Post 7: Cabbage and Clocks

The Devil in the Belfry
Vondervotteimittiss is a little town in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Devil in the Belfry.” The sixty houses in the town all face the steeple of the House of the Town Council, which houses an all-important bell, whose ringing dictates what must be done.

Now even though the members that form the Town Council are “little, round, oily, intelligent men, with big saucer eyes and fat double chins, and have their coats much longer and their shoe-buckles much bigger than the ordinary inhabitants of Vondervotteimittiss,” (read: the most respectable citizens of the town), they are really enslaved. The whole borough is enslaved to the demands of the bell in the tower.

Everyone waits for a few minutes before each hour. It’s a New Years’ countdown, but for every hour. When the belfry-man strikes the time, everyone counts the number of strikes and expects to go about their business according to what time of day it is.

This short story actually portrays Dutch burghers quite stereotypically. In addition to the stereotypical physical description of the stocky, blue-eyed, pipe-smoking towners, the short story gives these towners an unnatural obsession with 1) the time and 2) cabbage (for their sauer-kraut, of course).

In fact, the good people’s enslavement to both time and cabbage can be summed up in the Town Council’s three declarations:
"That it is wrong to alter the good old course of things:"
"That there is nothing tolerable out of Vondervotteimittiss:" and-
"That we will stick by our clocks and our cabbages."

The first statement may seem a traditional view, but it applies to nearly all humanity. Humans don’t like change. And picture-perfect Vondervotteimittiss is not unlike the rest of humanity, despite their funny vesture.

Secondly, the inhabitants also believed that the only good already rested in Vondervotteimittiss (things not from Vondervotteimitts cannot be good); and Poe foreshadows the arrival of the devilish stranger.

Thirdly, the burghers were fully satisfied with their lives; they saw no need to change and no need to look beyond the hills of Vondervotteimittiss for further fulfillment.

Do you see the problem with such beliefs?
And so, perfectly content with their cabbages and their clocks, the burghers are astounded when a dark, hook-nosed stranger (whose out-of-time hops betray a disregard for timing) fandangos and pirouettes into town. His haphazard way of walking shows his disdain for keeping the right time, and therefore his contempt for order. This disdain is finally manifested through the stranger’s violent assault of the innocent belfry-man.

No one stopped the stranger from killing the belfry-man because they were too preoccupied with the countdown to twelve o’clock noon. As a result, the stranger seizes control of the bell tower and rings the bell an extra time. The town is thrown into an uproar at the thirteenth ring: the old men complain that their pipes must have been lit for too long if it its thirteen o’clock, little boys complain that they must be hungry since it is thirteen o’clock, and the middle-aged complain that their sauer-kraut must be overcooked because it is thirteen o’clock. No one takes notice that thirteen o’clock doesn’t exist; they are upset because too much time has gone by.

Poe ends with a plea for all good people to expel the stranger who has control of the bell tower, and to return the good order. With an ending like this, there must be some sort of message that Poe wants to get across.

Meaning
On a broad note, this seems to me to be a warning against the obsession with useless things. The cabbage symbolizes our needs and what physically sustains us. So the townsmen like their cabbage—fine. But it is not right to be utterly consumed by what you consume.

The clocks are the indicators of a well-ordered society, structured to the second. But time is a human invention, and all things human are imperfect in some way. Laughably, the townspeople try to put time (and thus their whole lives) into a little controlled box with a pendulum. They pretend that they can control their lives if they can just control time. The townspeople don’t understand that things happen. Time is. We can measure it, but we cannot dictate it. And we must not let it dictate us.

Post 6: Genius and Mad

Hieronymous Bosch, Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Allan Poe... What do these people have in common? Brilliance and possible insanity. There are many artists, musicians, writers, scientists and criminal minds that have been blessed with genius and also touched with madness.

Vincent van Gough was a gifted painter and committed suicide. Albert Einstein (eccentric and socially unconventional) and Isaac Newton (paranoid) have been associated with cases of schizophrenia. And think of the countless rock stars brimming with talent who have either done themselves in with the same guns they sing about or done themselves up with the same drugs they warn against.

What cruel part of fate is responsible for the pairing of the traits of talent with the predisposition to depression?

