No espresso bathed salon created writer.
No double tall skinny. No fireside guitar music.
If inspiration comes by atmosphere,
Inspiration is only what atmosphere can reach.
Atmosphere cannot touch writer’s soul
Soul is triggered from within.
Can fine pen, crisp paper soft leather bound,
Speak truthful thoughts?
Can outside create writer inside?
Cliches beget only cliches.
As for poetry, I suppose I’m a cynic.
One of the standouts of my undergraduate career is the poetry class I took. My classmates and I had a real comradery, bumping into each other in the coffee shop and comparing notes about how long since either of us actually attended class. The professor thought he was Hemingway, I guess; at least he never seemed to be sober and reeked of crudeness.
The few times I did attend and listened to him preach his sermon on a particular poem, I found myself thinking, “How does he get that out of this?” He loved the poems I hated and hated those I loved, and we never saw eye to eye in terms of interpretation.
I got an “A” out of that class.
Most of the time when I read a modern poem written in prose it seems all they would have to do is run all the lines together and it would be a short story, sometimes a great one. When I’ve taken fiction classes, people said my writing is poetic. Since I have a hard time sustaining a piece maybe I should write it out in short lines and call it a poem. I did that to a very short story once in high school and got raves from the teacher, but now they call those very short stories “micro fiction”.
I’d love to change my mind. I procrastinated until the very end of my MA work to take the required poetry class. I’m already working on my thesis, but the poetry class starts this week.
I couldn’t be this honest about my feelings toward poetry if I wasn’t open to change. I’m ready to open the door to a whole new world of contemporary writing. I admire those who write with poetry in their voices, just don’t break it into short little lines please, and could admire modern poetry in a similar way if I only understood.
I’ve always found Emily Dickinson interesting, and stood in awe of Shakespeare. I even enjoy a good reading of “A Visit from St. Nick” and believe Clement Moore helped shape our modern interpretation of Santa Claus. But these writers worked within a poetic form, a framework, though I sometimes wondered why. Okay, I know Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter and that helped actors learn their lines quickly. And of course many of us can recite the line after “’Twas the night before Christmas . . .”
So now that it’s time, I’m looking forward to this poetry class and hope it helps remove the veil. I’ll share the process here.
It all started with an email from DreamHost. That domain name I got along with a years’ subscription to their hosting plan was about to expire, and I had to decide if I wanted to keep it. Along the same lines I also had to decide if I wanted to keep that hosting plan, the one I hadn’t really been using.
I never really had a problem with DreamHost, although some of my sites seemed slower there. But since I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 I had been having problems with editing posts, and a little research showed it was a host problem. So I headed over to DreamHost and found I didn’t get the same errors on a dummy WP 2.5 installation. Maybe it was time to give DreamHost another shot.
Then I remembered one of the original things that had attracted me to DreamHost, the fact they are striving to be a “Green” company and reduce their carbon impact. Seems they figured out running their company generated the same amount of carbon dioxide as 545 average-sized homes, and they decided to do something about it.
Although Kermit the Frog may have told us “It’s not easy bein’ green”, the staggering number of products today marketing themselves as “environmentally conscious might lead you to think otherwise.
Since The American Marketing Association’s workshop on “Ecological Marketing” in 1975, and the public’s adoption of the term “Green Marketing” in the late 1980s, the number of green products offered has skyrocketed. For example, the Energy Star label appears on home products from 11,000 companies.
It’s becoming easier to make your home “green” (and we’re not talking about paint here), and the products to help you do that have vastly improved since the early 1970s when “natural” laundry soap left your clothes dingy and water-conserving shower heads sputtered. Now compact fluorescent lightbulbs don’t flicker and hybrid cars don’t need to be pushed up steep hills.
The London-based market research firm, Mintel International Group, tells us around 12% of Americans are “True Greens” and 68% could be classified as “Light Greens”. But at the same time, Roper-Starch’s annual Green Gauge Report indicates 42% of consumers believe environmental products don’t work as well as mainstream products.
Nevertheless, the drive toward a sustainable future and the growing global concern over climate change is making consumers more and more environmentally conscious, and Mintel Research Director David Lockwood says, “All the corporate executives that we talk to are extremely convinced that being able to make some sort of strong case about the environment is going to work down to their bottom line.”
