Please read parts one and two of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN for this week. Below are a few questions we'll be exploring this week. Feel free to draw from them, or to develop your own questions. You should also feel free to respond to another student's post.
Your blogs will be due on Wednesday at 11:59 pm.
Your comments on other student blogs will be due by FRIDAY at 11:59.
For this week and next, students will NOT have to post in the discussion forums. Because we are nearing the end of the semester, I think it would be best to focus on our blogs and your upcoming final projects.
1) The title of this novel is based on a song by Morrissey entitled “Let the Right One Slip In.”
The lyrics are as follows:
Let the right one in
Let the old dreams die
Let the wrong ones go
They cannot
They cannot
They cannot do what you want them to do
Oh ...
Let the right one in
Let the old dreams die
Let the wrong ones go
They do not
They do not
They do not see what you want them to
Oh ...
Let the right one in
Let the old things fade
Put the tricks and schemes (for good) away
Ah ... I will advise
Ah ... Until my mouth dries
Ah ... I will advise you to ...
Ah ... let the right one slip in
Slip in
Slip in
And when at last it does
I'd say you were within your rights to bite
The right one and say, "what kept you so long ?"
"What kept you so long ?"
Oh ...
What connections do you see between these Morrissey lyrics and the novel? Quote passages from the text to support your answer.
2) Among many things, this novel makes a direct commentary on public housing and the manufactured nature of the suburbs and explores its secrets and its inherent violence. On the second page of the novel, Lindqvist writes that only one thing was missing from these modern high rises—“a past.” He writes, “That tells you something about the modernity of the place, its rationality. It tells you something of how free they were from the ghosts of history and of terror.” What is the symbolism of the vampire in this context? What do you think Lindqvist is trying to say about modern life and its manufactured and mass produced spaces?
3) This novel takes place during the Cold War. How does this novel explore themes of “war” and “violence”? How can we read the bullying on the playground as a metaphor? For what, exactly?
4) How would you characterize the relationship between Håkan and Eli? What might their relationship be symbolic of? Adversely, how would you characterize the relationship between Oskar and Eli?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE and George Haggerty's "Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture"
Please Interview with the Vampire and read George Haggerty’s essay “Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture” (on D2L). Below are a few questions we'll be exploring this week. Feel free to draw from them, or to develop your own questions. You should also feel free to respond to another student's post.
Your blogs will be due on Wednesday at 11:59 pm.
Your comments on other student blogs will be due by FRIDAY at 11:59.
In addition to your blogs and comments, you also must post in one or more of the discussion forums on my blog by Friday at 11:59 pm. You do NOT have to post in all of the forums, but I will be assessing you on how well you are able to respond to the various prompts and each others' ideas. Remember that Forum C is an open forum, so if there is something you would like to discuss that hasn't been addressed by me or another student, please post there.
1) On page six, Haggerty asks, “How do we explain the eroticization of Rice's figures of the night? What is it about the male-male seductions of Rice's work that places them on bestseller lists and makes them the staple of shopping malls and supermarket check-out lines? What makes these tales of pulsing bodily fluids the hottest topic in suburban as well as urban US culture?” How does he attempt to answer these questions in his essay? What do you think of his response to Anne Rice’s works? Do you agree or disagree with his analysis and why?
2) On page eight, Haggerty writes, “Readers of The Vampire Chronicles are offered a conflicted relation to Lestat and his posturing. They are like the audience in the Theatre of the Vampires: they desire a voyeuristic participation in something they want to believe and disbelieve at the same time. Their attraction to these creatures of the night is also a repulsion. They need to witness the homoerotics of this world and to reject its power at the same time. This is an uncanny relation but also a tremendously powerful one.” Do you agree with his assessment? Have our forays into vampire literature been a type of “theatre”? Read back through pages 213-224 and the scene at the Théâtre de Vampires. How are we as readers placed in a position that is voyeuristic and “forbidden”?
3) Haggerty sees Rice’s novels as symptomatic of our culture’s discussion over “the AIDS crisis, the crisis over ‘family values,’ and the collapse of the war on drugs with its attendant militarization of civilian life and war on male potency (10). What does he mean by these claims and how does he set out to support them? Do you agree with this reading? Why or why not?
4) Haggerty writes, “Dead brothers abound in these novels: Anne Rice seems to find in these deaths the source of imaginative life, the beginning of the tale, its generative force” (13). The film version of Interview begins with Brad Pitt mourning the loss of his wife and child. How does that change, in your opinion, the meaning of the novel?
