Resisting the Night

Radio host Jerry Klein recently proposed “all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band.” Shockingly, many callers agreed. At the end of the show, Klein unveiled his hoax, commenting that his callers demonstrated "how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen.” He’s right. We need reminders of what the Holocaust involved and what allowed it to happen. Elie Wiesel attempts such a reminder in his novel, Night.
The book, which follows Wiesel’s teen years in German concentration camps, calls readers out of the darkness. People should learn from the past, keep informed, and resist the night, or ignorance. The Holocaust caused an entire people group to change for the worse, obfuscating and challenging everything they believed. Night doesn’t just deal with what happened; it deals with who let it happen.
Was it really such a shock that the Germans permitted the Holocaust? Nietzsche, Darwin, Spencer, and Materialism all supported the idea of the survival of the fittest, intellectual pride, and separation from God. Nobody thought it humanly possible to wipe out an entire people, especially in such a cultured nation as Germany. What was putatively thought of as a good thing (intellectual excellence) turned out for the worse. Wiesel tried to encourage his father, stating that humanity was their ally.
I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it.
“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed, even these crematories….” (30)
Wiesel soon lost his own faith in humanity when he became a number: A-7713. Man’s sinful nature had vanquished humanity as a standard of morality. The Germans thought themselves superior and condemned all others, redefining “humanity.”
The Jews denied the danger. They forfeited their chance: the elders kept the younger from rebelling. If they tolerated God’s test, they thought, He would deliver them. Besides, it couldn’t get any worse. The point of no return came for Wiesel and his companions when their deportation train stopped at the Czechoslovak frontier. “We realized then that we were not going to stay in Hungary. Our eyes were open, but too late (21).” What chance of escape remained in revolt disappeared.
Since the Jews clung to such false hopes, did they bring this upon themselves? They hadn’t thought anything of the rumors of German violence; the Germans acted kindly when they quartered in Jews’ homes.
Our first impressions of the Germans were reassuring…. They never demanded the impossible, made no unpleasant comments, and even smiled occasionally at the mistress of the house. One German… brought Madame Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists rejoiced. (7)
Even corralled into ghettos, the Jews were content.
We were entirely self-contained. A little Jewish republic…. We appointed a… whole government machinery. Everyone marveled at it.... Our fear and anguish were at an end. We were living among Jews, among brothers…. (9)
After the Nazis expelled Moshe the Beadle with all the foreign Jews, “people were saying that they had arrived in Galicia, were working there, and were even satisfied with their lot (4).” Moshe had a different story. He managed to escape death and warn his fellow Jews of the coming Holocaust, but no one believed him.
Wiesel doesn’t blame the Jews, however. Wiesel blames God and never forgives him. His works question how God would let something like this happen. He wrote his first version of Night in Yiddish, but as he began to interpret his memories and they evolved in his mind, he began to bash Jewishness. He did not bash the Jews themselves; it was more about his own faith. Before the Holocaust, Wiesel studied and prayed regularly. By the end, he had lost his faith and did not know what to believe.
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the faces if the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. (32)
When a young boy is hung, Wiesel comments that God is there hanging with him (62).
Night is as theological as historical. As Gary Henry says in his analytical essay, Story and Silence: Transcendence in the Work of Elie Wiesel,
He has assumed the role of messenger…. But he does not continue to retell the tales of the dead only to make life miserable for the living, or even to insure that such an atrocity will not happen again. Rather, Elie Wiesel is motivated by a need to wrestle theologically with the Holocaust. (1)
Wiesel proclaims himself a messenger for victims of the Holocaust. Many survivors disagree. Although memories torture most, some have healed. Peter Wood, who worked with Wiesel at Boston University as Associate Provost, says survivors he knows dislike talking about Wiesel.
Some survivors do not think their lives are about the past. My friend Sam loves people. That’s what you’re supposed to take away from these terrible times. Sam pours himself out to others and to his family.
Wiesel mirrors the opposite of this. He never forgives.
As his interest in theology grew, Wiesel’s memories evolved. As his memories turned into one, solid account in his mind, they became stereotypes. Primo Levi discusses how a memory can become a stereotype in his book, The Drowned and the Saved.
[A] memory evoked too often, and expressed in the form of a story, tends to become fixed in a stereotype, in a form tested by experience, crystallized, perfected, adorned, installing itself in the place of a raw memory and growing at its expense. (23-24)
The perfecting of Wiesel’s story accounted for the increasing number of translations of his books and his increasing popularity. As Wiesel tailored his books to what the audience wants and what the author now wants, they evolved into the very picture and representation of the Holocaust. Wiesel’s image has advanced to where few question him. Wiesel has published 16 books; Oprah Winfrey interviewed him for both her magazine and her TV show; and PBS and History Channel documentaries have used him.
Wood questions Wiesel, saying he has done much for Boston University, but with few scruples.
He sold papers to the university archives and never delivered them. Also, after winning the Nobel Prize, he didn’t have to teach as much. He flew in once a week for a hand selected class of five students. Yet the university continued to use his name as a ploy to get new students, and it worked.
Henry suggests that the “drive to justify every second of his existence (3)” motivates Wiesel, but Wood suggests that part of Weisel’s motivation might be the desire to win the Nobel Prize. Both are right. As his stories developed and Wiesel began to question how he, of all the Jews, managed to survive, he gained a proclivity for questioning God and humanity even more. This motivated him to insert more theological background into his works and to promote his own work. Since he wondered how he of all people survived, he felt his life needed to have worth. He climbed to the top, preserving himself and his message just as he preserved himself during the holocaust. At the camps, Wiesel struggled with whether or not he wanted his father to die. He felt he would have a better chance of survival without his father, but knew that thinking this was wrong. Today, it is Wiesel's message that is left behind to die. He's allowed the stereotyped story to take over and kill the original, factual story. While he may have started out with good intentions, everything he appears to be about has become just a perfected story. Wood said he sees only the performer in Wiesel. “His story became what he was about. Who knows what’s underneath the performer.”
Readers can forgive Wiesel’s doubts, knowing what the Holocaust did to him. Furthermore, Wiesel will doesn’t want the holocaust to happen again. According to Night, a number of things contributed, to the holocaust, including Germany’s pride and the Jew’s ignorance; all revolving around God and whether He is just. If Wiesel believes that he is the voice of the Holocaust victim, let him. He may not represent all his fellows, but he remains a messenger to the world. We need someone to remind us. In a day of Muslim threats and invading immigrants, we should apply the lessons of history. Looking at what caused past holocausts, we can help prevent future ones.

