Author: samanthaglance

I have no idea. I have no words, because of the emotional rollercoaster these sections of the book have forced me to endure.

“I brandished it at him triumphantly, like a weapon,” (Ware, p. 97).

Allow me to start with this very important declaration: I believe Lo did not hallucinate what she saw.

However, I do believe she should have realized, prior to this interaction, how little evidence she had to prove that. In fact, as a journalist, I believe she should absolutely have known how much evidence was piled against her. In that moment of the quote, she is portraying herself as an insane person. I get that she was most likely not in her sound mind, since she – you know – just witnessed a murder. However, she has shown herself to be smart and more willing to choose fight instead of flight. Yet, in this moment, she isn’t thinking rationally.

This book makes as much sense as this picture. I understand that many books do not operate under the laws of real logic, and that many create their own. You realize, that once a book fails to abide by it’s own rules of logic, then that book is not worth reading.

For example, Elsie establishes in Part I that humans cannot understand her. However, later on, once we’ve reached Israel, people can understand pigs and camels just fine? I don’t know if that was racist jab at Middle Eastern languages, or if the author genuinely forgot the laws of his own universe.

The book is dumb to it’s own self-created standard. I don’t like it, the jokes fall flat, and every meaningful message is overshadowed by the failed comedy.

“I did not like the world,” (Duchovny, p. 40).

I think this book is weird, eccentric, and strange in all the wrong ways. It makes me feel like I’m reading the narration of a madman’s nonsensical dream. However, I do enjoy the fact that the animals in the book are given a sentient stream of consciousness. They are portrayed as dynamic characters with emotions and opinions, exactly like that of a human being.

Throughout the majority of my life, some of the most meaningful relationships I’ve had have been with animals. They have been as impactful as any human relationship, I think. I’ve seen hamsters and rats with unique personalities; I’ve seen ferrets solve problems; I’ve cats grieve; I’ve seen horses fall in love; I’ve seen dogs miss people when they leave and be overjoyed when they come back. I’ve even seen cows hide their calves so that they won’t be taken away. Yet, the world at large exploits animals to an unhealthy degree, disregarding their intelligence because the meat on their bones pays the bills.

This isn’t me preaching for everyone to go vegan. I believe everyone has the right to eat, and for many carnivores, that means someone has die. And, since humans are scientifically classified as omnivores, I believe we also have the right to eat a mixture of meats and plants. However, I also believe that humans have taken this give-and-take system and, by slaughtering these animals on such a massive scale, the act is now detrimental to the ethics of taking a life for food, because it’s not just for food now. It’s for profit.

Taking any life should never boil down to how much money can be gained from that animal. It should always be whether or not this animal will feed people. So many food industries have lost sight of that. All lives mean something, yet the world we live in tries to state the opposite, that’s why this quote speaks so much to me.

“They look like what you aren’t expecting. What you aren’t paying attention to,” (Gaiman).

This quote stands out to me for the worst reason of all.

Disclaimer: If you are in any way upset by the topic of gun violence, please do not read this.

Recently, I was watching safety videos on YouTube, things colleges had made in the event of an active shooter. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher and, in this time, these events are something that every student and educator is at risk of experiencing. I recall that I originally started watching them because, this one video was in a “most moving videos of the decade” compilation that I had just clicked on, not thinking about what I would experience.

One of the videos was made by a company called Sandy Hook Promise. If you don’t know recognize those words, I don’t know if you’re blessed or ignorant. I don’t know which would be better; knowing or not what the significance of the name Sandy Hook has. The video is here, but please do not watch it if you are easily disturbed by gun violence. I know I said this in the disclaimer, but please, do not watch if this will hurt you. If you decide to watch it, continue reading past the italics. If you can’t here is a quick summary:

Within the video, you as the viewer are following this redheaded boy and his end of the year story. He writes on a desk, starting this correspondence with someone he never meets. You watch as he looks at all these faces, wondering which is the one writing back to him. Finally, he is signing a year book, and a girl recognizes his penmanship, and they finally meet. But, before they can even introduce themselves, the gym door bursts open and a student with a weapon comes in. The video stops, and the produces let you know that, while viewers were watching the boy, there was someone in the background displaying disturbing behavior that could indicate he was planning to harm others.

