Cat’s Cradle Blog 2: Form and Genre

Cat’s Cradle proves to be an extremely complex work of fiction that manages to shed light on real, relevant social issues in a way that is entertaining, and even humorous to the reader, despite the issues that are brought to light being potentially uncomfortable to think about. While it can be argued that Cat’s Cradle falls into several different genres, due to both its unique style and execution, the aforementioned characteristic primarily points towards the genre and conventions of satire. Satire exists for this very reason, to use humor and entertainment to either insight some sort of change, or at least bring the audience to further think about and investigate societal issues that might otherwise go unattended to. One of the primary sets of controlling values that we identified in blog 1, the idea of either seeking the truth at the risk of one’s own happiness and/or comfort, and living in the comfort of a lie while accepting that it is in fact a lie, speaks as to why this genre needs to exist in the first place. Many people may be tempted to ignore issues for the sake of complacency and comfort, but satire serves as a way to effectively trick this target demographic to see through to the other side, and perhaps allow them to see the truth without sacrificing their comfort or happiness.

Aside from this element of satire, Cat’s Cradle relies heavily on the conventions of science fiction, such as a futuristic setting relative to the time period the book was produced, and the invention of new technologies, lexicon, and organizations. Science fiction is a genre that combines extremely well with the elements of satire for the very reason that science fiction exists in the first place, exploring “what if” scenarios and satisfying the innate human element of curiosity/innovation.

The conventions of both satire and science fiction is one form used in Cat’s Cradle, but another form found in the book is the qualitative progressive form. As Burke discusses in his Lexicon Rhetorica, qualitative progressive form is “the presence of one quality prepares us for the introduction of another” (125). One example would be foreshadowing, but the form calls for more than one insistance. In Cat’s Cradle, Jonah sets up a qualitative progressive form when he introduces us to the idea of his Karass (the network of people your life becomes tangled with in order to complete the tasks God meant for you). Jonah tells the reader that his karass “includes the three children of Dr. Felix Hoenikker” (6). By doing so, Jonah is establishing a mood of anticipation. The reader knows that Jonah will be tangled up with the Hoenikker children (Newt, Angela, and Frank) and they are constantly waiting for the moment where the convergence of these characters finally happen. Jonah repeatedly has close, but not full, encounters with the Hoenikker children, like Newt writing Jonah a letter or people in Ilium talking about them, which build the anticipation. Then finally when they meet on a plane ride by chance, Jonah goes to talk to them, and the reader feels a sense of completion or satisfaction. That mood would not be possible if the reader had not been placed in a state of anticipation before. Newt even happens to be drinking champagne, making the meeting feel like a celebration.

But then, Jonah says “The little son of a bitch had a crystal of ice-nine in a thermos in his luggage” (111). Oh yeah, nothing is actually resolved because  world ending ice-nine substance Jonah also warned us about is still out in the world, which Jonah on the plane doesn’t know about, and the karass hasn’t actually done anything they are suppose to. So in a sentence the reader gone from that fleeting sense of resolution back to anticipation. The qualitative progressive form created by the repeated idea of the karass takes the reader through the spectrum of anticipation and resolution. But there is another spectrum created of being given answers and then asking questions. For example, Jonah  gives us an answer in the previous quote, “The little son of a bitch had a crystal of ice-nine in a thermos in his luggage.” Repeatedly Jonah tells the reader that the Hoenikker children have ice-nine. The answer to the mystery of where is Dr. Hoenikker deadliest weapon is already given to us, but because the answer leads the reader to ask more questions. What are the Hoenikkers going to do with it? How will Jonah discover they have it? Will someone release it upon the world? The qualitative progressive form is taking the reader along the spectrum that the genre of satire wants the reader to take–to question. Satire wants to make us think, often about issues that we do not wish to. By giving the reader some of the answers, the qualitative progressive form in Cat’s Cradle is preparing the reader to ask the questions they might not have wanted to ask.

While the narrator is searching for his own truth, so is the reader. In this way, the narrator is almost meant to be a stand-in for the average reader, or target demographic for which the form is directed at. Not only does this make the narrator immediately relatable in an emotional sense for the reader, but it also means that the reader is inherently thrown into the struggle between the opposing controlling values along with the narrator. Considering the discussed intention of satire, to introduce potentially unsuspecting readers to potentially uncomfortable ideas or situations in the hopes of inciting some sort of cultural change or recognition of an issue, this means that the form serves to accomplish the goal of the genre and specific novel very well.

By Jordan

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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Don’t Put That Fish in My Ear

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Blog 4

An agreement is struck every time I pick up a book. I am saying that I will try to read the text as it was meant to be read, and if I fail in this agreement I won’t enjoy the text as much as I could. This is me accepting my readerly role. I made this agreement when I picked up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (THGTTG), I said I would try to be this narrator’s addressee.