Details in a Masterpiece

Every time I go on a tour, I think, “Do I have to? Tours are boring and the tour guides are always such dull, old people! Do I really want to risk getting a bad tour guide?” Most tours may not take money out of your pocket, but they can take a lot out of you physically and mentally. If you do not get lucky, you spend your entire time wondering how much longer the tour will last and thinking about the wasted time. As I walked down 5th Avenue on my way to the New York Public Library, I wondered whether I would get lucky. On a hot, Sunday afternoon, I did not feel like going anywhere. Would anyone else show up for the tour? After all, the library gives tours once every Sunday and twice every weekday except for Monday. Who would want to go on an indoor tour when they could go to the beach or some park and get a tan? I soon found that a small tour group, consisting of about five people, with a personable, middle-aged woman as your tour guide can push all the boredom and risks away.
I arrived five minutes early in a hurry to get the tour over with, and the tour guide came five minutes later in a hurry to start the tour on time. The hostess introduced herself to the five of us and asked some questions about our backgrounds. Then she started with a few basic facts. Two families brought their book collections together to found the library in 1895. The main library on 5th Avenue houses over 88 miles of bookshelves, and even more books are stored under the adjacent Bryant Park. It also contains the largest collection of Jewish books and newspapers in the country. You can read a Yiddish version of Sherlock Holmes or Hebrew text books.
Various artifacts and historical items throughout the library compete to sidetrack your attention. During the baseball season, the library displays a collection of valuable baseball cards. It also displays the Gutenberg Bible and a small globe made around the time when Columbus discovered the Americas. One of the hallways contains prints of maps and drawings of the American Revolution. Our guide told us that Thomas Jefferson’s version of the Declaration of Independence was edited before its passage because the states would not unanimously pass the original. Only two unedited versions of the original document exist, and the library puts one of them on display during July every year.
Air conditioning cools individual rooms, but the building as a whole does not have air conditioning. Inside, a new building exists, not visible from the street. The building is a masterpiece. The builders constructed Astor Hall completely with marble from Vermont. Marble from Greece makes up the hallways of the library. Our hostess pointed out that you can feel the difference between the marble from Vermont and the marble from Greece in their texture. One of the exhibition rooms is made of Italian marble, as well. The main exhibition room contains the only wooden ceiling in the building, and its bronze doors are modeled after doors found at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Stucco makes up the wooden look the rest of the ceilings possess. The tour guide pointed out small, interesting facts you normally would not think important for a tour. She told us about the areas where drinking fountains were located. The structures of the fountains still exist, but due to lead pipes, the library cut the water supply.
Our hostess pointed out two things, however, that captured my attention above all else. First, the design of the building and its contents interested me. Most specifically, the use of nature and animals throughout the building caught my eye. As you enter the building, two lions greet you. Their names are Patience and Fortitude. Early art critics thought they looked too friendly, but studies later proved their realistic nature. The sculptor of the lions received the job after he made two similar lionesses at nearby Morgan Library. At one time, people decorated Patience and Fortitude for the holidays. For the baseball season, the lions would wear baseball caps, but the decorating stopped when the embellishments began to harm the lion’s marble. Looking up above the columns in Astor Hall, you notice a small Bumblebee carved into the marble ceiling. The light fixtures in Astor Hall follow a beast motif with beast-like creatures carved into the fixtures. On one of the ceilings in the building, a woman, made of leaves from the waste down, looks down at you. In the Rose main reading room, original tables depict serpents, benches show gryphons and New York State’s seal with a beaver, and carved dolphins decorate the wooden walls.
The second thing that won my immediate attention was the McGraw Rotunda room, full of huge paintings depicting different forms of print. A large ceiling painting watches over four other images. One painting shows Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. Another painting shows a monastery where monks copy books. The latter painting depicts two books: a prayer book for the entire monastery and a girdle book, a prayer book for personal use. The Gutenberg Bible appears in another painting, but the artist, Edward Lanning, leaves the most intriguing piece of art in the last of these paintings. The last image on a large scale portrays an old fashion newspaper company in New York City, but if you look closely, you’ll find the artist chose to leave his signature on a small part of this painting. In the bottom right corner, on an image of a small piece of paper left on the ground of the newspaper company, the artist signs his name. The painting also depicts a letter to Phelps Stokes, the man who enabled Lanning to take on the painting job. The letter seems small compared to the large paintings in the room, but once someone points it out, you cannot forget that individual part of the painting.
The small details in such a huge building make the New York Public Library unique. Our tour guide made sure we knew her own personal favorite elements of the building as well as the details that help the library to stand out from all other libraries. I have always appreciated art, and this tour gave me a chance to gain a deeper understanding of it. The building captured my heart. I went in anxious to leave, I left anxious to return.

The Radical Heart of George Macdonald

“Where are ye going?” said a voice with a strong Scotch accent. I stopped and looked…. On one of the rocks sat a very tall man, almost a giant, with a flowing beard….
“I – I don’t quite know,” said I.
“Ye can sit and talk to me, then,” he said, making room for me on the stone.
“I don’t know you, Sir,” said I, taking my seat beside him
“My name is George,” he answered. “George Macdonald.” (Lewis 64-65)

