In David Fincher’s movie, we can see many of the ideas that Freud presents in his book, Civilizations and Its Discontents.  Some of the major ideas that Freud argued were the psychological ideas of the ego, superego, and the id. The id represents our animalistic instincts and the attainment of our desires and pleasures.  He introduces the superego as a completely contradictory part of our minds.  It represents the rules and regulations put for by society and more so as a sense of complete control.  The ego is basically the battleground between these two.  It attempts to obtain a sense of balance: obtaining as much pleasure as possible, while staying with the constraints of societal rules.  In this movie, which I’d rather not name because the first and second rules both state that I cannot talk about it, different characters are introduced that are portrayed in such extremes as to represent the id, ego, and superego.  For the purposes of this entry, we’ll refer to this David Fincher movie as: “the movie” and the characters in this movie as: Tyler and Jack.  In the movie, Tyler was technically not another character, but rather a manifestation of Jack’s id.  I guess you Tyler could say “I am Jack’s id.”  The character of Jack was represented as the superego.  He was a character that was seen as bound by all the rules of society and adhered closely to them as well as a character that sought control.  This distinction was made very clearly by one particular scene in the movie.  In this scene, Tyler is driving and he lets go of the wheel and just drives.  Jack, for obvious reasons, was greatly worried by this and immediately attempts to take control of the car.  I found this scene very symbolic in that Tyler was portraying a state of complete lack of control, while Jack cares much about obtaining control of the vehicle.  Although, this was rather difficult to conceptualize, I feel that Jack also represents the ego, because he was really both Tyler and Jack.  Instead of the traditional struggle between the superego and the id, he switched between two personalities, each portraying a single psychological state. 

I guess this is getting kind of difficult to explain with a movie that I can’t even talk about, so I think it would be better to look at another movie that also has these Freudian ideas.  Luckily Freud is everywhere.  Even in….

In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, we see some very similar Freudian ideas being presented.  In this movie, Batman attempts to maintain order and justice in Gotham City by defeating the Joker.  In my opinion, the character of the Joker, as portrayed in this movie, is the complete embodiment of the id.  The Joker is chaotic and aggressive.  Although he has plan, he acts very instinctively and cares nothing for the rules and constraints of society.  In fact, throughout the movie he attempts to get rid of all the rules.  He acts on his desire, which in this case was to put the world into chaos and get rid of all the rules.  This can especially be seen with his interactions with batman.  Batman doesn't kill.  The Joker knows this and often tries to get batman to break this rule.  His complete disregard for the regulations and restraints of society can be seen with his blatant breaking of rules.  He robs a bank which is the most typical crime.  Also, when he gets the money from the criminals of Gotham, he just burns it. He doesn't care about the importance that society puts on money.  Batman, on the other hand, can be seen as a character that strongly exhibits his superego.  He has a strong sense of rules and takes control of the justice in Gotham City.  He never breaks his rule of not killing, even though it would have been easier to do so.  Also he does not exhibit any signs of pleasure or desire.  Although he had feelings for Rachel, I would say that is part of Bruce Wayne’s character and not Batman’s.  In the clip below we see how the Joker is trying to get society to ignore their superego and express their id.  He make many Freudian critiques of society. 

Also, 

Jack and Tyler as Freudian foils of one another..and The Beatles

        Freud's Civilization and its Discourse and the film Fight Club initially seem to be two very distinct works, one a Hollywood cult movie, and the other a renowned psychological work. But when one takes the time to think deeply about the characters and plot of the film, some very obvious connections become apparent. The film intentionally allows the viewer insight into the personas of the two main characters, Tyler and Jack. Jack seems to live an incredibly depressing, mundane existence; he goes to work, battles insomnia, finds comfort in Ikea catalogs, and has this extremely bizarre coping mechanism of attending depressing sessions with sick people to help himself cope with his incredibly routine and uninteresting existence. Jack seems to be cut out of a mold, and not distinct from other humans. Jack is restricted by society and acts in accordance to what is expected of him. This is what makes Jack the superego as he balances his ID urges and morality from the ego. The ego is essentially the battlefield between urges and morality, and Jack becomes the ego at the end of the movie as he fights Tyler's influence and his own moral code. That is, until he meets his other half, Tyler, and it becomes like they are two halves of one whole.
         Tyler is the bad boy that our parents warned us about...times a million. He really lacks any moral foundation and has no real sense of whats good and whats bad. He has incredible amounts of meaningless sex with a woman who he met while she was overdosing and never interacts with outside of the bedroom. He steals fat to make soap, lives in an excuse for a house, creates this animalistic fight club, and burns down Jack's apartment (essentially his whole life) after meeting him on an airplane. Jack purely follows his instincts and inner desires, and is not restricted by societal norms (you do what you want to do and that's it). It's safe to say that Tyler and Jack are about as different as can be.