In spite of a growing interest among consumers and the increase of available quality products (corn-based disposable drinking cups, anyone?), a lack of controls in Green Industry leaves consumers skeptical as marketers run amuck. For many, the question “How green is Green?” remains unanswered. No universal standard must be met before a product can call itself green.
I had always thought of my involvement in SEO, Internet Marketing, and Social Media as fairly green activities. I knew I wasn’t burning fuel to go to work, except maybe a disproportionate amount of coffee, but I hadn’t thought about the companies who host my websites and run the services I use.
While activities on the web don’t consume much in themselves, what are the tradeoffs? I’ve heard Google offers its employees a $5000 incentive to purchase hybrid cars, but how many gallons of gas does it take to get all their people to work and back home each day? What resources do companies like Microsoft and Apple consume? And of course, what is the carbon footprint of the hosting companies where the Internet lives?
A lack of understanding and regulation leaves too many grey areas in the production of environmentally-conscious products, and until the shades of grey are removed Kermit the Frog will still be right.
It really isn’t easy being Green, but I decided to stick with DreamHost. At least it’s a start.
Last week I hung a bird feeder in my backyard, but didn’t realize there would be a social media lesson involved.
The first parallel might be obvious. I hung the bird feeder up and hoped a few birds would come, much like we might build a blog or another website and hope for a few visitors. Unfortunately I didn’t know of any social media sites where I could let the birds know about the feeder, so all I could do is wait.
For a few days nothing happened. No birds. I started to wonder if it was a bad idea, a waste of time. Or perhaps I should have hung it in the front yard where I had already seen birds hang out. But my cat hangs out in the front yard and rarely enters the fence to the back (where the dogs are), so the back yard seemed safer for the birds.
Eventually a few birds did show up. Crows. They were not exactly the cute little birds I imagined fluttering joyously around my back yard but they were visitors nonetheless. The next day I noticed a couple robins, and yesterday there were two finches. Now the bird feeder is a resounding success.
But I noticed a Social Media truth in the process: the crows were first to show up.
I’ve always thought crows were attractive with their shiny black feathers, but I remember my mom shooing them away from her bird feeder when I was a child. To my mom, crows were the criminals of the bird world. They ate trash and ransacked the nests of smaller birds. Crows were scavengers, the lower class birds.
An online friend recently sent an invitation to a new social media site. The site is still in beta, so membership is by invitation only. The site looks promising although it’s still small. But I remember thinking to myself as I registered, “I wonder how long before the Internet Marketers come?”
Internet Marketers are one type of crow in the online world. Marketers are among the first to arrive when someone hangs up a new “birdhouse” because they’re constantly on the prowl for something new. They are the early adopters, but the online world often views them as lower class birds.
A few years ago I received an email from Seth Godin inviting me to sign up for a new site called “Squidoo” where I could create something called a “lens”. I didn’t consider myself an Internet Marketer, and I’m not sure how I got on that email list, but I remember he told me I was an “early adopter”. I liked the sound of that and was flattered by the title. I did sign up and fiddle with the site but never finished building one of those “lenses”.
I guess I didn’t really see any need. However, the crows saw the need; they saw what was in it for them and helped make Squidoo into what it is today.
The same thing happened when Blogger was new. I signed up and built a blog, but abandoned it soon after because I didn’t have a need for it. I also built countless blogs on the Movable Type platform and a few on the old WordPress 1.5, but only because I enjoyed tinkering. However, marketers saw the potential of blogging and were a major force behind its development as a publishing platform.
A few months ago the Internet was buzzing about Google’s version of Wikipedia which would allow monetization by the author of each entry. I mentioned it on an Internet Marketing forum and I could imagine those particular crows drooling. A part of me wanted to shoo them away from this new bird feeder, however I knew it would be inevitable and the crows would come.
But without the crows clearing a path, how long before the finches would decide it was safe? The finches are cute but often it’s the crows who pave the way.
Crows provide social proof the place is worth a finch’s time.
If I go to WalMart looking for soap, I walk in the front door and scan the scene for the cosmetics department. Then I look for a sign pointing out the aisle where soap might be and make a beeline for it. You won’t see me browsing; I don’t have time and I don’t like being bumped into by other peoples’ shopping carts or listening to screaming kids. I’ve learned to quickly find the item I need.
When I’m looking for something online I don’t have to worry about things like departments and aisles. I can Google a topic and be taken directly where the information is posted. The process is much quicker than shopping at WalMart.