In this passage from The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis depicts a kind, elderly man who invites him to sit, talk, and learn. Lewis’ depiction of this man, old, yet strong and wise, fits the person of the real George Macdonald. In his writings, Macdonald invites the reader to sit down, relax, and learn something. He incorporates real-life lessons with spiritual lessons. Unfortunately, most of his books remain lost or rarely published in the modern world. He found fame during his own life, but his legacy found its realized expression in the works of others. Macdonald’s influence extended to writers such as C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and Mark Twain. Inserting doctrine into his stories made his stories dull at times and kept his name from the fame his fellow writers received in the future, but his writings influenced some of the greatest works we have today.
A 19th century Scottish writer, Macdonald grew up with a Calvinistic background, . He was born on December 10, 1824, the son of a farmer. At only 16 years of age, he attended Aberdeen University, where he studied chemistry and physics. He hoped to go into medicine, but financial problems forced him to leave. Macdonald decided to go into the ministry and attended Highbury College in London for the Congregationalist ministry. In 1850, he became a pastor. Three years later, the leaders of the church he pastored sent him away for radical beliefs. In 1851, he married Louisa Powell. They had eleven children together, but disease killed several of them. Tuberculosis followed Macdonald’s family. He had his first attack in late 1850 and his father died of tuberculosis in the bones.
Unable to return to the ministry, Macdonald found support in writing. He started with poetry, his favorite kind of writing, and in 1855 he published Within and Without. He also wrote short stories, essays, and commentaries. This paved the way to his full-length novels. He covered several genres, but fantasy earned him most of his fame. His first book of this genre, Phantastes, came out in 1958. Queen Victoria gave him a pension of one hundred pounds per year in 1873 and he traveled the United States and a few Canadian locations on a lecture tour during the 1870’s. He spent most of his latter years in Italy, where the warm climate improved his health. Macdonald died in Ashtead, England on September 18, 1905.
Although he never wrote an autobiography, modern audiences can pick out some of Macdonald’s life experiences in several of his books. Alec Forbes of Howglen takes place in northern Scotland and contains many glimpses into Macdonald’s memories of Scotland. Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood is set near the area where Macdonald tried his hand at pasturing a church. Another of Macdonald’s novels, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood presents a happier side of Macdonald’s childhood, and Malcolm or The Fisherman’s Lady, Sir Gibbie, and Thomas Wingfold served as a trilogy in his biography-like books. Writer Michael Philips describes Macdonald’s novel, Robert Falconer, on his website about Macdonald:
The reader gains a rare glimpse into MacDonald's own boyhood, with his internal struggles, his relationship with his grandmother (who largely raised him after the death of his mother) and his spiritual search as a young man attempting to discover God's love amid the hellfire Calvinism of his upbringing. Robert Falconer's resolution of this conflict is a wonderful window into the roots and development of MacDonald's own faith which would turn generations to come toward the Fatherhood of a loving God. (“The Original Writings of George MacDonald”)
Macdonald lived in a time of new ideas. Ideas of English and German Romanticism filled his head. As his views expanded and changed, he became less Calvinist and more Universalist. Victor Shepherd wrote in Fellowship Magazine:
Although the Scots had a reputation for theological precision, MacDonald thought it to be the product of the dissecting knife: fine work done on something lifeless. For doctrine (as he had seen it handled) appeared to have been made a substitute for living faith where the believer's heart is rightly related to the heart of God. (“Heritage”)
Macdonald argued that the Christian life involved more than believing in the right doctrine. One should exhibit their faith through the “fruits of the spirit” and strive to follow Christ’s example. Furthermore, he believed in a more personal relationship with God. God loves everyone and wants to save everyone. Macdonald rejected the idea of predestination and believed that everyone would eventually come to know Christ. In his article, “George Macdonald: Theology,” Mike Partridge summarizes Macdonald’s beliefs:
God is the Father welcoming his prodigal children home not just their creator or judge. Whether we realise [sic] it or not we are all on a road leading back to him. He is our Home. MacDonald believed that people were either responding to God or turning away from him. For MacDonald there was no absolute need for a moment of conversion as traditionally understood. We are all at different stages on the journey - a journey that has its beginning and end in God.
For Macdonald, life was an exploration to find God. You create your own hell when you reject God. Hell is the knowledge that you are separated from God forever. Christ came as God’s revelation to give us a clear vision of God. Once we receive this vision we should “be so overwhelmed by his [God’s] love that all wrongdoing would be immediately set aside. Seeing right was the beginning of acting right” (“George Macdonald: Theology”). God calls us home and wishes us to obey Him with all our hearts.
Macdonald inserted his beliefs in his letters to friends and family. The Heart of George Macdonald, a collection of Macdonald’s works edited and introduced by Rolland Hein, publishes a series of letters Macdonald wrote. In his condolence letters and his letters to ill friends, he emphasized God as father and Heaven as home. In a letter to Andrew Pym, he wrote that God cares for all His creation, particularly humans. He writes:
I want you to think over and over again… that God is just the one haven you have to make for in this storm. Say to him, My Father, I belong to thee, and I am ill, and I cannot help myself; be my Father and keep near me, and do what thou wilt with me. (Hein 9)
When he encouraged friends to think of Heaven as their future home where they would see their loved ones again, he also encouraged faith in the person to whom he wrote. The person should keep faith in God’s love and faith in the reality of Heaven. To Adelaide Pym he wrote a letter that compared the earth to a nursery. God puts us in the nursery, and some of our playmates in the nursery are taken home before others. In his letter to Susan Scott, he wrote:
God knows and cares, and uses for us as a means of education for our hearts and spirits which we do not ourselves understand. It is not needful that we understand the motive power in the processes that go on within us. It is enough to him who believes it that the Lord did rise again, although after that he was hidden from their sight. Yes, I will believe that I shall hold my own in my arms again, their hearts are nearer to mine than ever before. (Hein 10)
One of Macdonald’s last works, Diary of an Old Man’s Soul, details his relationship with God through a collection of short poems, one for every day of the year. On day three of January, he wrote about longing for his Heavenly home:
Sometimes I wake, and lo, I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:
Oh, thou who knowest, save thy child forlorn. (Macdonald 4, Diary of an Old Soul)
Macdonald published a series of sermons as well as a few doctrinal books, but he constantly inserted himself and his beliefs in his other writings, as well. Many of his novels focused on father-and-child relationships. Mary Marston exemplified his views on obedience to God and obedience to parents. In Marston, he specifically writes to young women, encouraging them in their dedication to Christ.
Macdonald’s talent lay with his ability to apply his stories to the lives of his readers. Phillips writes in his introduction to The Fisherman’s Lady, “It is as though he were continually weaving two parallel stories - that of a ‘plot’ and that of the partially submerged spiritual journeys being traveled in a parallel plane by those characters involved in the story” (“Why new edited editions of George MacDonald's books?”). Macdonald added sermons and long speeches into several of his novels. Unfortunately, while this attracted an audience of great thinkers and writers of his time, it kept his books from gaining a permanent popular following. Readers must bear through these elements patiently. Paying careful attention to the contents, even the slow-going contents, often turns up unique and interesting ideas. Macdonald wrote most of his works in Scottish dialect, as well, which makes them hard for the modern reader to understand.
Macdonald experimented with various genres and decided on fantasy. Realism limited the imagination too much, and he believed that fantasy conveyed double meanings better than any other genre. Jesus used parables to get across his messages, and the Bible is full of symbolism, metaphor, and analogy. He could write a story and a message into a fantasy. Fantasy fills a story with symbolism. Macdonald took advantage of this genre, using the symbolism to pass on his religious beliefs.
Even though Macdonald filled his fantasies with unrealistic elements, he made his characters seem real. His characters depicted the average-Joe of his time. These characters appealed to Macdonald’s audience. He wrote two adult fantasy novels, Phantastes: A Fairie Romance for Men and Women and Lilith, and he wrote several children’s fantasy books and stories, including The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel, The Princess and Curdie. Goblin made it to film in 1994 as a cartoon.
One of Macdonald’s better-known short stories was a fantasy. “The Light Princess” first came out with a series of other short stories. They formed stories within a story in Adela Cathcart, a collection similar to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In it, a cluster of travelers gathers for shelter in an inn and share stories with one another. Macdonald later published “Light Princess” in a few other collections as well, including, Dealings with the Fairies, his first book of short stories, and Works of Fancy and Imagination, another collection of various stories he wrote.
The story of “Light Princess” follows a plot similar to Charles Perrault’s “The Beauty of Sleeping Wood” (Sleeping Beauty). A king and queen have a daughter, but forget to invite the king’s sister to the baby’s christening. Macdonald describes the child’s aunt:
[She was] a sour, spiteful creature. The wrinkles of contempt crossed the wrinkles of peevishness, and made her face as full of wrinkles as a pat of butter. If ever a king could be justified in forgetting anybody, this king was justified in forgetting his sister, even at a christening. She looked very odd, too. Her forehead was as large as all the rest of her face, and projected over it like a precipice. When she was angry, her little eyes flashed blue. When she hated anybody, they shone yellow and green. What they looked like when she loved anybody, I do not know; for I never heard of her loving anybody but herself, and I do not think she could have managed that if she had not somehow got used to herself. (Macdonald 6, “The Light Princess”)
The sister casts a spell on the baby princess that takes away her gravity. For the next several years, the princess cannot walk. She can only float. She regains her gravity when she swims in a nearby lake, but loses it again as soon as she leaves the water. Swimming in the lake gives her great joy, and she spends most of her time there.
A side effect of the spell causes her to never cry. She can only laugh. She cannot take things seriously and thinks everything should revolve around her. Her character is immature and selfish. Macdonald narrates, “When she was told, for the sake of experiment, that General Clanrunfort was cut to pieces with all his troops, she laughed; when she heard that the enemy was on his way to besiege her papa's capital, she laughed hugely” (Macdonald 23, “The Light Princess”).
Everything changes one day when she meets a prince looking for a bride. The prince falls in love with her at once, but she rejects his thoughts of love and laughs at him. Still, they swim together in the evenings and the princess’ joy continues to grow. Her aunt, however, cannot rejoice at the princess’ happiness. When she sees how happy the lake makes the princess, the aunt casts a spell to take away all the water of the lake. The king and queen discover that in order for the lake water to return, a man must willingly sacrifice himself for the princess. He must find the hole in the lake and place himself in it like a cork. Once he does this, the water will return and drown him.
The prince decides to volunteer because he loves the princess, but he makes the princess come out with him on a boat to feed him until the water drowns him. As the water covers him and he takes his last breath, the princess screams and jumps in to rescue him. She takes him back to the palace, hoping the doctors can restore him. For the first time, she cries out of sorrow. Her tears bring rain to fill the lake. She regains her gravity and the palace rejoices. The prince revives and marries the princess. They live happily ever after, while the aunt’s caverns under the lake collapse with her in them.
Macdonald’s “Light Princess” can symbolize more than one thing. God sacrificed Jesus for our salvation, just as the prince willingly sacrificed himself for the joy of the princess. The immature and frivolous nature of the princess before she saves the prince represents human nature. As humans, we do not take the time to stop and see the truth found in God’s word. Macdonald believed that we should respond to Christ and rediscover God in nature and in scripture. In “Light Princess,” he also stresses the importance of love in a relationship. Our relationship with God should come from the heart. Love saves the prince and princess just as God’s love saves us. The conflict of “Light Princess” also revolves around life-giving water. The lake water gives life to the princess and her kingdom and, similarly, Christ exists as our living water. Bob Trexler points out in his article, “George MacDonald and the ‘Light Princess,’” the common themes evident in Macdonald’s stories:
All MacDonald's ideas derive from and point toward two central themes: The Fatherhood of God and the obedience of the Son. But in choosing these two themes, it would be necessary to include death as the major subheading under the obedience of the son, for it is clear from MacDonald's writings that our obedience is to be modeled after that of Jesus Christ, who became obedient unto death.
In “Light Princess,” the princess' willingness to risk joining her savior-prince in death illustrates Macdonald's belief that one must die to oneself in order to live unto Christ.
A letter to a man Macdonald once met at an inn confirms the theme Trexler points to. Macdonald states that belief in an idea in the Bible and the understanding and explaining of an idea in the Bible does not confirm your faith. He writes:
It [faith] is to take him as our Lord and Master, obey his words, be prepared to die for him; it is to take on us the yoke his father laid on him and regard the will of God as the one thing worthy of a man’s care and endeavour – as indeed out very life – that, and nothing less than that, is faith in the Son of God. (Hein 6)
Later, in the same letter, Macdonald says that people too often focus on understanding instead of acting. They tell others what to do instead of doing it themselves. Macdonald’s beliefs on faith and salvation resembled the book of James in the Bible. Yes, faith saves, but works, or the fruits of the spirit, accompany true faith. Preaching doctrine does not always save and sometimes deters people from focusing on the Bible as a whole. Thinking in terms of doctrine alone limits God. Macdonald wanted the kind of faith that moves mountains, a faith that acts.
Macdonald’s spiritual themes influenced G.K. Chesterton. In his introduction to the biography written by Macdonald’s son, George Macdonald and His Wife, he cites Macdonald’s book, The Princess and the Goblin, as his favorite George Macdonald book. Chesterton says, “[It] helped me to see things in a certain way from the start; a vision of things which even so real a revolution as a change of religious allegiance has substantially only crowned and confirmed” (“George Macdonald”). Chesterton admires Macdonald’s use of real world issues in a fantasy and enjoys the ability to apply a fantasy story to his own life. In the introduction to Macdonald and His Wife, he notes how Macdonald’s descriptions make him feel as if the plot could take place inside his own home. Chesterton says:
There is something not only imaginative but intimately true about the idea of the goblins being below the house and capable of besieging it from the cellars. When the evil things besieging us do appear, they do not appear outside but inside. (“George Macdonald”)
C.S. Lewis read Macdonald’s novel, Phantastes, as a teenager. It initiated his imagination and inspired him to begin considering Christianity. An atheist at the time, Lewis slowly found himself drawn to Christ’s amazing love and redeeming power. Later in his life, Lewis published George Macdonald: An Anthology, a collection of his favorite Macdonald works along with his own comments showing his appreciation to the author. Like Chesterton, Lewis found inspiration in The Princess and the Goblin. He claimed that of those who inspired him to write The Chronicles of Narnia, Macdonald played a key role. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and Macdonald’s Princess and the Goblin share many common themes. Most noteworthy, both stories appeal to the childlike nature of the average reader. Characters reflect the reader’s desire to become fully childlike and the reader’s inability to gain the perfect childlike attitude.
Exploring Lewis’ and Macdonald’s books in more detail reveals that they both make an effort to distinguish between the childish and the childlike. The childish character starts out selfish, but slowly transforms into the innocent, childlike character. Edmund Pevensie demonstrates this character in Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, part of the Narnia series. Edmund desires power over his brother and sisters and betrays them to the White Witch when she promises to give him power and riches. Subsequently, the witch does not keep her promise, and Aslan, the lion ruler of Narnia, sacrifices himself to save Edmund. Aslan redeems Edmund. Edmund realizes the full truth and accepts it, putting his sins behind him and moving forward.
Macdonald uses this transition in his characters to symbolize redemption. Dr. Don W. King, of the department of English at Montreat College, observes this in Macdonald’s adult fantasy novel, Lilith:
Mr. Vane in Lilith is a striking example. Throughout most of the story he is vain, short-sighted, ego-centric, conceited, stubborn, and over-confident. It is only through his relationship with Mr. Raven (Adam) and after a series of misadventures that almost lead to a catastrophe for the innocent who inhabit Lilith's world that Vane finally comes to see his short-comings; and, in the end, after he gains a childlike attitude toward life, he experiences a kind of inner healing. (“The Childlike in George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis”)
Curdie, in Macdonald’s Princess and the Goblin, gives us another example of the childish character. A worker in the mines, he finds himself forced into an adult mindset at an early age. He becomes friends with Princess Irene and later discovers the plot of the goblins to take over the kingdom. The goblins capture Curdie, but Irene saves him with the help of her mystical grandmother’s invisible thread, which leads her to Curdie’s location. Curdie refuses to believe in the invisible thread and Irene’s grandmother. He remains unconvinced until Irene’s grandmother appears to him and heals a wound the goblins inflicted on him. This reminds us of Thomas’ unbelief in the Bible. He would not believe in Jesus’ resurrection unless Jesus appeared to him.
Similar to Curdie’s unbelief, the brothers and sister of the character, Lucy, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, refuse to believe in a magical world called Narnia that Lucy finds in a wardrobe. In Prince Caspian, another book in the Narnia series, Aslan only appears to Lucy. He tells her which way to go when she and her siblings are lost, but her brothers and sister do not believe her story and decide to go the opposite way of Aslan’s directions. Lucy goes with them and after a long, tiring journey, Aslan appears to her once more. He points out her failure to obey and shows her the right path again. In this, Lewis points out that no one can achieve perfection, but hope still exists. Although Lucy fails to obey Aslan the first time, Aslan continues to appear only to her.
Lucy and Princess Irene represent the childlike character in Lewis’ and Macdonald’s books. With a childlike heart, these characters long for something more than what they have. Dr. King points out, “the child within, our childlike self, enables us to see, even if momentarily, that there is more to life than the physical reality about us” (“The Childlike in George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis.”). Macdonald’s wording becomes playful in The Princess and the Goblin when he describes Irene’s desire for something more. She lives in a great house in the mountains, built on top of the caverns the goblins inhabit. Macdonald narrates:
She [Princess Irene] got very tired, so tired that even her toys could no longer amuse her. You would wonder at that if I had time to describe to you one half of the toys she had. But then, you wouldn't have the toys themselves, and that makes all the difference: you can't get tired of a thing before you have it. It was a picture, though, worth seeing − the princess sitting in the nursery with the sky ceiling over her head, at a great table covered with her toys. If the artist would like to draw this, I should advise him not to meddle with the toys. I am afraid of attempting to describe them, and I think he had better not try to draw them. He had better not. He can do a thousand things I can't, but I don't think he could draw those toys.
Irene’s curiosity and longing for something new leads her up three flights of stairs to several passageways filled with mysterious doors. Eventually, one particular door leads her to the spirit of her grandmother. This contains similarities to the wardrobe door through which Lucy enters the land of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Irene’s grandmother tests her childlike faith, telling her to come back in a week if she still believes that her grandmother is real. She returns and her grandmother rewards her, showing her various mystical items, including the invisible thread that leads Irene to Curdie’s prison.
Lewis and Macdonald often drew ideas from each other, as shown in the similarities between The Chronicles of Narnia and The Princess and the Goblin. The two writers link humility and innocence with a childlike attitude. In this state, a character believes what seems unbelievable. Lewis and Macdonald harken back to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 18:3: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The Heart of George Macdonald contains excerpts from some of Macdonald’s sermons. Macdonald gave more insight to his views on the childlike state in his sermon, “The Child in the Midst.” Referring to Matthew 18, Macdonald said:
[W]hen the child was employed as a manifestation, utterance, and sign of the truth that lay in his childhood, in order that the eyes as well as the ears should be channels to the heart, it was essential – not that the child should be beautiful – that the child should be childlike. (Hein 323-324)
Macdonald said Matthew 18:3 calls us to become humble and discontinue fighting over who will be the greatest in Heaven. He saw that the Calvinist preachers of his own time missed this essential requirement for entering the Kingdom of God.
Lewis describes this in chapter 9 of his book, The Great Divorce, when the character of Macdonald shows to Lewis ghosts that come to the edge of Heaven. Macdonald is the teacher at the edge of heaven. The spirits of Heaven try to convert the ghosts. The ghosts can gain joy if they accept it and put away their sins, but they come to the edge of Heaven only to spit at its gates or to tell others about Hell. Some preach about the sins of other ghosts and the statistics of Hell, ignoring their own sins. Some do not ignore their sins; rather, they think their numerous sins give them authority. One particular ghost longs for his earthly fame. The fact that everyone has equal fame in Heaven appalls him. When he discovers that people do not remember him back on earth, he rushes away to gain back his fame. We also see a reference to the ministers of Macdonald’s time when Macdonald’s character states,
There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some many who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. (Lewis 71)
Macdonald and Lewis spend much of the chapter talking about the nature of Heaven and Hell. This chapter gives more insight to Macdonald’s own views on Hell. According to the character, Macdonald, Hell is a state of mind. Many choose Hell over the joy of Heaven because they cling to their passions and sins. They cling so hard that they become their passions and sins. Even when presented with the chance to gain joy and put away Hell, these people choose Hell. They would rather be master of their own Hell than serve God. On earth they knew the truth and rejected it, and they do the same in the afterlife. As Macdonald tells Lewis in the book, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it” (Lewis 72). It is hard to tell whether Macdonald would believe that the Hell depicted in Lewis’ Divorce should be taken literally or allegorically. Lewis seems to suggest that it is more allegorical: All people have the chance to go to heaven, but they choose Hell when they reject Christ.
It was not through his doctrine alone that Macdonald influenced his peers. Macdonald’s influence expanded with his children. One popular author of the time, Lewis Carol, became good friends with the Macdonald family and would not publish his book, Alice and Wonderland, until Macdonald’s children had read and approved it. Another writer Macdonald became friends with was Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Macdonald’s method of storytelling attracted Clemens. Macdonald’s and Clemens’ diction and style resembled each other. Both drew from their own experiences for inspiration, and both captured the language of their homelands in the dialogues of their texts.
Clemens’ first encounter with Macdonald’s work was Robert Falconer. Reading it with his wife, Olivia, he enjoyed the first half of it, but hated the book as a whole. Thus, Clemens and Macdonald got off to a rough start, but they soon became well acquainted in America when Macdonald went on his lecture tour. Both took interest in a group of freed slaves called the Jubilee Singers. At the time, the Macdonalds lived in England. Clemens eventually visited England, and he and his wife attended one of the Macdonalds’ garden parties, which the Jubilee Singers also attended. By this time, Clemens and Macdonald had become intimate friends. In her article, “Mark Twain & George MacDonald: The Salty and the Sweet,” Kathryn Lindskoog asks, “Is it possible that the two men conceived of a story about a white orphan boy whose friend was a good-hearted black man? Within thirteen years they both happened to write and publish such a story.” Clemens came out with Tom Sawyer soon after Macdonald wrote Thomas Wingfold, Curate. Macdonald’s Sir Gibbie contained similar characters. Lindskoog pointed out in her article,
On May 10, 1880, Mark Twain bought a new book from the J. R. Barlow bookstore in his home city of Hartford, Connecticut: Sir Gibbie, by his British friend George MacDonald. It was in a paperback Seaside Library Edition, and it cost twenty cents. In July, Twain received a bill for the book. On July 5, 1880, he paid the twenty cents. And that long-forgotten twenty-cent purchase may have contributed to Huckleberry Finn. (“Mark Twain & George MacDonald: The Salty and the Sweet”)
Sir Gibbie and Huckleberry Finn share many themes and story elements. Lindskoog continues:
Both Sir Gibbie and Huckleberry Finn explore questions of ethics and truth through the life of an unusually bright and unusually unfortunate boy. Both are set in the colourful [sic] region where the author spent his boyhood. Both were written for children as well as adults. And they have at least twenty plot elements in common. (“Mark Twain & George MacDonald: The Salty and the Sweet”)
Once, Macdonald proposed that Clemens help him write a sequel to Sir Gibbie, but it did not work out. The two authors also exchanged books written by others and by themselves. At the Back of the North Wind, one of Macdonald’s better-known novels, played a special role in Clemens’ home. Twain’s children often convinced him to make up stories about the book’s main character, little Diamond. Scholars have also proposed similarities between Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Macdonald’s Lilith.
Macdonald became a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, who took some inspiration from Macdonald’s fantasies for his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Although Macdonald never got the chance to join Tolkien’s famous group for writers and thinkers known as the “Inklings,” he gathered around him various types of fellow writers. While his beliefs kept him from a typical career in the ministry, they enabled him to preach his message in other ways. He lectured and he wrote. His theology and his writing style attracted readers and inspired great thinkers. Macdonald brought about a new way to write. While many of his peers wrote entirely realistic works, Macdonald maintained a realistic message within a fantasy story. C.S. Lewis took a few cues from Macdonald when he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. Others, such as Samuel Clemens, merely exchanged ideas with him. G.K. Chesterton looked to him as a role model.
Macdonald stood out from the crowd. In his lifetime, he wrote over 50 books. While his books are not as popular as they once were, his ideas live on in the writings of others. As readers sit down with a book by C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton, they are still invited to learn from the old, kind man with a flowing beard.