Following what I just said, there are two roles present in every book, right? The narrator and the addressee. But, during our discussions in class we looked deeper and said there are actually three roles present in every text, the narrator, the addressee, and the reader reading the narrator address the addressee.

 

“I like the cover,” he said. “‘Don’t Panic.’ It’s the first helpful or intelligent thing anybody’s said to me all day” (47).

To peel apart each of these roles in THGTTG, we first have to look back to our previous discussion on the book’s dominant Network of Controlling Values. As unique human beings we bring to the text our own dominant network of controlling values that may run counter to the ones my group and I found in THGTTG, as James Seitz argues “Readers who are unable, for whatever reasons, to assume the values of the implied author will find the text less satisfactory than they would otherwise” (142). (In this example the implied author is our narrator). In other words, readers who can not step into the role of the addressee and experience the text with this assumed set of controlling values, the reader will not have an enjoyable experience with the text. To enjoy a text, such as THGTTG, a reader must submit to the dominant controlling values and try to read the text for what it is, not what we want it to be. In Blog 1 we decided as a group that the values were as follows:

 

Controlling Values

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

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

Opposing Controlling Values

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.

Moving forward using these values we must ask ourselves some key questions. What kind of narrator would believe these values, what kind of addressee would believe these values, and what kind of reader would I have to become to believe these values?

In Blog 3 Jordan Coughlin wrote, “maybe there is some greater force at play that wants/needs Arthur and his comrades to update the THGTTG and accomplish all that they do along the way.” Meaning, could the narrator be some higher, more advanced being, telling the ridiculous story of Arthur Dent and company to “a roving researcher for that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (12) in hopes that the guide be updated to better serve its hitchhikers trying “to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day” (12)? Or could the narrator be an old, humorous hitchhiker that succumbed to the many pitfalls of an outdated guide and the addressee a captive guide researcher?

The reader would then need to fill the role of the addressee, who would most likely be eating up the ridiculous, improbable story of Arthur, with every aside being a possible new entry in the guide.

But what sort of values would this reading imply the reader adopt? Would it be the values my group and I found, or a different set? As Seitz pointed out, “rather, we ‘try on’ readings, envision the text through the eyes of various masks, all the while attempting to forecast what it proposes, ‘what it all adds up to’” (152). In other words, with this mask of old hitchhiker and guide researcher, the reader would want to know what it all means by reading with this frame, and would it end with a fulfilling culmination of events or the number 42? To this addressee, it wouldn’t matter. All they would want would be more information for the guide, the more outrageous and colorful the better.

I think that the narrator is actually something more, advanced. It plays its role of third-person omniscient with a kind of finesse that imbues it with a sense of character and personality. It also addresses certain events as if it has a large readership. At one point it says “Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now” (121). Many people have speculated it said, implying that somehow many people have knowledge of this event in the same way the reader has knowledge of it. Also, curiously enough, who thinks it’s curious? Here the narrator acts as its own character with opinions on the events of the story.

I suspect that the narrator is a newer, inuitiver, version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Also, I like to believe that, like the Earth, it was designed by the one that came before it. I can almost feel the words, “A [guide] whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate – and yet I will design it for you,” (163) in a voice similar to our narrator on the last page of the old guide. Why else would the narrator feel it important to fill the story with so many asides that feel like guide updates?

On pages 19 and 20 in our updated guide there is a comparative entry discussing alcohol which ends with, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the Encyclopedia Galactia” (20). Note the italics in the quote. The whole section is in italics while talking about the two books, except for the book’s titles. To me this is the new Guide talking about how it’s better than the other book. This self-awareness is like Marvin’s prototype mind. To me, it’s almost like Marvin is a system that comes before this new kind of Guide.

To further this idea, I think this new type of Guide is improbable, like the Improbability Drive. Why would the guide have such a detailed story of a homeless Earthling? Well, it’s a huge improbability, that is also somehow helpful. Arthur’s story surrounds:

[T]he Answer!”

“The Answer?” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to what?”

“Life!” urged Fook.

“The Universe!” said Lunkwill.

“Everything!” they said in chorus, (152).

And also:

“The Ultimate Question?” (162).

The Ultimate Answer turning out to be less helpful than the Ultimate Question would have been but, I think that the stories ultimate usefulness may not yet be apparent to the reader. But it will be, when most improbable.

So, if the narrator is the new guide, who could be the addressee. Is the addressee a hitchhiker, new to jaunting through the galaxy, or, could they be an experienced vet reacquainting themselves with the Guide? Whoever they are specifically, I believe them to be someone who wants more knowledge about the vast universe, someone who stuck out their thumb while lying in the mud, and this new Guide appeared to them, towel included, ready to show them the galaxy.