But even though we all realize finding information on the Web is infinitely quicker than finding soap at WalMart we still tend to organize our blogs and websites like a bunch of little WalMarts. We may not set up departments and aisles, but we do tend to build long lists of categories, subcategories, and tags.
I need WalMart to have departments and aisles so I can find my way from the front door to the soap. I don’t need a blog or website to be compartmentalized the same because I don’t usually enter them from the front door. A search engine takes me directly to the page I want.
So why do we still act like people are entering our websites by the front door? Even the visits I make regularly are made by clicking a title in an RSS reader or email. If I do visit a site by the front page I’m probably not looking for anything in particular. It’s usually interesting headlines or images that grab my attention.
If I do happen to look at a rambling list of categories located in some blog’s sidebar, it doesn’t hold my attention very long, if at all. But on the other hand, if there is a list of articles I’m likely to peruse it for something interesting.
I don’t think I’m much different than the vast majority of web users. We don’t browse websites to find our soap; we get what we need and get out, and if we do pause to browse a little only the most interesting things will get our attention.
It turns out all those categories and tags aren’t too good for a website’s SEO either. Even if you don’t believe in such things as the dreaded “Duplicate Content Penalty”, you might realize the problem when the changing content on category and tag pages is indexed on Google. It produces broken links and frustrated information seekers.
Sure, you can block your category and tag pages through a little robots.txt magic. But why not just get rid of them or at least whittle them down significantly?
Chris Pearson came up with an excellent use for categories in his post “What Every Blogger Needs to Know About Categories“. Using two or three categories, not only can you guide readers to your best and brightest content, but increase the number of direct links to your internal pages (great for SEO) and combat the dreaded WordPress “page bloat” as well.
Chris points out:
Whether you’re selling products, writing copy, or designing interfaces, you can benefit from playing into basic human psychology. And interestingly, with Website categories, accommodating natural human behavior also turns out to be an excellent SEO strategy!
In short make a few categories like “Must Reads” and a couple broad topics. Then instead of listing your categories, make each category a list. Here’s the code Chris offers for your sidebar:
<?php
query_posts('category_name=Popular&showposts=5');
while (have_posts()) :
the_post();
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?> <?php comments_number('0', '1', '%'); ?></a></li>
<?php
endwhile;
?>
The idea of streamlined categories isn’t likely to storm the Internet overnight, but it is catching on. Here are lists of popular bloggers sporting SEO-sleek categories:
When the new year arrives you may turn your attention to the copyright notice at the bottom of your WordPress blog. Many WordPress themes leave changing the copyright date to be done by hand.
But this is a world of automation, and doesn’t it make sense to make that little bit of housekeeping automatic as well?
Simply visit your theme editor. From the WordPress control panel, select “editor” under “Appearance” (or “Design” in older versions), then click on your “footer.php” file and replace the current copyright notice with this bit of code:
Copyright © <?php the_time('Y'); ?>
On January 1st your copyright notice will automatically change to:
Copyright © 2009
And you won’t have to worry about it again next year.
In another age, traveling medicine shows would tout their amazing stars as “The Great” or “The Invincible”. We learned to expect feats of magic and miracle from these men, even if beneath it all we knew they were charlatans. Fitzgerald used this bit of the pop psyche in the title of his novel, “The Great Gatsby”, and as we might expect he delivered a character strikingly similar to these miracle men of old. However, many people believed in these charlatans, even if they wouldn’t say so in public. Their tricks tapped into our desire for magic and wonder; they were men of fantasy and intrigue. In naming his novel “The Great Gatsby”, Fitzgerald stirred the complex reaction America had to all the Great and Invincible of our history, tapping into a rich spring of paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension.
Fitzgerald drove the reader into his novel with the question of Gatsby’s greatness. We wondered who this man might be. We come with a prejudice from the title, then Fitzgerald further guides us to accept Gatsby’s greatness by showing us his wealth. He has such wealth we are willing to accept the man must be great as well. But an ambiguity exists at the same time; nobody knows where this man came from, where his wealth originated, or indeed what makes him so great. But we believe it just the same. Here we have a man who has wealth and seems willing to share it. He seems well mannered and genteel, yet he reaches down from his pedestal and befriends our narrator, Nick. It seems somewhat a paradox, but real life is full of such opposites that the story only seems more real because of it. Because the paradox seems so real we believe the story, and because we believe the story we commit even deeper to believing the story’s title; the man must indeed be great.
