Inspired by “Letter,” by the wonderful Byron Otis

          A sigh escapes my lips the second my foot steps through the doorway. I let my
backpack slump to the floor and stumble toward the large wood burning fireplace across from
my bed to stoke the flames. The air is icy. I must have left the heater off this morning. Closing
my eyes, exhausted by the very act of seeing the world, I turn towards my bed for a nap. I
blink. He is in my room, lounging across my velvet throw pillows like an arabian princess. He
attempts to gaze at me with a sort of suggestive serial killer type expression, but instead
scrunches his face up in into a weird grimace that reeks of constipation. Casanova is trapped
in the body of a pudgy 16 year old. After a minute to shake off my shock, I notice the jacketpuffed over his broad shoulders. “Give it back” I say unflinchingly. I am cocky, contempt
coating my words like maple syrup coating a spoon. I can take him. Afterall, he is wearing
MY quarterback letter jacket. His lip curls, revealing a yellow braced tooth and he whispers,
“You don’t understand it. You wear it without reverence, as if this meager, meaningless felt
letter wasn’t the brand of a god, as if these leather arms are not the greatest trophy an
average IQ­ed, unremarkable in every way young man can receive, ­ his voice had risen to
the volume of a dramatic speech by now­ as if this jacket wasn’t your ticket to every vip show
in the country, your key to every treasure trove in the world, as if it isn’t society’s way to point
out the winners from the losers, and pound every sorry loser to a pulp, stripping from them
every dignity until they are waste of space. When I speak it is an unforgivable disturbance of
the air. When you speak, wearing this jacket that is, it is art.” As he speaks I begin to get
nervous, my heart thumping at a more desperate pace, and I hear the fire behind me gasping
to a roaring height. The realization of the possible danger before me creeps like the trickle of
sweat runs from my armpit to the shelf of my hip. Words stumble from my throat, “Nils, this is
too far. I’m calling the police.” My words get stronger. I hope to scare him off. “I have been
dealing with your twisted obsessions since 8th grade. You are a miserable loser, and I am
tired dealing with your desperate, stalker attempts to be an actual person. Go to hell.” My
finger surely go to the pocket of my jeans and close around my mobile saviour device. Nills
smiles slowly, lips spreading across teeth like honey spilling across the surface of milk. He
reaches down to a jug of lighter fluid, that I had not noticed until this moment. He dips his
hand into the liquid and the brings his palm to hover over his head with a dramatic flourish.
Than with fevered restraint he sluggishly rake his fingers through his hair. The lighter fluid
shapes his hair like a 60s greaser, forming a wave of strands into a smooth swoop with one
perfect oily tendril hanging down to tease his forehead. He stands, grinning at me all thewhile, and saunters towards me. I start, but he walks past. I hear him stop behind me. I turn
to look, dread inundating my every cell. He looks back at me. He stoops and climbs into a
now roaring fire.

Jung's Dillema

"There is only one story" - Thomas Foster

       When reading Thomas Foster's bizarre but apt eel metaphor for literature, I was reminded so strongly of that certain idealistic counterpart to Freud as to block out all other thoughts.  That counterpart is of course Charles Jung, the mastermind of the collective unconscious.  The idea of the collective unconscious is so allusive that I think it can only be justly described in Jung's own words.  "In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature, and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche there exists a second psychic system of a collective, Universal and impersonal nature, which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but it is inherited. it consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents," he so eloquently wrote.
    One of the more highly developed aspects of the collective unconscious is with the concept of archetypes.  These can manifest in archetypal events such as birth, death, initiation, archetypal figures, mother, father, maiden, or archetypal motifs, flood, creation, apocalypse.  Seeing as that all literature is a creation of the human mind, it would follow that the archetypes of literature are the archetypes found within humanity.  This idea of one set of events, one set of characters, one story, on mind, is comforting, and it certainly makes humanity's massive collective of literature less daunting, for archetypes are  helpful in making generalizations about literature.  However, the theory of archetypes can never be concretely applied because the archetypes are so vague and they manifest in an infinite amount of ways.  In other words the eels in Foster's barrel are too slippery to count, thus they can never be studied in a rigorous fashion.  There are far too man archetypes for them to be general, yet none are specific enough to be scrutinized.  Furthermore, archetypes often remove myths and stories from the cultural context and history of there original creation.  They allow the myth or stories' interpreter, often a westerner, to simplify possibly ancient texts and concepts in a likely prejudiced way.  So perhaps jingoism archetypes are best used to understand why both Bart Simpson, from "The Simpsons" and puck from a "Midsummer Night's Dream" are trickster rather than as a fundamental tool to understand the grand, underlying trope of humanity as Jung envisioned.  For if we do bravely plunge into the realm of the collective unconscious, we may find a murky swamp of contradictions, conceptual inconsistencies, and culturally inflammatory simplifications.