So what does this mean for us, the fabled reader of the narrator addressing the addressee? The improbability of the whole story is what seems to win out in the end, and Arthur is left, homeless and adrift, but never alone. I think that we are like Arthur, swept up on this wacky, nonsensical journey. We can give ourselves over to the zany events because it is so far removed from daily life. No government official would lie in the mud in the place of someone else just because he’s already committed to waiting around all day, no one would seriously take poetry as a form of punishment (it would be a discomfort at most), and no one would really believe that mice are the most intelligent interdimensional beings on the planet. We can either take a fish in the ear and hear what’s being said, or be deaf. The story drags the reader along because it is so out there, hitchhiking among the stars.

 

Not yet!

 

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Blog 3

As stated on the website, we are introduced to different cultural and textual codes within the text. The primary code, and perhaps the most prominant which we will focus on for this blog entry, is known as the symbolic code. This code: “Generates unresolvable oppositions (what are called “antitheses”) that structure a given conflict, and ultimately reinforce dominant cultural codes (controlling values), for instance, between male and female subjects, between those who “know” and those who are ignorant, between those who suffer and those who inflict suffering, the rich and the poor, the clever and the stupid, the simple and the complex, the rule followers and the renegades, the responsible ones and the neer-do-wells, the cops and the robbers, etc.”

Throughout THGTTG the reader is introduced to the eternal conflict between multiple sets of controlling values, one of which is the conflict of things happening by chance, leaving all those in the universe at the mercy of pure coincidence, and the idea that there is some predetermined path for all to follow, with some sort of greater scheme laid out for the future of the universe at large.

The idea that the earth is being destroyed to make way for a bypass, along with the fact that Arthur’s house was being bulldozed for similar reasons

The fact that, in the infinite, vast nature of space, Arthur always seems to be in the right place at the right time in order to be rescued, against all odds. An example of this is when Arthur is ejected from the Vogon ship only to be rescued, and the fact that they were even able to escape the Earth’s destruction at all by hitchhiking onto the ship. The insane coincidence is discussed by Trillian and Zaphod after they pick Arthur and Ford up in space:

“Anyway,” said Trillian, turning her back to the controls, “I didn’t pick them up.”

“What do you mean? Who picked them up then?”

“The ship did.”

“Huh?”

“The ship did. All by itself.”

“Huh?”

“While we were in Improbability Drive.”

“But that’s incredible.”

“No Zaphod. Just very very improbable.” (Douglas 90).

The conversation between Trillian and Zaphod demonstrates the conflict between what seems like coincidence and what seems like a planned event. On one hand, Trillian is saying it is “very very improbable” and even turns away from the controls to as if to say she had no control in the situation. It was pure coincidence. The example could also be viewed from the point of that all things in the universe are predetermined to some extent, rather than being chaotic. Zaphod is confused that there was no one acting, repeating “Huh?” because it is mind boggling to him that no one was in control. His first reaction is “Who picked them up then” because there is always a “who.” As a reader, we are also going “Huh?” We are taught that in stories, everything happens for a reason or that the protagonist is following his fate or that someone off screen is helping him. Even though Trillian says it’s improbable, the phrase “The ship did. All by itself” implies that the ship had the control, even though as an inanimate object it doesn’t. Humans strive to believe that something is in control and that there is an order to things. And maybe there is some greater force at play that wants/needs Arthur and his comrades to update the HHGTTG and accomplish all that they do along the way. But maybe it is also just an improbable coincidence that Arthur and Ford got rescued again.No matter what, the values of order and chaos are struggling against each other, as demonstrated by this symbolic code.

Aside from the aforementioned controlling values, THHGTTG also introduces a conflict between the ways in which people react to what is happening in the universe, along with their general tendencies to embrace either the chaotic nature that they perceive, or follow the orderly, planned values established by their cultures.

The earliest example of this is established in the meeting between Ford and Mr. Prosser. Mr. Prosser firmly represents those who adhere strictly to the molds and regulations set by their society, believing the universe to be a fairly orderly place with laws that must be followed, even if they don’t make all that much sense, and even if they might be inconvenient or unpleasant for some. Ford, on the other hand, represents those who embrace and support the more chaotic nature of the universe at large, moving with the flow as they perceive it, and adapting to whatever situation presents itself without a second thought, or even the slightest hint of a need to cling to a sense of order, or a strict set of rules.

Early on in the book, for the most part, the chaotic nature of the universe appears to be the controlling value which prevails, as is seen with the destruction of the planet earth and Mr. Prosser, who would never think of leaving the earth and the comfort of his orderly rules, and the continued success of Arthur and his comrades through sheer luck and happenstance.