Works Cited
Chesterton, G K. "George Macdonald." The American Chesterton Society. 1924. 17 Apr. 2007 .
King, Don W. "The Childlike in George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis." Into the Wardrobe: a C.S. Lewis Web Site. Summer 1986. Dept. of English, Montreat C. 16 Apr. 2007 .
Lewis, C S. The Great Divorce. New York: Macmillan, 1976.
Lindskoog, Kathryn. "Mark Twain and George Macdonald: the Salty and the Sweet." The Mark Twain Journal 30 (1992). 17 Apr. 2007 .
Macdonald, George. Diary of an Old Soul. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 3-4.
Macdonald, George. The Heart of George Macdonald. Ed. Rolland Hein. Vancouver, British Columbia: Regent College, 2004.
Macdonald, George. "The Light Princess." The Complete Fairy Tales. Ed. U C. Knoepflmacher. Penguin Group, 1999.
Macdonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. enotes.com. 25 Apr. 2007 .
Partridge, Mike. "George Macdonald: Theology." George Macdonald WWW Page. 2001. 17 Apr. 2007 .
Phillips, Michael. "The Original Writings of George MacDonald." George Macdonald & Michael Phillips. 17 Apr. 2007 .
Phillips, Michael. "Why New Edited Editions of George MacDonald's Books?" George Macdonald & Michael Phillips. 1982. 17 Apr. 2007 .
Shepherd, Victor. "Heritage." Sermons and Writings of Victor Shepherd. Prof. of Systematic and Historical Theology, Tyndale. 18 Apr. 2007 .
Trexler, Bob. "George Macdonald and the "Light Princess"" George Macdonald WWW Page. Mar.-Apr. 1999. 18 Apr. 2007 .

