ECOCRITCISM: WALL-E 2008

ECO CRITICISM: WALL-E 2008 (film)

by Andrew Stanton

ECOCRITICISM - is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation.

PLOT:

In 2805, Earth is covered in garbage due to decades of mass consumerism facilitated by the megacorporation, Buy n Large (BnL). BnL evacuated Earth's population in fully automated star liners in 2105. Left behind were trash compactor Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-Class (WALL-E) robots, to clean the planet. Through years of neglect, most eventually broke down due to lack of maintenance. One WALL-E unit has managed to remain active by repairing itself using parts from other broken units, and after 700 years of life-experience has developed sentience. Apart from his regular duties, he inquisitively collected artifacts of human civilization, and kept these items in his storage truck home. He befriended a cockroach, and enjoys listening to Hello, Dolly!

One day, WALL-E discovers and collects a growing seedling plant. Later a spaceship lands and deploys Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE). She is an advanced robot sent from the BnL starliner Axiom to search for vegetation on Earth. Inspired by Hello, Dolly!, WALL-E falls in love with the initially cold and hostile EVE. Wall-E wishes to hold hands with her. EVE gradually softens and befriends him. When WALL-E brings EVE to his truck and showcases his collection, she sees the plant and automatically stores it, inside herself. She goes into standby mode waiting for retrieval, from her ship. WALL-E spends time with EVE while she is in standby mode. He then clings to the hull of EVE's ship as it collects and returns her to the starliner Axiom.

On the Axiom, the ship's original human passengers and their descendants have suffered from severe bone loss and become morbidly obese after centuries of living in microgravity and relying on the ship's automated systems for most tasks. Captain B. McCrea, in charge of the ship, mostly leaves control to the robotic autopilot, AUTO. WALL-E follows EVE to the bridge of the Axiom, where the Captain learns that the earth is habitable again by putting the plant in the spaceship holo-detector for verification. The captain plans for the Axiom to make a hyperjump back to Earth so the passengers can recolonize. However, AUTO orders McCrea's robotic assistant GO-4 to steal the plant as part of AUTO's own no return directive.

With the plant missing, EVE is considered defective and taken to the repair ward along with WALL-E. WALL-E mistakes the process on EVE for torture and tries to save her. He accidentally releases a horde of malfunctioning robots. The on-board security systems then designate both WALL-E and EVE as rogue. Angry with WALL-E's disruptions, EVE brings him to the escape pod bay to send him home. There they witness GO-4 dispose of the missing plant by placing it inside a pod which is set to self-destruct. WALL-E enters the pod, which is then jettisoned into space. Fortunately he escapes with the plant before the pod explodes. Reconciling with EVE, they celebrate with a dance in space outside the Axiom. Meanwhile the Captain, learning from the ship's computer, has become fascinated about life on Earth before it was polluted and abandoned.

The plant is brought to the captain. He surveys EVE's recordings of Earth and concludes that mankind must return to restore their home. However, AUTO reveals his directive, which was secretly issued to autopilots after BnL incorrectly concluded in 2110 that the planet could not be saved and that humanity should remain in space. AUTO stages a mutiny and tasers WALL-E, severely damaging him. He also incapacitates EVE and confines the captain to his quarters. EVE realizes the only parts for repairing WALL-E are in his truck back on Earth. She helps him bring the plant to the holo-detector. The presence of a plant in the detector will automatically activate the Axiom's hyperjump. Captain McCrea opens the holo-detector. While fighting with AUTO, chaos on the ship ensues. AUTO partially crushes WALL-E by closing the holo-detector on him. AUTO is eventually disabled by McCrea, who now takes control. EVE places the plant in the holo-detector which frees WALL-E and sets the Axiom on the instant hyperjump to Earth. The human population finally land back on Earth, after being away for hundreds of years

EVE brings WALL-E back to his home where she repairs and reactivates him. After the repair WALL-E no longer recognises EVE, reverting to his original programming - an unfeeling waste compactor. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL-E a farewell kiss, finally holding hands with him. This jolts WALL-E's memory, and his personality returns. WALL-E and EVE happily reunite as the humans and robots of the Axiom begin to restore Earth and its environment. Viewed through a series of artworks WALL-E and EVE are seen holding hands in front of a large tree, which is revealed to have grown from the tiny plant that brought humankind home.

CRITIQUE:

A trash-swamped world: rubbish as an ecocritical metaphor in dystopian visions of the future. Wall-E is a great film depicting the future of the human race which sets as a reflection to every audience. This film is line in the eco-criticism for its focal point is the biotic environment depletion and the pursuit of a robot to regain the life on Earth. The movie taught us to value our world. We, humans. are capable to destroy and also restore all the things for we are the rational kind. It is in our hands on how we will make this world a better place for us to have a better living to be passed on generation to generation.

STRUCTURALISM: GHAJINI 2008

STRUCTURALISM: GHAJINI 2008 (film) 

by A.R Murugadoss

STRUCTURALISM - is a theoretical paradigm emphasizing that elements of culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover all the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and fell. Alternately, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, Structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract culture".

