Final Project

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Langston Hughes’s poem, “Suicide’s Note” is incredibly short. I feel that since it is so short, this video has done a pretty good job of increasing effectiveness and mood of the poem. Putting the poem to the song “Tears for Fears” set a somber mood before the three lines and twelve words of the poem are slowly put on the screen. The music choice was excellent for this poem, as it guides the reader toward the sad feeling the poem’s title suggests. While the song does do a great job of setting an appropriate mood for this poem, its lyrics make it difficult to pay attention to the poem itself, and the message is somewhat lost. Also, the effectiveness of the song in this machinima version of this poem was lessened by the use of scenery and characters from the Xbox video game, Halo.
In Family Guy, Season 3, Episode 5, Stewie quotes from Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” Stewie and Brian are having a snowball fight when Stewie ducks behind a tree and comes back with a very large, mechanized snowball cannon. Before firing the cannon at Brian, Stewie says, “Now is the winter of [your] discontent.” This quote happens at the beginning of the episode just as this soliloquy opens Shakespeare’s play. In this situation, this quote was just hilarious. Shakespeare’s Richard was not so much protesting his discontent, as celebrating his family’s recent good fortune. More recently, “winter of discontent” was used to describe the British winter of 1978 – ’79 when strikes were widespread.

Suicide Note

Langston Hughes’s poem, “Suicide’s Note” is incredibly short. I feel that since it is so short, this video has done a pretty good job of increasing effectiveness and mood of the poem. Putting the poem to the song “Tears for Fears” set a somber mood before the three lines and twelve words of the poem are slowly put on the screen. The music choice was excellent for this poem, as it guides the reader toward the sad feeling the poem’s title suggests. While the song does do a great job of setting an appropriate mood for this poem, its lyrics make it difficult to pay attention to the poem itself, and the message is somewhat lost. Also, the effectiveness of the song in this machinima version of this poem was lessened by the use of scenery and characters from the Xbox video game, Halo.
In Family Guy, Season 3, Episode 5, Stewie quotes from Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” Stewie and Brian are having a snowball fight when Stewie ducks behind a tree and comes back with a very large, mechanized snowball cannon. Before firing the cannon at Brian, Stewie says, “Now is the winter of [your] discontent.” This quote happens at the beginning of the episode just as this soliloquy opens Shakespeare’s play. In this situation, this quote was just hilarious. Shakespeare’s Richard was not so much protesting his discontent, as celebrating his family’s recent good fortune. More recently, “winter of discontent” was used to describe the British winter of 1978 – ’79 when strikes were widespread.

Light of Thy Countenance

Alan Moore’s graphic novel, “Light of Thy Countenance” is a literary piece of work. The most important thing that makes a piece of work literary is its distinguishableness from other works, mainly its originality and its creative and/or artistic intent. Works that are considered literary are not written just to entertain, but also to deliver a message, or provide insight into some aspect of light. Stories like Harry Potter are not considered literary because they are written for entertainment purposes, and are to be read at face value, having little or no deeper meaning to read in to. This graphic novel is literary because it is original and it provides messages on many levels that apply to many. “Light of Thy Countenance” provides insight into the dangers of pop-culture and television. This novel was clearly not written for merely entertainment purposes, but to warn people about the direction that television is taking their society. Alan Moore’s novel is also filled with subtle suggestions. The beginning of the novel opens with a white dot that zooms into a pub in England, showing that this novel is applicable to the whole world and to individuals at the same time. This image of a white dot is recurring throughout the novel and is the white dot in the center of an old CRT TV as it turns on. At the end of the novel it zooms out to show the white dot, and this time it shows the white dot as an egg being fertilized by sperm. This shows that our ideals, our obsession with television, is being passed on to future generations throughout the entire world. I have seen it myself; in third world countries I’ve seen whole families, six to ten people, in their house, which is a single room with a hotplate, gathered around a TV. This shows how much people today value TV, these families, that share the same room to sleep in together as they also have to cook dinner in, spend what little money they have on a TV. TV helps us escape from reality, but Alan Moore is showing that we overuse it, like a drug. Also, Alan Moore’s diction throughout the novel is very scholarly. He uses large words with very specific meanings to deliver his message.