         This is where Freud's ideas come in: Jack is the super ego and later becomes the ego, and Tyler is the ID. Jack uses his friendship with Tyler to be the kind of person that he most certainly isn't and wouldn't try to be without Tyler. He fights, lives in a disgusting house, and acts in a way completely unlike his previous existence. Tyler essentially pushes Jack to do the things he otherwise would not have the inner strength to do. As people we show the world one side of ourselves, and often bury inside our inner desires. Tyler seems to be the most terrible influence on Jack, but yet his presence in Jack's life seems to liberate Jack and introduce him to a whole new world. Tyler lives this insane existence, but ends up teaching Jack more about himself than he ever could have learned if he continued living how he once lived.

"You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

        Freudian ideas are everywhere in popular culture. Psychologists still value Freuds work and we see it leak into books, movies, and art all of the time. I bet that if you think about it you can recall various Freudian references you had encountered but did not place as Freudian until you learned about Freud. I was fascinated by the ID/ego relationship both when I read this book and when I saw Fight Club so thats what I want to focus on in my comparison. It seemed too easy to go for famous foils in popular culture like Luke Skywalker/ Death Vader so I branched out a little more.

       For those of you who don't know Paul McCartney and John Lennon of the Beatles, here they are. They are a legendary songwriting partnership and an incredibly large part of rock history. But while musically they might have had great success, these two individuals could not be more different. John Lennon, like Tyler, is a rebel. Lennon was incredibly controversial throughout his career, he failed all of his classes and never really cared about education. In his art class, he sat on a nude models lap and almost got expelled and eventually did get thrown out of his school. Lennon was deeply involved in drugs throughout his career, musically did not follow any previous standards, and maintained this rebellious, bad boy image throughout his career.
       His fellow band mate and song writing partner was the complete opposite. McCartney adored learning, and first pursued the visual arts and later cinema. He did not do well in school, but chose to educate himself on a variety of topics because he enjoyed it. He was married for a long time, an activist for many good causes, meditated and musically did not wish to veer far from current trends unlike Lennon. McCartney was very serious about the music and the band when Lennon was not. I'm not going to lie, McCartney did smoke some Mary Jane and enjoyed his LSD a little too much but it was the 60's so i'm just going to breeze on by that fact...

       The point is this: McCartney represents Jack as the ego. Obviously Paul McCartney is awesome and not as boring as Jack was at the beginning of Fight Club, but Paul McCartney did follow societal norms and did not stick out like Tyler and Lennon do. Paul McCartney knew limits and followed them just like Jack did. Until he met Lennon. Lennon is like Tyler, disregarding what is expected of him and very impulsive. They are the Freudian concept of the ID. Lennon introduced McCartney into this world of fame, drugs, woman, and it changed who McCartney was, much like Tyler changed Jack. This is not to say that it was all Lennon's fault that McCartney was a drug addict for awhile, because we know that there were other factors at play, but he did play a large part. Tyler brought out the inner desires of Jack, and Lennon brought out a side of McCartney that was buried before he met him. This is Freud's work personified by two different sets of people, and countless other examples can easily be made.

The Love Song, Into the Ocean, and Roman Holiday.

I’ll start this post off by saying just how much I enjoyed “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It is a work of art in which I was able to find meaning in every line. Or if I wasn't then I just enjoyed every word. In any case there were more than enough phrases that captured my attention. One of these is 

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."