PLOT:

Medical student, Sunita, is driven by curiosity to study the case of Sanjay Singhania, who is afflicted with short-term memory loss. She runs into him, befriends him, and finds out that he is out to kill a seemingly benevolent citizen, Ghajini Dharmatma. After warning the latter of the impending danger, she subsequently comes across a number of diaries written by Sanjay and attempts to put together a jigsaw puzzle as to how a successful and wealthy businessman became a crazed recluse, who re-lives his past through tattoos on his body, notes and Polaroid photographs on the wall of his Hiranandani Complex flat, and his sole obsession of carrying out his deadly mission - little knowing that Ghajini and his goons are out to erase every bit of evidence he has gathered and thus ensure that he ends up remembering nothing.

CRITIQUE:

The main structural device used in the film is well known to Bollywood audiences - that the romance designed to win them over with its sweetness and grace. The noir influenced Parwana (Jyoti Swaroop,1971) has the same structural flow: a retelling of a romance for about a third of the film, acts of vengeance and finally redemption of the lover whose destructive potential is stilled. Clearly the noble savagery of Ghajini and the chaotic sanguinity of Memento are poles apart with Bollywood showing a preference for a more saccharine product focused on romance, melodrama and action rather than irony.

PRAGMATISM: MOBY DICK

PRAGMATISM: MOBY DICK 

by Herman Melville

Pragmatism - is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice.

PLOT: 

This classic story by Herman Melville revolves around Captain Ahab and his obsession with a huge whale, Moby Dick. The whale caused the loss of Ahab's leg years before, leaving Ahab to stomp the boards of his ship on a peg leg. Ahab is so crazed by his desire to kill the whale, that he is prepared to sacrifice everything, including his life, the lives of his crew members, and even his ship to find and destroy his nemesis, Moby Dick.

Critique:

I begin by giving a basic overview of pragmatism, including its history and its methodology. Next, I show how Melville was well read in Emerson, who is also considered a proto-pragmatist. And then, through a close analysis of Moby Dick, I show how Melville illuminates the main tenets of this philosophy before it was even created.  Ultimately, I also show how Melville grapples with pragmatism's most frustrating qualities, which brings his own philosophical beliefs to light, and shows how Melville leaves his unanswered relation to truth to the reader to decide.

TERRITORIALISM: LOLITA

TERRITORIALISM: LOLITA
by Vladimir Nabokov

TERRITORIALISM - the literary content focuses on the characters' protection of his possessions and desires.

PLOT

John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. writes in a foreword that Humbert Humbert, author of the following manuscript, titled "Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male," died in jail just before his trial was to start in 1952. Humbert narrates hereafter. He details his European childhood and background as a scholar and relates his tragic childhood love for Annabel Leigh, whose death traumatized Humbert. Humbert is now obsessively attracted to "nymphets," young girls who possess a mysterious seductive power.

After shuttling around some mental institutions and doing odd writing jobs, Humbert lands in the New England town of Ramsdale. He takes a room at the house of widower Charlotte Haze because of her beautiful young daughter, Lolita, reminds him of Annabel. Humbert lusts after and flirts with Lolita, but is afraid to do anything lest the repulsive Haze, who wants Humbert, discover her lodger's pedophilia. Lolita goes off to summer camp, and Humbert reluctantly marries Haze, since it is his only chance to keep Lolita in his life.

Humbert toys with the idea of killing Haze, but is unable to do it. She discovers his diary, filled with entries about his love for Lolita and hatred for her, and tells him she is leaving. However, she is immediately hit by a car, and Humbert picks Lolita up at camp. He eventually breaks the news about her mother's death, and at a hotel called The Enchanted Hunter, they have sex for the first time. A strange man seems to take a keen interest in them.

Humbert and Lolita drive across the U.S. for one year. Humbert threatens to put Lolita in an orphanage if she does not comply with his sexual demands. Humbert gets a job at Beardsley College and enrolls Lolita in the girls' school there. Lolita's desire to socialize with boys strains her relationship with Humbert, and he finally agrees to let her participate in a school play called "The Enchanted Hunters."

Humbert suspects Lolita of infidelity, and they leave for another road trip. A man who resembles a relative of Humbert's named Trapp seems to be following them, and Lolita appears to be in contact with him. When Lolita gets sick and is placed in a doctor's office, she is taken away by the man who resembles Trapp. Humbert tries to find her for the next two years, but to no avail. He takes up with a woman named Rita for two years until he receives a letter from Lolita, now married, pregnant, and asking for money.

Humbert plans to kill Lolita's husband, but when he visits them, finds out that her kidnaper was actually Clare Quilty, a playwright with whom Lolita was in love. When she refused to participate in his child pornography films, he rejected her. Lolita declines Humbert's invitation to live with him, and he leaves heartbroken.

Humbert finds out where Quilty lives and, after talking with Quilty and shooting him numerous times, kills him. Humbert is arrested and put in jail, where he finishes his memoir. As we learned from the foreword, he died soon after in captivity, and Lolita died while giving childbirth that Christmas.