Is it the fame?
1) It must be frustrating to be an artist with without the distinction of genius. Many genii have gone unrecognized because society is simply “not that into” whatever their strong suits happen to be. To know that you possess talent and still aren’t able to sell must be maddening.

2) And once a genius has been discovered, he must undoubtedly feel pressure from a society that always expects great things of him. After years and years of writing and drawing, the only poem that earned Edgar Allan Poe renown during his lifetime was “The Raven,” about his dying wife. (And there’s definitely some deficiency in logic in that one. Talking birds?) After that, society took notice of him, and things spiraled down. Poe became an alcoholic, suffered hallucination, and died four years later, never writing quite so well.

Maybe it’s just plain, old depression.
It’s not law that an artist has to go crazy while creating art. Why can’t a person just be crazy, and then create art?

Call it the tortured artist effect, but creativity actually flows rather well from depression. Damien Rice, an Irish songwriter, may well fall under this category. Deep, introspective songs with heartbreaking honesty would never mean as much as they do if the writer were an extremely satisfied person at peace. Rice’s melancholy is the key (now this is personal opinion) to his creativity. Referring to “Grey Room,” which is about Rice’s songwriting process, the gloom of his grey room (which is a state of mind) brings him his colorful words. Dr. Jamison Kay supports the idea that melancholia permits emotions to flow properly:

"The fiery aspects of thought and feeling that initially compel the artistic voyage - fierce energy, high mood, and quick intelligence, a sense of the visionary and the grand, a restless and feverish temperament - commonly carry with them the capacity for vastly darker moods, grimmer energies, and, occasionally, bouts of 'madness.'"

Jamison, Kay. Touched with Fire:
Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. 1993. McMan's Depression
and Bipolar Web. 10 Feb. 2008. 3 Mar. 2009 .

Or is it the money?
Though he was a talented writer, Stephen Crane never made enough money to live comfortably with his common-law wife Cora. More than once Crane (1871-1900) was forced to write novels that he didn’t particularly like in order to generate cash for his family. His stories like Maggie, a Girl of the Streets: a Story of New York (1893) failed, not because they lacked literarily, but because the realism was too grim and depressing for audiences’ taste. But if Crane felt moved enough to feel that he could change society’s perspective and order to write about poor, the impoverished, or Maggie, a prostitute—who were the editors to censor, and who were the publishers to reject?

When you have something brilliant, you can’t swallow it. No matter how bizarre the unibrow, Frida Kahlo had to express the pain of her life-changing bus accident in 1925 in a way unique to her. Have you ever listened to a Nirvana album? Kurt Cobain (arguably one of the most iconic alternative rock musicians) was something amazing; yet it took more than just a little self-doubt to put a gun to his skull. No, the creativity is innate. Whether it comes out in a burst of madness or as a result of madness, genius mustn’t be stifled.


Interested in the thoughts of a madman? Creativity and madness from Van Gough’s perspective.

Post 5: Tree Hugger

How would you like to be stuck a tree for the rest of your life?

It is estimated that koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus), arboreal animals native to Australia, spend twenty hours asleep per day and one to three hours per day eating—all in the same eucalyptus tree.

The fuzzy animals spend only about four minutes a day moving among branches or to other trees. Since koalas are solitary animals, they tend to stay in the same six or so acres of territory and not seek out other trees to stake claims on. The life of a koala is greatly confined to the same group of eucalyptus trees. “Within its home range,” states this MSN Encarta website, “a koala uses only a small number of trees, with up to a third of its time spent in one favorite tree.”

But there are other arboreal animals that do get a change of scenery. Arboreal animals make their homes in our trees all over the world; but most arboreal animals live in tropical forests. In the tropical forests are various strata, layers of vegetation that house different forms of life because of differing temperatures and light availability. The canopy level creates a living floor of plant material on which tree-dwelling animals can walk. Little pools of water even collect from the rain so that animals can drink without climbing down from the canopy.

Some animals, like the orangutan, build sleeping nests for nighttime use. Other animals have physical adaptations that allow them to sleep in trees without having to build nests; siamangs (Hylobates syndactylus), for instance, have cushiony pads on their rear ends called ischial callosities. And sloths’ (of genus Choloepus for two-toed sloths or Bradypus for three-toed sloths) feet are outfitted with claws that allow them to hang from branches while they sleep.

There is simply no need to descend to earth. Animals can go their entire lives without ever touching the ground!

