Magic

Near the end of this semester, Dr. Mitchell-Buck asked us why magic in books is so well liked? Why are Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter so important to society? Well after taking this class I feel the reason magic has such a big impact on literature nowadays is the escapism that it gives off. Magic has this idea behind it that it is unobtainable in our own world, and being the greedy society we are we all want that which we cant have. Its common psychology, like when you give a ball to one child, the other will want that ball just because the other has it. Then when the child gets the ball he doesn't even want it anymore. That's what magic is to us, we want it because we cant have it, but if we did get it we would tire of it very quickly. Magic has always been this great thing that seems to be so fantastical, but I think that is only because we don't have it. there are many things we do have in the world that are pretty fantastical them selves but because we can see them every day they don't seem so great. Take a rainbow for example, do you even know how a rainbow is made? Light refracts off of rain drops thus producing every color of the visible light spectrum. If you don't think that is one of the most magical things then something is wrong. But of course, since rainbows happen all the time most people just pass by them with out a second glance. Only things that are out of the ordinary are seen as special, and thus seen as better than the ordinary. That is what magic gives to these books, they give a look into an out of the ordinary world that people can imagine they live in. People want to escape to these worlds to change up the mundane life they are living. Magic, the final frontier.

Harry Potter

Personally, I am not a big fan of Harry Potter. I know 'Gasp' right? I just never could get into any of the books. I think it had something to do with the big hype around how good they were, and I am not much of a reader to begin with too. Every one was saying they were the best book sat the time, but I got to like the third chapter and was just like "This is boring I am going to go play video games."
Now having said all that, I can totally understand why they became such a big success, and why everyone loves the Wizarding World of Harry Potter so much. For one thing, I think the books did so well due to the hype of the books, and not just the positive hype. When the books first came out there was this huge hype about not allowing the books in school because some parents got upset with the whole"wizards" thing, think the book is like satanic and goes against the christian religion. Which as we have learned in class, Christianity has a big problem with magic and witches and wizards dating back to like 400 a.d in Europe (even further probably but 400 is the date on our Kors and Peters Book) Now you may be thinking, "well if the book was possibly being banned then how did it get so popular?" Well that's just it, it became popular because it became so well known for being a controversial book. When you think about it, being infamous gets just as much attention as being famous, Hitler, Stalin, Italian dictator named Montecelli or something, Osama Bin Laden for example. All these names are well known, but not in a positive way at all. The same thing goes for books, Harry Potter was flagged as controversial, and so everyone wanted to see why it was controversial so they read it. Even if you didn't read it you still knew about it and knew like 30 people who had read it and so it became famous/infamous. And by the time all the controversy around the book being not suitable for schools died down, it was already one of the most well known books of the time. If you hadn't read it you would have been a social pariah since every one else would have been talking about it. I know that why I tried to read it, every one else talked about it all the time and because I hadn't I had very little input on conversations revolving around the book. As they say in the entertainment world, "There is no such thing as bad press." What they mean is even if people are saying bad things about a product, its still being talked about and people learn more about it and recognize it more and more. Harry Potter wasn't even the first book to become popular partly due to controversy. "The Catcher in the Rye" became infamous when the guy who shot John Lennon said the book made him do it. Nowadays in school, everyone reads The Catcher in the Rye, South Park even made an episode revolving around that book.
That's just my thoughts on why Harry Potter became so famous, we didn't talk actually talk about this reason in class so discuss your thoughts in the comments or hold them for the next class and maybe we will bring this topic up then.

Lord of the Railroads

Ok so for an alternate universe of Lord of the Rings, we have Lord of the Railroads. It is a western take on LOTR set in roughly 1880's. The main character would be a young general store clerk and well rounded nice guy named "Fred Oscar" but people call him Fred O. for short. This young man is a well liked man in his small town community of Shirefields, Oklahoma. His parents were even one of the first people to settle on this land way back like 20 years ago in the 1860's. However, due to very unforeseen circumstances, Fred O's parents mysteriously pass away and Fred O is left with an inheritance of stocks in a railroad company. When Fred O first finds out about these stocks he is very skeptical as his parents were not the type to invest in any big corporate railroad conglomerates. With his curiosity peaked, Fred O decides to attend a stockholders meeting for this railroad conglomerate all the way out in Chicago. He walks up to the corporate building which is a huge skyscraper of a building, of course skyscrapers at this time period are only like three stories tall however. It is here at this meeting though that our fateful hero Fred O learns about the railroad corporation's big plan to buy up all the land around Fred O's town and make a super railroad track that plows right throuhg it. Fred O is shocked to say the least and decides to talk to the head of the railraod company, a man named Samuel R. Omahn, but known to his underlings as S.R. Oman. This man looks pretty much exactly like Snidley Whiplash from Dudley Do Right (Pic Related).