CRITIQUE:

Lolita is a story narrated by Humbert Humbert, the main protagonist of the novel. The story circulates in Humbert's memoirs of Lolita. It is about his European childhood and background as a scholar and relates his tragic childhood love for Annabel Leigh, whose death traumatized Humbert. Humbert is now obsessively attracted to "nymphets," young girls who possess a mysterious seductive power. Such obsession is called as pedophilia which makes H.H as pedophile. Vladimir Nabokov used literary argues of the character's protection in his/her obsession. It has territorialist approach because Humbert married Charlotte Haze, mother of Lolita, just to keep his so-called "nymphet" in his life. Humbert's writing in his personal diary are all about his love, desires and obsession in Lolita's charming grace and beauty which always seduce him. In Lolita's presence, it reminds him of his first love, Annabelle Leigh. Humbert could not escape from the past. Another instances of this approach are Humbert's threatening styles to make Lolita have sex with him. It emphasizes one's abilities and limitless ways just to protect his pleasures, possession and obsession. Therefore, Lolita  falls under Territorialism theory of Literary Criticism.

DECONSTRUCTION: JUDE THE OBSCURE

DECONSTRUCTION: JUDE THE OBSCURE 

by Thomas Hardy

DECONSTRUCTION - Deconstruction is a method of reading which is based on the assumption that language is unreliable. The goal of a deconstructionist reading is to seek out the contradictions in the text to prove that the text lacks unity and coherence. The point isn't really to show that the text means the opposite of what it is supposed to mean, but that there can be no actual interpretation of the text. Although deconstruction is primarily applied to the written word, some practitioners use deconstructive techniques to analyze concepts, systems and institutions.

PLOT

Jude Fawley dreams of studying at the university in Christminster, but his background as an orphan raised by his working-class aunt leads him instead into a career as a stonemason. He is inspired by the ambitions of the town schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson, who left for Christminster when Jude was a child. However, Jude falls in love with a young woman named Arabella, is tricked into marrying her, and cannot leave his home village. When their marriage goes sour and Arabella moves to Australia, Jude resolves to go to Christminster at last. However, he finds that his attempts to enroll at the university are met with little enthusiasm. Jude meets his cousin Sue Bridehead and tries not to fall in love with her. He arranges for her to work with Phillotson in order to keep her in Christminster, but is disappointed when he discovers that the two are engaged to be married. Once they marry, Jude is not surprised to find that Sue is not happy with her situation. She can no longer tolerate the relationship and leaves her husband to live with Jude.

Both Jude and Sue get divorced, but Sue does not want to remarry. Arabella reveals to Jude that they have a son in Australia, and Jude asks to take him in. Sue and Jude serve as parents to the little boy and have two children of their own. Jude falls ill, and when he recovers, he decides to return to Christminster with his family. They have trouble finding lodging because they are not married, and Jude stays in an inn separate from Sue and the children. At night Sue takes Jude's son out to look for a room, and the little boy decides that they would be better off without so many children. In the morning, Sue goes to Jude's room and eats breakfast with him. They return to the lodging house to find that Jude's son has hanged the other two children and himself. Feeling she has been punished by God for her relationship with Jude, Sue goes back to live with Phillotson, and Jude is tricked into living with Arabella again. Jude dies soon after.

CRITIQUE:

Honestly, Thomas Hardy never fails to impress me with his writing strategies. The mysterious life of Jude broke my heart and carried my emotions especially in the midst of his struggle and the crime committed by the child. In early age, the latter realized how dull and empty the world is. The deconstruction techniques used by the author exquisitely empower one's critic reading endeavor. Deconstruction reveals guilt, duty, and unrequited love as essential elements to the construction of such story. Hardy's last novel is terribly dark work of art. Obscenity and pessimism dominate the atmosphere of Hardy's aberrant piece among all of his works. Deconstruction lies under, specifically, in the ending part which is not the expected actual interpretation of the literary work.  

NEW HISTORICISM: CASABLANCA 1942

NEW HISTORICISM: CASABLANCA 1942 (Film) by Michael Curtiz

NEW HISTORICISM - New Historicism is a school of literary theory, grounded in critical theory, that developed in the 1980s, primarily through the work of the critic Stephen Greenblatt, and gained widespread influence in the 1990s.

New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature, which documents the new discipline of the history of ideas. Michel Foucault based his approach both on his theory of the limits of collective cultural knowledge and on his technique of examining a broad array of documents in order to understand the episteme of a particular time. New Historicism is claimed to be a more neutral approach to historical events, and to be sensitive towards different cultures.

PLOT

Cynical American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is the proprietor of an upscale nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca in early December 1941. "Rick's Café Américain" attracts a mixed clientele: Vichy French, Italian, and Nazi officials; refugees desperate to reach the still neutral United States; and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, it is later revealed he ran guns to Ethiopia to combat the 1935 Italian invasion and fought on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War.