I think that these are probably some of my favorite lines in the entire poem because they are just so true! Throughout one’s life there is really so much time for so much to happen. For all of those “indecisions” and “visions and revisions.” But you also have to make sure that you realize that, though there is a lot of it, time will pass by. Which is why the overall vibe that I got from this poem was regret. I pictured a rich man with many benefits who was bored out of his mind with his higher position in society. Maybe he had an okay youth, spent on romance and adventures. But eventually he had to grow up and live up to his title. He had to invite guests over every night, attend extravagant dinners, and have coffee for breakfast day after day after day. He had no work. I mean, a life like that doesn’t sound all bad. But actually, if you think about it, it is.  Alfred felt that he had no purpose. He just watched time pass by and people enjoy life without him, while he stood by on the side and asked himself “Do I dare?” Such themes in this poem as regret, mortality, and an underlying note of “memento mori” (which means “remember that we all die” in Latin), made me think of a couple of things that I could connect to the poem.

The first one is called “Into the Ocean” by Blue October. You can listen to the whole song here: 

There are only a few lines that interest me though. First of all, when the singer says

                                              "Without a life vest I'd be stuck again
                                               Wish I was much more masculine
                                               Maybe then I could learn to swim
                                               Like 'fourteen miles away'"

This reminded me of how Alfred has basically lost touch of his masculinity and doesn't know if he can live up to his own expectations of himself as a man or pick up girls anymore. 

Then there’s this stanza: 

                                                "I want to swim away but don't know how
                                                Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
                                                Let the waves up take me down
                                                Let the hurricane set in motion... yeah
                                                Let the rain of what I feel right now...come down
                                                Let the rain come down."

In other words, the singer would like to escape his current life because he feels as though he’s drowning in it.

Maybe this is exactly how Alfred feels: the life he’s living is constraining him and he doesn't know how to escape. Then we see him imagine (or go to) the beach and the ocean, which of course brings me to the title of the song: “Into the Ocean.” 

The second comparison that I will make is between the poem and a wonderful movie called Roman Holiday. Roman Holiday was made in the 1950s and stars Audrey Hepburn. She plays the role of a princess who spends all her time traveling from place to place and carrying out the duties that she has. But she is young and would like, for once in her life, to do something that regular people get to do; to not just watch time pass by doing everything that bores her. Here is the trailer ^

Anyways, this princess, like Alfred, has basically no say in her life. She watches it go by (while sitting on a throne, nonetheless) and wonders if she would dare to try something new, like romance or some other exhilarating experience that she has never had before. 

Also, you need to watch this movie if you haven’t already. Like, now.

I will wrap this up with the following quote for Victor Hugo (the brilliant man who wrote Les Miserables): 

                                      

                                                              “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”

And it is, isn't it? I think Alfred’s main problem is that he realized this just a bit too late. So make sure to realize this now! Because you don’t want to be just a clock on the wall like Alfred too, do you?

Tuesdays with J. Alfred Prufrock

After several attempts of reading and trying to full comprehend The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock what I got was a sense of habitual carelessness of putting off important matters from Prufrock time and time again. He seems to be pushing things to last minute but in the end they will never get done. He uses the word of “time” in the on context there is still enough time to get whatever he needs to get done. For example in line 26 when he says “There will be time, there will be time” this phrase describes the overall tone of the rest of that stanza and the following because he’s implying there is always time to do something. However he doesn’t realize his body doesn’t stay the same with time limiting his abilities to get his obligations done with. To me it seems he never fully commits to the things he says he will do. He never directly asked his “over whelming question” that he talks about in stanza one and again in stanza 13 and compares the idea of asking a question to squeezing the universe into a ball which seems like an impossible task. He also says in line 37 “And indeed there will be time.” Prufrock is just giving himself an excuse that time doesn’t stop so he doesn’t need to be quick about getting his stuff done.

For those who have not read Tuesdays with Morrie. It’s about a man named Morrie who is a professor at Brandeis University who becomes ill with a neurodegenerative disease. One of his favorite pupils Mitch, also the author of the novel, discovers that his favorite professor is ill after seeing him on the television and decided to visit after sixteen years of not seeing him. Like Prufrock, Mitch would always put his work ahead of everything else and carelessly push everything else that mattered back, and not considering time of being of the essence. Mitch had a meaningless life that was revolving on issues that weren’t supposed to be that important, he went as far as to push back staring a family with his wife all because he was focused solely on his work. As Mitch visits Morrie every Tuesday till the day he dies he sees him withering away and slowly being more helpless with every passing Tuesday. He soon realizes that he still has time to priories his life and to put more important thing other than work first and to enjoy life and to accept death.

