity.” What Aristotle has not been able to do is overturn the image of God. And Jorge believes that if Aristotle’s second book on Comedy became an object for open interpretation, “we would have crossed the last boundary.” (pp.506-508, Vintage 2004) Laughter would be elevated from something reserved for the lowly – the foolish, the plebeians, the peasants – to an art, an “object of philosophy,” of “perfidious theology.” The fool’s relief from fear would no longer be momentary, but everlasting. When laughter is accepted as an art, rather than a sin, the fool may continue to laugh carefree; and as laughter provides redemption from the fear of death, this redemption from fear would be everlasting. It is this disruption in the “divine plan” to ensure that the fool remains a worshipper of God that Jorge fears.

This is perhaps best reflected through his asking: “And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?” (p.508, Vintage 2004) This line is particularly impactful as it makes clear that Jorge is not the selfish, establishment-protecting man he first appears to be. He sees the nature of man as so sinful that he believes fear is an all-important gift from God to keep society in order. Jorge is willing to give his life to destroy Aristotle’s book, not because he fears it could lead to the fall of the Church, but because he fears it could lead to the fall of God, and thereby society as we know it.

What Jorge fears is a reformation of the Catholic Church. A reformation does not deny the divinity of Christ, but it does deny the established body of Christ. The Protestant reformation, for example, is about the individual’s personal belief in the existence of Christ. It is a democratization of Christianity; the rise of the individual against the Mass. It is the idea that one does not need to go through the Church, with all its rules and formalities, to connect with Christ; all one needs is the Scriptures. It makes Christianity more accessible to the common man; he can live a life of faith without being subject to the intimidation and law of the Church.

Martin Luther, perhaps the central figure in this reformation, preached the doctrine: “sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solo Christo, soli Deo gloria” which translates to “Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, through Christ alone, glory to God alone.” This doctrine creates a direct link between man and God, completely

taking the Church out of the equation. However, with this rejection of the Church, and increased personal proximity to God, comes a lack of fear of God, which Jorge believes is vital to keep man in order.

In a sense he is right. The Protestant reformation certainly did make man more prone to sinful behaviour. In fact, Martin Luther encouraged his followers to ‘sin and sin strongly, as your faith will redeem you’. It is closely linked to the idea discussed by William; that if God were so insulted by the sins of man, he would never have given man the ability to sin.

With regard to Christianity, Jorge is fiercely conservative, and believes that man must be fearful of God, and therefore must, to some extent, be one step away from God – man must only be connected to God indirectly, through the Catholic Church.

William clearly has his doubts about the Catholic establishment, as seen through his questioning of Jorge’s stance on laughter, and his favouring of the empirical method of deduction over coming to conclusions based on authoritative text. Ultimately, Jorge and William are divided in their views about laughter because they are divided in their views about Christianity itself.

References

Humour in the 13th century: This made them laugh out loud (2015) Available at: http://www.heritagedaily.com/2015/02/humour-13th-century-made-laughloud/106908 (Accessed: 25 January 2017).

Eco, U. (2004) The Name of the Rose (Vintage Classics). London: Vintage Classics.

Encyclopedia.com. (2016). The Name of the Rose - Dictionary definition of The Name of the Rose | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary. [online] Available at: http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/name-rose [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Gracchii.blogspot.co.uk. (2016). Laughter in The Name of the Rose. [online] Available at: http://gracchii.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/laughter-in-name-of-rose.html [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

The Free Library. (2016). The intrusion of laughter into the abbey of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose: the Christian paradox of joy mingling with sorrow. [online] Available at: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/ laughter+into+the+abbey+of+Umberto+Eco’s+The+Name+of...-a0194333558 [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Theopedia.com. (2016). Five Solas | Theopedia. [online] Available at: http://www. theopedia.com/five-solas [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Naturalthinker.net. (2017). The Name of the Rose. [online] Available at: http:// naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Eco,%20Umberto/ECO,%20Umberto%20-%20 The%20Name%20of%20the%20Rose.htm [Accessed 18 Jan. 2017].

‘The ideal critic is the ideal reader’. Do you agree?

By Charlotte O, L6th

Connotations of perfection follow the word ‘ideal’; thus, the ideal critic and the ideal reader seem out of reach. This essay proposes that they are separate entities, and that the ideal critic is ultimately separate to the ideal reader despite the two having much in common. The hypothetical element to both employments begins theoretically. The word ‘critic’ is taken to be somebody who chooses to review a work of art, specifically literature in this case. Of course, the critic must first read at least a portion of the written work, and is in part a reader himself, yet the critic is distinguished from the reader in producing his critique either verbally or in writing, whereas a reader simply develops an emotional response to the text.

Throughout this investigation, a definition for both roles needs to be established. Oscar Wilde sets out a theory of the critic in the preface of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and a detailed description in his essay The Critic as Artist consisting of a discussion between the two characters Gilbert and Ernest. These texts contrasted with the techniques, specifically morality-based, of F.R. Leavis should help form this definition for the ideal critic. The ideal reader put forth by Roland Barthes’ in his essay Death of the Author, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘suspension of disbelief’, will set the basis for the ideal reader.

To begin, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde states, often ambiguously, his philosophies that apply to the text, including that of what criticism is. He writes “the highest as [is] the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography” (Wilde, 1890). The poetic nature of this phrase adds to its ambiguity, and it is necessary to unpick what he means by this. With the bracketed ‘is’, the meaning is implied that in whatever she produces, the critic is reflected in her own work.

This suggests that the critic’s subjectivity is tied up within her critique whether she intends or not, and it forms a tangible record of her identity. Implications of

this are that a critique can clearly never be completely objective. Instead of striving towards a ‘balanced account’, it is creatively beneficial to understand this, and use it to a critic’s advantage wherein she is unashamedly subjective.

Furthermore, in The Critic as Artist, Wilde suggests that this is not just a sideeffect, but the sole intention of the ideal critic. Gilbert claims that “that’s what the highest criticism really is, the record of one’s own soul” (Wilde, 1891). He treats the successful written or spoken critique of any art as surpassing the boundaries that are set by attempting to understand the motivations and intentions of the artist, or to connect them to the context in which the text was written. The critic is able to transcend this into his own invention, which is entirely independent of the original work of the artist. Independent in being the critic’s impression of the materials before him. ‘A creation within a creation’ (Wilde, 1891), as Gilbert puts it.

Wilde would agree that a critique can be completely unrelated to any universally accepted impression of the original work, so long as it is well formed and well written, whilst being true to how the critic has interpreted the material. “His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions.” (Wilde, 1891) His most successful critic is likely the most unconventional.

Furthermore, he romanticises the role of the highest art critic, in the case of Gilbert imagining himself and a friend looking at the Mona Lisa, since after eloquent reflection, being what Wilde would refer to as a critique, Gilbert declares that the picture “becomes more wonderful to us than it really is” (Wilde, 1891). Wilde deploys the adjective ‘wonderful’ twelve times in his essay, which reflects his style fairly accurately. In summary, Wilde’s most valid point is that the critic should not take the author’s intention into account as this is not only unnecessary, but impossible.

Wilde’s ‘wonderful’ critique should simply be the result of the ideal critic being both a successful analyst of literary works, but also a successful writer themselves.

Yet a criticism of Wilde’s definition of the ideal critic worth mentioning is that it is not based around the reality of the role of a critic. For instance, the audience of their critique often demands some similarity between critics, such as an analysis of the language and form employed by the author, or even a discussion on the morality of the text.

F.R. Leavis would argue that literature has immense power of influence on the readers, and therefore it is important that a critic treats their critique of a work as if it reflects the moralities of real life (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008) The basis of analyzing the morality of a text is to fully engage with it, applying and comparing the situations to reality. This is to unpick the text thoroughly, before piecing it together again to formulate their critique. Of course, morality evolves with the development of society and is highly subjective. Thus in order for the ideal critic to use morality in an accessible way, it will provoke debate within the critique, crucially not simply being the critic projecting her own moral values onto a text, and assessing if the two match.

In contradiction to this method, Wilde argues again in The Picture of Dorian Gray that “there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all” (Wilde, 1890) Wilde has purposefully limited the ideal critic to be simply a reader who creatively reports the result of his engagement with the text, and the quality of language and form used by the author will be tied up in this. He denies books specifically the label of ‘immoral’ or ‘moral’, and this is a valid point in the sense that a book, or literary work, cannot be labelled in such a binary way. Arguably, Leavis has put the critic a step further in his engagement with the text by applying morality. Most crucially, the ideal critic must never be seen to be sanctimonious.

For the second theory, a definition of the ideal reader is needed. The reader is human, and therefore must have some kind of personality that will influence how he perceives the work of literature. In Roland Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author, he claims that "he [the reader] is only that someone who holds gathered into that single field all the paths of which the text is constituted”, thus the reader sees every aspect of the narrative, and imbues it with his own meaning, as the ‘active producer of meaning’ (Dr Clarke, 2012). It appears that it is impossible for the reader to understand fully the intentions of the author, as ‘langue, predicated upon différance, precedes the author, determining how s/he views external reality and his/her self’ (Dr Clarke, 2012).

This implies that the reader and author can never be in total understanding of each other, with language determining how they both express themselves; therefore the reader must not try and understand the objectives of the author, nor understand the text through knowledge of their life,

and the context which it was written, but seek to find his own meanings within the text. This does seem an echo of the perfect critic, and both Wilde and Barthes seem to define them in the same way, with the only difference being that the critic produces a tangible, or audible record of his thoughts after reading.

