Dept. of Speculation Blog 3

Speculating Codes

                                                                    by Alex Geffard

In our first blog, we offered our first impressions of Dept. of Speculation, and explained a network of controlling values. In our second blog, we looked at the genres and forms present in the novel. In this blog, we’ll look at a couple of Intertextual Codes.

 

Kaja Silverman, in The Subject of Semiotics, paraphrases Roland Barthes by explaining that “a code represents a sort of bridge between texts. Its presence within one text involves a simultaneous reference to all of the other texts in which it appears, and to the cultural reality which it helps define-i.e. the particular symbolic order.” Think of the code as the connotative meaning of a word or phrase. There are many different codes, each which invoke some kind of other meaning or thought.

 

The two codes that I want to look at in this post are the Semic and Cultural Codes- which I found to overlap nicely.

 

The Semic Code, as interpreted by Rowan University Professor Andrew Kopp, “Defines characters, objects, and places through repetitively grouping a number of signifiers (“semes”: words and phrases) around a proper name….the semic code sets up relationships of power that often reinforce cultural codes.” The semic code highlights the words or phrases associated with characters, objects, and places, such as the epithet “Alexander the Great”, and hints at their meanings (Alexander was a great conqueror who took over many lands).

 

Naturally, Cultural Codes, as defined by Silverman, “speak the familiar ‘truths’ of the existing cultural order, repeat what has ‘always been already read, seen, done, experienced'”. This has to do with the ideas and thoughts we get after reading certain words or phrases. What appears in our minds is influenced by our culture and society. An example of this as an untrue stereotype is “the blond girl in front of me complained that she didn’t understand the math test.” When we read that the girl is blond, with think about the cultural idea that blonds are generally dumb.

 

In Dept. of Speculation, the Semic and Cultural codes are linked together. The words the author uses as placeholders for the characters are the semic codes, and the stereotypical positions that our culture sees these words are the cultural codes.

 

When the narrator changes POV from first person to third (page 95), she refers to herself as The Wife.  When we see this placeholder, we think literally that she is someone’s wife. She is married to someone. She doesn’t see herself as her own person. She believes that she cannot be referred to without hinting at her connection to her spouse.

Culturally, when with think of a stereotypical wife’s role, we typically picture a 1950s nuclear family, where the wife is a stay at home mom taking care of her child and cleaning and laundry. The breadwinner of the family is the husband, and she is submissive to him. Now the narrator is not the type of woman to be like this, because she works hard for herself and is normally a very independent woman (initially, she didn’t want to be a mother). But once she is married and has a child, she starts to see herself assuming the stereotypical role, having to stay at home and take care of the child. She finds herself emotionally connected to her husband:

• “After you left for work, I would stare at the door as if it might open again.” (page 24)

 

The Husband is the placeholder for someone’s… husband. It implies that the husband is a “he”. He is connected to his wife, a protector and leader for his family. He is his own person, who chooses to be tied to the wife.

 

Culturally, we think of husbands, in the 1950s nuclear family, as the patriarch of the family. The breadwinner. He is honest and strong, confident and kind. Now, in the modern view, our thoughts are less kind. Husbands are thought of as the person in the couple who will generally cheat. Husbands are less trustworthy than wives, and are often thought to be distant from their family. There’s the stereotype that all African American husbands leave their families behind, often to sleep with younger and hotter women. The Wife in the story sees her husband more in the modern sense, sensing him to be distancing himself from her in everything they do, less trustworthy:

• “ Some nights in bed the wife can feel herself floating up towards the ceiling. Help me, she thinks, help me, but he sleeps and sleeps.” (page 108)

 

This novel is rich with Semic and Cultural codes that really elevate it to a more universal level. They make the story almost seem allegorical, like the characters are modern archetypes.

Annihilation Blog #4: An Expedition Into the Narrator and the Addressee

   

   Over the past three blogs about Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, my group has come up with a network of controlling values, looked at form and genre, and searched for intertextual codes. In this final blog for the novel, I want to address (pun intended) who the narrator and the addressee are.