Needless to say when S.R. Omahn hears Fred O's plea to not run a railroad though his town, S.R. Omahn pays no attention to him and shews him away. Fred O hurries back to his small town and calls a town meeting to tell his neighbors of this oncoming monstrosity. The town goes into full panic and tries to come up with a way to deter the railroad company. The town mayor, Grant Dolph, who is an old and wise mayor of the town, with a long white beard and a pointy hat, decides that it should be up to Fred O to talk to go on a quest to talk to the other share holders of the railroad company and convince them to not run a railroad through their town. If Fred O can turn enough of the share holders against S.R. Omahn then they can stop the production of the railroad all together. Mean while the other townsfolk will do every thing in their power to hinder constrution of the railroad. In one scene Grant Dolph will even blow up a bridge that the railroad is being built on whil shouting "You Shall Not Cross!" (I can't be exactly like LOTR and say pass, that would just be too cheesy).  That scene would definately be in the teaser trailer as well.
Personally, i feel this movie would be just as big a hit, if not bigger, than Lord of the Rings. Like who doesn't love a good western? Just look at Django Unchained, and True Grit. I would definately cast like Clint Eastwood as Mayor Grant Dolph, and probably Jeff Bridges as Samuel R. Omahn. COMING OUT THIS SUMMER!

Shakespeare: The Tempest

So in class we talked about what powers does Prospero really have? When reading the first two scenes of The Tempest, it doesn't seem like Prospero is as powerful as we all thought he was in class. After looking back at the play, it seems like Prospero's power mostly comes from Ariel. The storm that wrecked the boat was conjured up by Ariel it seems, and so far that is the only real power we have seen. Yes he does have a sleep spell of some sort, but that does not seem to be that powerful as Miranda woke up from it kind of quickly it seemed like. And this "power over Ariel" is not magic at all. Or at least no magic that he showed. When Ariel complains and Prospero threatens her, he simply states that she should be grateful that he rescued her from that tree, and if she is not then he would put her back in the tree. But who is to say he didn't just take an ax to the tree? Like I can say I will put you in a tree, but that doesn't mean I actually have the power to do it. Maybe he would have forced Caliban to put her in the tree, they don't really talk about if Caliban has any magic powers, but if he was the son of a witch he has to be somewhat magical right? Which leads back to Prospero's magic over Caliban. It says Prospero took Caliban in when he was young since his mother (The witch Sycorax) died. But it doesnt say he uses magic to keep Caliban as a slave, just that he is Prospero's slave. To me it just seems that Prospero is all talk and very little show. But this may change as we read further into the play, or it may not. As we should all remember this is a play and back then they didnt have special effects to show the magic, so Shakespeare very well may have just made Prospero all talk and no show to fit what a play could show.

Merlin, The Sword in the Stone

When I think of Merlin I think of the Merlin form the book "The Sword in the Stone." This is a book I had to read back in high school. It was one of the few books I actually enjoyed reading back in high school (that and Ender's Game). This book shows Merlin as he helps a young Arthur through various training exercises. The training exercises though are different than one might think. Merlin uses his magical power to transform Arthur into various animals, like an ant or a swan and some others. While on these training exercises Arthur learns many things that will help him when he eventually becomes the king. Merlin in this book, besides having magic capable of turning Arthur into various animals, also has the power to see into the future. When I read the prose I saw this similarity between my current view of Merlin and the Merlin shown through the prose. However, the reasons behind Merlin's magical foresight comes in different form than the prose Merlin. Prose Merlin gains his foresight magic from God as a counter balance to the Devil giving him knowledge of the past. But in the book, Merlin actually ages backwards through time (not like Benjamin button but similar...). So in the Book Merlin knows the future not because he has magic that tells him the future, but because he has already experienced it. This also implies that Merlin then does not have knowledge of the past then, because he has not experienced that, the past to everyone else is Merlin's future. I thought this was a cool little detail that I now realize is based off of previous Merlins. I would like to know what version of Merlin every one else uses as their basis for Merlin. The Disney one? The British BBC TV one? Form another Movie or book? Talk about it in the comments.
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Margery Kempe

So that Margery Kempe character was pretty crazy huh? Screaming in church, having visions, talking to the Devil. If someone claimed to do that stuff today they would get a one way ticket to the loony bin. But if we were to look at how she acted and such in respect to the time, was she really all that crazy? We have read about a few other people, talking about mystics in particular, all of whom were from the same general time period. The period of religion being huge and playing a apart in almost every day to day activity, also teh time were magic is accepted to be real and evil. These other people also had some very crazy characteristics to them as well. Take just being an anchoress for example, they choose to live in a cell for probably about half of their life. If someone today just like asked to be put in jail, the concept would be so crazy to us we would make a movie about it.(Not thinking of any movie in particular) So there were a lot of crazy people back then, compared to our times perspective. But if they were all crazy back then, why was Margery Kempe actually considered crazy by people back then? Like everybody was crazy but this girl was just a bit more crazy and also crazy in different aspects, like wanting for her husband to die. All in all, every one was crazy so I don't feel like Margery was really as crazy as we think her to be. She was still crazy though, like really crazy.