On the other hand, it is important to take into account how both the critic and the reader take in what they are reading: essentially their perspective. Samuel Taylor Coleridge put forward an idea he coined ‘suspension of disbelief’. To paraphrase, in order for an audience (or reader) to fully appreciate a piece of literature or a play, they must take the pretend assumption that all fictional aspects of the book are real and believable (Martin, 2017). In his own words, for the purpose "as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” If the reader does not suspend his disbelief then it is impossible to personally connect with the text on any level. (Coleridge, 1817) Wilde might also apply this to the ideal critic. Although in opposition, the critic has to return back to reality in order to give the work full literary value in her critique. Her impression could stem from being the ideal reader, but it is romantic and not practical, to talk about characters or worlds as if they are real when analyzing a literary work fully.

This is because the critic focuses on craft, both of the author, and of her written critique itself.

To apply Coleridge’s theory, it emphasizes the importance of the reader being lost in a book, up until the point where she is completely absorbed in that world, and her morals unconsciously align with that of certain characters. Even further, up to the point where every curl of a page folds the reader deeper into the book and all at once the author’s every phrase corresponds to an aspect of her own life.

In such a case, words cease to be a barrier between the author and the reader and the reader is simply taking in what the author projects. This does not mean that the two are in perfect agreement or living identical experiences, just that their separate thought processes are in perfect harmony.

This for me, is the ideal reader.

In summary, what must be included in the criteria for the ideal critic is primarily a thorough engagement with the text, and

like Wilde’s definition it should be the critical reader’s own response to the work, and be open to admitting this. The critic will be reflected within his critique. The ideal critic may choose to comment on the morality of the text, especially if the morality is up for debate, or if it is an important aspect of drawing the book out and revealing it to give it literary credit, or otherwise – which is the goal of the ideal critic. He will refer to the author directly by acknowledging their choices. However, the critic cannot comment on what he perceives to be the result of the author’s context of production and social framework: the ‘meaning’ of the text. This is nobody’s job.

Equally, the context of reception in the form of the ideal reader here is imperative to consider. As the active producer of meaning, their engagement comes from applying their own context to the work.

This is aided by ‘suspension of disbelief’ to be wholly absorbed in the novel, and let it take the reader in whichever direction she chooses. This illustrates what sets the critic and reader apart; the freedom that the reader has in how she accesses the text. To apply her own values and morals to it would be encouraged, especially if her values are challenged through reading the narrative.

For these definitions of the ideal reader and ideal critic to stand, they can be applied to a specific work of literature. For instance, In Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, rich sensory language projects the reader immediately into the sublime world of Xanadu.

In an example of a section open for reader engagement, the writer gives the impression of a frenetic energy within this world, shown partly in the two lines, ‘And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething / As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,’ (Coleridge and Foundation, 2017) with the rhyme on the verbs to express this vivacity clearly and musically. The visualisation that any reader would presumably create, and the almost tangible life contained within these phrases, must differ from Coleridge’s own perception when composing. He claimed to have composed over two hundred lines of poetry during what is supposed to be an opium saturated dream. After waking he wrote the majority of the published poem before promptly forgetting the rest after a disruption. With knowledge of this context, an element of incompleteness is contained within it as a result, but without knowledge of the author beforehand this doesn’t seem worth considering, as the

poem rolls to a neat conclusion; ‘And close your eyes with holy dread / For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.’ (Coleridge and Foundation, 2017) For a reader, taking the context of production into account whilst reading this is just another angle to add to the intrigue that the poem already brings. Furthermore, suspension of disbelief is crucial to simply enjoy it as a reader, and to make the most of the extravagantly expressive language, ‘But oh! / that deep romantic chasm which slanted / Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!’ (Coleridge and Foundation, 2017) Barthes’ reader in his essay would hold all this language at his disposal, and would be free to create the world of Xanadu for himself.

The ideal critic might focus on the detailed imagery, and technically complex structure and rhyme, which is valid according to the definition outlined previously. It is likely near impossible that a critic can temporarily reserve any personal judgement on the poem before reading it, and this may be the reality of the ideal critic, as Wilde would certainly claim. Her personal impression can then be thought out and recorded.

As William Hazlitt, a Romantic critic, claimed in the 2 June 1816 Examiner: "Mr Coleridge can write better nonsense verse than any man in English." This opinion of it as ‘nonsense’ likely stems from knowledge of the context behind the poem, it being simply a drug-induced dream translated into verse, and the ideal critic would ignore this for the sake of full engrossment and analysis of the poem, to unveil its literary merits. Links to reality can be made with such a decadent and Elysium-themed setting, but while it seems to have no particular ‘ultimate meaning’, or morality

– even a basis in reality – the ideal critic should not be seeking to uncover any depths or moral groundings that the poem simply may not have.

Throughout this essay, there has been continuous overlap between the two entities. The reader can be seen as the free agent. Holding no responsibility in terms of how they engage with the text, their emotional reaction may dominate. Neither has any connection with the author other than the text, and as has been emphasised throughout this essay, must not attempt to understand the author along the journey.

In parallel, the critic can employ suspension of disbelief in order to immerse themselves in the text and formulate an understanding.

However, when it comes to developing a material response, in order to analyse it the critic must pick apart the author’s craft. As a result, they can merge both a critical eye and a personal response – putting the ideal critic a step further than the ideal reader and as Wilde intended, create ‘a record of their own soul’.

“Every time a door opens on the stage, a cosmos of infinite possibility is momentarily made; every time a door closes certain possibilities are extinguished and we experience a force of ‘death’”. In what ways is this true of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House?

By Louis S, U6th IB SL

Henrik Ibsen’s use of entrances and exits in A Doll’s House is a key element to the play as it allows him to present the entire stage as a vehicle of symbolic meaning. The play itself is set in only one room which means that the entry and departure of characters are striking events. Through these entrances and exits, Ibsen opens or closes an endless amount of possibilities that, for a very short period of time are visible to the audience. The thresholds and doors encapsulate the physical setting and Ibsen also uses them as symbols for class and gender distribution.

From what we can infer from Ibsen’s initial stage directions, there are four doors in total on the scene, the first one “leads to the hall”, the second “to Helmer’s study”, the third is “in the middle of the left-hand wall” and lastly the fourth is in “in the right hand wall, slightly upstage”. The delineation of the location of all the doors on the stage show the audience that they will play an important role within the play. Ibsen could have kept these stage directions to himself but the fact that he decided to share them explicitly with the director means that he was trying to convey their significance even before the play began. Moreover, it suggests the key role they will have throughout the play. The door that could be considered most important of all could be the one that “leads to the hall” because the Helmer family is threatened by outside forces during the entirety of the play so that door becomes the site around which the threat is centred. Once the play begins, Ibsen draws attention to the doors by meticulously using them to create precise effects therefore allowing the play to develop even further.

Not only does Ibsen use the doors to very quickly expose these infinite amount of possibilities, he also does so through the doorbells that signal the arrival of characters within the Helmer household.

Upon entrance, Ibsen chooses one of these possibilities through the reaction of the other characters. Mrs Linde is welcomed quite excitably by Nora, “Christine! And I didn’t recognise you!” and the good relationship she holds with the Helmers is clearly exhibited.

Ibsen’s use of the doorbell shows the audience that he is making use of every intricate detail on the door to his advantage to make the entrance of characters symbolic. However, this is in stark contrast with Krogstad’s arrival, whose entrance is also signalled by a doorbell but the reaction to his entry from Nora is very different to that of Mrs. Linde’s. “You? What do you want?”. The tension from these two characters is evident from the outset as

is seen from Nora’s informal and aggressive tone. Although Ibsen has chosen the same method of entry for Krogstad later on in this scene, the reaction from the other characters is quite the opposite to that of Mrs Linde’s entrance. Ibsen shows that a very similar entrance from two characters can have drastic reactions from people within the household, therefore putting forward the endless amount of possibilities that open up once a door is unlocked. Further on in the play, Krogstad re-enters the Helmer household however this time, no one has noticed his entry, “a knock on the door leading from the hall, but no one has noticed it”.

The fact that there is no doorbell used to signal his arrival indicates his unwanted presence in the household. Moreover, the bypassing of the main door - the defence the Helmer family has against the outside world - indicates a shift in Nora’s carefree attitude. This is highlighted by the contrast in the previous scene where she is playing with her children, “Come on, let’s play a game. What shall we play? Hide and Seek”, the bipolar nature of Nora’s character is developed here as the audience witness the polar opposites of her personality. Ibsen’s switch between entrances with and without doorbells opens up a significant amount of possibilities that allow him to suddenly manipulate the atmosphere within the house.

Although Ibsen’s significant use of entrances and exits of characters conveys particular effects within the audience, he also uses the physical aspects of the house to symbolise class and the different interactions between characters.