When Difficulty Comes

I still remember how I reacted the first time I was put into a worldly environment. I didn’t exactly embody the Christian attitude. I had a bitter attitude towards everything. It was hard for me to accept the differences in people, and I started to question my faith. It didn’t take me long to get over my feelings once the experience had passed. I thought I had learned my lesson, but I hadn’t. Similar experiences came, always with the same feelings and thoughts of rebellion against God. I wanted to question God; I wanted to know why I was having such a difficult time. I knew something had to change. That’s when I decided to go to France. I came close to rejecting my faith then, but I could never let go no matter how hard I tried.
I had visited France once before and loved it. This time, though, my journey to Montpellier was not so pleasant. On the plane, I sat next to a very nice German man who had plenty of interesting opinions. I was not strong enough in my faith to witness to him, but we did have a few short conversations on government and life in general. He spent the rest of the eight or nine hours of the flight in the bathroom throwing up because he had drunk too much alcohol. Needless to say, he didn’t exactly have the sweet aroma of flowers upon him when he was sitting next to me. Inside I reacted as if a skunk had mysteriously appeared and sprayed the entire plane. This was not much of a difficulty in itself, but it did foreshadow what I would see in many of my fellow students once I got to France.
Bad omens seemed to keep coming my way. When I arrived at the airport, my hostess recognized me right away, but as soon as she identified herself, she started to walk towards the parking lot, not even giving me a chance to get my luggage. Later that week, I came back to the apartment to find I had missed dinner. Another night, my hostess welcomed another woman into the apartment as a tenant who was not even part of the school I attended. One time, she had family over, a daughter, granddaughter, and son. Her granddaughter would not leave me alone; she was annoying, but cute in her own way. The daughter and granddaughter left that night, but the son stayed. I did not exactly feel comfortable wearing pajamas at night when I knew he was there.
I did get my own room, however, and I was grateful for that. My first night I fell asleep right away, but awoke in the middle of the night disturbed by two things. The first was a small rumble coming from my empty stomach. I was so hungry I heard my stomach talking. It seemed to sound off like a pig, “oink, oink, oink, feed me.” The second thing that awoke me was the need to use the restroom. I was rather irritated that no one had awakened me for dinner. Even more irritating was the fact that I did not know where the bathroom was. Here I was, in a very small apartment, and afraid to look for a bathroom! I don’t know why I was afraid. The overall experience I’d had so far made me want to crawl up in a corner and cry. The only thing I could think of to do was call my mom. I spent the entire night on the phone complaining. I held my need to use the restroom for quite some time, but eventually I got up the courage to find out where the bathroom was. As it turned out, French homes have two separate rooms for bathroom uses: one for the toilette and the other for the bathtub, shower, and sink. In the apartment I was in, both rooms had signs on them to tell what they were!
The next morning, I met two other girls who stayed in the room next to mine. Our hostess slept in the living room. They both came from other countries but were in the same student exchange program as me. I thought this odd, but knew they spoke English, so it would not be too strange for them to take classes with me. They showed me the ropes: how to get to school, which was in a large town center much like the markets and squares of Italy. The school was on the fourth floor of an old building. We almost always had to take the stairs. For a plus-sized girl like me this became a difficulty in itself, especially considering my apartment was also four floors up. As soon as I entered the classroom doors, I knew things were not going to be what I had expected. I soon found that these classes were not for beginners. Although I’d taken one year of French, I couldn’t understand a thing because the teachers spoke only in French!
I did make a few friends at first but soon learned how worldly they were. When we started to talk about our worldviews, I didn’t have much to say in my defense. After that, no one really liked me. It didn’t help that I wasn’t willing to visit bars, drink, and smoke with the other kids. Many came from other countries where they used beer and cigarettes at a young age; and all those from America took the opportunity to drink and smoke legally. I was the strange American. Even the woman with whom I stayed pressured me to take part. On top of all this, I became very homesick and got into the habit of crying in bed every night. I called my parents as often as possible, wrote in my journal as a way of venting, and did my Bible study every night.
The various difficulties depressed me, but God found little ways to cheer me. I began to realize the importance of difficulties and the possibilities of what we can make out of them. I met with American missionaries who were very kind to me. Other times I explored the streets of Montpellier and found a sense of independence. God gave me strength to persevere. I was content in those few moments when I could stop to watch a street performer or sing along with a ministering church choir. It was encouraging. I had often thought I would fall away in my faith; that I would somehow lose it and come to believe something else – or nothing. I have doubted my beliefs as much as any other Christian. Having grown up in a Christian home, many would expect me to rebel against what I’ve been taught. Now I was thinking about it again, but something kept me going. No matter what I thought or did, no matter how empty I felt, I couldn’t be separated from God. Romans 8:35, 39 says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The difficulties I’ve faced have brought me to the point where I couldn’t stop believing in God or in His love for me; His love kept me going when I was in France.
When the end of my adventure came, my hostess refused to take me to the airport. I tried to call Dorcas, one of the missionaries, but couldn’t find her phone number. Next, I called the missionary pastor. He gave Dorcas’ number to me, but when I tried to call her, my cell phone ran out of out-going minutes! Throughout my trip I had come to depend on God to get me through the hard times, so I prayed. I was about to go find a pay phone when my cell phone rang. It was Dorcas! The pastor had called her to make sure everything turned out OK. She was happy to take me to the airport that morning. The Lord had prepared my way home.
I felt like I had wasted my parents’ money on my trip. When I came home, my parents inveighed against the program’s curriculum and organization, hoping to get their money back, but they were forced to accept what I had learned as reward enough for their money. I realized that this trip was meant to be. Just as those long stairways and walks about Montpellier exercised my body, the difficulties built up my mind and developed my independence. Most important, my troubles caused me to depend on God instead of on myself and pushed me to do my own research and form my own worldview, to learn more about what I believe so I can defend Christianity.
My faith was challenged, but I took the opportunity to confront difficulty and overcome it. Epicurus said, “The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.” During my trip to France, I grew spiritually, mentally, and physically because of the trials I faced. Difficulty taught me. I was its pupil. I‘m sure many more difficulties will come -- life is full of difficulties. The question is: How will I react when they do come?