I see Morrie as how Prufrock sees himself in line 94 and 95 when he says “I am Lazarus, come back from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all.” Because as Morrie realizes that Mitch is pushing everyone and everything else back just so he can do his job and he wants him to realize he is wasting his time doing meaningless things. Morrie gives him life lessons to so he can too look back as his life when it’s his time to go and he knows that he has lived his life to the fullest. So when Prufruck says he is “Lazarus” I sense he is saying that he wish he can also come back and redo his life and not carelessly push back important matters. An not die an old man that regretted his actions or lack there off. Prufrock is missing his own Morrie so he too can be warned about life being cut short or missing out on important events all because there seems to be time to get it all done. It’s sad that Prufrock realizes his error of his ways a little too late because by this time he’s so close to death there isn’t much he can do to change. He can only reminisce and think back on how he could have changed his life. Luckily for Mitch, he has Morrie to help guide him on the right path to find true happiness instead of pushing happiness back and other day and another.  Prufrock repeats a phrase of “would it have been worthwhile.” I can see that he is starting to realize that maybe he should have taken a chance.

The love song of Mr. Yakov Peitrivich Gloydakin

After reading over T.S Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", the only feeling I got was one of immense insecurity. As if you have a man who is overly-educated, overly self -aware, overly detached, but under sexed. There is another character who reminded me of this from one of my favourite stories ever: Mr. Gloydakin from Foyodor Doetovsky's "The Double".

 no, not Richard Gere. Get that outta here!

 <- okay, that's better.

So yes, 'The Double" where our hero Mr. Yokav Gloydakin is just a big bag of insecurities wrought on by his over self awareness about his own faults and the falsity of high society. This leads to some very intriguing and humorous asides from our hero. For instance, there's a part in the story where Mr. Gloydakin is riding around town and not at work, when he sees one of his superiors. Upon seeing the superior he begins to think:

“Bow or not? Call back or not? Recognize him or not?" our hero wondered in indescribable anguish, "or pretend that I am not myself, but somebody else strikingly like me, and look as though nothing were the matter. Simply not I, not I—and that's all," said Mr. Golyadkin, taking off his hat to Andrey Filippovitch and keeping his eyes fixed upon him. "I'm . . . I'm all right," he whispered with an effort; "I'm . . . quite all right. It's not I, it's not I—and that is the fact of the matter.” 

The most interesting thing about the insecurity of Mr. Gloydakin is the paradox presented in his decision, he chooses not to be himself, but by acknowledging the superior he wouldn't of been himself anyway, it'd be the mask talking.

Yet this is all besides the point, what is of interest is Mr. Gloydakin's aside when standing beside the wood pile for a rich family whose daughter he is in love with - by the way he is crashing the party going on in the house.

The cabby left, muttering under his nose. "What's he muttering about?" Mr. Goliadkin thought through his tears. "I hired him for the evening, I'm sort of...within my rights nows...so there! I hired him for the evening, and that's the end of the matter. Even if he just stands there, it's all the same. It's as I will. I'm free to go, and free not to go. And that I'm now standing behind the woodpile--that, too, is quite all right...and don't you dare say anything; I say, the gentleman wants to stand behind the woodpile, so he stands behind the woodpile...and it's no taint to anybody's honor--so there! So there, lady mine, if you'd like to know. Thus and so, I say, but in our age, lady mine, nobody lives in a hut. So there! In our industrial age, lady mine, you can't get anywhere without good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example...You say one must serve as a chief clerk and live in a hut on the seashore. First of all, lady mine, there are no chief clerks on the seashore, and second, you and I can't possible get to be a chief clerk. For, to take an example, suppose I apply, I show up--thus and so, as a chief clerk, say, sort of...and protect me from my enemy...and they'll tell you, my lady, say, sort of...there are lots of chief clerks, and here you're not at some émigrée Falbala's, where you learned good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example. Good behavior, my lady, means sitting at home, respecting your father, and not thinking of any little suitors before it's time. Little suitors, my lady, will be found in due time! So there! Of course, one must indisputably have certain talents, to wit: playing the piano on occasion, speaking French, some history, geography, catechism, and arithmetic--so there!--but not more. Also cooking; cooking should unfailingly be part of every well-behaved girl's knowledge!” 