Even though Ibsen use doors and thresholds as more than just a physical location within the Helmer household he also develops them as a social and patriarchal boundary between characters in the house. The Maid often stands in the doorway and is assigned to the role of telling the Helmers when other characters enter the house, “A lady’s called, madam. A stranger.” This is very symbolic

of the distinct lives she and the Helmers have. She lives with the family but does not cross the threshold and participate in their life; she is merely a messenger who relays the names of people who come into the house. Of particular significance is the way in which the maid addresses Nora, “madam”, showing that she is inferior to her. Therefore, Ibsen has marginalised her from the family to show her difference in class to the Helmers. Moreover, he closes several possibilities when Krogstad enters and shortly exits the stage later on in the play; Nora directs him to Torvald’s study and “closes the hall door behind him”. The symbolic representation of the door is used as it would appear that Nora is trying to shut Krogstad out of her life, because of her past with him. Whilst doing so, Ibsen erases all other outcomes that could have occurred therefore extinguishing all but one possibility. Faced with Nora’s problems, Torvald agrees that they’ll “share it, as man and wife. And that’s as it should be”. Shortly afterwards, he physically shuts her out of his study and therefore cuts any influence she has over him and a barrier to her authority has been put up. In this instance, Ibsen opens and closes the door the Helmer’s study to give Nora a short glimpse at freedom before quickly smothering it with the reality of the patriarchal relationship she has to endure. Shortly afterwards, Nora decides to “bolt the door to Helmer’s study”, by doing so she is putting a blockade to her lies and secrets and she is doing all she can to delay the confrontation with the truth, adding to the symbolic aspects of doors in this play. Through Nora’s bolting of the study’s door, Ibsen shows that she does not want to be exposed to an infinite amount of possibilities, some of which could be detrimental to her relationship with Torvald.

The play culminates in Nora’s final gesture of the door being “slammed shut downstairs”. Ibsen’s has decided to put Nora on the other side of her own front door, something that should would

have never done earlier in the play, “Oh, if only I dared to go out!”.

She has become an outsider to her own family, leaving her children and Torvald behind. Moreover, this is the first time in the entire play where a door is “slammed” instead of being shut, adding to the significance of this action. Finally, a true force of death is experienced when Nora slams the door shut and her indefinite exit from her home symbolises this. Furthermore, she had only ever stayed within the central part of the house, so her exit of the household is made ever more significant because she had not yet gone to any other room during the play. The action of slamming the door is symptomatic of her anger but also of her breaking free from the oppressive patriarchal relationship she had with Torvald.

In conclusion, in almost every way Arnold Aronson’s quote is true of A Doll’s House as it shows how Ibsen takes advantage of the symbolic aspect of the doors to expose to the audience their importance within the context of the play. Furthermore, instead of being interpreted as a ‘death’, Nora’s final exit could also be seen as opening of an infinite amount of possibilities from her perspective as she is leaving all that she previously had to start again. Therefore, at the end of the play, Ibsen is trying to convey a message about the death of the patriarchy, and its extinguishment through Nora’s door slam that was ‘‘heard around the world’’.

Compare the methods both poets use to explore the effects of growing old in Julia Copus’ ‘An Easy Passage’ and Seamus Heaney’s ‘Out of the Bag’.

By Lily H, L6th

The poets of ‘An Easy Passage’ and ‘Out of the Bag’ both use a variety of techniques to explore the effects of aging in their poems. These techniques include manipulation of structure, language and tone.

The structure of both poems informs the meaning of the poem itself. The lack of structure in ‘An Easy Passage’ perhaps suggests a lack of structure to the two girls’ lives, and with the use of one continual stanza creates a fast pace and sense of freedom.

This freedom is echoed in the abundant use of enjambment, such as ‘one thing she must not do is to think/of the narrow windowsill’, adding to the flow of the poem, and this structure when juxtaposed with the prophetic language such as ‘omens’ and ‘astrology’ gives a reader the concept that the two young characters featured will grow up with a lack of structure to their lives.

This enjambment is also used to create a sense of a age coming unexpectedly, as phrases such as ‘the sharp/drop of the stairwell’ have a fast pace and suddenness to them, and along with the fast pace produced with the use of one continuous stanza, the poet produces the idea that growing old happens quickly, and by comparing it as a ‘drop’ perhaps suggests age to have a negative effect.

Similarly, enjambment is used in ‘Out of the Bag’ to create a sense of freedom and a fast pace in phrases such as ‘soft hands of his/ In the scullery basin’, however this abundant use of enjambment is juxtaposed with a strict, orderly structure of stanzas, and this could perhaps suggest that growing older happens at an even pace, and the freedom of the content suggests that the freedom of childhood is maintain in later life. However, this structure could

also suggest that the assumed age of the narrator, as he speaks with the past tense (‘saved’, ‘denied’, ‘held’), has made him boring, and that life is perhaps a never-ending routine. This same sense of boredom could perhaps also be interpreted from the use of four chapters, but on the other hand each of these chapters vary in length so a possible freedom can again be seen. The use of chapters also suggests that life takes place in stages, and this idea is also seen in ‘An Easy Passage’ as the movement from one place to another is likened to growing old, and the idea of change produced by this idea of different stages of life therefore means growing old produces a change, so a loss of childhood happiness with time may be implied.

These negative connotations given to the aging process is further explored in the language of the poem. Firstly, the title ‘An Easy Passage’ acts to both describe the physical movement of the protagonist and the inevitable toll the passage of time has on youth.

Secondly, the repetition of ‘for now’ emphasises to a reader the lack of permanence available in youth, and suggests an uncertainty to the effects of growing old. These effects are explored with the use of semantic fields. The first of these focuses on life and dark, with youth likened to bright light and age with darkness. One of the girls is ‘blond’, and they both ‘seem lit’ with ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ ‘shimmering’ with ‘sunlight’, while the inside of the house, which is compared with age, is said to be ‘shade[d]’ and the ‘factory’ representing a professional future is said to be ‘drab’. This contrast with the angelic use of light to describe youth suggests a purity and beauty that is lost with time as the girl falls into the ‘shade’, giving the concept of growing old a negative tone. However, the

heat and high pressure associated with bright light may be seen instead, and the fall into the inviting ‘shade’ would then be a positive change from hectic youth. The second semantic field is produced as the two girls are blazoned, and the beauty of the pair is used to objectify their youth. Examples of this come in phrases such as ‘toes and fingertips’ and ‘tiny breasts rest lightly on her thighs’. The detailed descriptions of the body of the youths reminds a reader of the effects of age, and a deterioration of the body and its beauty allowed by youth is suggested. In addition, the inconsistent flow around the body from ‘toes’ to ‘fingertips’ and from ‘breasts’ to ‘thighs’ perhaps indicates the unpredictable nature of growing old, but when juxtaposed with prophetic language such as ‘astrology’ suggests this unpredictability is destined, although superstitious connotations with words such as ‘thirteen’ may hint at an unlucky fate for this particular girl, and the age of ‘thirteen’ being a turning point between childhood and teenage years suggests that this time determines the girl’s fate.

Likewise, semantic fields are used in ‘Out of the Bag’ to explore the effects of growing old; a range of anatomical words such as ‘toe’, ‘foot’ and ‘shin’ remind a reader of the physical effects that age can have, however the beauty of these elements are not emphasised to the same extent as they are in ‘An Easy Passage’, suggesting that the narrator is indifferent to the toll that age may have. In addition, words with supernatural connotations such as ‘epiphany’ or ‘Lourdes’ act in a similar way to the prophetic language of ‘An Easy Passage’ by proposing the concept of destiny. However, in ‘Out of the Bag’ this language also carries associations with religion, so the poet is possibly indifferent to the physical effects of growing old as he believes in an afterlife. A semantic field of scholarly language is also utilised, as the narrator speaks of ‘ancient Greece’, implying wisdom that comes with age, although some of his medical

knowledge is incorrect as he sends ‘bits of the grass’ off to cancer patients, showing a naivety similar to that of a child’s suggesting that growing old doesn’t have much of an effect. This idea is repeated in the repetitive structure and the tone of the poem.

A sense of magic is produced with the phrase ‘Out of the Bag’ as though birth is a magic trick, and this wondrous tone is again created through the affectionate description of the doctor character, with the internal rhyme of ‘nosy, rosy, big, soft hands’. However, this focus on the hands could also be seen as sinister, and other words such as ‘chill’, ‘hooks’, ‘blood’ and ‘cold’ are utilised to make birth appear as both a magical and dark event. This lack of distinction between ‘births and deaths’ also comes in the dual purpose of the ‘sheets’ and acts to remind the reader of the cyclic nature of life.

Similarly, a conversational tone is produced with the continuous flow of ‘An Easy Passage’, and the use of one stanza produces a definite beginning and end, reflecting the content of the poem that compares growing old to a decline.

In conclusion, the structure, language and tone are manipulated in the poems ‘An Easy Passage’ and ‘Out of the Bag’ to present growing old as a natural stage of life. However, in ‘An Easy Passage’, the effects of this age is negative due to its destruction of beauty and inevitability, while in ‘Out of the Bag’, the narrator is indifferent towards age due to the cyclic nature of life.

conventions. This investigation concludes that, essentially empathetic with the experience of Japanese people in a dramatic 20th Century, Murakami’s stories can indeed be read as the localized voice of a global shift towards internationalism: they acknowledge the universality of the human experience through their narrative methods, dissolving cultural assumptions and boundaries in a geo-political landscape in which Japan has remained largely insular. Western cultural allusions combine with narrative and lexical choices for an ultimately realistic portrayal of contemporary Japanese cultural practices, accessible internationally, without diluting shifting cultural and aesthetic values.

INTRODUCTION The research question, ‘In what ways can the fiction of Haruki Murakami be seen as the localised voice of a global shift towards internationalism?’ is the result of a long-standing interest in Japanese language and culture, but also in anthropology and Haruki Murakami’s fiction.

In what ways can the fiction of Haruki Murakami be seen as the localised voice of a global shift towards internationalism?