 

   The narrator is the Biologist. We do not know her name, but her title gives away her profession. We also know that she is headstrong and likes to think for herself. While Area X is very dangerous, we learn that she is interested in exploring it. Unlike her the other women on her expedition, she doesn’t follow the psychologist (of course, inhaling the spores helped her to resist the hypnotism). As a researcher, she is very smart, and as a Biologist, she tries to study her environment.

 

   She is an expert at what she does, so as readers, we automatically believe that what she is saying is the truth (“I believe I qualified because I specialized in transitional environments”-pg. 11). Though, she does indicate that Area X can mess with people’s minds, so maybe not everything she says is as it happens.

 

   From the very first pages, we learn that the narrator is the Biologist (“I was the Biologist.”-pg. 3), and that this book is entries in a journal she is required to write in (“It was expected simply  that we would keep a record, like this one, in a journal, like this one”-pg. 8). As the quote mentions, the members of the expedition were given journals to keep records of their expedition. This could be because unexplainable things happened to the very first expeditions, so each subsequent one was required to keep a record.

   If something else happens to these expeditions, someone may be able to find out what happened to them.  The Biologist becomes that someone when she finds the other journals (including her husband’s) in the lighthouse.

   At the end of the story, the Biologist tells us that she plans to do the same as the people from the previous expeditions, and leave her journal in the lighthouse to be found.

   “I have spent four long days perfecting this account you are reading, for all its faults, and it is supplemented by a second journal that records all of my findings from the various samples taken by myself and other members of our expedition…I have bound these materials together with my husband’s journal and will leave them here, atop the pile beneath the trapdoor.” (P. 193)

   The Biologist chooses to explore on, leaving her records at the very top of a pile of multiple journals  to be found by someone else. That someone else is the addressee.

 

   Just to clarify, the addressee is the audience, the people who are reading or listening to the story. According to Peter Rabinowitz, there are about three types of audience, with the most straightforward one being the actual audience– the characters in the story who are listening to what the narrator has to say.

   I believe that in Annihilation, the character(s) reading the Biologist’s journal are part of the 13th expedition. Like before, a new expedition is sent into Area X to find out what happened to the previous expedition. The 12th expedition (in which the Biologist belonged to) never came back, so the 13th expedition was sent to investigate (this could have happened years later, as the 12th expedition was expected to remain in Area X for a long time, with no means to communicate to the outside world). Eventually, someone from this new group would find their way to the lighthouse and discover the journals. What the someone does with that information is another question.

   I think the Biologist hopes that the person who reads her journal is someone like her- someone who will think for him/herself. If the government group that sends the expedition includes another hypnotist, or just uses individuals who follow directions, whoever discovers the records might not do anything about them. Someone like the Biologist will learn from the journals and try to find out more about Area X.

 

   I mentioned earlier that Peter Rabinowitz has three different types of audience. The second of these is the hypothetical audience– the people the author envisions will read his book. He bases his writing style and artistic choices based off this assumption. At its most simplest level, Jeff Vandermeer seemed to be writing an interesting story for fans of the science fiction/horror genres. But I also think he assumes that we as readers we do not fully trust the government or any Big Brother organization. We live in a world where secrets are kept from us, and we are being monitored almost at all time. Vandermeer hopes that we are like the Biologist, who thinks for herself, and follows what she believes is right (this will make our connection and understanding of the Biologist greater).Like the Biologist, we have learned to question things and investigate on our own.
   We need to become the narrative audience– the readers who who understand what the story is an imitation of  real life. As the best case scenario, we need to assume that we are the addressee that the Biologist hopes will read the journals- the person who knows not to trust the big organization and to think for him/herself. The fictional world is an imitation of real life, and as we see that the Biologist is someone who has a very similar mindset to us in the real world, we are clued in to imitate our ideals as the actual audience in the novel. We have to believe that the character we are in the narrative thinks like us and the Biologist.