Foundations of a Leader

Well, time got away from me again today so I thought I would go ahead and post something a little more interesting (and controversial - I warn you, I am conservative, but this review should not offend anyone). This is also regarding a past event, but is still relevant today.

You never know what to expect when a politician speaks. I didn’t know what to expect when Ralph Nader spoke about his new book, The Seventeen Traditions. I knew that he was a politician and had run for the presidency in 2000 as a third party candidate, but little else. My dad told me he was a liberal. I wondered if a liberal could have a good side. His book looked like it was about traditional values that should be implemented into society, but I didn’t know what values.
“This is the shortest book I’ve ever written,” Nader started at the book discussion, “but it’s long overdue.” Why? It’s overdue because the times are changing for the worse. The rest of his speech detailed why we need to look at foundations to change times for the better. Nader found his foundations in his family life as a child.
“We aren’t seeing enough people rising to leadership,” Nader said. He suggested that the solution may lie in civic education and other basic units of life. He asked, “What generates civic spirit?” His answer: the family unit. “If you ask anyone involved in civic activities how they got started in those activities, they’ll tell you it started with a friend or family member that took them to a speech, rally, protest, or event of some kind.”
Nader talked about what we can gain from the foundations of older generations. He pointed out that not only did people communicate more orally in older days, but they listened to nature and to those around them, whereas today it’s all about virtual reality instead of real sights and sounds.
Nader said that he was disciplined by proverbs, not by shouting. “There was a proverb for every conceivable occasion,” he commented. His parents made sure that their disagreements weren’t shown in front of their children. “When dinner came,” he said, “mother didn’t ask us what we wanted to eat. We weren’t old enough to know what we wanted to eat.” Life was full of hypotheses, logical arguments, and conversation. He was in a continual state of learning that would eventually make him what he is today.
One day he asked his mom if he could have long pants since all the other boys’ mothers let them wear long pants. She replied, “They’ve got their mothers and you’ve got yours. Why are you afraid to be different?” This made him realize that standing out was a good thing.
Another time Nader’s mother asked him if nature was for sale. He knew the answer was no. That got him thinking about all the other things that shouldn’t be for sale, such as democracy, elections, and education.
Nader recalled an example of the shaping of his mind. At school one day, a friend of his looked at a girl and said, “What a pig.” “I thought about it all the way home,” he said. “I wondered why my friend would say such a thing. He seemed a better person when he was younger. It got me thinking about discrimination. Too many jobs today are based on looks instead of personality or qualification.”
Nader concluded, “we all should look back and try to find wisdom and try to find the things that work.” He also asked, “Do you love your country?” If you love your country, he said, you should work harder to make it a better place. Most places of influence were contributed by individual benefactors. Nader said there should be more benefactors in this world. “It’s no soup kitchen charity, it’s institution-building.”
Overall I agree with everything he said. When it comes to education, we need to study the old as well as the new. Part of the reason the newest generation lacks in leadership is that they aren’t observing, reading, and interacting enough. There is a lot more initiative to be taken and a lot more potential to be developed.
A reform of the family is needed. The Village may have its role, but the Family lays the foundation. Our politics may conflict and our practices of family living may differ, but we agree that the American family needs revitalization.
The real entertainment came during the question and answer time, which was heated with arguments that required security intervention. One person shouted that George W. Bush should be imprisoned. Two audience members wouldn’t stop interrupting the people who had put their hands up to ask questions. These protestors demonstrated how their families failed to instill in them respect, manners, and a sense of relevance.
Nader ended by recapping his lecture. He said students need to stop rationalizing their failures. “If others can do it, so can you! Kids need to stop making excuses for themselves!”
Nader is a good speaker, and I believe he has a good heart, too (or at least good foundations), even if he is a liberal.
Works Cited
Nader, Ralph. Discussion of The Seventeen Traditions. Barnes and Nobles. Union Square, New York City. 30 Jan. 2007.

The Art of Interpretation: Die Ägyptische Helena at the Met

Well, I was going to post something on the Christian themes in Nancy Drew today, but time ran out so I've decided to post something I know no one will read and post something else tomorrow. The following is my review on the Metropolitan Opera's production of Die Ägyptische Helena, which is long over. However, if you are an operalover I'm sure you'll enjoy reading it for the sake of future productions of it at the Met as well as for the sake of just getting an idea of what the opera is about.