By Gabriel G-B, U6th ABSTRACT The scope of this World Studies investigation, through the analytical tools of Literature and Anthropology, is the evaluation of Haruki Murakami’s approach to writing fiction between 1992 and 2006, within shifting cultural parameters. Literary analysis facilitates insight into the ways in which the fiction of Haruki Murakami be seen as the localised voice of a global shift towards internationalism. However, being dependant upon cultural practices, such shift is more meaningfully assessed through the additional perspective of cultural anthropology. The prism of two disciplines allows for a comprehensive understanding of the aesthetic norms from which Murakami’s work breaks free - how and why it does so. Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of ‘liquid modernity’1 is a useful critical perspective in this evaluation of Murakami’s post-modernist success.

Through its departure from Japanese aestheticism, Murakami’s fiction, despite its international acclaim and ‘translatability’, has often been criticised

by Japanese traditionalists for being proselytised by globalisation. This essay proposes that not only can it be read as the localised expression of a shift towards internationalism which contributes to the global emergence of Japanese culture, but also as a true expression of contemporary cultural practices.

Murakami’s oeuvre is a fruitful case study because of his deliberate use of both Western and Japanese cultural influences and narrative

1. Bauman, Zygmunt, Culture in a Liquid Modern World, Cambridge: Polity, 2011.

In a fast changing world, cultural and political barriers are being raised and broken so regularly, their impact on daily life is scarcely noticed. A shift in attitudes towards internationalism is one of the most important societal changes to take place since the fall of the Soviet Union. Internationalism, as the increase in co-operation and trade between nations the world over, is often the founding principle of politically liberal, in some cases socialist, governments and civil society: a positive, lucrative form of power-sharing by developed nations.

Literature – language in its finest form – as the voice of human creativity, brings us the closest to understanding the human condition. From prose to poetry, literature, often regarded the best words in the best possible order2 arranged to “narrate an experience”, “writing which, through form and expression is connected to ideas of interest”3, and of “lasting importance”4. Literature draws upon human experience in some form - often an imagined superlative to real themes and concepts shared with readers who are invited to consider a fictional world presented through narrative conventions, encouraging an intimately empathetic experience of ‘otherness’.

Herein lies the question of the cultural boundaries of literature, however: through a reader’s personal response, the meaning of a text is modified by the cultural context in which it is read - a perspective that has long fascinated Reader Response theorists and that has informed many international, mostly post-colonial, writers whose works are either written in English, or in view of being translated into English5.

While Japan’s relationship with the West by no means comes under the umbrella of colonialism, it has certainly been shaped by historical events and, in the wake of its first opening to the world in 1853, by a subjugation to Western power that can almost be described as self-colonisation. This submission was echoed in the resentment felt by Japanese intellectuals as they feared Western culture encroaching centuries of established Japanese cultural and aesthetic values6.

This essay examines how, as sample of contemporary literature, the work of Haruki Murakami, can be seen as the localised voice of the global shift towards internationalism, and how this is achieved by adopting Western narrative methods, resulting in high ‘translatability’, while preserving an arguably localised cultural expression. Murakami’s fiction dwells on dramatic shifts in the Japanese culture and psyche as a result of historical

2. Samuel Coleridge: “The definition of good Prose is – proper words in their proper places; - of good Verse – the most proper words in their proper places”, in Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. II, compiled by H. Nelson Coleridge. John Murray, London, 1835 3. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/literature 4. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literature 5. Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in English to appeal to a wider readership, selling over 10 million copies (and being translated into a further 50 languages): the “English language [is] able to carry the weight of [his] African experience […] a new English […] in full communion with its ancestral home […] altered to suit its new African surroundings.” Wole Soyinka described Things Fall Apart as the “first novel in English which spoke from the interior of an African character rather than [...] as the white man would see him”. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/dec/13/chinua-achebe-life-in-writing

Also Nigerian, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks of inadvertently adopting a Western ‘voice’ to communicate her native tales in English for ‘carrying’ her experience abroad. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_ danger_of_a_single_story/transcript?language=en

6 This resentment transcended generations; the writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki was particularly outspoken against the influence of the West on Japanese aestheticism and culture, after Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933, through his acclaimed essay, In Praise of Shadows (1933)

and natural catastrophes: the Second World War (1941-45), the Tokyo Sarin gas attacks and the Kobe earthquake (1995) being most pertinent examples.

Whilst all of Murakami’s oeuvre would make evidence for this argument, this essay will sample works published between 1993 and 20067, a period of significant cultural, technological and social change – particularly in terms of the global shift towards an internationalism shaped by the clash of Eastern and Western values. Therefore, through the tools of anthropological and literary investigation Murakami’s post-modernist approach to narrative will be explored as representation of a transformation common to many creative acts in a ‘liquid modern world’8, an issue of increasing global cultural relevance. Polish philosopher and sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, reads post-modernism as ‘liquid modernity’, according to which “change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty.”9 Combined with textual analysis, the liquid modernity model helps redefine Murakami’s success, facilitating an understanding of the impact of globalisation on the creative voice of an individual as spokesperson for his times on a shifting international scene, capturing socio-cultural realities peculiar to contemporary urban Japanese culture.

Through an anthropological perspective this essay examines how the modern Japanese ethos was acquired and became fertile cultural context to Murakami’s work. Equipped with this understanding, the essay then studies narrative and lexical choices in Murakami’s stories, with the aim to expose the impact of a global shift towards internationalism in a sample of contemporary literature, thus challenging ethnocentric interpretations to be changed or suspended.

JAPAN: CULTURAL CONTEXT The Japan of Murakami’s youth was an excluded and exclusive nation, a product of its historical and anthropological context: in the Pacific islands, which humanity reached last in its diffusion from central Africa, tribalism endured with little need for independent technological advancement. On these archipelagos, the nature of the tribe varied by island: resource-rich locations yielded tribes of peaceful peoples who made advancements in agriculture and government, while resource-scant island tribes developed warfare and technologies, such as ships. Eventually, islands separated by greater distances became segregated by their resources and by the adaptability of tribes. In the case of Japan, the warriors dominated10, as argued by anthropologist and geographer Jared Diamond. As early Japan developed, so did a political system that eventually unified tribes under an imperial dynasty preserved to this very day. After centuries of Imperial rule, civil war broke out amongst the warrior class who tasted power when they were accepted into the Imperial court. The victorious clans established the Shōgunate: the position of Shōgun would become the single most important political and military figure in Japan for the next few centuries. Under the Shōgun, based in Tokyo – then named Edo – no Japanese or foreigner11 was allowed in or out of the country. Japan – cocooned in its protective nationalism – remained, in anthropological terms, undeveloped12.

In 1853 America sailed into Japanese ports determined to open the country to the world. Confronted with an enemy possessing a defining technology which the Japanese did not have – guns – the Shōgun was powerless and submitted to Western calls for Japan to end its archaic isolationism and to allow the entry of foreigners. The Japanese people

7. Murakami, Haruki, and Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel, The Elephant Vanishes. London: Vintage, 1993; Murakami, Haruki, and Jay Rubin, After The Quake. London: Vintage, 2000; Kafka On the Shore. London: Vintage, 2005; Murakami, Haruki, and Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. London: Vintage, 2006 8. The concept of liquid modernity is defined in Bauman, Zygmunt, Culture in a Liquid Modern World. Cambridge: Polity, 2011, 12-13 9. Bauman, Zygmunt, What Use is Sociology? Conversations with Michael H. Jacobsen and Keith Tester. Cambridge: Polity, 2014 , 90 10. Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel. London: Vintage, 2005, Part 1 11. Predominantly from China, and what would later become Eastern Russia and Korea.

12. According to the definition of “A largely isolated nation or society that has a low technological level but is economically self-reliant. They are not participants in the world economic system”, http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cglossary.htm#sectT

witnessed the easy submission of the Shōgun to foreigners with contempt.

With this, a period of civil unrest broke out between the Japanese, having lost confidence in the Shōgun and Emperor Meiji, aged just fifteen, abolished the Shōgunate and began to lead his country with the backing of the most powerful samurai clans.

In a series of political events known as the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) Japan entered a defining shift in power and economy, and for the first time, stepped into globalising world politics, initiating Japan’s rise to becoming a rival of the greatest Western powers of Imperial Germany, the British Empire and the United States. The shift during Meiji government was radical in its scope. The government universalised education, modernised transport and ‘borrowed’ Western technology such as factories and medicine, such that Japan became a dominant goods manufacturer and a pioneer in medical advancement. The government imported Western experts in science, legalism and economics to ensure the closest possible imitation of ‘the West’.

Literature and culture were also significantly influenced by the ‘Westernisation’ of Japan, especially during the reign of the next Emperor, Taishō, with Japanese writers beginning to experiment with Western methods. After the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in Tokyo, the government commissioned the city to be rebuilt in Western style, bringing with it Western fashion and music: especially jazz. While popular culture entertained these changes, there was anxiety about the potential eradication of Japanese culture through self-colonisation in the intellectual milieu.13 When Emperor Hirohito took to the throne (1926), Japan’s longestrecorded monarch and his government were on the brink of changing the nation completely. In a controversial act of militarism, Japan fully conquered Manchuria to the outrage of China and the West, but, further mocking Western inaction, left the League of Nations entirely on 24 February 1933. This East-West break would reverberate into Japan’s cultural sphere, granting space for a renewed focus on traditionalism in regards to preserving Japanese identity and aestheticism. This defining moment also inspired Tanizaki’s argument that, left alone, Japan would have evolved a more independent perspective on both science and the arts.14 The invasion, against the backdrop European unrest, led to Japan’s entrance into the Second World War, engaging in a prolonged conflict in which the Japanese lost almost all Pacific colonies and was bombarded by the United States’ Air Force and by Imperial propaganda into defending the Home Islands to the last man, woman and child. This resulted in a cultural seachange from insularity to the near self-colonisation, a process that inspired Murakami.