But Fitzgerald also introduces a tension, possibly springing from the sense of ambiguity. As a reader we want to know where Gatsby came from, why he is wealthy, but we are afraid we won’t like the answer. Fitzgerald strings us along then plants little seeds of doubt, and we begin to worry. What if Gatsby is a bootlegger or a gambler, would we be able to reconcile the belief we have already adopted that he is indeed great? We need him to be great, because we already believe he is. Eventually, however, we come to realize Gatsby was not born to greatness nor did he really aspire toward it. Even his schooling is questionable. He does not have any of the sure signs of greatness we have come to expect, yet we realize there is still something great about him. It might simply be that we want to justify the decision we’ve already made about him. We need him to be great because we’ve already made up our minds that he is, but this brings a certain irony into play because we have committed to his greatness even though he isn’t great by the definition we originally would have given the word.
Again, it is like the charlatan who made us believe in snake oil. When the snake oil doesn’t cure baldness or make your hiccups go away, we tell ourselves “The Great and Powerful” charlatan was a great entertainer. He is still great, just not in the way we originally expected him to be. In “The Great Gatsby” Fitzgerald first made us believe Gatsby was great, then left us to justify the reasoning in spite of the evidence. But that is just like real life.
Even if they disagree about other issues, all feminists believe patriarchal ideology works to keep men and women confined to traditional gender roles so male dominance may be maintained. Utilizing the precepts of Feminist criticism, it could be argued “The Great Gatsby” promotes a thinly veiled patriarchal agenda. Through Fitzgerald’s treatment of the three women in “Gatsby”, as well as masking the possible homosexuality of a central character, the novel seems to promote only the traditional gender roles, swaying uncomfortably from any possible variance. This hidden agenda may be uncovered using common tools of Feminist criticism, primarily through the use of psychoanalytic theory, but with elements of Marxist theory and deconstructionism as well.
Psychologically, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle are obviously quite different from each other. In fact, it could be said they are like three corners of a triangle, supporting each others’ role in the story but entirely separate at the same time. Daisy is portrayed as a classic beauty who uses an innate sex appeal to gather some amount of control over her surroundings. As an athlete Jordan might carry the greatest potential to stray from a typical gender role; she could easily have been characterized as a lesbian because of her detachment from men, her self-centered lifestyle, and her unexplained connection to Daisy. Myrtle seems to be a more earthy woman, possibly possessing a raw sexual energy, but Fitzgerald stops short of portraying her as an independent, sexual being, empowered to pursue her own sexual experiences. In many respects these characters could have been deeper had Fitzgerald felt free to expound upon these possibilities; it seems the story would only have been enriched if he had explored these women deeper. However, the fact that Fitzgerald was not willing to fill out these women to their potential could indicate a desire, either of his own or one he felt society had placed upon him, to keep them within the expected stereotypes of their gender.
A similar opportunity showed itself within the characterization of his narrator, Nick. Nick’s reluctance to enter into a relationship with Jordan was not sufficiently justified by the ol’ “girl back home” routine. No attempt at all was made to explain why Nick found himself at the bedside of an effeminate man, who was in his underwear. Nor did Fitzgerald explore Nick’s admiration for Gatsby on what seemed to be a more physical basis than of friendship; Nick made frequent schoolgirl-like references to Gatsby, but there didn’t seem to be much reason for a friendship. Gatsby’s motivation was clearly to make contact with Daisy, but why did Nick want to be close to Gatsby? These issues could have easily led to some discussion or admittance that Nick might have been gay or at least questioning his gender role. But the author’s unwillingness to breach these subjects seems to indicate he had made himself subject to the established patriarchy. By not saying anything against it, Fitzgerald inadvertently spoke in favor of the established order.
From a purely economic standpoint, the patriarchal agenda is evident in how all three of the major female characters are dependent to varied degrees upon the men in their lives. Even Jordan has some need for a man. Daisy and Myrtle are more obviously and traditionally dependent. The patriarchal agenda is also supported in the way men do “business” and women sit around and gossip. Even Nick, who in some ways is portrayed in a traditionally feminine role because of his financial dependence upon his family, is given a nice “man’s” job in the stock market to remove any anti-patriarchal doubts. Simultaneously, a deconstructionistic dichotomy exists within the novel; the characters live in the decadent and supposedly “free” Jazz age, but at the same time seem unwilling or unable to free themselves from the patriarchal elements of society.
