A Possible Example of Romance

While contemplating what Dr. Sexson described as the apparent death and wondering how I could best understand the three other concepts of romance, I came across a rather strange example of what I thought would perfectly match the criteria that we have established to this point. That is not to say that it is the perfect romance by any stretch of the imagination, only that it meets the criteria for a romance and, as popular culture, provides a succinct example of the concepts we seem to be discussing in class. And so, without further ado, I offer for the reader's consideration Gladiator. This is the point where anyone who has not watched the film should either concede that they do not care about spoilers or go and watch the movie before reading the rest of the blog.

I will concede that on the surface, Gladiator does not seem to be a romance. After all, his wife and child are murdered, crucified by Roman legionnaires, however, if we look closer, I think that it becomes apparent that the movie, though masked by brutality and bloodshed, is in the end romantic.

Let us begin then with the first apparent death. Maximus, our hero, is introduced as a character of exceeding nobility, a man who has led the Romans to countless victories over their enemies. As the film opens, he is once again caught in a battle with men from Gaul. The battle goes as planned, and Maximus is soon reunited with his friend the Emperor. The plot proceeds rapidly now. The Emperor implores Maximus to take over for him after he dies because he fears the power that his son would have over the empire. Commodus, the son, learns of this, kills his father, and has Maximus taken out into the countryside where the once proud general is to be murdered. Maximus, of course, escapes without the knowledge of Commodus and races home to protect his family. There he finds the bodies crucified above the front gate of the villa. It is that this point that he falls into a fevered state from one of his wounds and is picked up by slavers who take him to be sold as a gladiator.

Death, then, comes in many forms for Maximus. He is presumed dead by Commodus. His wife and child are killed, and he soon falls from his lofty position to the lowest of slaves. He is no longer a man that others respect but one that they expect to die for their amusement. For all intents and purposes, the man that we knew at the beginning of the film is dead, replaced by a desperate warrior with only one thought on his mind: Revenge.

This brings us to the second of our requirements, the quest. It is at this point that Maximus attempts to work his way up the ladder so to speak. At first, he resigns himself to dying in the arena, to truly becoming what he no doubt feels inside. However, soon he learns that he can perhaps meet the Emperor, now Commodus, if he is impressive enough. What follows, and I am doing a poor job of explaining the plot here, are a series of battles and chess moves that eventually brings Maximus face to face with Commodus (our first revelation).

Each side then sets about plans to overthrow the other. Maximus and several of his friends attempt to escape, only to find that Commodus has found out their plan. Many of the men are murdered, though a few are left alive, including Maximus, to fight one final time in the arena. Commodus, seeking to gain the favor of the people, plans a fight for himself against Maximus and, using the froda that he constantly does throughout the movie, stabs the stronger man in the back before the match so that his stronger opponent is not able to use the full extent of his forza. In the end, though, Commodus is killed, ironically enough by the very hidden blade with which he sought to weaken Maximus.

Maximus dies as well, however, and the first few times that I saw this movie, I thought that part to be sad. However, our recent forays into the world of romance have shown me that this is, in fact, both the final revelation and the happy ending we have been seeking all along. Maximus is reunited with his family in Elysium, I did not say that the movie was wholly accurate, and strangely enough, there is a sense that the republic of Rome, once thought dead, is now revived and ready to take its place again.

 

In the end, I hope that I have shown a modern interpretation of a classic romance. Though on its surface Gladiator appears to be a sad movie where the main character dies, that appearance masks the more romantic view that the entire movie takes. We watch a man fall from grace, search for vengeance, gain  all that he has lost back, and, in the end live happily ever after with his wife and child. In the back ground, the country itself echoes the plight of the man. First it is great as a republic, then it falls into the hells of empire, before finally reemerging as the dreamed for republic again. And if that is not romance, I do not know what is.