Post 4: What time is it, chronomaniac?

"Server time is always right." - Rower

How do you know what time it is?
A) check the position of the sun
B) ask someone else
C) check your watch

I'm one of those people who always asks someone else. I don't wear watches because I know that I'll always worry about what time it is and about being late. And this seems to be a common affliction that our society suffers from: an obsession with time. "There are only twenty-four hours in a day! I didn't have enough time to finish! Can't you go any faster? Where did all my time go!" Heard any of these lately? Yeah. We're obsessed.

Why do we need to do everything so fast? As soon as we wake up, we rush to go to work or school. At work/school, we rush to get everything done. Then we rush back home. At any point do we stop to think about why we do this or how this affects us? Where does the need to get things done fast come from? And once you've rushed through everything you needed to do, what's next?!

We can learn from the concept of time in Indian mythology. In the world of souls, one human month is only equal to a single soul-day. In the world of the gods, one human year only makes up a single god-day. And a single day in the life of Bhrahma (the universe creator) is equivalent to 8,640,000,000 human years!*

The life of a human is so small when compared to everything else...only humans could get so caught up in a quest for more time.


*Kannikeswaran, K. "Concept of Time in Indian Mythology." Templenet - The Comprehensive Indian Temple website. 17 Feb. 2009 .

Post 3: Betazoids Among Us

The Betazoids from Star Trek are a race of humanoid empaths with the ability to communicate telepathically and sense others’ emotions and thoughts. The advantages of such an ability are invaluable. Betazoids are basically walking, thinking, feeling lie detectors. They’re real-life Jaspers of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, able to sense people’s feelings and act accordingly. Job possibilities would instantly open to them: they would make keen counselors and therapists, intuitive judges in courtrooms (although probably a bit more biased), insightful job interviewers, and very understanding negotiators towards terrorists or suicidal bridge-jumpers.

Now though this sounds like a wonderful superpower, the abilities of a Betazoid can be unnerving to other people. Think of the effects that the presence of a Betazoid would have on the people around him. Living in the United States, the ability to know others’ feelings would undoubtedly be considered an invasion of personal privacy. As writer Christopher Paolini's fictional character Brom tells his pupil Eragon, "Once you're inside your enemy's mind, it's easy enough to anticipate what he will do and prevent it." (pg. 245)Since the human mind is a private place, even if the thoughts of a person are not accessible, wouldn’t you be a little afraid to know that other people—regular-looking on the surface—could know exactly how you feel at all times?

Secrecy would be pointless because a Betazoid could instantly feel that you’re hiding something. And the façade of a seemingly strong leader would be shattered because a Betazoid would see right through it and most likely call the person on it. Those putting up the façade would be stripped of dignity and respectability because all the Betazoids would know he is a sham.
If humans and Betazoids were to mingle, we humans would feel so invaded. A gift that could be used for good would be shunned because people would develop a fear for those with it.


For more extensive information about the Betazoid race, visit this website: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Betazoid

Post 2: Height, Godly Height

Rower made a joke today about the vertically challenged not being as much fun as those blessed with enough height to be considered normal. This got me thinking…

Whether or not a person’s height affects her funniness, there are lots of things that affect a short person just because she is short. For instance, the generalizations about short people often include their inability to perform well at Tall People Things like fashion modeling or picking cherries. And hulking figures are a bonus for things like football.

But there are Short People Activities that require participants to have smaller builds, like horse jockeying or doing the limbo. For athletes like gymnasts or lightweight wrestlers, not only does a person need not have a hulking figure, but the extra height and body mass is rather undesirable.

However, a taller frame, according to this website, is more desirable in the workplace than a shorter one is. Timothy Judge and Daniel Cable conducted an experiment to find the difference in salaries of several tall and short people. Guess what? The shorter people consistently earned less than taller people. On average, a taller person would earn an additional $789 for every inch that made him taller than his shorter counterpart.

On top of that, it’s estimated that “for every inch shorter you are, 5 per cent fewer women will find you [men] attractive.”* How’s that for a short man’s self esteem?

It makes sense that there be an idea that shorter people compensate for lack of height by acting aggressively. (How can short guys be taken seriously otherwise?) This “Napoleon Complex,” as named by psychologist Alfred Adler, explains aggressive behavior in shorter persons; but a study conducted by the English University of Central Lancashire actually disproved this. The Napoleon complex is a fictitious diagnosis.