Overall, a Feminist criticism of this novel allows the reader to understand how subtle and pervasive the patriarchal influences are within our society. Through the questions Feminists ask of the text we are able to see a possibility for deeper characterization and a more enriched human experience without the shackles of patriarchal tyranny.
In On Writing, Earnest Hemingway says, “I try always to do the thing by three-cushion shots rather than by words or direct statements. But maybe we must have direct statements too.”
E.B. White is often quoted with, “Be obscure clearly.”
The three-cushion shot and obscure clarity could be seen as extensions of the “show, don’t tell” advice often given to fiction writers. Their use can add texture to a piece of writing, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks from his own experience. Of course the technique may be utilized in description and narrative, but when a work carries a political, social or religious message, the three-cushion shot can be utilized to provide these pieces with an added level of breadth and scope.
Utopian literature has long been a stronghold for the imaginative use of obscurity; inventing new societies, new governments, and new social norms has been the hallmark of this genre. In the process it has often capitalized on the use of satire, symbolism and euphemism. Utopian authors created obscure clarity through the names assigned to characters, locations, themes, and everyday vocabulary used within the context of the story.
In his Utopia, Thomas More criticized the religious and political views of his contemporaries by obscuring his true intentions through the use of satire. Ayn Rand used religious symbolism in Anthem to exalt the pursuit of one’s true self. In The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood applies the use of euphemisms to show how we might become used to just about anything, however tyrannical or foreign it initially seems.
Other writers, as well as film makers, built euphemisms, established symbolism, and wrote in a satirical manner to both cloak and intensify their messages.
By the use of obscure clarity, the resulting pieces of literature have become powerful works of fiction, capable of clearly delivering messages beyond what might have been possible without the use of such three-cushion shots.
This is the first in a series on using obscure clarity in fiction. I’ll use Utopian Literature in my examples, but the same concepts would apply to any genre.
Thomas More was a man of deep religious convictions, a devout Roman Catholic who was canonized in 1935, four hundred years after his death, by Pope Pius XI. More was declared the patron saint of politicians and statesmen by Pope John Paul II. It should be reasonable then to assume More’s religious and political views would be similar to those of the church he served. But More’s fictional piece Utopia, completed in 1516, flies in the face of his century’s religious convention with its free society of religious experimentation and political socialism.
Understanding the names of places, people and even the book’s title will reveal More’s satirical purposes in writing the book.
Modern readers have come to understand a “utopia” as a paradise, a world built on higher ideals where the lamb lays down with the lion. As such, it would be natural to assume that in this book More had explained his designs for a more perfect world, with his own religious, political, and moral beliefs fulfilled. But in fact, the word “utopia” (which was coined by More himself from Latin) would be literally translated as “no place”. By calling his dreamland “Utopia” More is betraying his story, showing it is a made up tale; he is literally calling it a place which does not, and presumably cannot, exist. He further betrays his true view by the names he assigns to various characters and places within the story.
The primary narrator, the character who describes this paradise to his companions, is a traveler named Raphael Hythlodaeus. Although he is telling his tale to two real-life, historical characters, Thomas More and his friend Peter Gilles, Raphael is a fictional character. Since the character’s name is chosen by the author, it opens the door to investigate the reason this particular name was assigned.
Because More was widely known to be a deeply religious man, it doesn’t require too much stretching of the imagination to assume More chose the name “Raphael” with its Biblical counterpart in mind. In the Bible, Raphael was the name of an angel.
The angel Raphael was mentioned in the Book of Tobit. He guides Tobias and later cures his father of his blindness and helps him recover his property. Because of this story, Raphael is considered an angel-physician, an agent of healing who cured both the bodies and the souls of men. In fact, the name “Raphael” is from the Hebrew for “God has healed”.
Throughout the Bible, angels are seen as ministers of light and illumination, proclaiming messages from God. The angel Gabriel was said to have delivered tidings to a virgin named Mary, who was to bear the son of God. The archangel Michael is one of the principal angels in Abrahamic tradition; his name was said to have been the war-cry of the angels in the battle fought in heaven against Satan and his followers. Therefore, the name Raphael carries connotations of a healing messenger, with a message of possible divine origin. Taking this into consideration it might appear More professed his Utopia to possess an illuminated culture, and that imitating their society would mean the deliverance of humanity. Deeper exploration of the book shows this isn’t the case at all.
