For this week, i selected Ocean at the End of the Lane to read. I am very fond of this book now, and I plan on rereading it once the semester ends to understand the content of it more. It was an interesting read; characters fairy related tend to be fun and whimsical and at times a bit hard to follow. In this story, it reinvented a few old myths and tales, a few of which being "witches", mischievous spirits, and spell casting to ward off evil spirits. The largest reinvent in this story i believe is to be the mischievous spirit/ demon Ursula Monkton. She has traits similar to a demon such as possession, she latches onto our main characters foot and uses him as a connection point to our world. This possession is in part transformed into a parasitic insect, which embeds itself into his foot and requires magic in order to expel. She is not technically possessing him, however she is using him as a gateway into this world. It also delves into parallel worlds, the witch-like characters appear immortal like the gods of ancient mythology. However, they are not immortal. As it is pointed out in the text, the witches live in a different realm of time that occurs much slower than our own, giving them the appearance of immortality due to their lack of aging. Even their "death" isn't truly death, more a hibernation to rebuild until they can function in the world again. Lessie return to her ocean is a sort of means to it, they are immortal in the sense that they do not die but they can be injured, and injured seriously.
Like any mythology, it begins with a character coming from an ordinary background and facing challenges that seem beyond their abilities. In this tale, it follows an interesting twist because the character in question ends the story just as ordinary as he had in the beginning. His memory is stitched together to forget the events of his childhood, however, returning to gran's makes his memory return temporarily. He has no recollection of the events that had occurred nor has he retained enough memory outside of the house to allow him to experience any moral development because of it. It is only Lettie who receives any moral development in the story, she sacrifices herself in order to save him from the Varmints. She is the tragic hero, who lays her life down in order to save another. It would have been interesting to have an alternative version of this story written from her perspective with the tragic hero in mind. The myths were made relevant to the contemporary world due to them hiding in plain sight. They had been on that property for years, and no one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary there. The myths made in the story explained the psychologically bent behavior of some of the characters, such as the narrator's father. Had this not had the context of a demonic entity it would have been assumed the father had an affair, as well as a total psychotic break that lead to him nearly strangling the narrator. It uses mythically created characters to explain the more quirky psychotic tendencies of unstable people.
Notes: 10/10/2016
genre- expectation around genre for it to be it for it. ex. scoff has scoff, can be narrative wise.
set of loosely set expectations
think like a pizza
Neil, NEIL.
Genre vs literature:
some works that are not genre- creating taxonomies for these creates more genres
everything has a genre
Neil-scientology
mythological expressions to explain their meaning
mythology- much bigger than yourself and finding yourself within it
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