At this point, the reason for Rick's bitterness—his ex-lover, Norwegian Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman)—walks into his establishment. Upon spotting Rick's friend and house pianist, Sam (Dooley Wilson), Ilsa asks him to play "As Time Goes By". Rick storms over, furious that Sam has disobeyed his order never to perform that song, and is stunned to see Ilsa. She is accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a renowned fugitive Czech Resistance leader. They need the letters to escape to America, where he can continue his work. German Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) comes to Casablanca to see that Laszlo does not succeed.Petty crook Ugarte (Peter Lorre) shows up and boasts to Rick of "letters of transit" obtained by murdering two German couriers. The papers allow the bearer to travel around German-controlled Europe and to neutral Portugal, and are thus almost priceless to the refugees stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to sell them at the club later that night. Before the exchange can take place, however, he is arrested by the local police under the command of Vichy Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), an unabashedly corrupt official. Ugarte dies in custody without revealing that he had entrusted the letters to Rick.

When Laszlo makes inquiries, Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), a major underworld figure and Rick's friendly business rival, divulges his suspicion that Rick has the letters. In private, Rick refuses to sell at any price, telling Laszlo to ask his wife the reason. They are interrupted when Strasser leads a group of officers in singing "Die Wacht am Rhein". Laszlo orders the house band to play "La Marseillaise". When the band looks to Rick, he nods his head. Laszlo starts singing, alone at first, then patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in, drowning out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser has Renault close the club.

That night, Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted café. When he refuses to give her the letters, she threatens him with a gun, but then confesses that she still loves him. She explains that when they first met and fell in love in Paris, she believed that her husband had been killed attempting to escape from a concentration camp. Later, while preparing to flee with Rick from the imminent fall of the city to the German army, she learned that Laszlo was alive and in hiding. She left Rick without explanation to tend her ill husband. With the revelation, the lovers are reconciled. Rick agrees to help, leading her to believe that she will stay behind with him when Laszlo leaves. When Laszlo unexpectedly shows up, having narrowly escaped a police raid on a Resistance meeting, Rick has waiter Carl (S. K. Sakall) spirit Ilsa away.

Laszlo, aware of Rick's love for Ilsa, tries to persuade him to use the letters to take her to safety. When the police arrest Laszlo on a minor, trumped-up charge, Rick convinces Renault to release him by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters of transit. To allay Renault's suspicions, Rick explains he and Ilsa will be leaving for America.

When Renault tries to arrest Laszlo as arranged, Rick forces him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with her husband, telling her she would regret it if she stayed, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

Major Strasser, tipped off by Renault, drives up alone. Rick shoots Strasser when he tries to intervene. When the police arrive, Renault pauses, then tells them to "round up the usual suspects." Renault suggests to Rick that they join the Free French at Brazzaville as they walk away into the fog.

CRITIQUE:

Casablanca was released in 1942, during a series of other propaganda film releases in the midst of the Second World War. The film premiered in New York City in November of 1942, to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca; it went into general release in January of 1943, to take advantage of the Casablanca conference, a high-level meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in the city. There is the suggestion that some bias is present in how the war was retold during World War Two because it is likely that it was created on the basis of propaganda film production.

Also, the film looks at the perspective of Vichy-controlled Moroccan state but mostly through the eyes of non-citizens (i.e., the glorified American hero Rick, Victor Laszlo, a Czech resistance leader sought by the Nazis); there are very few actual Moroccans present in the main plot of the film, which alters the viewers understanding of its real historical relevance. Casablanca appears to be a place where others have been displaced and moved to, but through this narrative in particular, there is no mentioning of where the Moroccans in fact are. Because this is a romantic drama, most of the plot follows the relationship between Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), an American expatriate living in Casablanca, and his once lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). I could say that this undisputed masterpice peratains to what new historicism is all about.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL: TROPIC OF CAPRICORN

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM: 

TROPIC OF CAPRICORN by Henry Miller

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM - Autobiographical criticism is a form of literary criticism which analyzes a writer's biography to show the relationship between the author's life and their works of literature. Autobiographical criticism is often associated with Historical-Biographical criticism, a critical method that "sees a literary work chiefly, if not exclusively, as a reflection of its author's life and times.

PLOT

Miller opens the novel with a burst of philosophy, reflecting on life in general. What will follow, he implies, is a series of loosely linked, ostensibly autobiographical musings or accounts. The story proper, such as there is, begins with a young Miller working a series of dead-end day jobs. He finally manages to secure a long-term stint at what he calls the “Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America” (in all likelihood his bemused term for the Western Union Telegraph Company). He serves as a makeshift employment manager, hiring and firing at a rapid pace. He is swept into the system, and contemplates its crazed and inhumane logic (or lack thereof). He takes his first serious stab at writing around this time, when his boss casually mentions that he’d like to see a Horatio Alger-esque tale concerning the telegraph company. Miller describes his first book as terrible, but a necessary step on the way to becoming a writer. He is married and has a child, but this doesn’t stop him from having an affair with a coworker named Valeska. Asked to look after the Millers’ child while the wife undergoes an abortion, Valeska and Henry make love surrounded by the dominos they had been using to entertain the kid just an hour before. Miller spends many of his nights carousing with his sex-hungry friend MacGregor. He also has befriended a seventeen year-old kid from Harlem named Curley who has no ethics and will steal from anybody, and who occasionally supplies Miller with spare change.

