Notes for 19 October 2015

LITCS 114
Teaching Associate: Patrick Mooney
Bldg. 494, room 160B
Fall 2015

• Final thoughts on Triffids?
  • We haven't really talked much about gender ...
    • Josella: God, I must look awful (52)
    • Josella: I cracked, and howled like a girl in a Victorian melodrama. (52)
    • Josella: Shows you what a modern young woman can come to after all, doesn't it? Screaming, and collapsing with the vapors―Hell! (55)
    • Bill: Better, I imagine, to be a pirate than a pirate's moll (56) (but really, take the context into account here).
    • aggressive manifestations of femininity ... Josella: Besides, don't you know there' a bit of the dumbest film star in every girl? (67)
    • Josella: Why should the one static thing in a collapsing world be my reputation? Can't we forget it? (92)
    • Dr. Vorless: The men must work—the women must have babies. (100)
    • Dr. Vorless: I would ask you to consider very carefully whether or not you do hold a warrant from God to deprive any woman of the hapiness of carrying out her natural functions. (101)
    • Josella: And afer all, most women want babies anyway—the husband's just what Dr. Vorless might call the local means to the end. (102)
    • Coker at Tynsham: in the world that has vanished women had a vested interest in acting the part of parasites. (and see the surrounding text) (144; ch. 10)
    • You're quite wrong, she inerrupted him firmly. I'm Josella Masen, author of David Masen. (210)
    • Susan, who should have the chance of a husband and babies. (216; ch. 16)
  • Summary/discussion: Triffids as representative postapocalyptic text
    • The world in its everydayness, its (social) construction, and its precarity.
    • Value, and the presuppositions that go into our systems of valuing.
      • Especially, questions about what a life is worth.
    • Often, a specific concern is the relative nature of ethical judgments.
    • Evidence and consequence – and how causes result in effects.
    • What it means to be human, and how the human is separated from the natural.
    • Practicality and realism.
    • Social (re-)organization.
    • The re-production of knowledge.
    • The (social) production of space.
    • Balance and precarity.
  • The changed world
    • I suppose I behaved like a fool. My head was still full of standards and conventions that had ceased to apply. (45)
    • What I found that I did feel—with a consciousness that it was against what I ought to be feeling—was release ... (46; ellipsis in original)
    • All the old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one mighty slash. Heaven alone knew as yet what others might arise—and it looked as though there would be plenty of them—but they would be new. (46)
    • this strange world (47).
    • Dr. Vorless: I point this out to you because the world we knew is gone—finished. (98)
    • the world in which she [Susan] was going to grow up would have little use for the overniceties and euphemisms that I had learned as a child (174; ch. 13)
    • Josella: No—the world's gone, and we're left ... (188; ch. 14)
    • Title of ch. 15: World Narrowing (190)
• The Book of Genesis
  • The first book in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
  • Traditionally, Moses is held to be the author, but ...
    • 20th- and 21st-century scholarship tends to see it as a compound work stitched together by an editor (in about the 6th century BCE) from two to four different original sources.
  • Is generally seen as divided into two primary thematic sections:
    • A primeval history (chapters 1–11); and
    • A cycle of Patriarchal stories (chapters 12–50).
  • For both Jews and Christians, emphasis is often seen as being on the establishment of a series of covenants between God and humans.
  • The Covenant with Abraham
    • [T]he LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, I am almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. / And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly. (17:1–2)
    • No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. (17:5)
    • This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; [...] and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. (17:10, 13)
  • The destruction of Sodom
    • ... is generally seen by (most) modern scholars as motivated by God's anger at the violation of the rule of hospitality, despite the way in which the name has influenced contemporary vocabulary.

      The men [i.e., the visiting angels] said to Lot ... [W]e will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it. (19:12–13)

    • So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said, Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain.
      [...]
      The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar.
      Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens.
      So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
      But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
      (Genesis 19: 17, 23–26)
• The Book of Revelation
  • ... is traditionally the last book of the Christian scriptures.
  • ... was also the last book of the current canon to be accepted into it (no earlier than 397 CE).
  • ... is often known as the Revelation of John or the Apocalypse of John, or by any number of other variants.
  • ... was probably not, despite traditional ascriptions, written by the same John to whom the Gospel of John is attributed.
  • ... was probably written some time between 68 and 95 CE.
  • Perspectives on Revelation
    • Futurist: the belief that the Book of Revelation literally depicts future events as they will actually occur.
    • Historicist: the belief that Revelation allegorically (or otherwise symbolically) depicts a broad view of history.
    • Preterist: the belief that Revelation primarily depicts the events of the 1st-century Apostolic period of the early Christian church.
    • Idealist/symbolic: the belief that Revelation does not literally depict actual people or events, but rather is an allegory of the spiritual path or the struggle of good against evil.
  • Some passages ...
    • Then I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.
      Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals? And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it.
      (Revelation 5:1–3)
    • And I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.
      And he had a little book open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land,
      and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. And when he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices.
      Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.
      (Revelation 10:1–4)
• Today's whiteboard shots:
  • Ways of reading the bible
  • Summary: thematic concerns in Triffids
  • Types of approaches to the Book of Revelation