Catherine of Siena

So i decided to do a little more research on this Catherine of Siena person. I personally didn't like the reading we had of her because it was all first person from Gods point of view and I thought that was kind of weird. While doing this background research I found a lot of pretty funny pictures. Most of which were about the "Mystic Marriage" of Catherine to Jesus, like the ones we saw in class. But there where other ones too, like this one ->

The big part of this picture is of the marriage to Jesus, in this one he is an adult but still putting the ring on her finger like the others. What I found interesting of this picture as opposed to the others though was the mini-pictures below the main picture. There are three smaller pictures at the bottom, one of a demon being killed by a hammer, one of an angel bringing two different soldiers together, and the third is of an angel fighting a demon. These pictures bring in the different parts of Catherine's story into one picture. This is ironic though as we also read about Hildegard who talked about demons, the Devil in particular, and these demons kind of resemble the worm-fox hybrid thing we saw in Hildegard's pictures. One difference of this picture from the others, however, is the missing of the stigmata from Catherine's hands. This could be due in part because as we read Catherine did not like to mention her stigmata to other people. 

[Picture from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Siena"]

Lillith, Adam's First Wife

 So after hearing about Lilith in class the other day I decided to find out the whole story behind her as I became quite curious. After doing a bit of background, I found there are a couple different versions of the story and how everything happened. In one version she is a demon who murders babies, much like the witches we heard about in class. Another version she is a succubus who gives men wet dreams, another scenario much like the witches we talked about in class. She was a goddess in one story, and then became Wife of Death. Some stories even turned her into a good guy by making her a model for oppressed womanhood. The one I decided to look at closer was the one most commonly accepted and dates around the medieval ages, which I thought was perfect for our class.

  The story starts off with God creating Adam from dust and clay. But as Adam is the only person, he gets a little lonely. God hears Adam's woe and decides to create Lilith from the same dust and clay he created Adam from. When Lilith was first created however, she and Adam fought often. Adam tried to rule over Lilith as he was the alpha male, Lilith did not like this one bit. Lilith demanded she be treated as an equal since she was in fact created from the same dust and clay as Adam was. Lilith got fed up with Adam and his domineering ways, so she left the Garden. God sent three angels to chase Lilith and bring her back to the Garden, but when they caught Lilith, she refused to go back. Lilith then claimed that she would kill children and babies to get back at Adam. The angels then proceeded to overpower Lilith and demanded that she not kill children and babies. Lilith, being inferior to the angels, decided to strike a deal with the angels. Lilith would not harm any children or babies as long as the mother hung an amulet around their neck with the names of the three angels. This amulet would tell Lilith to stay away from that household as it would be guarded by the angels (heh get it "guarded by angels," they are guardian angels, ha hilarious, the story didn't say that specifically but I put it in there because I liked the idea, okay back to story time) So seeing how Lilith turned out, God decided to make a new woman to be Adam's mate. This time he did not make her from the same materials as Adam so she could not claim to be equal. God decided to make this new woman from Adam's rib. This woman, of course as we all know, was named Eve. But Lilith still flew around the world, looking for babies to kill, and swearing vengeance upon men. They say she would howl through the night, giving her the nickname "The Howling One."

Sorcery ion Christendom

As one of the people in the group for the discussion of this chapter, I figured I would write a bit about my thoughts on the chapter. This chapter is about sorcery in Christendom (as you can tell by the title). This chapter goes on to take a religious view of magic and how it relates to Christianity. Tonie touched on this topic briefly in her post with the views of the Devil being magic. This was a big question to me when reading the chapter. Why is the Devil's power considered magic, but God's power is considered miracles? This gives magic the notion of being evil, since it is correlated so closely to the Devil. But with magic being considered evil by the church, why do people study it? Well it seems people still studied it since a lot of magic was used for good. Like magical cures or spells to ward off evil spirits. But if magic was the Devils power how come so much magic was for good and not evil. This lead me to think more about how we perceive magic today. In most movies magic has no real connotation as good or evil, as it is used by both good and evil as more of a tool. The good and evil aspect focuses more on the magic user than the magic itself. I guess the is kind of what it was like back then as well, but in the eyes of the church all magic was evil, regardless of the user. Now for those of you reading this i would like you to comment with how you think of magic. Does magic have a good or evil connotation to you personally? I personally think of good when I think about magic. I think of the mighty Hero who uses magic to save the princess against evil.