At this point in the novel, Miller dives back into his earlier past, culling through vivid childhood memories. He recalls accidentally killing a kid with a rock when he was playing with his cousin Gene one summer afternoon. No one found out he was involved in the act, and when he asked Gene about it twenty years later, even Gene seemed to have forgotten about it. Miller reflects on the clarity of childhood, how children seem to cut through to the essence of things, how his conversations at that age were models of lucidity and sanity compared to those of the adults, how something is suppressed and muffled inside us when we grow up. He then jumps forward a few years, to a time in his early twenties when he met a man named Roy Hamilton. Roy was searching for his biological father, but even in the midst of his familial confusion seemed surefooted, wise in profound ways, a rock in the middle of an ocean. He and Miller were good friends for a short period of time, and Miller recalls that time with great admiration for Hamilton, for he enabled Miller to know himself better.

The journey toward self-discovery continues, with Miller stumbling through the Southwest lost, alone, and in need of Hamilton (who has continued seeking his father). Miller thinks of his own father, a heavy drinker who routinely goes on the wagon, falls ill, and then throws himself headfirst into Christianity. After the minister who originally inspired his conversion leaves for a position in New Rochelle, Miller’s father falls into disillusionment and depression. Miller describes him as a man betrayed, before turning to the example of Grover Watrous, a neighbor who also found God, and remained the most “joyful” person Miller has ever known.

Miller transitions to his more current sexual exploits. He lists the women he has bedded: a “simpleton” who lives upstairs in his coworker Hymie’s place; Veronica, with her “talking cunt”; Evelyn, with her “laughing cunt.” Finally he lavishes dozens of pages on a nameless woman with whom he had an intense sexual relationship, a “plunder-bird” lady who wears only black and no underwear. She and Miller go to sleep at dawn and get up at dusk. They make love constantly. In between this running narrative of various women and sexual encounters, Miller describes two writers who profoundly marked him at this time in his life, when he was still developing as a reader and a writer: Dostoevsky and Henri Bergson.

Miller turns again to his childhood: he remembers taking piano lessons, coming on to his piano teacher and losing his virginity to her, and then in later years using his piano-playing as a way to attract women. More importantly, he writes of sensing a new world just beyond his reach when playing piano; the compositions that spring in his head seem to belong to a music of the future, an indefinable something to which he should aspire. A similar, but far more instantaneous and clear, revelation occurs when he is standing one day in a vaudeville theater and sees the curtains rise. He interprets this prelude to the spectacle as a metaphor for humanity, and sees in it the key to breaking through his creative block. He begins writing prolifically of a “New World” and tries to elevate writing to spiritual heights.

Miller remembers his sister, a “mental dwarf” who was beaten for her mistakes as a child, and whose pain he tried to share. He writes of the misunderstood artist, the misunderstood saint, but concludes that vicariously partaking in others’ tribulations deprives him of his own identity. He must continue on the path to greater self-awareness, for the self is, in a sense, everything. “Thought and action are one,” Miller argues, aligning thought with not just existence, as Descartes does, but with action – the physical, the real. The world might spring from a single stray thought, and thus to end his book Miller must “seek the end in [him]self.”

CRITIQUE:

The plot explained why the Tropic of Capricorn goes along to autobiographical criticism. This nover was banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller’s Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn’s ethnic neighborhoods and Miller’s outrageous sexual exploits, The Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature. 

NEW CRITICISM: FEBRUARY 23

NEW CRITICISM: FEBRUARY 23 

by David Lehman

NEW CRITICISM - A method of literary evaluation and interpretation practiced chiefly in the mid-20th century that emphasizes close examination of a text with minimum regard for the biographical or historical circumstances in which it was produced.

POEM

Light rain is falling in Central Park
but not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West

where sun and sky are yellow and blue

Winds are gusting on Washington Square

through the arches and on to LaGuardia Place

but calm is the corner of 8th Street and Second Avenue

which reminds me of something John Ashbery said

about his poem "Crazy Weather" he said

he was in favor of all kinds of weather

just so long as it's genuine weather

which is always unusually bad, unusually

good, or unusually indifferent,

since there isn't really any norm for weather

When he was a boy his mother met a friend

who said, "Isn't this funny weather?"

CRITIQUE:

New Criticism emphasizes explication, or "close reading," of "the work itself." It rejects old historicism's attention to biographical and sociological matters. Instead, the objective determination as to "how a piece works" can be found through close focus and analysis, rather than through extraneous and erudite special knowledge. It has long been the pervasive and standard approach to literature in college and high school curricula. February 23 caught the new criticism approach because it focuses on the text regardless of the other elements of literary piece.

PSYCHOANALYTIC: LIMITLESS 2011

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM: LIMITLESS 2011 (film) by Neil Burger

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM -  adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche. Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilt, ambivalence  and so forth within what may well be a dis unified literary work. The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary work. But psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as in dreams) through principles such as "symbolism" (the repressed object represented in disguise), "condensation" (several thoughts or persons represented in a single image), and "displacement" (anxiety located onto another image by means of association).