HGTV airs a show called Designers Challenge in which three designers compete to create the best design for a room in someone’s house. Each designer has a unique interpretation of the room. They all have good designs, but only one can win, only one stands out above the rest. Similarly, if we give one opera to four directors, each person will come up with a unique cast and visual design. Sometimes one interpretation stands out above all others. The Metropolitan Opera’s 2007 production of Richard Strauss’ Die Ägyptische Helena stands as one of those productions. While most productions tend toward a more realistic look, David Fielding, director and designer, decided on a more fantasy-driven look. Rarely performed, this opera requires something special to attract an audience. In Fielding’s production, the surreal sets and extraordinary cast attracts an audience. Once the audience shows up, the story pulls them in further.
Helena follows relationships between two married couples: Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Aithra; and King Menelas of Sparta and Helen. Aithra worries that her husband no longer loves her. Her oracle mussel shell reassures her of Poseidon’s faithfulness and tells her about Menelas and Helen, who are on their way home from Troy. Menelas wants to kill Helen. With her powers, Aithra sinks Menelas’ boat just in time to save Helen from his dagger. Menelas and Helen swim ashore to Aithra’s palace. Aithra gives Menelas a potion that makes him forget his past. Aithra then sends him with his wife to another land where they can live a new life together. She also gives Helen two potions, one that would give Menelas back his full memory and another that would take away the pains of Menelas’ past. The previous owners of the land that Aithra gave to Helen and Menelas end the peace when they appear. First Da-ud attempts to woo Helen with a song, then his father, Altair, tries to take Helen by force. Meanwhile, as the potion begins wearing off and his memories start to return, Menelas mistakes Da-ud for Paris and kills him. Tired of living in an artificial reality, Helen realizes that in order to live a happy life, she will have to give Menelas the potion of forgetfulness continually. She decides to give Menelas the potion of remembrance, confident that only it can save their marriage. He takes the potion and it restores all: Menelas recovers his memories and renews his marriage with Helen.
Fielding creates an interesting contrast between the characters and the sets. The sets match the magical element of the story. Planets and neon colors splatter the canvas and oversized beds, and slanted doors provide a surreal, grandiose atmosphere. When Menelas’ ship sinks, a giant silhouette of a running man with a briefcase appears in front of a background that looks like a raging sea. Later, when Altair and Da-ud emerge from the bathroom, a similar silhouette appears, but in front of a background that looks like a Sahara desert.
On the other hand, the characters wear plain, solid-colored outfits. The men wear business suits and the women wear straight-cut dresses that drag behind on the ground. The solid colors symbolize the identities of the characters wearing them. Aithra’s blue dress represents the sea and her divinity. The landowners wear yellow and orange suits, representing the land. Altair, in the autumn of his life, wears orange and Da-ud, in the sunny disposition of youth, wears yellow. Altair’s orange also symbolizes his aggressiveness when he tries to force himself upon Helen. Other characters wear white and black costumes, symbolizing the potions, Aithra’s oracle mussel shell, and the dagger with which Menelas wants to kill Helen. Another man wears a red suit to symbolize the deaths of characters. The colors also occasionally serve simply to brighten up the stage.
Symbolism, especially the use of colors and colored lighting, permeates the opera. When the owners visit Helen, they bring briefcases with lights inside of them, symbolizing jewels, their gifts to Helen. The shadows of characters tell the same story on the wall and make the characters and their colored costumes stand out. They also symbolize the darkness that follows each of us. Colored lighting emphasizes the colored costumes. The lighting also follows the mood of the events. The stage darkens during serious scenes and brightens during frivolous scenes. The character of Helen shines as a light. Like the lights used to symbolize jewels in the briefcases, her light shines as the ultimate treasure that every man wants to possess.
The story is not always easy to follow, but the abstract sets and costumes and the dissonant music fit an opera that tells the story of a mythical fantasy. The wonderful cast helps as well. Deborah Voigt draws most of the crowds in with her interpretation of Helen. She is not overly pretty. An opera company fired her once because of her obesity, but she later had surgery for it and had lost weight since then. She still qualifies as plump and what draws the audience to her is her voice. Voigt has a round tone to her soprano voice, and while most sopranos’ high notes are painful, her high notes are beautiful and make for easy listening. Her facial expressions and her hand gestures convey her character’s varying emotions.
Despite her pride, Helen will do anything to have her husband’s love again. In typical portrayals of her story (books, movies, and other productions that focus on the Trojan War), Helen loves Paris, but at the beginning of Helena, the story focuses more on who owns Helena. Paris took her, but Menelas won her back in battle and now she is under his dominion again. At the beginning of the opera, Helen’s love for Menelas remains in question because she had allowed Paris to seduce her. She might merely wish to keep her life, or she might submit to her husband as the conquerer. By the end of the opera, however, Helen clearly loves Menelas. Helen has tired of men trying to seduce her, causing her to realize she does love Menelas and does want to fix her marriage. The fact that Menelas loves Helen for who she is, not just for her beauty, convinces her to give him the potion of remembrance. She chooses real love over artificial, even with the risk that Menelas’ murderous fury might return along with his memory.
Although fictional, this story reflects relevant lessons about the human condition, the choices we make, and the values we ought to hold. The libretto, or text, of the opera and the emotions portrayed by the singers bring out these elements. One might not decode all the symbolism, but the attempt remains worth the effort. Overall, having the best singers, unique sets, and a beautiful story, Fielding’s staging stands as a masterpiece and a work of art.

Works Cited
Die ÄGyptische Helena. By Richard Strauss. Dir. David Fielding. The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, NYC. 23 Mar. 2007.
Designer's Challenge. Home and Garden Television. HGTV.