An excellent example of this conflict between the opposing controlling values represented by Prosser and Arthur can be found on page 13 of THHGTTG, where it states that Mr. Prosser finally “realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight was lifted off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it.” This quote clearly demonstrates how Mr. Prosser clings to his sense of order and complacency within firmly established roles in society to such a degree that, even in instances where he comes out as the loser, he is still satisfied simply because it is in line with his values and self-worth.

Overall, the appearance and usage of the symbolic code within THHGTTG serves to strengthen the narrative by adding an interesting dynamic to the setting, and the scenario at large; a scenario that, at first glance, may seem like a relatively simple take at British humor with a setting in outer space. On the contrary, the dynamic offered by the opposition of the controling values within the narrative force the reader to question their own significance in a universe that is not only vast beyond human comprehension, but can also sometimes seem to be unfeeling, and uncaring when it comes to the daily life of a single individual.

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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

All GIFs are from giphy.com

URLs:
https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh-W8QDVA9s

https://images.8tracks.com/cover/i/009/130/317/hitchhiking-3215.jpg?rect=0,0,500,500&q=98&fm=jpg&fit=max&w=320&h=320

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1268&bih=515&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=freeway&oq=freeway&gs_l=psy-ab.3…291394.292854.0.293171.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0….0…1.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0….0.OqfjJkyRUiw#imgdii=a2N7UksflGzOQM:&imgrc=NlzvYJl2PxN-WM:

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/hitchhikers/images/e/e1/Guide.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/160?cb=20080505045130

 

 

https://pbmo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/peace-sign1.png?w=300&h=344

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grab your copy of The Hitchhiker’s guide and your towel. We have some galaxy hitchhiking to do.

What if Earth was voted so insignificant by other planets that is was decidedly to be destroyed to make way for a bypass?

via GIPHY

Arthur Dent’s morning is just like any other or so he thinks. His life takes a strange turn when he learns that his house will be demolished for a new bypass, his best friend is an alien, oh.. And did I mention? All he ever loved including his planet Earth will be destroyed. Within hours he finds himself stowed away on a Vogon’s spaceship. To make matters worse the Vogons are, according to the hitchhikers guide, the most unpleasant race in the Galaxy. With any hopes of survival he will need to stick close to his alien friend Ford Prefect and The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy to survive this changing world.

Our Journey through space has just begun and I cannot wait to see where it take us. Let the adventure begin!

Oh, and Don’t forget your towel!

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That’s it’s job (P.52).”

Before reading this book, I was having major anxiety that I would not be able to understand this particular genre. I have never actually read a science fiction book so I was not sure what to expect. I decided it was best if I pushed past my reluctance and dove in blindly by just accepting the text as it was. A few times throughout the text, however, I found myself projecting what I thought the text was trying to say. Being aware of this bad habit of guessing what the author is trying to achieve, helps me to stop and refocus on letting the story be told as it is. In the end, I hope to be able to understand the conventions of the science fiction genre.

I treated the first section of the book as a basis of reading for discovering the underlying network of controlling values. This is a skill that I am still developing, so this approach is really pushing me further out of my comfort zone. (Kind of like Arthur being thrusted out of the comfort of his planet and into the unknown galaxy.)

My group members and I had the opportunity to discuss possible controlling and counter ideas that are evident in this book. Here is the chart we created:

After class, I was able to play around a bit with this information and expand on it a bit. I am curious to see if this network of controlling values will still ring true in the end.

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.

We were able to come up with this network of controlling ideas but referring to McKee’s definition of Controlling idea.

According to Mckee, “ A CONTROLLING IDEA may be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end (McKee 115.)”

We see this “change in existence” in the text as Arthur is forced to leave behind all he has ever known when his planet is destroyed. He is now faced with the decision to either adapt to his new environment or to stay true to his ways. We see an example of this n the text:

“You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy’s a fun place. You’ll need to have this fish in your ear.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Arthur, rather politely he thought (P.55)”

We see that Arthur is struggling between deciding whether he should adapt or resist.

I predict that by the end of the book we will see a progression in Arthur’s personality. I believe he will go from someone who is used to going through life not questioning much to stepping out of his comfort zone.

Value Graph: (Chapter 5 p. 45-56)

+ Arthur learns that they are on a Vogon’s  Spaceship

– Arthur asks when he can go home and learns that Earth has been destroyed.

+Arthur joins Ford on the mattress to see the Hitchhiker’s guide.

-Arthur panics and begins to freak out

+Ford tells Arthur to look at the book and stop panicking.

-Ford asks him to join him and have fun in the Galaxy. Arthur is reluctant.

-Ford tells him to put a  fish in his ear in order to understand the Vogon’s speech but Arthur is still reluctant.

+Ford shoves the fish in Arthur’s ear. At first Arthur tried to take it out but then he stopped resisting and started listening to the Vogons.

GIFs from Giphy.com

Slade House Blog 4: Who is telling the story?