PLOT

Aspiring author Eddie Morra (Cooper) is suffering from chronic writer's block, but his life changes instantly when an old friend introduces him to NZT, a revolutionary new pharmaceutical that allows him to tap his full potential. Soon Eddie takes Wall Street by storm, parlaying a small stake into millions. His accomplishments catch the eye of mega-mogul Carl Van Loon (De Niro),who invites him to help broker the largest merger in corporate history. But they also bring Eddie to the attention of people willing to do anything to get their hands on his stash of NZT. With his life in jeopardy and the drug's brutal side effects grinding him down, Eddie dodges mysterious stalkers, a vicious gangster and an intense police investigation as he attempts to hang on to his dwindling supply long enough to outwit his enemies.-- (C) Relativity

CRITIQUE:

The merging of brilliant minds in this immensely made film has caught the attention of every audience by its sci-fi thriller genre. It has made people think of what-ifs conclusions. Even I, myself, think of the probabilities if I were on the situation of the main protagonist in the film. It had made me change my impressions on drugs, seriously. This is really a so-so good film that made me ga-ga over. (Okay, I'm being informal now LOL) It blows one's imagination all throughout the movie. Limitless film has the manifestation of the writer's own neuroses. Of course, who would not want 100% full potential working brain of our own? Eddie Morra's behavior in this film ideally depicts psychoanalysis. Neil Burger's film is impeccably projected to author's psyche. The patterns presented are traceable not only to the author but also in everyone's secret unconscious desires in life. Getting high is good as long as you know how to handle yourself.

HUMANISM: CLOUD ATLAS

HUMANISM: CLOUD ATLAS 

by David Mitchell

HUMANISM -  A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth. Concern with the interests, needs, and welfare of humans. A cultural and intellectual movement of the Renaissance that emphasized secular concerns as a result of the rediscovery and study of the literature, art, and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome.

PLOT

Cloud Atlas is a novel composed of six interlacing narratives, each one housed within the next, so that the first is a book read by a character in the second, the second a series of letters cherished by a character in the third, the third a populist novel being considered by a publisher in the third, and so on. To fully realize this Russian-doll experiment Mitchell divides each tale in half and places them, sandwich fashion, at opposite ends of the book. Thus the opening narrative is the last to be concluded, the second the penultimate, etc. At the centre of the novel lies the indivisible doll, an unbroken post-apocalyptic tale wrapped fivefold. Despite this symbiotic, intra-textual concept, further emphasized by the unifying themes of recurrence and predation, each narrative stands as a novella in its own right.

'The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing' is an eighteenth century maritime romp in diarised form. Ewing, an American notary, waits upon repairs to his ship on the Chatham Islands where he hears a detailed and brutal account of the indigenous people. Aboard the tyrannically captained schooner he discovers that his medical companion is more foe than friend, more dupe than doctor and that the treatment he receives for his apocryphal brain disorder is devised to kill not cure. Ewing narrowly escapes loss of life and property and the infamous ‘Arsenick Goose’ flies off to filch elsewhere. 

 ‘Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery’ assumes a populist prose style to rework the classic ‘intrepid journalist takes on ruthless captain of industry’ formula. It is 1970's California and Luisa Rey discovers that the much hyped local nuclear power plant is not as safe as it seems. Unlike two of her moral allies she survives the inevitable car chases, explosions and fisticuffs to deliver the equally inevitable, all-vindicating report to the authorities. 

Set in 1931, ‘Letters from Zedelghem’ adopts the epistolary form to capture the final brilliant months of the precariously bi-polar, precociously bi-sexual Robert Frobisher. Fleeing ignominiously from his debtors in England, he arrives in Brussels to realize his whim of serving as amanuensis to a dying world-class composer. Whilst aiding the irascible genius in the creation of a masterpiece or two, he sleeps with his wife, surreptitiously sells off some of his property then falls unrequitedly in love with his daughter.  In a final fit of manic creativity he produces his own magnum opus then kills himself.

‘The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish’ is the comic tale of an over educated underachieving vanity publisher who unexpectedly finds one of his books flying off the shelves when its author propels a scoffing reviewer from a rooftop. Unable to meet the demands of the author’s thuggish brothers, who violently demand a slice of the profits, he flees to Hull where he ends up incarcerated in a high security nursing home. Along with two of the homes more spirited inmates, he masterminds then executes an escape plan that delivers him into a bucolic, wealthy retirement.

 ‘An Orison of Somni~451’ is the dark dystopian autobiography of a service industry slave who evolves beyond her laboratory controlled, genetically engineered social function to become a martyr for the abolitionist cause. It is set in a futuristic Korea where eugenics and corpocracy have combined to create a nightmarishly Orwellian world and everything, including Somni~451’s insurrection, is dictated by a state intent on maintaining its grip on power.

 ‘Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After’ is a grim post-apocalyptic narrative set on the island of Hawaii where life has reverted to the days of tribal pre-civilization.  Valleysman Zachry loses his brother and father to a neighbouring tribe of savages when he is young, and his remaining family later play host to Meronym - a mysterious dark skinned member of an advanced tribe from across the seas. Though he at first suspects her of espionage, he is at last persuaded of her good intentions when she uses her ‘smart’ to liberate him from the marauding savages.