Alice in Ithaca (Searching for Cyclopses)

As a young child, for only one offense was I repeatedly chastised for; that crime was "running away."  I place "running away" in quotation marks because from my perspective, I was never running away from something; I running towards something.  I happened to not know what that something was, and my lack of explanation was detrimental to parental diplomacy, but essentially I was questing.  These quests were repeatedly prompted by two things.  I either had encountered some mental or creative conundrum that required sorting or I had just finished reading Odyssey or Alice in Wonderland.  (I admit I actually had the Odyssey on audio tape)  I read or listened to these books impulsively, and after each 8-hour literary marathon, I felt the need to go somewhere.  I was witnessing two cocky but lovable characters grow up or "gain self-knowledge," in the words of Thomas Foster, and I wanted to do the same.  I encountered obstacles, strangers wondering where my parents were, kindly faces that I mistrusted, snakes hidden in tall grasses, and the burning heat of the ruthless Texas sun.  Usually I found my holy grail as well, a hidden park, shiny rock, or abandoned doll thrown out onto the sidewalk.  Thus, I was perfectly convinced no matter how unpleasant my punishment was or encounters were that my quest had been successful.

As a child, I could not have verbalized those obvious tropes, but that does not make them unimportant.  The Odyssey is perhaps the more traditional example of the quest, maybe the most.   The cocky young man unwillingly embarks on a search for gold, and then slowly every friend, comfort, and dignity is stripped away, due in part to his original arrogance.  With everything gone, when Odysseus, the knight returns to Ithaca, the ultimate symbol of home and comfort, he is far wiser and ready to lead his city (as symbolized by the bow only he can string).  Odysseus could not have gained such self-knowledge at home.  All comfort had to be taken away, ultimately, he had to be alone, surrounded by the unknown to know himself.  That is one reason quests are so often used in stories.  Even though they are practically cumbersome to write about, because the familiar and relatable aspects of home are removed, they are an essential trope in literature, because they facilitate the greatest amount of character growth.

If I loved the Odyssey, I loved Alice In Wonderland better.  To a young girl, Alice is perfectly relatable, even if the wacky world in which she is thrust is not.  Even her peculiar troubles with being the wrong size are reminiscent of puberty and childhood.  Alice's holy grail is simple, and quickly irrelevant as the best holy grails are.  The knowledge she gains is essential; she learns that the world is governed by ones own expectations and nothing is as it seems, and some riddles have no answer.  These are lessons that every young girl must eventually learn.  However, Alice taught me that often such lessons can only be confronted on a quest.

Feast or Famine: Food in Literatue

A shared meal is a ritual and a complex combination of the deeply personal consumption of food and the social experience, the details of which define the people eating it, especially in an economic sense.  Scarcity of food is made iconic in the orphanage in the novel "Oliver Twist." Not only is the scant meal in the orphanage a lovely exposition, introducing the theme of Oliver's hardship to the readers, it also unites the orphans in reverence for what they lack, a hearty meal. Yet, despite food's obvious importance to all humans, a meal is a rather predictable and boring thing to describe.  Food is prepared, the table is set, eating commences.  Detailing the ritual further can be incredibly tedious.  So why is so predictable a setting as a meal so often significant in literature or stories in general?

Thomas C. Foster, in "How to Read Literature Like a Professor," stipulates that "whenever people eat or drink together, it's communion."  By "communion,"  Foster does not necessarily mean an act of holiness, merely and act of general togetherness.  Usually people only eat with those they like.  A shared meal is a symbol of mutual closeness and trust or can make apparent a lack thereof.  In either case a shared meal is a marvelous literary tool to bring characters together or highlight their separateness, and more simply a convenient excuse for characters to be in the same room.  A famous scene in Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" features the Cratchit family's modest feast, a symbol of love and kinship despite economic hardship. The cultural significance of eating together is exemplified in the fantasy country of Westeros, loosely based on western Europe in the series "A song of Ice and Fire" when many of the characters describe their horror when one family kills another family at a wedding uniting the two, breaking an important social code of honor.  Similarly, in  Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," the social implications and often unspoken codes of sharing food are examined when a boy is shamed by Scout for pouring syrup all over his food, an implication of poverty, and in turn Scout is shamed by Calpurnia for being rude to her guest.  However, the implications and purpose of sharing a meal seems obvious. While Thomas Foster focuses on the significance of shared meals, any food reference in literature can act as a symbol and further character development.

Food in a story can signify countless things.  A character may taste his or her childhood in a bowl of soup; food can invoke wholesome feelings of love and family.  Food is a great signifier of culutral heritage and origins.  In the book the "The Color Purple" a myriad of scenes feature poor southern food, such as black eyed peas, placing the characters squarely in a specific socio-economic class that is both a source of strife and pride.   In turn, food is often looked upon as sinful, the consumption of which is extremely private.  Fasting is a symbol of virtue, gluttony a sin.  The maiden never devours her dinner, but nibbles on tea cakes or any other dainty fare.  Food symbolically is intertwined with sex, whether it be shared or not. This is true in any great food centered story.  In the film "The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover," food is a shamelessly ubiquitous symbol.  Sumptuous and exotic fare is devoured, in particular rich meats.  This consumption of flesh is intensely sexual and disturbing culminating in the taboo act of cannibalism.  In a similar, if more sedate manner, C. S. Lewis exhibits the sinful nature of food in "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe," when a young boy, Edmund is seduced into betrayal of his brothers and sisters by the allure of Turkish Delight, which he greedily devours.  In short, even though eating can be a banal activity, in literature it is a powerful signifier of not only the relationships of the characters, but their backgrounds, desires, and personalities.