If you don't want to read that whole mess, in short its him assuring himself of his actions and then assuring himself of what a good woman is like. Insecurity to the max right there.

We see a lot of this in Elliot's poem, first of all in summary, the poem seems to be about a man ruminating over a decision to approach a woman and in his mind he sings out to her. Its important to note the extensive focus on time, especially in the 3rd stanza and his trying to justify his hesitation b y saying he's old, and lastly his lament that no longer is that woman's siren song for him, and so he drowns in his torment.

Yes, insecurity and love are wonderful things.  

On Monsters and Humans: The Metamorphosis

Have you ever wondered what type of bug Gregor is? After all, it wasn’t explicitly stated in the novel. Many speculate that he is a huge cockroach. Others suspect that he is in fact a large beetle. Professional entomologist Nabokov Vladimir, a man enamored with Kafka’s story, has even done a detailed analysis about the text and has concluded that Gregor is most likely a beetle (You can check out his lecture here). The important thing to realize is that somehow Gregor Samsa had transformed, as stated in the very first sentence of the entire novel: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect” (Kafka 1). We don’t know why and we don’t know how, but right away we discover that Gregor Samsa is a huge insect in appearance. Mentally, however, we see his human conscience remains as his first concern was that he was late for his work. His grotesque appearance too disturbing for them to handle, Gregor’s family isolate and hide him away. They assume that he cannot understand them and carry on treating him like a monster, even afraid to be in his presence for longer than a few minutes. Gregor has, in fact, somewhat become the Incredible Hulk.
 
 
What an absurd statement! But let me explain. 
For those of you who don’t know about the Hulk, I'll summarize based on the two Marvel movies he was featured in: The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers. The Hulk is actually Bruce Banner, a modest human physicist who was experimenting with gamma radiation. After an incident exposing him to the very same radiation, Banner now transforms  involuntarily into ”an enormous green rage monster”, as Tony Stark puts it. As this Hulk, Banner has no control over his temper and incredible strength. He basically likes to smash things, causing fear and panic everywhere he goes. For this he is often perceived as a threatening monster because of his looks and deranged behavior, and he moves to Calcutta to isolate himself.

"It's not easy being green."

That’s basically Gregor. It’s a struggle for both "monsters" to hold onto humanity as they deal with the change in their lives.  Like when Bruce Banner loses his human conscious when becoming the Hulk, Gregor also begins to lose sight of his humanity, becoming more and more like a bug the longer he remains one. He doesn't lose sight of it completely, however. Back to Nabokov Vladmir’s thoughts on The Metamorphosis and Gregor’s beginning transformation, he writes, “In the original German there is a wonderful flowing rhythm here in this dreamy sequence of sentences. He his half-awake—he realizes his plight without surprise, with a childish acceptance of it, and at the same time he still clings to human memories, human experience. The metamorphosis is not quite complete as yet.” It's true; the metamorphosis isn't complete because both men retain their humanity despite their appearances. Banner isn’t the Hulk forever; it is his subconscious that restrains the Hulk’s full power, and he is capable of changing back into a human. Although Gregor doesn’t have that same luxury of turning human again, he desperately clings onto his humanity, represented physically in the text by the picture of the woman with the furs. He is a human on the inside who is solely concerned about the fate of his family, and he remains a human until his bitter death.

"On hearing those words from his mother Gregor realized that the lack of all direct human speech for the past two months together with the monotony of family life must have confused his mind, otherwise he could not account for the fact that he had quite earnestly looked forward to having his room emptied of furnishing. Did he really want his warm room, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be turned into a naked den in which he would certainly be able to crawl unhampered in all directions but at the price of shedding simultaneously all recollection of his human background?" –Kafka, The Metamorphosis. Here we see Gregor come to terms with the fact that he still wants to be and is still human.
 