More assigned Raphael the surname Hythlodaeus, which when translated from the Latin means “dispenser of nonsense”. So although he may have been named after an angel, a messenger of light, the Raphael Hythlodaeus character is designed to be simply a messenger of nonsense. More’s satiric intent was further underscored when he used this character to describe a country whose name literally means “no place”, and its river of no water and its ruler with no people. Most of the proper names More used in Utopia are words of Greek derivation, invented for More’s purposes. Anydrus (the name of a river in Utopia) means “not water”, and Ademus (the chief magistrate’s title) means “not people”.
In the introduction to his translation from the original Latin, Paul Turner states:
It is clear from an ironical passage in a letter to Peter Gilles that More expected the educated reader to understand these names; and, to ensure that their significance was not overlooked, he mentioned in the book itself that the Utopian language contains some traces of Greek in place-names and official titles.
The implied benefits of divorce, euthanasia, married priests, and women priests, expressed in Utopia, disagreed with More’s celebrated dedication to devout Catholicism. More was a persecutor of heretics (Protestants) yet the book extolled the virtues of embracing varied religions, and even under the same roof. The piece engaged in political criticism, but More himself was Lord Chancellor, an influential English lawyer. Communism and the idea of communal living expressed as an ideal in Utopia could be seen as the opposite view expected from a rich landowner such as More.
Satire was an established staple in Medieval and Renaissance literature; the periods gave birth to such greats as Geoffrey Chaucer and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. English pieces from the late Medieval period were aimed primarily at hypocrisy within the church. Even if he did not criticize the church, within the protective walls of satire’s three-cushion punch More was afforded the safety to criticize other religious and political fancies of the day.
Few would dispute that Twentieth Century literature has been impacted by the work of Ayn Rand. Every book written by Ayn Rand is still in print and sales each year number in the hundred thousands. More than 20 million copies of her books have been sold to date.
In the summer of 1937 Rand constructed a dystopian tale of mankind in the distant future called Anthem. Unlike More, Rand’s reasons for writing the short
novel are fairly transparent; she did not obscure her message through the use of Greek. If her motives are not readily apparent within the story, then the title “Anthem” can easily be broken down to reveal Rand’s motives. An anthem is a piece of music with religious significance. It is often made of scripture, and is sung or recited as a proclamation of faith. In naming her story “Anthem”, Rand declares its purposes, but in this case these purposes are not religious in the traditional sense of the word. In a letter Rand explains the final two chapters of the book are the actual anthem, and it is obviously an anthem to the individual.
The working title Rand used for this short novel was “Ego”. However, as she corresponded in November of 1946 to Richard de Mille:
I used the word in its exact, literal meaning, I did not mean a symbol of the self – but specifically and actually Man’s Self.
In an introduction to the 50th Anniversary American Edition of Anthem, Leonard Peikoff explains:
Although the word ego remains essential to the text, the title was changed to ‘Anthem’ for publication. This was not an attempt to soften the book; it was a step that Ayn Rand took on every novel. Her working titles were invariably blunt and unemotional, naming explicitly, for her own clarity, the central issue of the book.
On another level the names she assigned to her characters, as well as their social significance and assignment within the story, add another layer of meaning to the text. In the world she has created, our own world but in the distant future, people are expected to view themselves only as part of a larger whole, a single cog in a larger machine. The individual is not recognized, and preferences are not permitted. To further this agenda, names are assigned at birth via committee, and are such socially oriented names as “Unity”, “Union” and “International”. No surnames are used, but instead a string of numbers is attached. These names have no individual meaning and are merely used to indicate which cog a person is in the great machine of society.
As the story progresses, two of Rand’s characters explore possibilities of the naming convention. Rand uses this realization as a stepping stone toward their ultimate realization and understanding of the concept of an individual. They assign descriptive names, which appear more like titles, such as “The Golden One” and “The Unconquered”. In this case, Rand’s naming choices revealed the characters’ growing understanding of “self”.