RUR vs Frankenstein

Like in Frankenstein, RUR has a theme of technology gone too far. In Frankenstein, Victor was worried about creating an Eve for his creature because he was worried they’d reproduce and eliminate humans as the dominant species on the planet. Victor’s creation was stronger, faster, smarter, and more dexterous than humans. In RUR, robots were created to make working easier. Robots were supposed to be the ultimate worker because they remembered everything, thought nothing new, and had very few needs compared to humans. In RUR, Domin’s Helena wants the robots soul’s to develop more, leading to robots who think new thoughts for themselves. Soon, a robot issues a decree to destroy all mankind and reproduce (make more robots). This is exactly what Victor was afraid of happening in Frankenstein, he didn’t want his creations reproducing together and making more of the superior beings to oppress humans.
In the end of RUR, the two robots left are blessed as Adam and Eve, the first man and woman of their kind. In Frankenstein, the monster was Adam, the first man of his kind, and the monster wanted a mate to keep him company, an Eve to his Adam.
In RUR Damon offers himself up for dissection by the robots so that they may learn what the spark of life is. In Frankenstein, Victor works towards finding the spark of life by robbing graves and assembling together a plethora of body parts from different corpses and somehow bringing the creature to life. This is kind of opposite: in RUR we have the creations dissecting the creators to gain knowledge of the spark of life, while in Frankenstein, the creator is using parts that once had the spark of life, sewing them together, and reanimating them.
Basically there is a strong connection between the two stories and the theme of technology going too far and taking over humans.

Frankenstein Evidence

Mary Shelley uses storms to foreshadow unfortunate events, which is a Gothic element. There is the storm before he creates the monster, and the storm right before the creature kills Elizabeth, and several other storms that show something bad is about to happen.

Mary Shelley has a theme of science going too far. We have to watch out for the applications of our creations. Victor Frankenstein destroys the woman monster (Eve) he’s creating to keep the creature company because he’s worried that the new female creature could be worse than the first creature. I think that part of this is to show that while we can invent and create amazing things, we cannot always foresee their application, which may be terrible, like the atomic bomb. Science is uncontrollable and too free to do whatever it wants because you can’t have laws against something that hasn’t yet been invented or created. There was no notion at the time of creating life from scratch, so nobody could tell Victor that this would be a bad idea with bad results.

Like in “Paradise Lost,” Victor abandons his creations instead of giving it the much needed attention and guidance required.

Another Gothic element is that Victor didn’t tell anyone about his creation until his wedding night with Elizabeth. I believe that Victor didn’t tell Elizabeth about his creature, and went ahead with his wedding even though the creature had told Victor that he’d come for him on his wedding night, because Victor wanted to kill the monster. Victor wanted to destroy his creation, and the only way he knew how to find him was to create the wedding, and use Elizabeth for bait so the creature would come. This use of Elizabeth as human bait is very dark.

At one point, the creature tells Victor that I’m your master. This fits in with a theme of evolution. The creature is what Victor created, and it is superior to him in many ways just like successors in evolution. The creature is faster, stronger, has more stamina, heightened senses, and has an uncanny ability to learn at a very rapid pace. Victor is worried that should he make a female creature, the two would mate and take over earth as the dominant species. Man giving way to the next step in evolution.

Owl Creek

At first the reader is coaxed into feeling sympathy for this man. We get the feeling that he is a decent person; a civilian, gentleman, and a grower. We also get the idea that he’s a decent man because his last thoughts are of his wife and kids. The captive hears a “death beat” from his watch and we feel the inevitability of his death, but the author toys with us, moving his thoughts to that of escape the from noose, and we are filled with hope for our hero, just as the Sergeant steps aside and lets him fall, his weight supported only by a noose around his neck.

The story changes to part II, where we are told the main characters name and business. We find out that he is a slaveowner and a strong supporter of the South during the Civil War, and we suddenly have less sympathy for him. In part two, the story reads, “Mrs. Farquhar was only toe, happy to serve him with her own white hands,” I’m not sure if “toe” should be “too.”

Then the reader gets curious as to what Peyton Farquhar has done to get himself into this predicament as he asks curious questions of the visiting soldier. As Peyton falls into the water find himself with superhuman senses, even hearing a fish swim by. His superhuman senses found nothing that wasn’t beautiful, as he had just escaped from certain death. We gain sympathy again for him as his thoughts return to his wife and children. He makes it home, and we are excited, only to find out that this had been false hope the writer had instilled in us. Peyton had never escaped, these were merely his last thoughts right before he was strangled by the noose.