Daphnis and Chloe

In the introduction to Greek Fiction, Helen Morales introduces us to a concept that, in my own original reading of Daphnis and Chloe, I had not understood or deemed as less noteworthy. She points out that the style of the "novel", if I may use her own word, suggests an education on love, an attemt to define it for those who have never known the embrace of love or to awaken memories within those who have already tasted its nectar.

Perhaps it is not coicedence, then, that Daphnis and Chloe do not understand their attraction to one another and cannto express their affections beyond the shared kisses and embraces that lack the pure intimacy they so desire to both convey to the other and feel for themselves. They know that they are in love bur are incapable of expressing themselves, lacking the knowledge of the world that would allow them to move beyond simple contact. It is interesting to note that the two lovers, if they can truly be called that at this point of the story, take their cues from the animals around them. Often animals are seen as the most innocent of creatures, and it is the the time that Daphnis and Chloe spend with these creatures that makes them so ignorant of their own society and customs, that leaves them with a lack of understanding with regards to their feelings. Yet, the goats and sheep, almost in counterpoint to the innocence of the two humans' own innocence, exist with an internal knowledge and understanding of what to do and when to do it. They do not need a secret tutor leading them off into the woods for private instruction.

This leads us, then to a predicament, for we can see that Daphnis and Chloe are drawn together by some passion that they cannot comprehend, some natural desire that pushes them together. yet, this same deep-seated attraction seems to be parallel to, if not slightly overshadowed by a logical portion of the mind that needs both instruction and understanding in order to fully grasp the notions of the more primitive brain.

Longus, it would seem then, sought to show his audience that love is something both primeval and logical, based within the deepest roots of desire while still pertaining to the brain and all its powers of understanding. It is this that he is, perhaps, referring to when he states that he hopes the story will "bring back memories for those who have know love, and... give instruction to those who have not..." (Morales 137). Thus we can see passion burning away the cobwebs of a love grown cold and dark while those who are yet uninformed can begin to see the first blueprints of a design that is at once simple and immensely complicated.

Beren and Luthien

So in reading for one of my other classes, I came across a great romance that I thought I would share with the rest of you. As the title of this blog suggests, it's called "Beren and Luthien" and is a chapter in the book by J. R. R. Tolkien. The chapter itself is rather long, but I'll try to sum it up in a few sentences or so.

A man named Beren is wandering through an enchanted forest when he comes across Luthien. She is, of course, the most beautiful elf in the world. As such, he is instantly spell bound and can only pine after the woman after she vanishes into the trees. He spends the next few years wandering the forest in search of her until he finally sees her again and calls out to her. She turns to look at him and is, of course, at once spell bound by him as well. Of course they must go to her father and get his permission for the marriage. He, not wanting to lose his daughter to a human tells the man that he will give her hand in marriage if he will only bring a jewel from the crown of the evil demon king in the north. He, of course, expects the man to die in the quest and so feels confident in his agreement. Beren accepts the mission and sets off to accomplish this task. There are several adventures that ensue during which Beren and Luthien struggle through several hazards in order to accomplish their goal. I will not tell you the specific details as I might want to use part of this for my final romance, and I think each of you should pick up the book if only to read that chapter. Needless to say they succeed and eventually return the jewel to the king, though Beren is mortally wounded in the process. Perhaps the most romantic portion of the story comes, then, when Luthien travels to the land beyond the sea and receives a boon from the gods, so great is her grief. She may either choose to leave the world of men behind and live in the world of gods without any memory of her beloved, or she can give up her immortality and return with Beren to the land of men. She, of course, chooses the latter, and they are both given their lives back to live and die together as mortals.