As we finish David Mitchell’s Slade House, we turned our attention to an important question–who is telling us this story?  The Rhetoric of Narrative states that there must be a narrator (someone telling the story), an addressee (someone being told the story), and a relationship between the two (a reason for the narrator to address the addressee). By looking at the text through the context of the whole novel, we will be attempting to identify these elements. If you wish to read up on our other thoughts on Slade House, give our previous post a read.

Who’s narrating the story!?

Each chapter has presented us with a different narrator (Nathan, Gordon, Sally, Freya, and Norah) but are there really five different narrators? But the narrator must be telling an addressee these events from a hypothetical time and place, but most of the narrators are gone in every sense of the word. Nathan, Gordon, and Sally all had their souls devoured after being tricked into entering Slade House by the immortal twins, Norah and Jonah Grayer. After his soul is eaten, Nathan cuts off mid-sentence saying “The Nathan in the mirror is gone, and if he’s gone, I’m–” (36). Their fates transcend their story. When they end, so do the words on the page as there is no one left to narrate. Freya escaped, but she was not present when the previous victims spent their last day in Slade House. The only narrator who was there and makes it out of the story with her soul intact is Norah Grayer. Could Norah be the narrator? What is she, psychic? Well, yes. When Jonah, disguised as Fred Pink, tells all to Freya in part of his cat and mouse game in an imagined The Fox and Hounds Pub (or Orison as the twins call it), he explains that the twins possess the power of “telepathy” (151) and that “They could rummage through their clients’ minds and discover things no one knew, not even the people whose minds they were in” (163). She could read the mind of everyone who entered Slade House, like Nathan, Gordon, Sally, and Freya. And could, hypothetically, pass those thoughts along to us, the readers.

But she isn’t talking to us specifically. She’s talking to whoever she wants the reader to be. In Blog 1, we discussed how readers project their values and ideas onto a text when they read. Narrators can do the same thing. If Norah is telling the story, she will project whatever controlling value she wishes to win onto text. So naturally, when she is telling the story, Norah is projecting that her addressee will be persuaded to see things how she has presented them (also known as submitting to the text). She wants her addressee to believe the Orison she has created by constructing this story.

So who is Norah’s perfect addressee? If we believe that Norah is transmitting this story through telepathy, then whoever she is transmitting to must be capable of receiving the message in the first place. Who else is psychic in the book? It turns out, almost everyone. Jonah, as Fred Pink, reveals another key detail to Freya during their talk. The twins can only consume an “Engifted” to feed their lacuna, who is “a psychic, or a potential psychic” (177).  It would then make sense for Norah’s addressee to be an engifted as well.

The addressee after Norah describes the door

But engifted addressees come with a risk. All of their victims were capable of everything the twins do, which explains why their victims were able to begin to see through their Orison sometimes. For example, Nathan sees a woman mouthing words, possibly saying “‘No, no, no’ or ‘Go, go, go’” (21). Sally even finds the exit, breaking the illusion of a Halloween party the twins made when she sees “a small black iron door, exactly like the one is Slade Alley, only this one’s already ajar” (119). Their engifted-ness allows them to look closely and notice the strange, but their failure to reach farther and question what they see leads to their demise. As addressees, we are capable of the same. We notice when something seems off about Jonah asking Nathan about fears Jonah couldn’t have known of, or when Gordon sees Nathan’s portrait, or when Sally sees the iron door in the living room. But then we keep on reading the narrative and go back to just seeing the Orison as what it appears to us as, a story. The narrative is sucking us in like the twins suck victims into their illusions. Us (the addressee) failing to close read parallels the victims failing to examine Slade House closely, only to realize they are trapped. Norah’s chapter reveals how she toys with her addressee like she toys with her engifted victims. When she is luring Marinus into Slade House, while possessing Bombadil’s body, she says “‘It’s small, it’s black, it’s iron'” to Marinus, but thinks “I enjoy spelling out the obvious” (201). How many times has she told us about the small black iron door while she narrated? For each victim she describes the door to us, the addressee. She spells out the trap before us but we enter the door (the narrative) anyway! At this point, she is just showing off her tricks! Norah’s ideal addressee is an engifted, who can receive her telepathic Orison, maybe even notice the odd things within, but ultimately fall for her tricks.