SHIFTING VALUES In this defining moment when the use of nuclear weapons by America swiftly forced surrender from the Japanese, on 12 January 1949, under peaceful military occupation, Haruki Murakami was born in Kobe. The internal tension faced by the defeated Japanese was difficult to resolve: the traditional principles of Bushido15 conflicted with the deep embarrassment of defeat and of the Japanese involvement in the war, opening the country’s eyes towards more internationalist perspectives. Murakami grew up in a Japan led by the former samurai idealists, aware of the dominant western culture being drip-fed into Japan.

13. Wang, Georgette, ed., De-Westernising Communication and Research. Oxford: Routledge, 2001, 147; Tanizaki, Jun’ichirō, In Praise of Shadows (1933). London: Vintage, 2001, 14 14. Tanizaki, 14-17 15. The Samurai Code of Honour, emphasising loyalty and honour above life itself. http:// www.dictionary.com/browse/bushido

Additionally, to say that occupying forces shaped modern Japan would be an understatement; as with liberated Western Europe, America turned Japan into a market for American goods, allowing the Japanese immediate economic and structural reprieve without re-militarising.

The main generation who bought into the American market would have been that of Murakami’s parents, the generation who also decided to emphasise education, technological and social advancement above individuality, creating the collectivist atmosphere still in place today. The capitalist doctrine of ‘working for the common good’ – often warped to ‘the good of the company’ – was more peaceful than the ideals of expansion post-Meiji, albeit exaggerated to absolve the past and prevent such a violent situation in the future. This facsimile of Western capitalist society is prominent in Murakami’s narratives through his protagonists and their existentialist alienation, as expressed through their behaviour and cultural practices in absurd roles modelled on modern Japanese work and home culture. Such a character is Katagiri in the short story ‘Super-Frog Saves Tokyo’16, whose role in his company is to liaise loan repayment from the dregs of Tokyo’s fictional society. He is pulled into the fantasy of a giant talking frog who battles with an angry earthquake-causing worm, a magic realist expression of absurd urban alienation caused by a workaholic culture.

HARUKI MURAKAMI’S VOICE The international popularity of Murakami’s work accounts for his ‘cult status’ at home and abroad17 - but also for his controversial place on the Japanese literary scene: his post-modern narrative methods defy cultural boundaries and the values of established Japanese aestheticism, those praised by Tanizaki, for whom “Japan is only too anxious to imitate America in any way it can”18. In his own words, Murakami sees the writing of his youth as an escape, ‘to run as far as [he] could from the Japanese condition, to distance [himself ], from the curse of Japanese’19. However, his early fiction often blends his own experiences with those of his characters through the use of the first person, empathetic narrators and listeners.

The act of storytelling has shaped human history since time immemorial: real or fictitious depictions human endeavour and cultural practices have dominated the ways in which societies build identity and collective memory.

Murakami’s storytelling skills are most memorable in his manipulation of narrative perspective in stories such as ‘On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl’, ‘The Elephant Vanishes’20 or ‘Folklore from My Generation’21, which, similarly to many of his novels, rely upon the first-person narrator and analepsis to convey his view of Japanese changing cultural practices – from courting and coming of age rituals to dysfunctional relationships in urbanised settings where affection is presented as a vanishing commodity.

Murakami’s deployment of the narrative voice is dependent on Japanese norms of formality and identity: Murakami employs the informal boku as a first person pronoun, e.g. ‘I, the male narrator’ with its informal, ‘democratic’ tone. Occasionally in his works, Murakami employs the pronoun boku as a proper noun, as the name of his narrator, in an effort to remain close to the English ‘I’ and to avoid the impression of an authoritative figure22.

Boku, typical in conversational Japanese – carries a familiar tone, denoting friendship or closeness – but its informality is atypical of Japanese literary norms. In the words of his most loyal translator, Jay Rubin, Murakami has adopted this device for over 20 years23, testimony to his narrative empathy: ‘Murakami knows how stories are told – and heard. He is sensitive to the rhythms of exchange between teller and listener, and is conscious enough of the mechanics of this process to recreate it – which he often does – in a fictional setting.’24 This empathy, as will be shown later, is essential to the shift towards internationalism and the relevance of Murakami’s fiction to international readers in a global context dominated by increasingly homogenous cultural traits.

16. Murakami, 2000 17. https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/haruki-marukami-now-available-in-50-languages/ 18. Tanizaki, 54 19. Rubin, Jay: Haruki Murakami: In Search of This Elusive Writer (documentary) https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=NI6LyqO9i8Y&list=FLoGsFVi7bt7g24GlmVRzM0g&index=3 20. Murakami, 1993 21. Murakami, 2006 22. Rubin, Jay: Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words. London: Vintage, 2005, 38 23. Rubin, 38 24. Rubin, 5 25. Shigeko Okamoto, Janet S. Shibamoto, ed., Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People. Oxford University Press, 2004, 6-8 26. Murakami, 1993

Japanese sociolinguistics debates aspects of speaking practices that are arguably perceived as more gender-specific than their Western equivalents - from tone and pronunciation to honorifics.25 Whilst Murakami’s Boku is an expressly male narrator, its female equivalent (encountered less often), such as the narrator/protagonist of ‘Sleep’ or of ‘The Little Green Monster’26, is presented through the formal first person pronoun, Watashi27 – i.e. ‘I, the female narrator’. This is a possibly deliberate signal of distance between author and female narrator, whose experience Murakami can only strive to imagine and sympathise with, but never empathise with, as he embarks upon his interpretation of a housewife’s alienation from her family or her struggle to recover her sense of self - as a result of undeniable existential pressures inherent to shifting anthropological values and gender interrelationships in contemporary Japan.

It could therefore be said that all of Murakami’s works are an exploration of the individual’s place in the world and of the modern day urban malaise, a quintessential alienation, as human beings find themselves at odds with a rapidly changing world, shifting moral values and a blurring of cultural boundaries, but also of cultural practices, through the friction between internationalism and traditionalism. In Murakami’s own words: “In a world where even the ground beneath our feet can’t be relied on, imagination becomes less of a luxury and more of a duty”.28 Thus, in his unique brand of Japanese magic realism, Murakami seamlessly draws realities together in much of his fiction: the undersea volcano in ‘The Second Bakery Attack’, the vanishing elephant or the vivid presence of the ‘little green monster’ in their eponymous stories - or the parallel worlds that threaten the ‘real’ worlds of Murakami’s novels.

CREATIVITY AND INTERNATIONALISM Murakami’s Japanese magic-realist moments are neatly counterbalanced by realist diction which often mimics English conversational parataxis, as for instance in the voice of his endearingly indecisive boku narrator of ‘The Second Bakery Attack’ (who cannot make up his mind about his metanarrative choices: “Things happen. Or not.”)29; the Watashi in ‘Sleep’ (“I just can’t sleep. Not for one second.”)30 or the ‘boy named Crow’, the alter ego of the eponymous narrator of Kafka on the Shore, whom the narrator refers to in the third person (“But he’s not just pretending. He’s totally awake. As always.”)31 Moreover, as avid translator of contemporary American – the staple for international – fiction, from Fitzgerald and Capote to Raymond Carver32 Murakami “became a one-man revolution in Japanese fictional style”33 opening up the market for American fiction in Japan. It is no surprise therefore that his narrative voice carries “the musical cadence of America”34, through its tone and diction. Colloquialisms such as “cool as a cucumber”35 – with “cool” and “cucumber” featuring in katakana phonetic script36 in the Japanese original, a linguistic convention for borrowed words or ‘Japanised’ American idioms.

As such, Murakami’s narrative style and lexical choices naturally lend themselves to translation, especially into English, accounting for much of Murakami’s global success, is his refinement of a deliberately international, albeit American, ‘creative voice’: from the start of his fiction-writing career with Hear the Wind Sing, Murakami would firstly write the early stages of the novel in English, then translate into Japanese, because “Writing in a foreign language, with all the limitations it entailed” liberated him from the obstacles of emotional and cultural weight his own language posed in the way of his creative fluency37.

It is easy to assume, therefore, that Murakami’s work would not have become so popular if he had tried to capture a version of Japanese identity that belonged more to the past, traditionalist aesthetics. Murakami establishes the author/narrator/character trichotomy by appealing to a 27. Rubin, 176 28. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/oct/19/fiction.harukimurakami 29. Murakami, 2003, 36 30. Murakami, 2003, 76 31. Murakami, 2005, 1 32. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/13/haruki-murakami-interview-colorlesstsukur-tazaki-and-his-years-of-pilgrimage 33. Rubin, 74 34. Chozick, Matthew Richard, De-exoticising Murakami’s Reception, in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 45, No.1, East–West Issue. 2008, 65 35. Murakami, Haruki, and Philip Gabriel, Kafka on the Shore. London: Vintage, 2005, 360 36. “キュウリのようにクール”. Katakana is often favoured by younger generations over Kanji even for indigenous vocabulary.

37. Murakami, Haruki, and Ted Gossen, Introduction to Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and Pinball (1980). London: Vintage, 2015, ix

common humanity and through this unity, a sample of human experience, as result of the forces of history and changing cultural practices, is expressed. Murakami’s work can be defined as example of a voice for the global shift towards internationalism, both for absorbing and propagating the influential strand of Western culture that is American modernist and contemporary fiction, and for opening a window for post-modern East/ West cross-pollination into the contemporary Japanese literary scene, at the centre of which Murakami’s fiction stands38.