They are “what you are not paying attention to.” The people you overlook in favor of the interesting story… How many kids fell so far down into their own self-destructive spiral that they became the monster people loathe to speak of?

No one noticed this seemingly normal man, until he became the monster who stole twenty-seven lives, and then, his own. No one paid attention to his declining mental state, self-isolation, and fascination with weapons. They let it go, moved on. And in their avoidance, a man became a monster, and no one knew until it too late.

For a paper that discusses the tale of a monster, what better candidate is there than the walking corpse with a beating heart, that is, the Phantom of the Opera? I would like to take the opportunity to investigate how a man, through the treatment of his society, became a monster.

Both Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera contain characters with natural deformities who are hidden away from society for the majority of their lives. However, both characters become very different people within their specific stories.

Quasimodo turns into a kind-hearted soul, who falls in love and (even though he lacks understanding of the situation and helps the wrong people) truly cares for the woman he loves, to the point of dying alongside her once she herself is executed. He dies out of love, and only carries the holder of his heart into his sanctuary to protect her from those who would harm her.

Erik, on the other hand, has grown as dark as the shadows he stalks. The people of the Opera are an amusement to him, a play thing that can consume his time, of which he has too much of. He does not truly feel love, but entitlement. He saw the outer beauty of a woman and enjoyed her songs, but used manipulation to coerce her trust and affections, before spiriting her away to his sanctuary.

The question I pose is simple: how could two individuals who live through similar conditions become such different people. Why did Erik’s isolation not make him more appreciative of human connection, as it did with Quasimodo? And how did the lack of affection in his childhood not make Quasimodo apathetic, as it did Erik? I do not have these answers, only these characters who do not really exist can speak the words of ultimate truth.

Who is Erik?

The Phantom of the Opera, or Erik, as has now been revealed, is now known to be a simple man. Christine describes his face as similar to that of a decayed corpse, coated with rotting flesh in the place of smooth skin. Erik himself told Christine that his mother gave him a mask when he was young, possibly implying that he was born disfigured.

It is also revealed that Erik lives in the walls of the Opera House. Somehow, the building was constructed with a set of corridors that he can use to traverse the building, much like that of a phantom. It is also revealed that there is ample space within this system of corridors for a horse (who can apparently walk up stairs, but that is neither here nor there).

Finally; Erik is a killer. Whatever his mental state, he was so obsessed with Christine and the power that came with being the Phantom of the Opera that he killed and maimed. His mind has grown darker than the shadows he stalks.

“Thanks to them, I am now able to recount in every detail those moments of intense love and terror,” (Leroux, 9).

The first chapter of The Phantom of the Opera reveals to the readers that the novel is not a simple thriller, but is told from the perspective of a private investigator. This narrator mentions one key fact: all of his information is second-hand, retrieved from the personal accounts of witnesses. While the narrator has stated that he ensured the credibility of these witnesses, the fact remains that the information comes solely from secondary sources, which calls the reliability of the portrayal of these events into question.

Jeffery Cohen’s Monster Culture (Seven Theses) reminded me of a video game I played around a year ago, called Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. It is an older game that takes the concept of the vampire and throws out all the pre-established lore in order to make its own. The game was fun to play through, the characters and lore playing off each other so well that I found myself invested in almost everything the game had to offer.

The reason I believe this is relevant is because the developers of this game took the culture of the vampire and redesigned it to create their own story. In a previous post, I complained how I believe creating vampires into a sexually desired monster was baffling to me, yet here I am praising this game that seemingly did the same. However, there is one distinct aspect that this game held onto: the vampires were not the good guys.

Throughout the game, you as the player will make choices that determine what kind of monster you are: driven by greed, lust, sadism, or many more. The decisions the player makes will affect how the other vampires will respond to you, however, humans are always considered to be inferior. Multiple times throughout the game, humans are put in danger by the supernatural, yet the vampires only want to intervene to ensure that their presence is not exposed.