Selina Zheng, Period 1, 11/22/21

Literacy and Learning 

• Write about your thoughts regarding any of the fiction or non-fiction covered in class.

• Reflect on any new information you have learned in English class by considering how that learning influences your critical perception.

• How is what you’re learning applied to any other classes/the world around you?

So far, we’ve read a compilation of different cultural variants of Cinderella, an assortment of Greek Myths, and the beginning of Oedipus Rex. As a child, I was gifted an anthology of different fairytales from around the world, but aside from enjoying the text, I never participated in any deeper interpretive reading (obviously, being five.) Having the opportunity to revisit old classics like Lin Lan and discover new versions of the same myth that I loved now that I was older, more mature, and more capable was extremely eye opening. I had dabbled in critical theory outside of class before, but had been too intimidated to try and start any of my own work. Instead I preferred to read the analyses of others, but our final fairytale project gave me the push I needed to read through the lens of critical theory on my own. Now that I think about it, I suppose it would be a little inaccurate to say I had never written any kind of piece involving critical theory before, but I would call modern mythology my first true exposure to exploring the intersection between culture, society, and literature. As I realized through my self assessment of my fairytale piece during our progress check, before, I was just identifying pieces of literature that were connected to my critical theory, now I was considering it’s consequences, significance, and implications. The application of critical theory to literature undoubtedly had not only an academic impact, but one in the real world as well, inherently, since the very definition concerns the critique of society. Literature is like a mirror for the real world. Just as we learned with Fahrenheit 451, the lines between the ‘material’ and the ‘fictional’ can become blurred enough for us to use one to understand - and enact change - in the other. 

I was extremely excited to start Oedipus Rex - I love tragedy. My first introduction to it was The Oresteia. I had read plenty of Greek epics and plays before, but tended to stray away from tragedy, not really for any particular reason. However, I read snippets of Anne Carson’s translation of the Oresteia online and became instantly fascinated - a pipeline straight into the appreciation of darker works which I had never approached before (coincidentally, perhaps this is where I can trace the beginning of my decision to rank modern mythology as my first choice.) While I don’t count these as tragedies based on the criteria we were given (plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle, primarily missing melody), I became drawn to literature that explored more intense topics and emotions, like Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Now that we’ve begun exploring tragedy in class, I find myself wishing to revisit those works with my new knowledge. Although we only briefly discussed catharsis so far, I find it the subject that is most interesting and consuming of my thoughts. Both The Bell Jar and No Longer Human are, as I’ve already mentioned, intense. For me at least, they were both an extremely profound experience that I still remember with complicated emotions. No Longer Human especially had an impact on me. Oedipus Rex, though I remember we abstained from calling it a comic tragedy, was at least amusing because of dramatic irony. We felt bad for Oedipus, but (and this may be dark humor) our mutual cringing at his ignorance alleviated the pain somewhat. No Longer Human had no such moments. The narrator, Yozo, starts off miserable, and continues falling deeper and deeper into a spiral he can’t climb out of. Even worse, just as we’ve mentioned is common in tragic works - everything is his own fault. So while we haven’t been able to fully discuss catharsis yet, I’m excited to learn more about it and apply it to my own experience with No Longer Human, especially because I had an interesting case where the ‘purgation’, or cleansing of emotion didn’t happen immediately after I finished reading, but gradually over a series of months as I continued to think about it.

Modern mythology keeps revealing new things about topics I thought I had already understood. One reason plays do so well with conveying tragedy in comparison to movies (not to say that movies are terrible at tragedy) is because of the audience. There is a world of difference between standing on stage and proclaiming your dreadful loneliness to a sea of quiet voyeurs, silently spectating your pain but unable to, or unwilling to reach out, in comparison to a movie screen, where we’re often brought up close to the face of the agonized individual. There is a more personal connection in plays, which I feel that I’ve missed out over the past 2 years with classes held on Zoom, that I am experiencing now.