Back to the first question: Why don’t we find out what type of bug Gregor is? It is because it’s not important to know what type of bug he is on the outside but rather what type of human he is on the inside. Gregor Samsa is the Hulk, a raging, terrifying monster who seems focused on destruction, but inside there is a human Bruce Banner that controls the "monster" that he supposedly is. It is not the outward appearance that proves a person is human but rather the human qualities that they still express, which is what Gregor’s family fails to notice. For Banner, he was feared and hated for being a monster, and so he thought of an end.

 
 "In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know! I tried!... I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth... and the other guy spit it out!"  
Banner would choose to die as a human instead of unleashing the monster to the world, which is what Gregor chose to do. As Gregor clung desperately to the picture on the wall, he realized just how much he wanted to be human, and when he discovers in end that there was no point in his existence any longer, he laid on the floor and died a human instead of accepting the fate of a monster, his final act of concern for his family.
It is sad to think that Gregor's family never realized his sacrifice for them and still think of him as a monster, but it is even sadder that Gregor never realized the larger role he played in his family's lives in being human, which is the opposite from the Hulk, who was able to escape the monster status and be revered as a hero. As Nabokov Vladimir had said, “Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.”

 

Drawings by Chris G. Check out his work!

Wallpapers and Windows

I've loved Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” ever since I read it in middle school and reading it for COM 3 made me pretty happy. Strangely, though, it was so hard for me to come up with another work I can relate it to. Pop culture seemed to be the easiest way to go, but the light bulb above my head just wouldn't turn on. The next morning, I woke up remembering a movie I watched two years ago, Secret Window, the movie adaptation to Stephen King's novel of the same name. It was perfect. And it stars Jack Sparrow Johnny Depp. 

Besides, who isn't crazy for doesn't like or know Mr. Depp? 

Not only did I discover how wonderfully the movie relates to "The Yellow Wallpaper," I've also discovered that this

<-- motivational picture is for real. All of the ideas came pouring out... Unfortunately, I have a word limit.

Joking aside now. (Sort of...)

I'm just going to go with what I remember about the movie, so I apologize for some inaccuracy. I have a fine memory (with the help of limited videos online and wiki). Although, I would like to see the movie again to get a feel of my post, but Netflix has all of Depp's movies except this one and, as a college student, watching a movie = 2 hours of lost, precious time = body becomes lazy/tired = realizing that there's more work to do = freaking out over lost time and the work not started. Well... for me, at least. 

So, here it goes. 

Secret Window is about an author, Mort Rainey, who becomes traumatized after he discovers his wife, who is insane for cheating on Johnny, has been having an affair with another man. To avoid facing the reality that she wants to divorce him, he isolates himself in his cabin far away from the city.

John Shooter intrudes in Mort's only refuge and accuses him of plagiarism. In denial, Mort tells Shooter that he has a few screws loose and shoves him away. However, Mort lets curiosity get the best of him. After reading Shooter's work, Mort realizes how impossibly similar it is to his own writing. The next day, Shooter approaches Mort and offers him a deal. If Mort can prove, within three days, that his work existed before Shooter's, then they will move on with their lives. 

This deal should have been easy and Mort would've returned to living forever alone in his cabin. But, it wasn't and that's okay because we get to have more fun and adventure when our hero's life becomes downward spiral into despair, right? 

So, Mort gets a call from his estranged wife telling him that their house burned to the ground destroying the copy of his book, his proof. (Let's skip some murder scenes). Time is running out. The following day, Mort's agent mails a copy of a magazine with his story. Mort realizes the pages of his story have been torn off the magazine. He first assumes Shooter did it. But, wait... Shooter doesn't have access to this magazine. The package was sealed until Mort opened it. There's no way Shooter could be the culprit. Unless... 

GASP! 

Mort is Shooter. 

 

This is what Mort's "inner voices" were trying to tell him. 

There are now two Johnny Depps Morts!

Mort accepts that Shooter was just a figment of his own imagination. He then beats his wife to death, decapitates her lover, and buries them underneath his corn field.

 Exactly... 

In the end, Mort gets away with it. For now... 