This story was perhaps most memorable to me because of the end. I remembered Dr. Sexson mentioning the other day that romance always ends in death and I couldn't help but notice that perhaps the most romantic aspect of this particular story was an immortal elf giving up immortality, even eternal peace to live but a short time with her true love. It seems then that the greatest understanding of love comes as the flame burns brightest, but in its bright burning, it is burned up more quickly, and we are required to love all the more fiercely. I guess what I'm trying to say in a round about sort of way is that it is through our mortality that we can love and live as we do. In Troy, a not so fantastic movie, but one that was brought to mind by the puppet show on Friday, Brad Pitt explains that it is the gods who are jealous of men because it is our mortality that drives us to greatness, that spurs us into heroic acts that would never be considered before. Immortals last. They can hold grudges and maintain feuds for a millennium. Man loves because he does not know what breath will be his last or whether his next moments will give him the immortality that only song can bring.

Returning then to "Beren and Luthien,"  it is this same understanding of love as something special and bonding, uniquely through death, that creates a fantastic, and I would perhaps argue, perfect romance. The loves of both main characters for the other, leads each to their deaths, and, while those deaths are at one time postponed, still each chooses to give up much longer lives in exchange for the other, and there is true beauty in that choice.

Tragedy vs. Romance: A Possible Perspective

As I was reading Frye, I came across a very familiar title by Euripides called The Trojan Women. If anything is completely counter to the romances that we have been reading, to the eternal spring that seems destined to bloom within our class, it is that play in which the women and children are either led off into slavery or murdered for fear of future uprisings. I know that they are not very happy pieces, but I decided to share with you the two most disturbing scenes from the film in '71, at least by my estimation. So without further ado, here they are.

No where, I would argue, is the sheer winter of destitution more pronounced than in these few moments of the film. Innocence is lost and what remains is only the despair of a grandmother who has lost the flower of youth upon which she so passionately doted in her waning years. Within the play, and later the film, the complete brutality of, as Frye terms them, forza conquers the subtlety of froda. There is, in essence no happy ending because the weaker individuals, the last remnants of the once proud city of Troy, find no ears to hear their pleas, no individual that can fall under the sway of their words. What is left, then, seems to be a demonic parody of the romances that we have looked at so far in which death is a far kinder fate for the boy than his mother will receive.

As I write this blog, I begin to feel almost hollow, my mind emptying itself of the thoughts that are too painful, even within a fictitious reality, to hold onto for so long, and I find myself drifting back into the story of Daphnis  and Chloe, which I finished for today. It is a tale, it can be argued I think, far less beautiful in its language, far simpler in its dialogue than that of The Trojan Women, but there is something equally beautiful within the simplicity of the tales of the two abandoned children who grow up to be goat and shepherds, and the spark of hope that their love creates not only for the other characters in the story but also for readers, who often want and need to believe that the world outside of their own reality is not as harsh and cruel as they imagine it to be.

In the end, then, I hope that you enjoyed the clips of tragedy from Euripides. I hope that they granted you a new perspective of lows, but I also hope that they allowed each of you to see the beauty in simplicity that the tales such as Daphnis and Chloe and The Ephesian Tale create. They do not create the dense, eloquent characters of tragedy, but, at the same time, they allow us to dream of worlds where such tragedies do not exist.

A Trip to the Past

Every fiber of my being tells me that I'm going to regret making this blog that digging into the past allows others to see parts of my life that, for better or worse, I want to keep locked in my head away from the world. For some reason or another, I'm imagining right now that by letting others into my own past, they will somehow judge me for what they read. Of course, that ignores the fact that all of us were at one point six years old, that we each have a past of naivete.

Looking into my own past there are two examples that I wanted to share, and although I really don't want to, I'm going to take a deep breath and keep typing.

The first romance story that I remember, if it can truly be called that. Is The Land Before Time. For those of you who may not have seen the movie, or may have forgotten the plot, it follows Frye's simple design of a cyclical shift from the world of the idyllic to the demonic or night world and back again. The story follows a young dinosaur named Little Foot whose world is, in many ways perfect. One day, however, all of that changes with the fall of a giant asteroid. The dinosaurs are forced to migrate to a new home, a paradise of legend if they want to survive. Along the way, Little Foot is first separated from the larger herd, and then his mother is killed, sadly, before he meets up with a few other small dinosaurs. I can actually remember all of the names now that I think of it. Ducky: the duckbill, Peetrie (not sure how to spell his name): the pterodactyl, Spike: the stegosaurus, and Sarah: the Triceratops. It's surprising to me that I can still remember those names after so many years. Continuing the story, the young dinosaurs travel across a barren waste land, searching for a land that they are not even sure exists. Along the way they are confronted by monstrous, carnivorous dinosaurs that I can remember being terrified of as a child among other hardships. After days and days of searching, when all hope seems lost, the five young children not only find the lost paradise that they had been looking for but also reunite with their families.

