Does the story ever stay the same?

In our class discussions about appropriations, adaptations, and interpretations, I started to think about other books that have been turned into movies, and what is lost and added on in the process. As corny and girly as it may be, two of my favorite books and movies are Notebook and Pride and Prejudice. I love the books themselves, and read them first, but seeing the movies seemed to only complete the experience-in some ways. Being a movie, not all the details and good lines were included, but in both of these examples, the movie stayed very close to the text. There was something fulfilling in seeing these movies for the first time though, and in every time I watch them after since, yes, I do own both of them, and yes, they are presently in my dorm room. And yes, my roommate and I, being the English major freaks we are, watched Pride and Prejudice about two weeks ago. But what makes these books and movies so great is the emotion that they arise in you, the feelings of connection even if you have no reason to feel connected to them at all. There's something in them that the author has captured, some essence that makes them so perfect, and somehow, the director has managed to portray that on film. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's awesome. It makes the books and the movie both so much better. So whether they are appropriations, interpretations, or adaptions, these two books and movies definitely capture some kind of magic.

Family Ties

As I sat in the family room of my brother's off campus house tonight, eating dinner with him, my cousin, and three of his seven housemates, my mind wandered and oddly enough, made some connections to Othello and the family relationships that are present there. Desdemona goes against her father's ways and elopes with Othello, a man of different status and race. I also thought about this section of our class's theme: displacement. I started thinking about this when I thought that I don't know if I could give up everything I know, my family, and my life. It was hard leaving and going to Rome for three months, away from my family. It was hardest to leave the people I was with tonight, which is probably why I started making connections to Othello. I've been separated from my brother before, but never for three months. A senior at ND, Kevin has ran Cross Country and Track the past three and a half years. Due to the time commitment, he was only able to go abroad during the summer between his sophomore and junior years, and for six weeks. Not three months. But anytime he and I were separated for more than a week, I had my cousin Michael around to hang out with, and be like my surrogate brother. But not this fall. This fall, Michael headed off to Dayton for his freshman year, and Kevin came back to South Bend for his senior year. And I had a month of being home without the two of them, feeling out of place almost every second. I felt displaced at home, still with my  parents and sisters, but without Kevin and Michael. Making it worse, every time I visited my brother, my best friend, Tara, and  my cousin, Elizabeth, at ND and SMC, I left feeling as if i was leaving the one place I felt at home, complete. Being apart from Elizabeth was hard too, but not as hard as the others since I went the first eighteen years of my life seeing her twice a year. But not being able to talk to her fifty billion times a day (literally-you should see the amount of texts we send each other each day) was going to be a challenge. So going away felt as if I was out of place-not where I was meant to be. Rome grew on me, and the feeling out of place left some. But coming back to SMC and ND, i've felt more back in place, back to where I feel I should be. Therefore, Desdemona leaving her life, her family, and everything took a lot more than  I could have done. She must have loved Othello more than the life she knew, and went with him. Maybe she didn't feel displaced when she was with him, like I do when I'm with my family.

Interrupted Life

After watching the film "Girl, Interrupted," I started to wonder what I would do if I my life were interrupted in the way that Susanna Kason's was, or in any way. In everyday life, we have plenty of small "interruptions", distractions. A text message, an email, a friend saying hi as you walk past them in the hallway or around campus, a roommate walking into your room, a phone call from home, your favorite TV show of the moment, a work out, a practice, a meal. Life in our modern world is full of mini interruptions, and we deal with them as if they aren't any major consequence-because they aren't. We take part in these interruptions, not seeing them as life-changing or greatly altering in any way, just a bit of added 'spice' to our day. We take part and move forward with our lives. But what if we were interrupted in more than just a tiny way? What if instead of the interruption being a quick conversation with a girl you run into on your way to class, the interruption is much larger and more life-altering? What would we do if our lives were dramatically changed in a few minutes, and without our consent like Susanna's mother and doctor putting her into the cab to Claymoore? What would we do if a year of our life as we knew it was taken away?

Personally, I can't even begin to fathom this thought. A year of my life completely different from what I know it as isn't an everyday thought. But watching Susanna Kason's experience, I wondered what I would do. Not if I attempted suicide, but if for whatever reason, I was relocated for a year to a place housing girls with varying issues and illnesses. Would I be able to adapt and accept them, to be friends with them when I knew I wasn't supposed to be there? I can only imagine having to deal with this separation, where you're being placed in a different mental world rather than just physically.

Coming to college and studying abroad have placed me in different situations with a different physical location, but not so much a mental one. I have been forced to get to know girls I previously never knew existed, to learn about myself and those around me, and to see what their lives are like, because most often, they're very different from mine. But like Susanna Kason realized in the end, just because they're different from you are doesn't make them less of people or friends. I was forced to open myself to girls in Rome, and came back with 40 new best friends. They saw me through good and bad, as did the girls at Claymoore saw with Susanna. I thought at times I would never get through, but those were the times I realized how amazing the people around me actually were. Nothing like being placed in an institution like Claymoore, and my life wasn't interrupted like hers was, but it definitely was a part of my life I'll never forget.

To get back to what I'd do if my life were interrupted for a year, I still can't even imagine. I can only hope that if it happened, I'd be able to find friends as good as the ones Susanna Kason did.

Second Take

Reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" for the second time in my career here at Saint Mary's, I was struck by a few things. First off is the differences and similarities of the two classes that I've read it in. Humanistic Studies is, as Professor Williamson-Ambrose said on the first day of class, an interdisciplinary field. To me, that makes it about making connections from one topic to another, or in this case, from one class to another. I first read this text in my 109W English course first semester last year. Two of the novels we read in that class were Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, two texts referenced in our previous assignment by Virginia Woolf. Reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" made me further connect these two classes in my mind, and notice how Humanistic Studies does cross set up boundaries. In my English course last fall, we focused mostly on the texts themselves, with some background information on the author. In Hust., however, we look into what is going on in the time period these works have been written in- how these outer forces effect what is being written, why its being written, and so on. Two very different courses, but with certain elements present in each that make them even more effective. 

The second thing that I noticed in reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" again was the details that I forgot about from my previous reading. I remembered certain details such as the narrator's husband John treating her as a child, the narrator hating the wallpaper then, in the end, having an extreme connection to it, but my mind let slip the parts about the rings in the walls, bars on the windows, the nailed down bed, the line around the room, and the areas of paper ripped off or torn at. Funny how my mind would retain the lesser "evil," "normal" details compared to these. Maybe it was an unconscious protective mechanism since normally I don't try to remember details of those sort, or I just didn't find them all that important. Reading them again made me feel disturbed almost, and brought back memories of feeling the same way when I first read it. The narrator's reaction to these details was also one that made me uneasy. How could she assume that these would be elements of a nursery or boys' school? And why doesn't she connect that the house must have been empty for a number of years, had legal trouble, and be so far away from the town for a reason? She might be depressed, but wouldn't these details stand out as being abnormal? 

In reading this, the flaws in the "Rest" cure stand out to me right away, and its no wonder that the women following it went crazier rather than improving. If you shut me up in a room with crazy wallpaper, by myself, all day, every day, and in the summer, I think I'd get a little loony too.