By Alex

Cat’s Cradle Blog 1

 

       

         Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut  is a difficult book to explain to a person who hasn’t read it. There are so many turns and seemingly irrational plot points and deeply hidden themes that the whole story itself could be portrayed as a physical cat’s cradle.  

 

 

         What I can say is that the book follows a man who likes to call himself Jonah (whose original name was John). He tells us his failed attempt at writing an account about what important Americans were doing when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. We see him gather information from various eccentric characters, all interlocked with one another. And while all this is happening, Jonah is explaining how he was led to becoming a devout member of a religion known as Bokononism, in which all things that are told as truths are actually shameless lies.

 

         So what could this all mean?

 

         This was difficult for me to come up with because the story is “all over the place”.

 

         But then again, this is what I am reading for. I knew what I was getting myself into when I chose this book. I had already read Kurt Vonnegut’s  Slaughterhouse-Five, so I expected this story to be satirical and confusing. And those expectations have been met so far. It only raises my curiosity, and I am intrigued in learning about the meaning of Cat’s Cradle’s Story.

 

        I decided to refer to the writings of  Robert McKee, a writing expert we have read about a lot in class. One quote really stuck out to me-“A well-told story neither expresses the clockwork reasonings of a thesis nor vents raging  inchoate emotions. It triumphs. In the marriage of the rational with the irrational.”

 

        The best way to find the rational in the irrational is to come up with a network of controlling values.

 

        In every story, there is a controlling idea- the idea that is the most prominent. Every controlling idea has two parts- purpose and context. The purpose is the reasoning for the controlling idea, and the context is the reasoning for the purpose. For every controlling idea, there is a counter controlling idea, which is the former’s complete opposite. The counter idea has its own purpose and context that help to have it make sense and be understandable.

       Here’s a visual example of a network of controlling values for The Matrix:

 

         So, this is one network my group came up with from the first thirty-five chapters of Cat’s Cradle:

 

          By questioning everything, you may discover your own truths; not questioning anything will lead to ignorance and believing lies. However, being ignorant can save you from discovering hard truths; looking for truth will lead you to uncover things that will be hard to deal with.

 

         To highlight this network, I wanted to focus on this one situation from the book, when Jonah asked Marvin Breed, the owner of Avram Breed and Sons, a tombstone establishment, who paid for a particular tombstone with an angel on it. (Page 72-73)

“There’s already a name on it- on the pedestal.”

“It was never called for?” I wanted to know.

“It was never paid for…. This German immigrant…his wife…died of smallpox here in Ilium. So he ordered this angel to be put up over her…..”

“But he never came back?” I asked.

“Nope.” Marvin Breed nudged some boughs aside…There was a last name written there. “There’s a screwy name for you,” he said. “If that immigrant had any descendants, I expect they Americanized the name. They’re probably Jones or Black or Thompson now.”

“There you’re wrong,” I murmured

           …….

“You know some people by that name?”

“Yes.”

The name was my last name,too.

 

Purpose- By questioning everything, you may discover your own truths.

      Jonah, in the pursuit of finding out who had ordered the tombstone, discovered that it was his own last name written on it. This may mean that his story was always meant to be intertwined with the Hoenikker family. The German Immigrant (who may be Jonah’s ancestor), bought the tombstone from Marvin Breed’s great-grandfather. Marvin Breed is the brother of Doctor Asa Breed,  who loved Emily Hoenikker, the deceased matriarch of the family Jonah is learning about. Maybe it was his destiny to go interview them?

     Anyways, the  Immigrant couldn’t pay, but said that he would be back to pay for it and pick it up when he could. He never came back, and wasn’t part of any conversations until Jonah arrived (maybe saying that he is the descendent meant to return to pick up the tombstone).

 

      Interestingly enough, Jonah Experienced his first vin-dit around this time, a Bokononist word meaning a “sudden, very personal shove in the direction of Bokononism, in the direction of believing that God Almighty” has some elaborate plans for him. Again, this hints that Jonah was always destined to go to the town of  Iliad to meet with the Hoenikker children. Jonah says early in the book that those three children were surely included in his Karass, which Bokononists believe is a team that does God’s Will without ever discovering what it is doing.