The other romance naive story that I can remember fairly well involves the, as they were called then, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Again a quick synopsis of the plot for those of you who never had the pleasure of seeing the show, it follows the adventures of five teenagers who are charged with protecting the world from the evils that threaten it. As with the story of Little Foot and his friends, the Rangers are most definitely good and their foes evil. It's harder to remember any specific details of the storyline as the plot changed from episode to episode, but there is no doubt that each week the Power Rangers fought to protect the world from the evils of a witch (that much I remember) and her no less frightening gargoyle like warrior lieutenant. Between the two of them, and the monster that they created, the world was constantly in danger, but there was no doubt that the Power Rangers would win the day and the world would return to normal.

As Frye says "[the] characterization of romance is really a feature of its mental landscape. Its heroes and villains exist primarily to symbolize a contrast between two worlds, one above the level of ordinary experience, the other below it" (53). He goes on to describe the greater world as "the idyllic world [and the] other is... the demonic or night world" (53). the last piece from Frye that I wish to include before concluding with my own thoughts involves a "plunge downward at the beginning and a bounce upward at the end. this means that most romances exhibit a cyclical movement of descent into a night world and a return to the idyllic world" (54).

In more simplistic terms, though Frye does do a good job of that himself, the romance is a story divide between the forces of good and the forces of evil, between light and darkness, and it is the loss of their ideal world and the attempt to return to that ideal world that pushes the plots of romances forward. In the case of The Land Before Time, the story is a romance because it begins in a world where everything is indeed perfect, where plant eating dinosaurs live in peace and are not threatened by any outside forces. That all changes one day as has been said above and a group of young dinosaurs fall into a world of shadows where they must struggle until they can reemerge into a world of peace and prosperity. The fact that they do so is what makes the movie a romance I would argue and allowed a child like myself to see a world with no greys but only light and darkness.

In the case of the television show Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the world is clearly divided between the forces of good and the forces of evil. There are no ambiguities to stress a child, making him or her wonder about the motivations of either side. Rather one side is constantly struggling to destroy the world while the other struggles to stop them and save it. The fact that they do, the fact that each episode begins in peace, falls into chaos, and ends with the return of that peace, makes the Power Rangers yet another example of the Romance.

So this is the end of my current blog, and I hope that it was somewhat useful and helpful in explaining Frye's diagnosis of the Romance. As much as I was nervous about sharing these facts from my past, the process of putting them down in my blog has helped to make me at least more comfortable. It's actually been quite refreshing to return to that mindset. 

Man the Creator

“In traditional romance… the upward journey is the journey of a creature returning to its creator. In most modern writers… it is the creative power in man that is returning to its original awareness. Identity and self-recognition begin when we realize that this is not an either or question, when the great twins of divine creation and human recreation have merged into one, and we can see that the same shape is upon both” (Frye 157). T

It is this fall and eventual rise that, Frye would argue and I would agree, shapes the very foundations of western literature since the birth of Christianity and the subsequent spread of The Bible. Whether we wish to admit it or not, The Bible is at the very heart of the Romance. Man’s fall from grace, his eventual need for salvation, and the subsequent redemption of his soul have spawned countless epics and poems, novels and short stories, all focused on the principle aspect of humanities loss of purity and its constant, yearning desire to retrieve what was lost. From Dante, whom Frye mentions, to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and from T. S. Eliot to the much simpler, yet still profound, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, each of these stories deals in its own unique way with the loss of something loved and the adventures that one must undergo in order to find that lost treasure.