Anyways, this suspenseful movie relates to Gilman's work through the contrasting themes of isolation and freedom. 

Isolation: In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator and her husband, John, retreat to their summer vacation home. John believes that isolation will cure her depression, but it doesn't. Actually, it makes things crappier than they already are. Similarly, in Secret Window, Mort attempts to heal his broken heart, but, eventually, it turns into a vengeful one. The isolation gave the narrator and Mort more time to realize all that is wrong in their lives.

Freedom: The narrator treats her isolation as a prison. The yellow wallpaper becomes her only friend. Eventually, she begins to see patterns on the wallpaper that take a shape of a woman, who the narrator identifies with. Therefore, in the end, the wallpaper woman is the freed version of the narrator like how Shooter is a freed version of Mort. 

The narrator and Mort had to lose themselves, to free themselves. Freaky, right?

The similarities are crazy. I can only say that John was lucky to have only passed out unlike what Mort did to his wife's lover.

The Metamorphosis vs Beauty and the Beast

After reading The Metamorphosis, I honestly had no idea what I was going to do my blog post on. After thinking about it in the shower (where I get most of my thinking done…) about other possible works that involved a character being viewed differently at different points throughout the plot, I realized that I found some interesting similarities between Gregor Samsa and the Beast from Disney’s animated film “Beauty and the Beast”. Gregor and the Beast were both once important to the people around them, but unfortunate transformations have led them to be regarded with disgust.

To refresh your memory if you haven’t watched “Beauty and the Beast” in a while (or at all), the Beast wasn’t always a beast. He’s actually a prince who cruelly refused to give shelter to an enchantress when she was disguised as an ugly beggar simply because of her unattractive appearance. This revealed how shallow and evil his heart was, so the enchantress cursed him by transforming him into a hideous beast. The Beast hid in his castle because of his appearance, and the only way for the curse to be broken was if the Beast loved someone and received their love in return. I personally don’t understand how the prince’s kingdom neglected to realize that their prince had gone into hiding for a few years, but I digress.

The Beast successfully hides in his castle for a few years, but near the end of the film his appearance gets revealed to the town by Belle. Oh yes, Belle is the girl that he falls in love with and she also falls in love with him but the details aren’t important to this blog post. Anyways, when the people of the town see his terrifying face, everyone becomes blinded by their fear and then they all freak out and go to the Beast’s castle to kill him. The important part of this event is that the townsfolk assume that the Beast is dangerous simply because he has a scary appearance. Hmm…sound familiar?

Now let’s focus on The Metamorphosis for a little bit and compare it to “Beauty and the Beast”. Gregor Samsa is an important person in his family and the immense panic that he feels when he realizes that he’s late for work suggests that the money he makes from his job as a salesman goes towards supporting his family. This suspicion is confirmed on page two of the story when Gregor mentions his parents’ debt, which he is working to pay off. The family’s income was coming from Gregor, but once he became unable to work, they had to find another family member to provide the income. Gregor’s importance to his family parallel’s the prince’s importance to his kingdom—they can both be considered to be successful figures, although they are successful in different ways. 

Unfortunately, both the prince and Gregor plummet from their success when they undergo transformations that turn them into unattractive “creatures.” Once these transformations occur, they are no longer viewed as important people. Instead, they are shunned because of their appearance and the people around them start treating them very differently. Gregor’s father, who once cared about him, develops feelings of disdain towards Gregor and even hurls a bunch of apples at Gregor in order to intentionally harm him. Gregor’s sister, Grete, was very close to him when he was still in his human form. However, she becomes completely repulsed at his new appearance and is terrified whenever she sees him. Even though Gregor’s family knows that he’s still the same person on the inside, they’re so frightened by his bug-like appearance that they are unable to look past his exterior. Gregor’s situation is similar to that of the Beast—the townsfolk in “Beauty and the Beast” are unable to look past his exterior appearance. If they knew that the Beast was actually the prince, would they still be scared out of their minds? Probably, because the Beast is terrifying compared to the other cute Disney characters that appear in the film. Both Gregor and the Beast have changed so drastically that the people around them—and in Gregor’s case, the people who are closest to him—are refusing to be associated with them.