 

Context-  Not questioning anything leads to ignorance and believing lies.

      If Jonah had never questioned Marvin Breed about the Immigrant and the tombstone, he would have just assumed that it was a personal tombstone for the Breeds themselves (which is why they refuse to sell it). He would have been ignorant to the fact that he had a possible connection with the Hoenikker family. He would have never experienced his first vin-dit, which had lead him to the path of becoming a full-on Bokononist. If he wasn’t into the religion, his whole story which he is telling us, would have played out, and been interpreted completely differently. Maybe all the events that he tells us about won’t be shameless lies anymore. Maybe we could have learned the real truth.

 

Purpose- Being ignorant can save you from uncovering hard truths.

       If Jonah had chosen not to ask questions (which wouldn’t make sense since he is interviewing people for his book), he wouldn’t have learned that he was personally tied to the story of the Hoenikkers (meaning that he could keep himself at a comfortable space from them; he doesn’t have to worry much about them).

       If he had chosen not to ask questions, Jonah  would not have been thrust into Bokononism, radically altering how he views life, and getting rid of his Christian faith.

 

Context- In the pursuit of discovering truth you may uncover things that are hard to deal with.

       Whether he liked it or not, Jonah, through asking the questions, had to deal with the fact that he was connected to the Hoenikker family. He might not enjoy their presence, but he will still be drawn to them.

       And when the actual vin-dit happens, it wasn’t exactly pleasant for Jonah:

 

“There you’re wrong,” I murmured.

The room seemed to tip, and its walls and ceiling and floor were transformed momentarily into the mouth of many tunnels- tunnels leading in all directions through time. I had a Bokononist vision of the unity in every second of all time and all wandering mankind, all wandering womankind, all wandering children.

“There you’re wrong,” I said when the vision was gone.

 

        The experience shakes him, and he can barely speak after it. Learning this possible truth was a bombshell for Jonah.

 

          Here is a value graph- a way to show the battle between the controlling idea (+) and the counter controlling idea (-) in a specific scene  (page 23):

Every class, he explained, got to pick distinctive colors colors for itself in its junior year, and then it got to wear those colors with pride.

(+)   “What colors did you pick?” I asked. *Jonah is questioning this hoping to find out some valuable information about Franklin Hoenikker, the second of the three children*

      “Orange and black.” * This is a straight answer that won’t change the graph*

(+)   “Those are good colors.” * The original controlling idea is still ruling; this is Jonah seeing how the bartender will respond*

       “ I thought so.” *I don’t see this affecting the graph*

(+)   “ Was Franklin Hoenikker on the Class Council Committee, too?”

(-)    “He wasn’t on anything,” said Sandra scornfully. (-) “He never got on any committee, never played any game, never took any girl out. I don’t think he even talked to a girl. We used to call him Secret Agent X-9.” * Sandra believes this and is ignorant of Franklin true self. She only knows him through what was observed/rumored of him. The graph is doing a  major descent*

(+)   “X-9?” *small positive*

(-)    “You know-he was always acting like he was on his way between two secret places; couldn’t ever talk to anybody.” * Minor descent because Sandra is not giving much thought on the matter*

(+)   “ Maybe he really did have a very rich secret life,” I suggested. *Rising, because this curiosity will eventually lead to truth*

(-)    “Nah.” *Descending again*

(-)   “Nah,” sneered the bartender. “He was just one of those kids who made model airplanes and jerked off all the time.” *not even considering Jonah’s words. Sharp descent*

 

      At the end of this scene, the counter controlling value won out.

 

To close out this blog, I urge you to consider that another network of controlling values might work better for the rest of the story.  In my experience, there have been a few times where the initial network evolved into something different over the course of the narrative. Of course, keep this current network in the front of your mind as you read,  “plugging in” story beats to see if it still works. Story-wise, I think Jonah will continue to ask questions and experience vin-dits, finding out more about his connection to this whole narrative.