According to Frye, some of the older Romances are those which attempt to bring us closer to the creator, while in more modern stories, we become the creators trying to return to a purity of the story. Frye’s genius is that he suggests that both sides are one and the same thing, or at least reflections of the same individual concept. Thus, in our attempt to reach a simpler understanding, in our attempts to return to the source of the ocean of stories, we are attempting to reconnect with our roots, to remember where all these stories came from and the spark of inspiration, whether externally or internally, from the divine that caused the first man to weave a tale of stories. It is the human that becomes divine when he creates worlds within his own imagination, breathing life into characters that before were nothing but thin air. 

I am reminded here of Prospero's speech to Ferdinand in Act 4 Scene 1: "These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are mad on , and our little life is rounded with a sleep." Shakespeare has said what Frye himself seems to be indicating at the end of his chapter. Prospero has shown his future son-in-law a fantastic vision full of Gods and spirits that seem to have shaken the young man. The old sorcerer reminds his young friend that we ourselves are no more than actors on a stage. We are here one moment and gone the next.

But Prospero's words bring to mind another interesting fact. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of..." echoes almost hauntingly with the idea that Alice is afraid of when she fears that her own existence will soon be expunged when the Red King wakes up, but it is also a close parallel to the Hindu belief that we are all merely created from the dream of Vishnu, that the entire universe and its history have lasted as the god slept, and that when he wakes we will no longer exist.

Haroun, himself becomes a god, creating a world within his dreams that is shaped by the world he knew. Though Haroun's world does turn out to be real, there is still a sense that he brought the place into being, that before Haroun slept there was no Kahani. To take this to another level, Haroun and his own world never existed until Rushdie imagined them and put them to paper. Once there, the characters could live and breathe within the minds of the readers. It is this connection with the divine, I think, that Frye attempts to make in the quote at the top of the page.

I have gone far from where I had originally started this blog. Suffice it to say, there are a thousand more things (perhaps we could add one extra just to be safe) that I wish I could say right now. But my head is beginning to swim with all of the thoughts rushing about. I leave this post then with a thought from Rushdie: "To give a thing a name, a label, an handle: to rescue it from anonymity, to pluck it out of the Place of Namelessness, in short to identify it-- well, that's a way of bringing the said thing into being" (63).

A Tale of Time

In my last blog, I discussed a few different possibilities for the importance of stories. Mostly I settled on two aspects of the story, that of the introspective reader who is able to look into the stories and find the "mirror of man" and the other was a sense of escape. The first I looked into in a little detail, and I hope that in my ramblings I was able to show that stories can be used as a differing perspective to the method of scientists. We can look at ourselves through literature rather than at the world around us. The second I touched upon briefly for a short paragraph and had thought the idea sufficiently written on until I read Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It is my hope then, in the next few paragraphs to look into the one aspect of the novel that captured me from the beginning: time.

Time is everywhere in Haroun. It is present when Soraya smashes the clocks at precisely eleven before leaving with Mr. Sengupta. It is there as Haroun struggles to concentrate on anything for more than eleven minutes at a time after his mother's departure. Time is present as Haroun and his friends travel on their adventures and even when he returns. In short, Time rears its head every moment of the book. Though we are not aware of it, or, perhaps more accurately, only subconsciously so, it is time that accompanies us on our journey through this tale, and time that leads us back again.

Time is such an integral part of our world that we hardly ever really think about it. We understand that it is a need to be in one place or another at a particular time that drives our world as we know it today, that wakes us up in the morning and drags us to work or school in an effort to not be late, to remain on schedule. Like the moving hands of the clock, we pass, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, along a repetitive path of waking and dreaming, eating and working. The constant repetition so absolute that the world around us sometimes begins to haze and blur passing swiftly by us like the currents of a stream and carrying us all toward the inevitable conclusion at the end: Khattam-Shud. We look to escape that constant tedium, and, in our search, many of us turn to the worlds of myth and legends created by others, stories where we can be anything, do anything, and live in worlds that we know can only exist in our dreams.