As Rand’s characters gain further awareness, they begin to explore the symbolic possibilities of an individualized name. Rand’s protagonist names himself Prometheus, symbolic of his attempt to share his light box invention with his brethren and the resulting persecution. Prometheus then names his female partner “Gaea” to symbolically show that she is to be the mother of a new race. The lives of both characters have shown parallels to their mythological-god namesakes, and we are led to expect further godlike parallels from them in the future.
Throughout the piece, Rand employs forms of symbolism by means other than name. For instance to deepen the humanistic values of her text, she pulls images from the Bible. Her protagonist pulls light from the heavens and delivers it to his brothers with a message of hope for the future, but is rejected and persecuted. He discovers a word from ancient times, the word “I”, and proclaims it is a god, to be followed and worshiped for its own ends. Rand draws from the Biblical account of Adam and Eve as well. Overall, Rand uses the depth of symbolism to enrich the messages within her text.
Margaret Atwood is a Booker Prize-Winning author who has received numerous awards and several honorary degrees, including the Canadian Governor General’s Award, Le Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature. Her works have been published in more than twenty-five countries. In her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood capitalizes on society’s tendency to euphemize difficult situations as a way to gain their general acceptance.
The Handmaid’s Tale paints the picture of a dystopia from the then-near future. One of the distinctive features of this world is how names are assigned to a position, a job, and each handmaid assumes that name when they take that job placement. The names of handmaids in the story, such as Offred, Ofwarren, or Ofglen merely show that handmaid is the property of Fred, of Warren, or of Glen; as such, the women are reduced to the level of an object. Just as I may own a car and call it “my car”, when it’s sold a new car takes its place and is given the moniker “my car”; the names of handmaid characters in Atwood’s story show a similar lack of personal regard.
While not directly named for their assignments, two other official forms of employment for women are assigned generalized names, the “Aunts” who train the handmaids, and the “Marthas” who run the households. Guards are called “Angels” and men in leadership roles (within the Gilead regime, the government within the story) are called “Commanders”. Atwood utilizes such “friendly” names to assist in hiding the grim realities within the story; such euphemisms as “angels”, “handmaids”, and “aunts” hide the real duties of characters assigned to these positions.
In particular, the term “handmaid” is applied to the nameless surrogate mothers forced into slavery to bare children for the country’s sterile elite. The term is taken from the Biblical account of Rachel and Jacob.
“And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her, and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.” (Genesis 30:1-3)
Reminiscent of the section titles in Geoffrey Chaucer’s medieval narrative poem The Canterbury Tales, where Chaucer’s text personalizes his storytellers even though they are identified by their profession, Atwood creates a complex narrator for her story.
The complexity of the narrator, Offred, is in contrast to the generic qualities of her name.
My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter.
Atwood utilized other euphemisms to reflect the utilitarian sensibilities of the governing culture within her story. A short Biblical reading and the subsequent act of fornication imposed upon the handmaidens was called a “ceremony”. The resultant babies, when they were not correctly formed or had some other defect, were called “Unbabies”, and women who could not conceive were called “Unwomen”. Assassinations of the rebellious and disobedient were not called executions, but “Salvaging” and were seen merely as an “unpleasant necessity”. Even the handmaids’ slogan, “From each according to her ability; to each according to his needs” could be seen as a euphemism for the reality of slavery which it strove to mask.
With such words as these, Margaret Atwood made the dystopian hell of The Handmaid’s Tale seem a place of benevolent inconveniences where anyone could grow accustomed. Ironically, in Atwood’s tale where such occasions as public hangings and slavery can be accepted as commonplace, the simple game of “Scrabble” is viewed as a dangerous, forbidden activity.
The use of euphemism as a means of creating obscure clarity may also be seen in the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019 in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, B
lade Runner. In this film, a class of androids has been created to perform slave labor on remote planets. In some instances these androids are too smart for their own good and become dangerous. However they are not “exterminated”, despite their decidedly human appearance and actions; the term used for their annihilation is that they are simply “retired”. One could only guess if such a euphemism is applied to the “retirement” of human individuals as well.
The use of obscure clarity and the three-cushion shot is not limited to Utopian Literature alone. However, whether by the use of satire, symbolism, euphemisms, or some other means, the Utopian Literature genre has drawn a long line across history from its works with hidden, or at least partially veiled, agendas.
Where Edward Bellamy’s novel Looking Backward caused the formation of small book discussion groups called “Bellamy Groups” across the nation, its indirect attack on the Industrial Age from whence it came brought new attempts at social reform and affected the future for several generations. In a like manner, George Orwell’s book and the movie version of 1984 sent reverberations around the globe for introducing the concept of a futuristic “Big Brother” who is always watching us.