Indeed, Murakami’s effort to craft a ‘creative self’ is reflective of the inherent post-war Japanese drive for perfectionism. Murakami acquired “a creative rhythm distinctly [his] own” and “wanted to deploy a type of Japanese as far removed as possible from so-called literary language in order to write in [his] own natural voice”39. However, while some of his critics “saw this as a threatening affront to [the] national language”, Murakami defends “the inherent right of writer to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine – without that adventurous spirit nothing new can be born. [His] style in Japanese differs from Tanizaki’s as it does from Kawabata’s”40. Murakami’s style also differs from Mishima’s, whose work also broke cultural boundaries in his treatment of previously taboo themes, while preserving a narrative voice that stayed close to Japanese aestheticism. Mishima’s nationalism and samurai values were everything Murakami resisted when he grew up.

Therefore, Murakami’s work seems to shake off what is known as the Juxtaposition Model41, which upholds that in the Oriental world elements of life exist in parallel, maintaining harmony: tradition for the homestead, modernity for the workplace; rationality and science on the public front while magic and spirituality reign in private. The Juxtaposition Model is the binary opposite of ‘liquid modernity’: Murakami’s ‘TV People’ and ‘Super Frog Saves Tokyo’ best showcase his rejection of the juxtaposed norms when he allows the eponymous spirits to invade the protagonists’ offices and minds, thus capturing the shift from one culture model to another, as critique of the indiscriminate propagation of the media and consumerism.

series of interviews with victims and some of the perpetrators of the gas attack, and after the quake (2000)44 a short-story anthology allegorically inspired by the earthquake trauma, uncharacteristically, but strategically, narrated in the 3rd person, synonymous with his personal disconnection with the country and with his own (and therefore his characters’) shock to the sense of cultural identity. The re-connection with his home culture “led him down one of the darkest avenues of Japanese history” leading to reflection on the troubled relationship of Japan with its past45, at the heart of shifting contemporary Japanese cultural and social values.

SUBJECT LIMITATIONS In its organically wide scope, the discipline of anthropology helps evaluate the conflict between traditionalism and internationalism in contemporary Japanese culture on an individual scale, as presented in Murakami’s narratives. In macroscopic terms, anthropology also serves to show the global shift towards internationalism. However, to unpick Murakami’s narrative voice, combining the anthropological perspective with literary analysis is essential. In the context of Japan and of its place on shifting international scene, Murakami’s oeuvre, through its lexical and narrative choices, presents the model of a microcosm of global relevance.

CONCLUSION The impact of globalization on cultural and aesthetic values is expressed in Murakami’s work as a dialogue between East and West. Murakami is well placed in this argument: his work empathetically deviates from the Juxtaposition Model in its concern with Japanese culture and psyche and their place in a global context – nevertheless leaving the contemporary Japanese literary milieu critical of his relevance and loyalty to Japanese literary tradition46: despite Murakami’s immersion in Western culture through extensive work as translator of contemporary American fiction, as a travel writer and a lecturer in Chicago, his deliberately Westernised style is often criticized for pandering to a Western audience.

However, Murakami cannot be read as Western author either, despite the fact that his work adopts an Americanised narrative voice and Western allusions, and a tone and diction more typical of the works of Raymond Carver and of the modernists Murakami translated. From our Western perspective, his stories paint a faithful portrait of contemporary Japan, albeit one that mirrors international realities – although an equivalent investigation by a native Japanese reader would yield a different conclusion.

The result is Murakami’s role in Japan as a propagator of liquid modernity, defying the classical modernism of Japanese culture and foregrounding Japanese creativity.

SHIFTING TOWARDS THE WIDER WORLD Apart from its internationalised stylistic features Murakami’s fiction can also be seen as the voice of a global shift towards internationalism because the experiences of his characters are essentially universal – from the quiet solitude of the salaryman, to family life and relationships. Murakami’s exploration of contemporary concerns in a world increasingly governed by global economic, political and moral values, resisted being limited to the decades of Japanese insularity42. Examples in the Murakami literature are the female protagonist in ‘Sleep’, the victimised narrator in ‘TV People’ and notably in ‘A Slow Boat to China’43 who despite having all the semblances of a ‘normal’ life, feel alone and not in control of their own worlds; their cultural practices and predicament are conveyed through international narrative conventions such as magic realism and playful syntax, as they enjoy American jazz and European classical music, while their routine includes Italian food and Russian literature. In addition, Murakami’s go-to principle of the boku viewpoint facilitates a greater journey than reaching a conclusion – there is no guaranteed end result – which in Murakami’s fiction there rarely is: an interesting deviation from mainstream Japanese literary evolution, and a mirror to cultural and anthropological shifts.

In everyday life, the syncretism inherent to internationalism is both creative and destructive, with cultural tension and nationalism as backlash reactions.

However, contemporary Japanese ethos encourages a practical absolution of a wartime past. While Murakami’s critics call out a perceived succumb to globalisation,47 Murakami’s narratives beckon towards internationalism by speaking a positive, open-minded Japanese voice abroad, rather than contributing to an insular narrative. He breaks down cultural barriers and clichés established by 19th Century Japonisme, clichés of closed borders and exotic, medieval but refined aesthetics, as perceived by the early Western visitors to the country - and of anthropological interest.

However, Murakami never forgot his roots and his perspective took a sharp turn in January, 1995, when news of the Kobe earthquake reached him in the States, followed by those of the Sarin gas attacks. These spurred his return to Japan to understand the physical, moral and cultural devastation, marking both a return to his roots and a turning point in his career, as his focus turned towards his people. Murakami wrote Underground (1997), a

In these ways, Haruki Murakami’s fiction can be seen as the localised voice of a global shift towards internationalism, foregrounding its impact on the individual’s sense of self and place in their own culture, because literary discourse inevitably engages the reader through empathy and acknowledgement of the universality of human experience through cultural practices that range from the private to the political.

38. Murakami has been considered for the Nobel Prize for Literature numerous times; equally, his translation of The Great Gatsby into Japanese brought this American classic to the Japanese market.

39. Murakami, 1980, xii 40. Murakami, 1980, xiii. Yasunari Kawabata was the Nobel Literature Prize Winner in 1968 when Yukio Mishima, the other giant of Japanese contemporary literature, had also been considered.

41. Hanafi, Hassan, “Tradition and Modernism between Continuity and Discontinuity: Possible Models and Historical Options.” Asian Journal of Social Science 33, no. 3, 2005, 384-93. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/23654378.

42. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/13/haruki-murakami-interview-colorlesstsukur-tazaki-and-his-years-of-pilgrimage 43. Murakami, Haruki, and Jay Rubin, Alfred Birnbaum, The Elephant Vanishes. London: Vintage, 2003, pp 74, 196, 218 44. Murakami insisted the title ‘should be all lower case’, Rubin, 225

45. The Music of Words; Haruki Murakami: In Search of This Elusive Writer (Documentary) 46. Masao Miyoshi in Rubin, 7- 8 47. http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/internetnation/bungaku

Tanzania, Africa, Extreme Writing Challenge

by Katya C, 5th We drove on in the small safari bus out of Arusha, the city, towards the plains and mountains ahead. With all the windows wide open, the dry African wind roared in our ears, tangling our hair with sand and dust. The roads were made of gravel, rocks and dirt, so the trembling bus moved rapidly and sharply. The soft colours of the wilderness outside blended together in a pale sea of pastels, with rare lone trees spiking up from the flat land. Patches of thirsty yellow grass lay on the ground, with the sun mercilessly sucking out its colour and life. And still it did not feel like we were really in Africa.

The bus continued to jolt forward laboriously. A gradual change that somehow seemed sudden came over the landscape: the desert became broader and in the distance a faint blue silhouette of the mountain range began to seep through the white sky. The plain appeared endless before but now the far away mountains made it look even greater, even more menacing. Now the desert had an edge, a visible ending, which gave us the stunning comprehension of its size. Heat waves danced and twirled on the horizon, creating mirages, which filled us with an unsettling felling of loneliness and helplessness against nature.

Just as the image began to blur in our eyes from its monotony, a zeal of zebras gaited into our view. Although the appearance of the mammals wasn’t thrilling to anyone, it was the freedom with which they moved and the size of these small specs of black and white compared to their exposed surroundings that filled us with unexpected delight and amazement. And as the zebra paced away into the shivering skyline, we understood that we were in Africa.

Extreme Writing Challenge

by Ethan D, 3rd

Sitting on a paddle board surrounded by endless nature and crystal clear sea, I take in the surroundings of Lobster Bay. Behind me in the shape of a semi-circle is the Sui Hang Hau neighbourhood, the place in which I have grown up. In front of me is nothing but blue sea and pea green coloured mountains. Underneath me lies a whole different eco-system. Paddling around I can see the transparent jellyfish with their tentacles hanging below, and schools of fish passing by. There is also a faint smell of horses drifting over the sea from the west. This is coming from the local stables, which I can just about glimpse through the trees. Lobster bay is a popular destination within the Sui Hang Hau community. On the weekends, there are at least a dozen people out on the water either swimming, paddle boarding or kayaking. The local fishermen are also often seen fishing off the rocks to my right, right before open ocean. At night, the sea looks like a city, with the many lights of the different squid boats. Since the winds coming into the bay can be quite cruel at times, it can become a nightmare for some, with angry waves and howling winds it is not pretty place. Though as I sit here on this beautiful summer morning I take in the small bit of paradise that sits right on my front door step.