Just as we are trapped within our own time, so Haroun is trapped in his. He is trapped in a world where the time of happiness has stopped, where his mother is no longer present, and the songs she sang are now silent. He is trapped in a world where his father can no longer tell the stories that captivated his audiences and led them through magical lands. He is, therefore, trapped in a world that many of us have inhabited and from which many of us long to escape. If we look closely at the story, Haroun teaches us how.

Haroun's solution comes in the need to rekindle the fire of creation within his father that will allow the man to tell his stories again. And so, on the night before his father is set to help a greasy politician win the hearts of the people, Haroun goes on an adventure that will change his life forever. Here I must warn those that have not read the book that there are spoilers in the next few paragraphs. Do yourselves a favor and pick up the book before continuing. For those readers who have already finished the story, let us continue.

Haroun finds out shortly after arriving on the moon, Kahani, that the ocean of sea of stories is in fact poisoned. After falling in with several friends and eventually finding his father in this strange world of stories, Haroun is charged with saving the Ocean, as we knew he must be. A long story short, Haroun saves the world of stories by returning time to normal. (He actually causes the moon to begin to rotate on its axis, a process by which we measure time.) In so doing, he is able to overthrow the evil shadows, and the rest of the shadow people, along with the people of Gup, live happily ever after.

Haroun returns to the "lower world" and begins to worry for his father. After all, their adventures took place over the course of two days and the Shah of Blah was supposed to tell his tales the previous evening for the wicked politician. To Haroun's amazement, however, he soon learns that the entirety of his journey took place in one night. He had accomplished in mere hours, the events of several days. Soon Haroun and his father return home to find Soraya returned and life returns to normal, time begins again.

Let us pause, then and return to several aspects of the story of Haroun that deal with the aspects of time. First, there is the concept of the moon with one half in perpetual light while the other half remains in perpetual dark with a twilight strip in between. This at first seems natural, since the figures on the dark half are so accustomed to night and their counterparts of light so used to the sun. Yet, it is the very perpetuity of the darkness that creates the problems for the Ocean of Stories. The evil shadows, born because of endless night, create a shadow ship from which the poison the ocean and a plug that they hope to use in order to stop any new stories from forming. It is only the power of the sun, the world returned to its rightful cycle, that saves the world and the ocean.

The other concept that I wish to look at is the time lapse that occurs when Haroun travels to Kahani and back. His adventure lasts only one night. We as readers fall into stories in much the same way, I would argue. A novel can turn eons into pages, battles that last hours into minutes. And it can do the reverse. It can make a moment last a life time. Create from the last moment before death an entire world in which characters live and love and die.

Time, then, is the instrument of the story, from dreams to books to movies, it is through stories that we pass beyond the bounds of time and enter worlds where eons are but a second and seconds last an eon. It is through stories that we escape the endless circle of the clock and become the heroes of our own stories.

I realize that the beginning of my article was not very comforting, that many of the readers of this piece will be saying: "that is all well and good," but eventually we wake, eventually the story ends, and we must, however regrettably, return to the bounds of that clock. To those of you I can only quote a passage from the book itself. "The real world is full of magic and so magical worlds could easily be real." It is true that the world, itself, can be a boring place, full of the dull trappings of everyday life. But Dull Lake, as Haroun and his companions floated upon it, turned out to be anything but. It was instead a place where men made their own realities. In much the same way, I will argue one last time, and you may agree with me or not, we can make our own worlds. Even the rainiest day can bring joy if we know where and how to look for the magic within it, and if we ever find that this world has become a little too mundane for the moment, there is always a return trip to the world of stories waiting for us in the form of a Hoopoe or a flying lion, waiting to rush us with all haste back to the the Ocean of Stories and whatever dreams we wish to make realities.