Replace “Time Machine” with “Slade House”

But what is the reason she is telling the engifted addressee her story? Our group could not come to a consensus on this one.  The novel’s repetitive nature, retelling the same story of an engifted lured into an orison with a false story, and each victim being captured and consumed, lends itself to being a cautionary tale. Even the twins themselves ignore what’s right in front of them and are defeated by Marinus in the end. They too were engifted, albeit ones that strayed down a darker path. In this light the narrator is warning others to not make these same mistakes. They want the addressee to see the pattern before they are lead up the stairs. The story then becomes a cautionary tale told to engifted children in their beds. Or maybe its not to any engifted child, but to Norah herself in her new life after she enters the body of a fetus to escape death. She is in the baby’s body, telling herself about all the events that have past. She is recounting it all in present tense because it is coming back to her, and she is processing it all. She was growing old in her previous body and forgetting things. And now she is in a newborn’s body. By remembering all of these events and her goal of revenge at such a “young” age, she is effectively making  her mission her life’s goal. Whoever she is talking to specifically, the message is the same–assume nothing, and question everything because your life could depend on it.

Slade House Blog 3: Hunters and the Hunted

For our third blog on Slade House by David Mitchel we took a look at intertextual codes, like the semic, proairetic, symbolic, and cultural codes. Through looking for these codes in the text, we are working to discover any connotative meanings and see if what we find challenges the controlling values.

As described on our course’s website, the semic code “Defines characters, objects, and places through repetitively grouping a number of signifiers (“semes”: words and phrases) around a proper name.” That is to say that characters, objects, and places are often described by certain words or associated with certain images throughout the text. These words and images carry a connotative meanings or connections to other texts and cultural ideas that help define them for the reader.

For example, the twins call all of their victims “engifted.” This carries several implications from the idea of being academically gifted to perhaps being supernaturally gifted. Another signfier that surrounds these engifted characters are foxes. Every victim begins there journey outside or in a pub called The Fox and Hounds. A fox hairpin is also passed from victim to victim throughout the chapters. At one point Nathan, the first victim, plays a game with Jonah called fox and hounds. In the game, two people start a race on opposite sides of the house and run until someone catches the other. As Jonah explains, “The catcher is the hound and one who’s caught is the fox” (20). While their game gets interrupted, Nathan fails to escape Slade House and gets his soul devoured. He most certainly ends up being the captured fox and the twins are the hounds hunting him. The game also sets up a symbolic code, which consists of opposites in the text, of chaser and the chase, or killer and victim, or the powerful and the powerless. The twins have all the power in their Orison. They literally control everything their victim perceives, while their victims have no control.

Being the fox defines Nathan and the other engifted as prey, but foxes carry a cultural connotation of cleverness and danger. Later, foxes reappear in a much different context. While the fourth victim, Freya, is having her soul devour, the ghost of her sister appears with the fox hair pin and “plunges a six-inch needle into one side of [jonah’s] windpipe” (193). That is the more cunning fox we are used to seeing. So it seems the semic code of foxes defines the engifted as both prey and predator.

The ending of Freya’s chapter, with her escape from the twins, also demonstrates the Proairetic code. The proairetic code “determines the causal (cause and effect), narrative sequence and syntagmatic progression…. which allows the reader to predict subsequent events that follow from their causes.” We can see the proairetic code in the chapters leading up to Freya’s story by the repetition in each victim’s journey. Each victim is lured through the Black iron door, lured into Slade House itself, tricked into eating or drinking the Banjax, and tricked into entering the Lacuna under their own free will. After the engifted is lured through the door, they find themselves paralyzed and kneeling in front of a candle, facing both Grayer Twins and their own reflection in the mirror. Their soul is then pulled out by some type of “jellyfish like” blob with tendrils and devoured by the twins.  So when chapter 4 comes around, the reader is predicting in their mind what will happen. They already assume Freya will follow the steps laid out by those before. And knowing that dreadful outcome builds the tension of the story.  Yet, in chapter 4 when Freya’s soul is about to be consumed, Sally’s after image appears and attacks Jonah. As a result, the Grayer twins are not able to feed on the soul, and the Orison is closed for another 9 years. This deviation before the final chapter alters the proairetic code, but still has some semblance of it. Despite the reversal, it keeps building suspense because now the reader cannot guess where the story will go next.

All of these codes point to a cultural code developing throughout the text. The cultural code “speak the familiar ‘truths’ of the existing cultural order, repeat what has ‘always been already read, seen, done, experienced'” (Silverman 242). The hunter becoming the hunted is a familiar story we all have experienced. The contradicting nature of stories where the side with no hope, no power, but refuses to die, win against those with all the power. However, Freya’s escape is not the end of the story. So we will have to see whether the powerful twins who forsake their humanity win out, or their victims who cling to their humanity conquer their killers from beyond the grave.

Slade House Blog 2: References, References, and more References.

As we continue our second reading of Slade House by David Mitchell, we decided to try to spot our own dead cats, as mentioned in Blog 1. The protagonist of the first chapter, Nathan, often spots the out of the ordinary, like a dead cat in an alleyway. So as readers, we challenged ourselves to go back and pick out sections of the text we found odd. By reading these sections closely, maybe we discovered perspectives he had not seen before.