CRITIQUE:

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilization – the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.Cloud Atlas‘s humanist ideas about reincarnation, all races are one, love transcending lifetimes, everything is connected which are brilliantly realized.

ROMANTICISM: ANG TUNDO MAN MAY LANGIT DIN

ROMANTICISM: ANG TUNDO MAN MAY LANGIT DIN 

ni Andres Cristobal Cruz

ROMANTICISM - An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. Romantic quality or spirit in thought, expression, or action.

PLOT

Tumawag si Flor kay Victor upang anyayahan itong makipagkita sa kanya sa isang palamigan sa Quiapo. Napag-alaman ni Victor na si Flor ay dalawang buwan ng nagdadalantao. Nangangaba si Flor na totoo ang sinasabi ng babaing pumunta sa kanyang apartment at sinabing siya ang totoong asawa ni Tonyo na ama ng dinadala ni Flor. Nangako si Victor na aalamin kung totoo ang kinatatakutan ni Flor. Nahuli si Victor sa usapan nilang pagkikita ni Alma sa lobby ng pamantasang kanilang pinapasukan. Pagkatapos ng kanilang klase ay napagpasiyahan niyang dumalaw sa apartment ni Flor. Pagkatapos ng kanyang pagdalaw kay Flor ay umuwi na siya. Namataan niyang nag-iinuman sina Lukas at ang mga kaibigan nito sa isang restawran sa Looban ng Tundo. Muntik ng magkagulo sa loob ng restawran. Buti na lamang at napigilan iyon ni Victor. Ngunit ng papauwi na sila ni Lukas ay nakaharap muli nila ang mga Waray at nakipagbabakan ang mga iyon sa kanila. Kumalat sa Looban ang tungkol sa pakikipagbakbakan nila Victor at Lukas.

Sa klase nila Victor at Alma na Philippine History ay kinuwestiyon ni Victor ang librong isinulat ni Agila na isang awtoridad ng Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas. Sa araw din na iyon ay bumili si Alma ng bago niyang talaarawan.

Sa gabing iyon ay nagkaroon muli ng masamang panaginip si Alma tungkol sa kanyang ama at kay Dolores na dati nilang katulong. Kinabukasan ay nagpaalam si Alma sa kanyang Daddy at Mommy na magkaroon ng party para sa nalalapit niyang graduation. Inanyayahan ni Alma ang kanyang mga kaklase at si Victor. Dumating ang araw ng party ni Alma ngunit siya ay malungkot dahil sa hindi sinunod ng kanyang mga magulang ang kagustuhan niya na sila-sila lamang ng kanyang mga kaklase ang magpaparty. Nagtungo muli si Victor sa apartment ni Flor bago pumunta sa party ni Alma. Nagtalo silang dalawa tungkol sa kagustuhan ni Flor na hindi na maaari pang mangyari. Pagkatapos ng pagtatalong iyon ay pumunta na si Victor sa bahay nila Alma.

Dahil sa pamimilit ni Alma at dahil na rin sa pamilya ni Victor ay napagpasiya nitong dumalo sa kanilang baccalaureate at graduation dahil sa ayaw niyang ipagkait ang kaligayahan sa kanyang pamilya. Dumating ang araw ng Baccalaureat nila Alma at Victor, sa araw na iyon ay niregaluhan ni Victor si Alma. Kinabukasan ay araw ng graduation nila Alma at Victor, sa araw naman na iyon ay nagregalo si Alma kay Victor ng isang fountain pen na may naka-engraved na "Victor-Alma." Si Flor naman ay nagregalo kay Victor ng isang relo.

Lumipas ang ilan pang mga araw. Nabalitaan ni Victor na nakapagtayo si Flor ng isang patahian kung saan katulong niya sa pagpapatakbo nito si Dolores. Dinala ni Victor si Alma sa patahian ni Flor at doon nakita ni Alma ang matagal na niyang hinahanap na si Dolores, ang dati nilang katulong na sa kanyang paniniwala ay nagawan ng masama ng kanyang ama.

Dumating ang buwan ng Hunyo. Nagsimula na si Alma sa pagtuturo sa Torres High. Ilan pang mga araw ang nakalipas at pumunta si Alma sa patahian nila Flor upang kausapin si Dolores at ibigay ang sustento nito para makatulong at makabawi sa maling nagawa ng kanyang ama.

Si Victor naman ay tinulungan ni Paking upang makapagturo sa Torres High. Nakatanggap agad siya ng appointment bilang substitute teacher sa paaralan. Nagkita muli sina Alma at Victor sa Torres High kung saan pareho silang magtuturo.

Dumating ang araw ng panganganak ni Flor at sa araw na iyon ay hindi nagpahuli si Tonyo. Naroroon siya upang makita ang kanyang anak kay Flor. Pagkatapos ng pangyayaring iyon ay napagpasiyahan ni Tonyo na ipagtapat sa kanyang maybahay na siya'y may anak ka Flor. Naging maayos ang usapan ng mag-asawa at napagpasiyahan nilang dumalaw kay Flor sa ospital.