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide Blog 2

              In the first blog, it was mentioned that our group came up with a network of controlling values for the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

Purpose: If you adapt to the changing world around you, you will survive.

Context: If you are reluctant to adapt to the changing world, you will not survive.

Purpose: If you stick to your comfort zone, you stay true to yourself.

Context: If you step out of your comfort zone, you may go against your values.

 

               It is a way to look at the main ideas of the narrative as it progresses.

 

               But sometimes it is also good to look at other smaller ideas embedded within the text. This is a method called close reading.

 

Jane Gallop, in her text, “The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters”, says that, “Close Reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent- elements in the text which out to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.”

                I re-read closely the first fourteen chapters of the book, and just as Gallop said, noticed underlying elements.

                To explain these elements, there are five

               different forms to choose from:

 

1) syllogistic progressive form

2) qualitative progressive form

3) repetitive form

4) conventional form

5) minor or incidental forms

                   The two

                    that I want to focus on are Minor or Incidental Forms, and Repetitive form.

                   Minor or Incidental Forms deal with tropes and figures of speech and thought. The main genre of Hitchhiker’s is Science Fiction, and the main trope used throughout, is satire, which is defined by dictionary.com as,

            “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.” 

                 

 

              The specific type of satire in the book is what I like to call the Absurdity of Folly- the quality of being wildly unreasonable and lacking good sense.

 

 

       In the context of the book, a lot of it involves characters mindlessly applying rules. Here are two prominent examples:

•       When the demolition crew came to demolish Arthur’s house to make way for a bypass, he tells Mr.Prosser (the head of the crew) that he hasn’t been notified about it.

        Mr Prosser says, “But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.” (page 8)

       These plans have been  up for nine months, but they never took the time to inform Arthur when it was relevant. Now that it is time for the house to be demolished, Arthur can’t do much to stop it. It was unreasonable.

• When the Vogons come to destroy Earth to make way for an express route and announce it to the human race, everyone on the planet panics.

         The Vogons inform them that, “…All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint…” (page 35)

         Just like the last example, it was unreasonable for the Vogons to think that humans would be able to create far-reaching space  technology and be able to find the plans in the fifty years that they were up.

         

 

         If you noticed, these two examples have a lot in common, which is where the Repetitive Form, which is the “consistent maintaining of a principle under new guises”, comes in.

In these first fourteen chapters, quite a few things repeat:

• The Earth getting demolished to make way for an express route is just like Arthur’s house getting demolished by the deconstruction crew to make way for a bypass.  The “victims” find out last minute, and the “demolishers” claim to have posted a notice sometime before ( not bothering to actually inform the “victims” in person).
• What would the book be without some hitchhiking? When the Earth is destroyed, Ford and Arthur hitchhike onto the Vogon ship.  After they listen to Vogon poetry, they are jettisoned into space, and hitchhike onto the Heart of Gold ship. Each of these events happen right before the two men are about to die.
• The idea of coincidence could also be considered a recurring form. It is a coincidence that Arthur befriends Ford. It is a coincidence that Arthur and Ford are able to be picked up by the Vogon ship at the moment the Earth was destroyed. It was a coincidence that the the Heart of Gold picked up the duo just as they were about to die in the vacuum of space. All of this was highly improbable, and yet they all happened nonetheless (especially the guys being able to hitchhike onto the second ship while it had its very quick Improbability Drive working to travel long distances in a short amount of time.  

          Another example, which is stated to be coincidence is, “Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island ( the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence..) to the Heart of Gold Island, which by another meaningless coincidence was named France” (page 37).

 

       

             

              These are only a couple of examples from the book highlighting the two forms that I chose to talk about. There are many more examples sprinkled throughout the book, making it a fun experience to find them all. And while I only focused on two forms, the other three forms can also be found if by close-reading the text.

So Don’t Panic, and Keep On Close-Reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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URLs:
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