Village of Mehamn, Norway Extreme Writing Challenge

by Ricardo T, 3rd The village of Mehamn, with an approximate population of 900 inhabitants, sitting on the North most part of continental Europe, is an unusual and spartan holiday destination. With the unexpected weather and sharp climate conditions, you never knew what would happen next.

24 hour daylight, incredible landscapes, pristine wildlife, gorgeous fjords, warm and kind people, Mehamn is surely a ‘must’ place to visit. You would think that being so close to the Arctic Circle you would find a desolate landscape. On the contrary, the whole place was sprouting with incredible wildlife, both on land and sea. On land, you would find hundreds of reindeers scattered all around the grassy plains, criss crossing the almost deserted local roads. Whilst in the gelid blue Barent waters, massive cods ruled the depths of the sea. Apart from cods, the Barent Sea exploded with fish of all kinds, like: Cods, Halibuts, Pollock, Wolffish, Coal fish, etc. Most certainly Norway is not a place short of wildlife!! A local rule, to preserve wildlife, stated that you could only keep the fish you ate: therefore, we only kept 2¬3 fish and released all the daily excess catch. During summer, the average temperature of the Barent Sea is around 8¬9 degrees, which is quite low... The temperature is so cold that if you fall in the water you would freeze to death in less than ten minutes!.

We also followed a local tradition: we bathed into a large hot tub in the open air and, subsequently, after we couldn’t stand the heat anymore, we jumped into the freezing sea water. You had to exit the water quickly as you could risk to pass out!

The last day we all waved farewell to Mehamn and beautiful Norway, hoping to be able to return there in the future.

Why do people invent monsters and are they less scary now than they were before?

A TED talk transcript: transactional writing by Guilia F, L6

Today I’m going to talk to you about monsters.

Monsters have different effects on everyone: for example, when you were younger you may have been scared of the dark and imagined all kinds of horrible monsters hiding there; but everyone would have imagined something different.

Monsters can take any size, shape or form and they could even look just like you or me. The rough definition of monster is a large ugly and frightening imaginary creature. They play an essential role in films, books, and TV series; without them, most of us wouldn’t watch, read or enjoy many of these entertainment sources.

But why are we so fascinated by monsters and other imaginary creatures - and why did people start inventing monsters? Was it just for fun or was there maybe another reason behind it all? And are monsters now not as scary as they were, for example, 40 years ago?

I’m going to start from the very first source where monsters featured in our culture: Myths. Monsters from myths are very different depending on their origin; for example, in Greek mythology, there’s the Minotaur - the monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. There is Polyphemus, the giant with one eye; the Sphinx, which has the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle and the face of a woman, and there is also the dreaded Chimera.

The Chimera was one of the scariest monsters in Greek Mythology as it had three heads, each with a different animal - a snake, a goat and a lion; its front legs were like a lion’s paws; its back legs were like a goat’s.

On the other side of the world, in Native American myth there are water cannibals, horned snakes and giant turtles, while in

South American myth there is the WereJaguar.

One of the most popular monsters in world culture is the dragon: one of many theories regarding the origin of the dragon is that no one invented it. When apes started walking on the ground they had more predators to deal with and their brains, which were much smaller than they are now, couldn’t cope with all of the information; some say that some of the predators were merged together. In the case of the dragon, it was the jaguar, the eagle and the python were imagined to have all merged together to make a new monster. This could also be an explanation for how some other monsters were created, such as the griffin, which is part lion and part eagle. The human mind merges together the scariest parts of the animals, the ones we fear most and creates the most frightening monster possible.

However these monsters are always killed in films.

Nearly all books contain at least one monster in them: whether it’s a dragon, a vampire or something else, generally people experience a tremendous enjoyment of stories with imaginary creatures. There are such examples in some of the most popular books today: The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Twilight and the Stephen King novels. All of these have monsters in them.

People choose to read them because they like being scared and they like to have an escape from the ordinary world and into an imaginary one with magic, monsters and other such creatures.

There are also various books written on monsters for example The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, by Caspar Henderson, The Book of Imaginary Beings, by Jorge Luis Borges, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ by J.K Rowling. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is a 21st century Bestiary, which includes 27 different beings.

For each of them, there is a long description of where they live, what they look like, what they eat and anything else that can be said about them. The Book of Imaginary Beings includes more than 120 beings, their description and where to find them. On the other hand, Fantastic Beasts and where to find them is based on the magical creatures from the Harry Potter books.

“Monsters that scare us like vampires, zombies help us cope with what we dread most in life:” This is a quotation by Patricia Donovan about how people invent monsters and include them in books and films because it helps to make them feel better about life and lucky that they are not in the situation themselves. It helps them realise what their biggest fears are and that if we don’t face them then they will never go away. And as David Castillo says: “They offer a way for us to understand our own modern fears and their monstrous offspring, and new ways to think about broad questions of political history and how they relate to the modern age.”

We also watch movies and read books about monsters because they fascinate us in some way and we find them entertaining.

One of the most well known books about monsters is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the story of a scientist named Victor Frankenstein who managed to create a monster using dead human body parts.

Frankenstein then abandons the monster who in return starts killing members of Frankenstein’s family. When this (essentially

“

In the past, vampires were portrayed in a much scarier ways, as for instance in the film Dracula. Now there are even good vampires, instead of all being terrifying monsters.

Gothic) horror novel was released, it was very popular - and it still is - because of how different it is to other novels written in that time. It caught people’s attention because it was something they’d never seen before and the horror of the story, centred around a monstrous creature, grabbed people’s interest.

Now, let’s move on to my other question: why are monsters today not as scary as they used to be? For example, vampires today sparkle (like in Twilight) or they’re good monsters, like in some of the Marvel movies. Some say that in the past monsters were much scarier; if we take a look at a werewolf from the film an American Werewolf in London and then we take a look at one of the werewolves from Twilight. We can all see that the twilight werewolf looks more like a big fluffy dog than an actual scary werewolf like the other one. Monsters are even the main subjects of some cartoons, like Monsters Inc. which is about monsters scaring children to load on energy. However, even they are shown as big fluffy multi-coloured monsters and they are made to look less frightening to children.

In the past, vampires were portrayed in a much scarier ways, as for instance in the film Dracula. Now there are even good vampires, instead of all being terrifying monsters.

On the other hand, others may disagree with this and argue that monsters are scarier today because of all the special effects available to us through technology now, that couldn’t be used before. Special effects enable the producers to obtain a more vivid and realistic image of the monsters and in so doing they make them scarier.

However, if we take vampires as an example, even though we can see that they have changed a lot compared to the more frightening ones; there may be a reason for this: instead of being evil they are good

vampires. So instead of being scared of monsters we have become their friends.

On the other hand if the monster wins over us we don’t just die or get hurt. We become the monster. Like when vampires bite and turn humans into vampires like them. We don’t just like watching scary films because we like being scared. We watch them because the monsters always die in the end and this helps us to see that we can conquer our own fears – because if we don’t, they will conquer us.

To conclude, there are various explanations to how and why people invent monsters, but in my opinion it is mostly because we like being scared - and seeing monsters in films or reading about them in books provides us with an escape to another world which makes us feel better about the real world, while also helping us realise that we are far more fortunate than characters in films. Even though people like watching horror movies and feeling scared, they don’t want to be the victim. To answer the second question I think that there a various examples to both the arguments and so in some cases the special effects make the monsters scarier but in some older films they are scarier than the modern ones.

The last reason for monsters being more frightening in the past, is that now we are friends with monsters instead on them being our enemies - and that’s why they look less scary. There are three ways things can end with monsters: we can kill them, be killed by them or befriend them.

What effect has social media truly had on our society?

By Laura N, 3rd

Social media has a massive impact on our everyday lives. The average American uses 8 hours of social media per month. Whilst seeming harmless, all this time spent on social media can have a bigger impact than we think.

It was first invented so that people could interconnect all throughout the world making Earth a more globalised place. However, many people would argue that this is no longer the main reason for the use of social media. This is Facebook's mission statement: "Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them." Does everyone agree?

But what attracts us to social media? Technology has been rapidly developing throughout the last 25 years, everyone feels that they have to stay updated on the latest. Of course, one of the main attractions for connecting to the internet is the ability to connect better with the world around us. However, people are starting to become addicted to the feeling that we get when someone likes or comments on a photo.

Negative or positive, it generally has a large impact in our self-esteem and the way we think of ourselves and others. Gaining a like on a photo releases a melatonin that makes us feel happy and calm. This is what we become addicted to and this is why we love social media so much. However, the feeling we get one someone comments something negative is completely different.

Not only do we feel distressed and unhappy but we start to feel angry, jealous and in some cases, suicidal.

Dangerously, this feeling is even more addictive.

Recently, a psychological scale has been made to measure Facebook addiction – the Berge Facebook Addiction Scale. The scale can be used to diagnose illnesses such as neuroticism. As you can imagine there are some very unhealthy scores that co-inside with taking the test. One of the scariest being the negative correlation between how much time we spend on Facebook and the number of hours of sleep we get each night.

Social media can have an awful impact on how we sleep at night. Our devices release something called ‘blue light’ which causes a melatonin to trigger in our bloodstream energising us and making it a challenge for us to sleep. This is a terrifying result. Sleep is vital for human performance and 87% of teenagers say that they can’t find the energy to focus in lessons if they haven’t slept at least 9 hours of sleep. Researchers suggest we switch off our devices 1.5 hours before we plan to go to bed.