5) For this blog, do a google search on some key terms such as “postmodernism” and the “theatre of the absurd.” How do you think these artistic and philosophical movements inform Rice’s work?
6) On page 284, Armand calls Louis “the spirit of the age.” What does Armand mean by that? What is Louis’ response? Is a part of what attracts us to the character Louis is that he represents some “spirit” or zeitgeist of our age? What is that?
7) What do you think of the ending to this novel? Imagine you were the boy interviewing Louis. Would your response to Louis’ story be the same? Why or why not?
Your blogs will be due on Wednesday at 11:59 pm.
Your comments on other student blogs will be due by FRIDAY at 11:59.
In addition to your blogs and comments, you also must post in one or more of the discussion forums on my blog by Friday at 11:59 pm. You do NOT have to post in all of the forums, but I will be assessing you on how well you are able to respond to the various prompts and each others' ideas. Remember that Forum C is an open forum, so if there is something you would like to discuss that hasn't been addressed by me or another student, please post there.
1) On page six, Haggerty asks, “How do we explain the eroticization of Rice's figures of the night? What is it about the male-male seductions of Rice's work that places them on bestseller lists and makes them the staple of shopping malls and supermarket check-out lines? What makes these tales of pulsing bodily fluids the hottest topic in suburban as well as urban US culture?” How does he attempt to answer these questions in his essay? What do you think of his response to Anne Rice’s works? Do you agree or disagree with his analysis and why?
2) On page eight, Haggerty writes, “Readers of The Vampire Chronicles are offered a conflicted relation to Lestat and his posturing. They are like the audience in the Theatre of the Vampires: they desire a voyeuristic participation in something they want to believe and disbelieve at the same time. Their attraction to these creatures of the night is also a repulsion. They need to witness the homoerotics of this world and to reject its power at the same time. This is an uncanny relation but also a tremendously powerful one.” Do you agree with his assessment? Have our forays into vampire literature been a type of “theatre”? Read back through pages 213-224 and the scene at the Théâtre de Vampires. How are we as readers placed in a position that is voyeuristic and “forbidden”?
3) Haggerty sees Rice’s novels as symptomatic of our culture’s discussion over “the AIDS crisis, the crisis over ‘family values,’ and the collapse of the war on drugs with its attendant militarization of civilian life and war on male potency (10). What does he mean by these claims and how does he set out to support them? Do you agree with this reading? Why or why not?
4) Haggerty writes, “Dead brothers abound in these novels: Anne Rice seems to find in these deaths the source of imaginative life, the beginning of the tale, its generative force” (13). The film version of Interview begins with Brad Pitt mourning the loss of his wife and child. How does that change, in your opinion, the meaning of the novel?
5) For this blog, do a google search on some key terms such as “postmodernism” and the “theatre of the absurd.” How do you think these artistic and philosophical movements inform Rice’s work?
6) On page 284, Armand calls Louis “the spirit of the age.” What does Armand mean by that? What is Louis’ response? Is a part of what attracts us to the character Louis is that he represents some “spirit” or zeitgeist of our age? What is that?
7) What do you think of the ending to this novel? Imagine you were the boy interviewing Louis. Would your response to Louis’ story be the same? Why or why not?
Monday, November 8, 2010
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE
Please read up to page 158 (Part One) of Interview with the Vampire. Below are a few questions we'll be exploring this week. Feel free to draw from them, or to develop your own questions. You should also feel free to respond to another student's post.
Your blogs will be due on Wednesday at 11:59 pm.
Your comments on other student blogs will be due by FRIDAY at 11:59.
In addition to your blogs and comments, you also must post in one or more of the discussion forums on my blog by Friday at 11:59 pm. You do NOT have to post in all of the forums, but I will be assessing you on how well you are able to respond to the various prompts and each others' ideas. Remember that Forum C is an open forum, so if there is something you would like to discuss that hasn't been addressed by me or another student, please post there.
1) What differences do you see between the vampire characters in Dracula and I Am Legend and the vampire characters in Interview? Considering our previous encounters with vampires, how do we see the concept of "the monster" being complicated in this novel? Consider the narrative perspective in this novel. How does Louis's first person narrative affect the way in which we view him as a "monster"?
2) What is the significance of slaves and slavery in this novel? How might this aspect of
3) What is the significance of religion in this novel? What are some of the depictions of Catholicism in this novel? In broader terms, what sort of theological issues does this novel explore?
4) How might the vampire family we see in this novel be a "queering" of the traditional American nuclear family?
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