So even if short people get paid less than tall people, and there are fewer women who want to date short guys, and potbellies look a lot stranger on short people than they do on tall people, short people needn’t be labeled as aggressive because of it.


*Kirby, Terry. "Theory of 'Napoleon complex' is debunked - This Britain, UK - The Independent." The Independent | News | UK and Worldwide News | Newspaper. 29 Mar. 2007. 03 Feb. 2009 .

Post 1: Deleted Scene in The Crucible

Deleted Scene in The Crucible

Going through Act II of The Crucible, a student in English class pointed out that there was a missing scene in the play; Scene II of Act II was played onstage only once, when The Crucible first opened in theatres. Then in later publications and productions of The Crucible, the scene was left out. Why could this be? There must have been a reason why this scene was left out of the later editions of the script for the play. It’s dubious that Arthur Miller just decided that he didn’t like this scene anymore.

Description of the Missing Scene
In this missing scene, Abigail Williams meets John Proctor in the woods at night, where they discuss the happenings in town. Abigail tells John of the mental suffering she has gone through for the good of the town, and even shows John the physical proof of her sufferings: numerous holes in her leg from witches’ needles, the wound in her abdomen that Elizabeth Proctor’s spirit reopens every night, and the lump on her arm that George Jacobs strikes while Abigail tries to sleep. To the reader who knows that Abigail is not in any way connected to witchcraft and has no ability to see spirits, Abigail appears insane. She appears to believe that the wounds she has caused herself were . But not only is Abigail is insane enough to mutilate her body for the sake of being believed by Salem’s court, Abigail still deceives herself into thinking that John will marry her one day.
John sees Abigail’s deluded state, and, determined to end Abigail’s influence over the court at any cost, warns her that he will confess his affair with her to the court. Abigail, still maintains that John loves her, doesn’t believe that John would blacken his name or her name by his own will. (She instead accuses the hypocrites of Salem of stealing John’s honesty and goodness, and she forgives his misstep.) Abigail laughs in disbelief and dismisses his threat; she tells John not to worry because she knows John secretly hates his wife Elizabeth and will marry Abigail once Elizabeth hangs for witchcraft.

The Scene’s Importance
The reader can now see the full effect of the witch trials on Abigail’s character. This is actually one of the best scenes in regards to character development!
It shows how the sudden power and respectful fear that Abigail has gained has seized her wits and thrown them out the door. We witness Abigail’s complete derangement. She is not just power-hungry anymore. She is a different girl with a new and different motive for playing the victim of spirits in court.
Only in this scene do we see that Abigail has a motive for accusing townspeople of witchcraft other than revenge on Elizabeth Proctor: she also wants to rid Salem of its hypocrites. She rants about the hypocrisy of the townspeople, who only appear to be good but fall deep into sin. Abigail truly seems to believe that she does God’s will by cleansing the town of sinners. (Here is a character analysis that disregards the omitted scene and describes Abigail’s character as chiefly vindictive.)

Reason for the omission of such an important scene?
Since Abigail’s new quality (of being deluded and insane) is only present in this missing scene, we may theorize that perhaps Arthur Miller left the scene out so he could create a character whose villainy was solely vengeful, and not a side effect of being insane. Obviously, Abigail was not meant to turn out insane; perhaps Arthur Miller wanted to show readers what could happen when the unscrupulous seize power. This could only be accomplished if Abigail were only a manipulative person with her wits. This way, the downfall of man could not be blamed on insanity, but on man’s manipulative, deceitful behavior.

“Additionally, when the girls are treated as ‘officials of the court’ with the power to charge and condemn, the thrill in arousing hysteria and anxiety in others, combined with the power to
condemn, proves too seductive for a young girl to ignore.”
— "Sheffield Theatres Education Resource." Welcome to Sheffield Theatres Checking Plugin. 26 Jan. 2009 )

As the quote above describes, Abigail and the other girls have let the lure of newfound power control them. This much is evident without the omitted scene. So perhaps the play is better off without the second scene in Act II. Abigail’s obsession with power is enough for the reader to think about without throwing the question of her insanity into the mix!


*I apologize that there is no link to provide the text of the missing scene; The Crucible is still in publication and is still under copyright, so there are no online sources of the text.