What is interesting is that researchers found that people who are more anxious and socially insecure are more likely to use the social networking sites. This is becoming a huge problem for our society because for young people today, getting ‘likes’ on photos in the virtual world can bring a huge sense of accomplishment and social acceptance. The endless comparison of another person’s photo and your own comes with a huge wave of dissatisfaction with your own body.

Claire Mysko, an award-winning author and expert on body image, leadership and media literacy, explains: “While social media is not the cause of low self-esteem, it has all the right elements to contribute to it. Social media creates an environment where disordered thoughts and behaviours really thrive.”

For teenage girls, the photos of (digitally edited) very skinny and ‘perfect’ women can make them relate slimness with happiness.

This is okay for most girls. However, some teenagers have anxiety or disordered eating which can lead to serious, life-threatening illnesses such as anorexia and bulimia. Mysko suggests that ‘although social media provides the validation and confidence a teenage girl craves, it also provides a catalyst for more insecurity.’ How many times have you scrolled through a social media website and felt

worse about yourself? How many times have you compared yourself to someone digitally edited? This kind of empowered awareness can help inform a young person’s choices.

In conclusion, it is obvious that social media has some awful impacts on today’s society. However, we must not forget the endless opportunities given to us by social media that come with responsibility and maturity.

How have stress levels changed from our parents’ generation to our own?

by Zoe H, L6

Stress is a common problem today: the world is ‘on’ 24/7 and ever-growing stress levels have been proven to cause an increase in a variety of serious health issues: depression and suicide, difficulties within relationships, contribution to infertility and even an increased risk of heart attacks.

O

ne might usually associate stress-related problems with the strains that come with adulthood - however, in recent years, stress has become more common in teenagers; as a result, the age band on which health issues can occur has expanded. Stress is a common problem today: the world is ‘on’ 24/7 and ever-growing stress levels have been proven to cause an increase in a variety of serious health issues: depression and suicide, difficulties within relationships, contribution to infertility and even an increased risk of heart attacks.

One might usually associate stress-related problems with the strains that come with adulthood - however, in recent years, stress has become more common in teenagers; as a result, the age band on which health issues can occur has expanded.

It therefore seems important to me that we raise aware and find solutions to this rising trend. This article explores how stress levels have changed from one generation to another, in order to expose the gravity of this problem and consider how we can possibly prevent it for the future generations: The definition found for it in the Oxford dictionary (Oxforddictionaries.com)is: 1.

A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.

The essential words to extract from this definition are ‘strain’ and ‘demanding’. Looking at our teenagers today their stress is caused by many different elements: the hours they are expected to work and study; examinations and testing with expectations of high grades, plus

success in other aspects of their development.

Such pressure contributes to the high levels of stress in today’s teenagers: comparatively, when our parents were teenagers, stress was generated from fewer sources - mainly peer pressure, which indeed still persists.

Sam, a pre-teen, gave me rather surprising and totally shocking answers to questions about school-caused stress: not at all what I expected from a boy aged 11. A year away from his Common Entrance exams and currently working in the top sets at his local a prep school, he had already achieved the success of an offer from the secondary school of his choice– subject to reaching the desired 65% pass mark at Common Entrance.

Talking to Sam, it seemed to me everything was going well and there was no need for stress at all. However, this new pressure of knowing what was now at stake for the 11-year-old, and needing to achieve a pass mark of 65% (a necessity drummed into him by his prep school teachers, and backed up by his parents) did, in fact, cause some stress for him. Sam explained how he was worried about not doing well enough to achieve the required grade and what would happen if he didn’t.

Sam’s family support him by paying for extra tuition at home (this had an impact on the

relaxation of his home life, therefore also contributing to the pressure.) Nevertheless, additionally the pressure was also coming from him, as he now really wanted to get in to this school and started believing his teachers that if he didn’t work harder he might not make it.

Like many young people today, he is objected to the overkill of extra curricular activities: three musical instruments and sports, in addition to academic commitments; his parents micromanage his different activities and schedules regarding both work and play.

Sam is denied an opportunity for a lunch break, or to simply have fun and play outside with his friends. Sadly, when I asked if he was enjoying school at the moment, he said “not anymore”.

I asked what it would take for him not to be worried about everything and enjoy himself. He felt that for this to happen, the adults around him could be more encouraging and helpful, explaining that if they were ‘nicer’ and ‘more understanding’ then he ‘wouldn’t be so stressed’.

Sam desperately wishes that he could have more fun at school and at home.

Like many today, Sam’s mother is worried about the fact that young children nowadays do have too much pressure on them to achieve results at very young ages, and that the pressure of getting into prep schools is where the pressure only begins. After this, there is the stress of getting into good senior schools, which she felt was getting out of hand. Children are working much harder, to almost unhealthy levels, due to high the demands of the standards required: “Schools nowadays expect much more from pupils, and with worries such as entrance exams, the children are pushed much more than the last generation. I didn’t properly start working hard until my O-levels when I was 16, but even then, the marks that I achieved did not make much difference in any of my future careers as getting jobs was not very difficult; so the pressure just wasn’t there”.

“Of course education is important, but to jump through all these hoops just to get your child in the ‘right’ school so that they have a ‘good education’ is madness […] But it is hard to ignore the teachers and the other parents pushing their children to the front: we are all in a constant game of catch up.”

Time is a constant pressure. Never enough time. Long gone are the days where children had so much time on their hands that they actually read books and explored their environment unsupervised, finding their own way in life, without being micro-managed by their parents.

It is time we addressed this issue so that we are able to focus on what is really important: our personal happiness. Our children growing up happy and balanced.

The one area that stands out among young children - teenagers in particular – as a major

cause of stress is the constant pressure of exams and testing. Currently, in the UK, students are confronted with many more important exams than any the previous generations. For our parents, there was only two summers of exam stress: “Ordinary Level and Advanced Level”; with our generation, it is very different.

Teenagers today are forced to bear up to four years of constant exam and test pressure only to be continued in the highly encouraged additional years at university. And this is much more common than it used to be, for now it seems to be impossible to get a decent job without having studied at a top university.

Furthermore, nowadays we are slaves to an ever-growing Internet platform with media profiles to constantly manage. We have seemingly no private life and nowhere to hide as teenagers might have done in the past.

Nowadays, everything is instantaneously ‘liked’ or ‘ignored’ within minutes of posting a status or ‘selfie’, available for all to scrutinize in a network of teenagers that in reality we don’t even know, yet we might share a couple of ‘mutual friends’ virtually, never to be forgotten (!)

This is a newly developed extension of what is typically called peer pressure. Numerous sites and apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are constantly telling teenagers what we should be doing, what we should look like, what we should listen to or talk about in order to have the most fun.

This worry of missing out on what everyone else is doing is what pressurises teenagers to do things that we wouldn’t usually do and pushes us to be constantly distracted by our devices and what our friends are doing. As it has been in past generations, peer pressure is an enormous factor, but these days it is a much more familiar.

There is no escaping the standards of social media. Peers always seem to be having fun; again it is a problem of keeping up with the cooler kids and the strain of trying to be popular. Using social media and communicating with friends via the Internet not only takes up a lot of time – precious time that would be best spent reading a book or resting from the pressure of the day – but it also adds on to the stress of our daily lives in the form of peer pressure, which was obviously prevalent in past generations in some form, but the difference now is that there is no escaping the Internet; it is on twenty-four hours a day.

Something is out of balance: never before have children been under so much pressure to be popular and successful, and the worst thing is that we won’t know the consequences of what this stress has on the rest of our lives for a few years yet. How long can we carry the load of such pressure? Perhaps this is especially worrying with new modern technology and medicine allowing us to live much longer than before.

Nowadays, children and teenagers are forced through their education, learning the facts and syllabuses that are required for specific

examination processes. However, surely an education should be more than this? Surely, young people should be learning about the world and the different experiences that come with it, learning about different subjects in depth, rather than sticking to the shallow reality of the public examination process’ demands. The problem lies within the competition between other parents and their children; as Sam’s mother said, it is hard not to join in the fight for a place in a ‘good’ school, otherwise there is the worry that you are putting your own child at a disadvantage.

What this generation needs to realise is that success in exams and being successful online are not the most important things in this world and do not define success in our own lives. Failure is possible, and something that we should learn from and not shy away from. By this natural learning process (that cannot be taught in a classroom), we can learn to protect ourselves from the pressure that comes with constantly attempting to live up to excessively high standards, and just to learn to accept ourselves.

Over-working and overloading ourselves just to achieve good grades is not the answer either.

However, shifting the balance is not as easy as it sounds. In order to fully achieve this goal, a general consensus of agreeing on quality of life is needed to create this sense of calm; a good balance between work and play is important and worth striving for. It would take a brave new world to get this balance corrected, as the competitive nature of us as teenagers is going to be tough to break.

Not to mention our schools and our parents, as well as the set ways that we have been taught to push ourselves in order to succeed. I can’t see it happening until wellbeing in general becomes a general priority over achievement and success, and how this idea of achievement and definition of success itself changes.

Stress has numerous roots that are in desperate need of being weeded out. It is self-perpetuating.

We have lost sight of what really matters: what is more important, a child’s so-called ‘good education’ or their wellbeing?

I hope that in this article I have communicated both how strongly I feel, as a student myself, about the inevitable stress of everyday life.

But also I hope that I have expressed just how I believe the balance is in need of being re-assessed in order to enable students to breathe and develop at our own pace; enjoying the natural journey and transition through to adulthood, which I think is something that we are currently missing out on.

I think that it is imperative to address this problem before it becomes the norm in future generations, who may not actually realise what ‘stress’ is.