During her second time reading Slade House, Brittany noticed images that were repeated numerous time. Each chapter someone is lured into Slade House. For example, Nathan’s mother goes because she hopes it would help her music career and Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds is lured by Norah disguised as an attractive woman in need of help. Brittany also noticed that each time, the victims passed through “a small black iron door, set into the brick wall” (9) that leads into a beautiful garden. Also while in Slade House, every victim eats a special substance, which the Grayer twins call banjax. And finally, each victim, with the exception of the last, gets their soul devoured. When examining the basic structure of each chapter and the motifs within, Brittany realized that you could draw multiple parallels to the biblical Garden of Eden story. Both stories feature humans tempted with something they desire by a sinister trickster(s) figure (It wouldn’t be far stretch to call the Grayer Twins snakes) while in a grand garden. They partake in a food offered by the trickster(s), whether it be an apple of a cup of coffee, and lose their immortal soul. Adam and Eve lost their place in Heaven and the victims of Slade House have their souls devoured by the Grayer twins. Alex also picked up on a biblical reference. Jonah Grayer shares his name with the prophet who was eaten by a whale. While Jonah is the one doing the eating, instead of being eaten, Alex found out through some research that due to the biblical story, sailors traditionally use the name “Jonah” to personify someone who brings bad luck. The Jonah from Slade House brings bad luck to Nathan and the other victims. After closely reading the characters interactions with the garden and the Grayer twins, Brittany revised her controlling ideas of Slade House. Viewed through this lens, the book is about giving into temptations and the effect it has on your soul, or sense of self. As discussed in Blog 1, Nathan does die because he distrusts himself.

Speaking of Nathan, Alex decided to dig into the seemingly hapless narrator of the first chapter. One reference that really stuck with him was about Asterix, a popular French comic. Nathan mentions, “For me, Valium’s like Asterix’s magic potion, but it makes Mum dopey” (8). In the Asterix stories, Asterix’s village hasn’t been conquered by Julius Caesar thanks to a secret magic potion created by the village’s wise old druid (known as Getafix in English), which gives whoever drinks it temporary superhuman strength, agility, and senses (almost like a super powerful adrenaline shot). Nathan mentions the comic series  because it was very popular in Europe in the ’70s and  ’80s, and  Valium is his magic potion, giving him a sense of high in which he can accomplish his best. The first time Alex, and the rest of us, read the chapter we doubted Nathan’s experiences because he was on Valium. Like Nathan, we assumed that he was hallucinating rather than actually experiencing the garden dissolving or Jonah turning into a Mastiff. But if we look at it with the perspective that Nathan is like Asterix, than Nathan’s perception of events (or at least perception of the Grayer’s Orison) was more accurate than a normal person’s. That would explain why Nathan saw so many more warning signs than the second victim Gordon Edmonds. Prephaps if we had trusted in our narrator more the first time, we would have seen the Grayer twin’s plan earlier.

In an attempt to close read, Nicole decided to also look at what Nathan notices. Nathan notices that “Seven Magpies fly by. Seven’s good” (3). The Magpie is a clever bird that constructs the best nests and is one of the only mammals that can recognize themselves in a mirror (Wikipedia.com). Norah and Jonah can be likened to the magpie in their detailed construction of their illusions for their victims as well as the use of the mirrors, which the victims see themselves in. As the English Fairy tale about magpies explains, the magpie tries to teach the other birds how to build nests but none stay till the end, and at which point the magpie is fed up and refuses to teach anymore (surlalunefairytales.com). To Nicole this shows a sense of pride in the creation of the nest, and the illusion, which may lead to too much pride. Which is a downfall for Norah and Jonah later on. Furthermore, Nathan sees the seven magpies and decides that it is a good sign, which ultimately isn’t so for him. In most cultures the number seven is a lucky, pleasing mathematical iteration. There are seven days of the week, seven continents, seven seas, seven wonders of the world, and don’t forget the winning lucky sevens in every casino. But it isn’t so in all cultures. In Chinese culture the number signifies not just bad luck, but death (psychiclibrary.com). Which in Nathan’s case ends up making the most sense.

Something everyone noticed was the repeated mentions of The Fox and Hounds tavern that every victim sees when they try to find Slade House. Brittany researched the name and found a game by the name where the objective is for the fox piece to cross to the other side of a chest board without being stopped by the hound pieces, which parallels the Slade House victims trying to escape the Grayer Twins. Nicole noticed that Nathan says, “She’s wearing her dark blue concert outfit and her hair up with the silver fox-head hairpin”(4) which she had originally forgotten that the hairpin came from his mother. The fox hairpin is one of the things that lead to the ultimate demise of the Grayer twins. It is a symbol of cunning, cleverness, and adaptability (whats-your-sign.com). With this aiding in the the downfall of the Norah and Jonah, the symbol is well used. The mention of, “[A] pub called The Fox and Hounds” (3) implies that the fox is cornered (like in the game) and will not survive. But the use of the fox hairpin proves that the foxes strategy and cleverness wins out over brutality.