The self-proclaimed prophets of our modern society stand on street corners within the city. They hold up their cardboard signs and warn us to “repent.” As we cross their paths we duck our heads and hide our eyes, pretending they are not there and never considering their messages. At the most we might throw a dollar in their hat with the small hope that somehow it will make them go away. Such prophets have always been with us.
But other prophets approach us on the literary sidewalks. They capture our imaginations with tales of a time to come and the possibilities of the future. These prophets also warn us of our folly, but we listen carefully. We give these prophets of the literary sidewalk our rapt attention because they do not hit us with their messages head on. These prophets shrewdly approach us and spin their tales with an obscure clarity. They tell us of our folly, but soften the blow with a three-cushion shot so we are not offended. For this sensibility, we regard these writers as our best and brightest, the wise sages among us.
The short story Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the movie The Stepford Wives directed by Frank Oz (from the book by Ira Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby) utilize gender reversal to explore sex roles in society. Never mind the improbable pretexts of each piece, a race of self-breeding Aryan women and a town full of android bimbos who are miraculously restored to flesh and blood in the end, we are posed the simple question, “Is what’s good for the goose good for the gander?” and left to ponder the related questions and their answers.
In Herland three men are held captive by an isolated all-female nation and attempt to understand what women could have been if not for the influences of man and his idea of domestic bliss. Gilman uses the device of role reversal to make explore the irony of the situation. The men are overpowered and detained by the women and we’re given the idea these women are far from the weaker sex. The women wear short hair, and the men’s hair grows long while in captivity. The women are the leaders and the decision makers, while the men are forced to follow. The men seem to be the emotional creatures in the story, while the women are more rational. Through these devices, Gilman attempts to show sex roles are learned and imposed by society; sex roles are not seen as something inherent or biological.
In Oz’s The Stepford Wives, the role reversal has largely taken place before the opening credits. A collection of high-power women executives overpower their spineless “it must have been cold there in my shadow” husbands (I wonder if the Bette Midler “Wind Beneath My Wings/Beaches” connection was intentional). The men respond in the only way their neurotic-macho sensibilities allow, they divide and conquer the potentially superior race, reducing them to a society of AOL-slow blond bimbos. Not only were these wives the bread winners, but several of them had the audacity to be taller than their husbands! However, it might be said that the women in this story never did relinquish control to the men; even though they appeared nothing more than a battalion of domestic-goddess slaves, the men were still controlled by the lust hold these women had on them. The control didn’t happen to be helpful to the women, but they had it nevertheless. In the end, of course, the ultimate role reversal is revealed when a woman is revealed as the evil genius behind the entire plot; and I thought only men could be evil geniuses!
While gender role reversal did go a long way to highlight our expected norms and cause us to question their validity, unfortunately both pieces suffer from two-dimensional characterizations which discredit the potential strength of the exploration. The three male characters in Herland conveniently represent three stereotypes of manhood, the philosopher, the romantic, and the man’s man, and none of them are given much opportunity to contemplate any other point of view. The women in Herland suffer a similar fate and at times seem more a race of clones than an advanced matriarchal society; they are too wise, too noble and too even tempered to be human, and might not engage us enough to ponder what makes them seem traditionally male or female. While the wind-up-toy women of The Stepford Wives are understandably a little less than human, their husbands are also portrayed as caricatures of men; each of the husbands were so universal in their desires, any of them (except the gay man) could have swapped places an nobody would notice.
In reality, people, both men and women, are more complicated than either of these stories would allow. An Utopia for one sex does not have to be a dystopia for the other. While the swapping of gender roles did go a long way toward showing tendencies in both sexes which we commonly assign to one or the other (and I did enjoy watching the bozo husbands’ shop-till-you-drop punishment in The Stepford Wives), real life is seldom so cut and dry. The effects of both estrogen and testosterone were denied when Herland explored society’s contributions to sex roles. What would happen if a man enjoyed cooking and didn’t know how to fix a car, could his Stepford wife be that flexible? What if the he-man had a tender side and what if there was variety of temperament within the Herland race? While things must by necessity be simplified for the constraints of a story, the subject of gender and its shallow characterization in these works left important issues unexplored.