Hindi na napigilan ni Alma ang kanyang damdamin at napagpasiyahan niyang ipagtapat na kay Victor ang kanyang nadarama. Sa araw din na iyon ay ipinagtapat ni Alma sa kanyang Daddy na alam niya ang tungkol sa kanilang dalawa ni Dolores. Nasabi niya iyon ng dahil pagtatalo nila tungkol sa pagkikita nila ni Victor.

Kinabukasan ay ipinadala ni Alma ang kanyang bag kay Victor at sa di sinasadya ay nakita ni Victor ang talaarawan ni Alma. Hindi umaamin si Victor kay Alma nang tanungin siya nito kung nabasa niya ang talaarawan nito.

Lumipas ang mga araw at mas lalong nagkamabutihan sina Victor at Alma hanggang sa dumating ang isang araw na hindi na nila napigilan ang damdamin ng isa't isa at sila ay nagpasiya ng magpakasal. Pumunta si Victor sa bahay nila Alma upang hingin ang kamay ni Alma sa ama nito. Hindi naman tumutol ang ama ni Alma at masaya pa ito para sa dalawa. Napagpasiyahan nilang sa lalong madaling panahon ay ikakasal sila.

Dumating ang araw ng kasal. Simple lamang ang pag-aayos dito at kakaunti lamang ang inimbitahan ngunit sa kabila nito ay masayang idinaos nila Alma at Victor ang araw ng kanilang pag-iisang dibdib. Sa gabi ng kanilang kasal ay nakapag-isa ang bagong kasal. Inihandog ni Alma ang kanyang talaarawan kay Victor at Ibinigay naman ni Victor kay Alma ang panganay nilang halik sa isa't isa. Doon ay ipinagtapat na ni Victor na nabasa niya ang talaarawan ni Alma. At pagkaraan ng ilan pang sandal, doon sa pook na iyon ng Tundo'y sinimulang likhain, sa kabila ng ingay ng mga nagsusumbatang pulitiko, ng dalawang nagkakaisa't nagkakaugnay ng pangarap ang isang bago't matapang na daigdig. Isang daigdig na kaypala'y may sariling langit na biyaya ng pag-ibig.

CRITIQUE:


In limelight modern age of Philippine literature, the highly critically acclaimed novel of Andres Cristobal Cruz has greatly influenced the life of Filipinos today. Ang Tundo Man May Langit Din generates Romanticism theory in a fact that the story's center point is the characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.

POST-COLONIALISM: MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN

POST-COLONIAL CRITICISM: 

MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie

POST-COLONIAL CRITICISM - A type of cultural criticism, postcolonial criticism usually involves the analysis of literary texts produced in countries and cultures that have come under the control of European colonial powers at some point in their history. Alternatively, it can refer to the analysis of texts written about colonized places by writers hailing from the colonizing culture.

PLOT

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.

The book begins with the story of the Sinai family, particularly with events leading up to India's Independence and Partition. Saleem is born precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, and is, therefore, exactly as old as the independent republic of India. He later discovers that all children born in India between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. on that date are imbued with special powers. Saleem, using his telepathic powers, assembles a Midnight Children's Conference, reflective of the issues India faced in its early statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political differences faced by a vastly diverse nation. Saleem acts as a telepathic conduit, bringing hundreds of geographically disparate children into contact while also attempting to discover the meaning of their gifts. In particular, those children born closest to the stroke of midnight wield more powerful gifts than the others. Shiva "of the Knees", Saleem's nemesis, and Parvati, called "Parvati-the-witch," are two of these children with notable gifts and roles in Saleem's story.

Meanwhile, Saleem's family begin a number of migrations and endure the numerous wars which plague the subcontinent. During this period he also suffers amnesia until he enters a quasi-mythological exile in the jungle of Sundarban, where he is re-endowed with his memory. In doing so, he reconnects with his childhood friends. Saleem later becomes involved with the Indira Gandhi-proclaimed Emergency and her son Sanjay's "cleansing" of the Jama Masjid slum. For a time Saleem is held as a political prisoner; these passages contain scathing criticisms of Indira Gandhi's overreach during the Emergency as well as a personal lust for power bordering on godhood. The Emergency signals the end of the potency of the Midnight Children, and there is little left for Saleem to do but pick up the few pieces of his life he may still find and write the chronicle that encompasses both his personal history and that of his still-young nation; a chronicle written for his son, who, like his father, is both chained and supernaturally endowed by history.

CRITIQUE:

Salman Rushdie’s  Midnight’s Children marked the beginning of a new era for Indian English novels both in India and abroad  and went on to win ‘the Booker of Bookers’, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award’s 25 years of history.  Midnight’s Children is being regarded as a foundational text of postcolonialism. The reason for this immeasurable popularity of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is to be found in its unique style. Finally there appeared an Indian writer who told the story, the way it should be told, and who did not write about village life and social ills.  The days of R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and their peer group witnessed a sunset. Rushdie ‘chutnified’ both the Indian history and language with his acute sense of humour and invented new metaphors of nationhood.