All of these insights produced by close reading gave us some new perspectives to consider. When we stopped and noticed the odd, we could begin to peal back the layers of the text. Controlling ideas and even plot points of the novel can shift and transform based on what perspective you choose to view the story from. New information, like biblical parallels, name meanings, comic titles, folklore, and games shifted how we looked at the text. Perhaps going forward, we will continue to see these connections and see how they alter our perception of of the text.

Slade House Blog 1: A Boy, A House, and a Dead Cat

Our reading group’s first book is the novel Slade House by David Mitchell. The first chapter of Slade House is focused on a young boy named Nathan and his mother heading to meet a Lady Grayer at her house, Slade House, which is off of Slade Alley. After a bit of trouble finding the location, they finally arrive through the black iron door into Slade House’s garden where they are introduced to Lady Grayer and her son Jonah. Lady Grayer, who goes by Norah, takes Nathan’s mother inside to meet with a well-known musician. Nathan stays in the house’s garden to play with Jonah.

All the members of our reading group had read Slade House over the summer and when re-reading this first chapter we were reading while keeping our potential projections of text in mind.  While discussing this text, we all realized that we in some way had projected our own ideas onto the text. One possible source was preconceived notions of what genre Slade House belongs to. Hearing a book is “horror” or “suspense” raises expectations of what that book will be like and we look for those characteristics when we read. Another source of projections came from our own previous readings. It was difficult to read mimetically and to submit to the text when we knew what was coming.

We were also trying to discern the controlling idea and counter idea, terms for opposing themes defined by Robert McKee in “Structure and Meaning.” Certain things stuck out to as the narrator, Nathan, tells the story. Nathan’s mind tends to wander, which is reflected in his stream of consciousness narration. His mother is scolding him, but he focuses on her lipstick color or the story of how she got her hairpin. Nathan’s mother instructs him to improve his skills in “Blend In more” (5) and “Acting Normal” (6). Nathan is in a constant struggle between how he wishes to act and how those around him expect him to act, as exemplified by his fascination with a dead cat in Slade Alley. When Nathan points out the dead cat and tries to express how much it upset him, he is shut down by his mother. She wants him to think as she does and forget about it, and he does for a moment. In this small exchange, the ways of others (the way of ignoring dead cats) prevails and Nathan submits to that way of thinking.

Events escalate the longer Nathan stays in Slade House.  While playing with Jonah, Nathan is suddenly consumed with a vision of the garden fading into nothing and a mastiff (his biggest fear) chasing him into Slade House.  He tries to tell Norah, but she assumes he means they were pretending. Things get stranger as he looks for his mother and discovers a peculiar painting of himself. He is confused is quick to blame his mother for this terrible “joke.” Everything that happens are big red flags that you think would make anyone get the heck out of that house, but Nathan doesn’t. A perfect example is while he is playing with Jonah, Nathan sees a woman with a beehive hairdo mouthing words. He thinks she might be saying “‘No, no, no’ or ‘Go, go, go’” (21). Nathan tries to focus on the woman and figure it out, but he snaps back to playing the game when Jonah calls out “‘Ready, Nathan?’” (21). Again, Nathan wants to focus on the peculiar, but instead of a dead cat, it’s a woman with a beehive hairdo. He then submits to another person calling his attention back to the socially acceptable behavior, but instead of his mother telling him to ignore the dead cat, it’s Jonah calling his attention to the game. Nathan repeatedly fails to stick with his gut instincts and instead tries to think and behave like he is expected to.

The result is that he becomes trapped in Slade House’s attic by Norah and Jonah, who promptly eat his soul. When you forsake your own autonomy by letting others dictate how you should act and think, you will be consumed. Nathan’s tragic end is proof of that controlling value winning out in the end. Nathan was literally consumed, but when we submit to them and their ideas aren’t we also consumed by the masses? Is there anything left of us if we allow others to decide our thoughts? While for Nathan, there was nothing left, the first chapter does leave us with some hope. For every moment when the “they” won in Nathan’s mind, there was also a moment where the counter idea, Nathan’s trust in himself, put up a fight. He stopped to watch the woman with the beehive hair and he tried to tell Norah of the mastiff and when he found a portrait of the beehive woman along with his own, he heard her call out “Run now, as fast as you can,  the way you came in” (26). While submission won, resistance existed. Now whether someone will ever trust in themselves enough to conquer Slade House or not will become evident as we progress through the novel, but for the rest of us, we can only stop and notice a dead cat when we see one, despite what everyone else says.