Behind the Diva in Maria Callas

Maria Callas lived the life of an operatic character. Controversy followed her everywhere. There was her temper, there was her relationship with her mother, there was her marriage, affair, and divorce, and there was her voice. To the press and her audience she upheld her confidence, but behind the diva stood a lonely and wounded woman. She was sensitive but ambitious. The lack of love in her life made her bitter. She became notorious for being difficult to work with. She wanted revenge on those who hurt her, but at the same time wanted them back in her life. Her emotions clashed and she incorporated them in her music. “Her genius was that, although she was interpreting, she made her audience feel that she was creating” (Stassinopoulos xiii). The slightest move of her head conveyed an emotion. “She exploded the concept of what beautiful singing means: Is it pretty sounds and pure tones? Or should beauty evolve from text, musical shape, dramatic intent and, especially, emotional truth?” (Tommasini).
Maria’s unique acting made her stand out. Like a magnet, she drew everyone to herself. She could sing badly and everyone would still love her. For a time she could sing almost any part written for the female voice. She took lessons from well-known voice teachers. She had it all, even a jewelry collection that was hand made for her performances. It was all these artificial loves that filled the days of Maria Callas. She worked hard to get to the top. Due to her myopia, she had to memorize the stages. This also forced her to focus on her music and drama more because she could not rely on a conductor. Being a perfectionist, she obsessed over her parts. She would spend several hours practicing just one gesture of the hand. At one performance she tripped and fell, but stood back up and continued the rest of the opera without anyone in the audience noticing she had sprained her ankle.
Much of Callas’ determination came from her mother. Her grandfather was a well-known tenor in Greece. His singing gave her mother, Evangelia (also called Litza), her dream to become an actress. Litza failed to achieve her dreams, but she passed her desires and ambitions to her two daughters, Jackie and Maria. Jackie played the piano and Maria sang.
Maria found acceptance in music. Five years younger and less attractive than her sister, she knew rejection at an early age. Her birth on December 2, 1923, in New York City, was not received joyfully. When they had lived in Greece, Litza and George Kalogeropoulos had a son, Vasily, who died at an early age. Litza expected another boy and mourned the birth of her new daughter. Four days passed before she agreed to nurse Maria. Eventually, the babe was christened Cecilia Sophia Anna Maria Callas. Litza reluctantly took Maria in, but continued to reject her emotionally until the discovery of her voice.
When Litza saw Maria’s gift, everything began to revolve around developing her daughters’ talents. Despite money problems during the Great Depression, she forced George to pay for piano lessons. Receiving little love and much discipline from her mother, Maria pushed herself just as hard as her mother did, hoping to earn more affection.
Family division made life harder for Maria. Litza told the girls their father was betraying the family by cheating on her. Maria, stressed, began to overeat at an early age. Her weight problems would follow her for most of her life.
Maria was a lonely child, left by herself for many hours a day while her sister attended school and her mother suffered her bouts of melancholy…. At school she felt awkward, her eyesight – even with glasses – troubling. She was significantly heavy and shy. She made few friends and never knew in what emotional state she would find her mother upon returning from school. Her greatest joy was to sit quietly and listen to the few records they had on the gramophone (Edwards 12).
During junior high school, Maria played roles in school shows, gaining short periods of popularity. This “crystallized in Maria’s mind the vague notion that singing was the only way out of her despised obscurity” (Stassinopoulos 12). For what her mother had withheld, she had found a lesser substitute.
In 1934, neighbor John Eriksen, a chorus member at the Metropolitan Opera, offered to give Maria free singing lessons. He wanted to help Maria relax her voice and warned Litza that pushing Maria too hard could damage her voice. Litza continued to push her daughter. Maria’s vocal range and power expanded, but, as Eriksen predicted, the extra effort would take its toll on her voice later in life. The rest of her teachers would teach her the right singing techniques, but Maria would still push herself too hard. Her dreams of getting to the top fast would ruin her.
Certain that Maria was a child prodigy worthy of Shirley Temple treatment, Litza dragged Maria to competitions, but no offers came. Litza felt America had nothing in store. Convinced that glory days awaited them in Greece, she packed her bags. Maria, age 13, had just graduated from junior high.
Once in Greece, Litza pushed Maria harder, making her sing for anyone who would listen. Maria hated singing on demand, but all the work paid off when Maria auditioned with Madame Maria Trivella, a teacher at the National Conservatory in Athens. Maria sang the “Habanera” from Bizet’s Carmen, an opera about a gypsy who plays with the emotions of a soldier. “Madame Trivella was stunned… by the young woman’s dramatic delivery of the aria; her seeming ability to understand Carmen’s passion.… The amazing thing was the way she used her eyes, her hands, the stress on certain words and phrases that brought the aria suddenly to life. This was something innate, truly felt, which the majority of hopefuls never achieved but that a great diva must possess” (Edwards 21).
Trivella would teach Maria how to avoid singing from the throat. At the National Conservatory, she studied languages and operatic history. She took the extra work as an opportunity to avoid home, never eating with the family and studying whenever possible. In 1939, at just 15, Maria sang the role of Santuzza, a woman whose lover leaves her, in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana.
With World War II on its way, Maria had to change teachers. Trivella came from Italy, and the Greeks mistrusted all Italians. Maria auditioned at the Athens Conservatory for Elvira de Hidalgo. De Hidalgo did not expect much from her, but her mind quickly changed. “Before starting, Maria turned her face away. Then, as the accompanist played the opening chords, she pivoted, head high, facing front, eyes wide, hands slowly rising from her sides. There was an electric moment in the room when Maria began to sing” (Edwards 30).
De Hidalgo enabled Maria to expand her range and helped her develop the tools of her voice, both dramatic and musical. Their relationship enforced Maria’s habit of categorizing others as good or bad. Litza turned into more of an “evil stepmother” and de Hidalgo turned into a “fairy godmother.” Maria developed most of her habits with de Hidalgo. De Hidalgo “lent her the full scores that she could not afford to buy, and Maria, in order to give them back as soon as possible, would memorize them” (Stassinopoulos 23,24).
In 1941, the Germans took Greece. Years of hardship followed in which Maria’s singing kept her family alive. Soldiers who liked her voice provided food. When the Germans searched her home for fugitives, she started to sing and the soldiers forgot what they were doing in order to listen. During the civil war that followed, Maria would hide with Litza, with little to eat, while rebels besieged Athens. These war years were not all hard times, however. In 1942, she took the place of the leading soprano in Tosca, making her the youngest Tosca in history.
Along with an end to the war years came a renewed resentment towards Litza. Callas hated her mother because she hated living in Greece. One thing was not renewed, however: The Athens Opera, with which Maria had sung during the occupation, would not renew her contract. Maria returned to New York and reunited with her father. She auditioned for many companies, but found no offers. No one had heard of her fame in Greece. In 1946, she found refuge in Eddie Bagarozy and Louise Caselotti. Caselotti gave her singing lessons and became Maria’s agent along with Bagarozy, who wanted to revive the Chicago Opera. They would open with Turandot, a forgotten Puccini opera with an oriental twist on The Taming of the Shrew. Maria played the title role. “At the age of twenty-three she had managed to capture both the imperious coldness and cruelty of the Oriental Princess and the fire and sensuality that are burning underneath” (Stassinopoulos 47). Unfortunately, bankruptcy ended the endeavor.
Maria found her next job with Giovanni Zenatello, who needed a soprano for the title role in La Gioconda at the Verona Festival in Italy. In Verona, Maria met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, her future husband. He had “a manner that conveyed interest, a certain sophistication and an aura of success” (Edwards 69). Maria threw away Bagarozy and Caselotti for Meneghini and soon won the role of Isolde in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde at La Fenice, in Venice. She had a month to learn the part. Maria suddenly found herself booked at opera houses all over Italy. Part of that success came from conductor Tullio Serafin, who conducted Gioconda and many more of her successful operas. Maria later commented that he “taught me, in short, the depth of music” (qtd. in Edwards 72).
The ultimate turning point in her career came when she performed the title role in Norma, in Florence. The role required a wide vocal range and demanded much from the leading soprano. In this kind of a role, Maria was invincible. “Maria was the first coloratura [lyric soprano of high range]… to sing the high notes dramatically, not merely as ornamentation, nor to display her ability to sound like a trilling bird, but to stress the meaning of the words that landed on those notes and so integrate them into the dramatic line of the story” (Edwards 85).
While playing Brunnhilde in Wagner’s Die Walkure, Maria was asked to replace the soprano who played Elvira in Verdi’s I Puritani. She alternated between the two operas, practicing Puritani during the day and performing Walkure in the evening, switching from one character to another in just moments.
As her career improved, Maria became depressed. She wanted Meneghini to propose. He always accompanied her, but nothing more. Her wish came true and they married on April 21, 1949. Maria would later say in an interview with Hy Gardner, “It was as though God sent him to me, because I was very alone and he really was always with me since then and was everything to me.” Although Meneghini dined and wined Maria, he used her money to do so and gave some of her money to his own family, as well. They were happy, however, and Maria contented herself with the role of housewife. Meneghini at least appeared to love her and was the first to show affection for her as a person.
Meneghini booked Callas internationally, from Naples to Buenos Aires, and worked hard to schedule her in the famous Italian opera houses. She found national approval in Mexico City and had her first solo bow, but Meneghini seldom accompanied her and she missed him. When he playfully suggested that she give up her career, it reminded her of her goals and ambitions and drove her onward. She lost over eighty pounds between 1953 and 1954.
In May of 1953, she performed in Cherubini's Medea, one of her greater roles. In Medea, the title character is a headstrong woman abandoned by her husband. Maria Teresa Filippi Abriani, who sang in the chorus, was amazed by Callas’ singing. When the chorus left the stage, she stood watching, forgetting to leave with the chorus. “I remember when she arrived as Medea,” she said in the documentary Passion Callas. “She’d come down those stairs to that chariot. She’d sing: ‘Io Medea!’ That was something! She looked like a giant.”
Eventually, the New York Metropolitan Opera hired Maria to sing Norma. Things did not go well. TIME magazine published an article beforehand that portrayed her as an ungrateful daughter with a temper. Maria pushed these accusations aside, claiming that she respected her parents and that these things should have been kept private. In fact, on a few occasions, Maria had begged Litza to come to her side for support, but her times with her mother did not last long before she grew tired of Litza again. In Mexico City, she swore never to see her mother again.
New York did not hold much for Maria and exaggerated publicity continued to follow her. “A disagreement… over proposed repertory for 1958-59 ended with the diva's well-publicized ‘firing.’ Callas did not return to the Met until 1965, when she sang two Toscas, her final opera performances in the U.S.” (“Lucia di Lammermoor"). In 1958, Callas performed Norma at the Rome Opera House but took sick at the premiere and had to quit after the first act. Meneghini wrote a note of apology for her to read aloud on stage, but she did not read it. The press shouted stories of her diva attitude over a minor cold. Callas commented in her interview with Hy Gardner that she did the first act because she knew she would be criticized if she did not go on, but left when her illness worsened. She said, “I had to make a Callas performance…. Of course, I fight if I have my weapon, my only weapon is my voice – now, if I haven't got my voice, now, it's ridiculous that I fight.”
Maria would not let the critics or the hecklers in the audience ruin her. Jon Vickers recalled one of the performances at La Scala that he sang with her:
[I]t went badly for her. Many in the audience booed. Her next lines were, "Didn't I sacrifice my own mother for you, didn't I sacrifice my own father for you?" And then she turned away from me on the stage, looked straight out into the auditorium, spread open her arms and [sang], "I sacrificed it all, and instead gave everything to you!" You could have heard a pin drop -- the tension was incredible! (qtd. in Whitson)
More conflict was on its way. Once, she refused to do extra performances an opera company added on because she promised a friend she would go to a party. At this party, she met Aristotle Onassis. He wooed her and she gave up everything for him. Maria felt more like a normal person with him and divorced her husband in 1971. Onassis eventually divorced his wife, but not for Maria. He married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the late President John F. Kennedy, for political reasons.
After Onassis left, Maria stopped performing on stage and sang just a few concerts. In 1971, she gave a series of successful master classes at the Juilliard School of Music. Lloyd Schwartz attended one of the classes. He later recalled a lesson he found “most riveting.”
Callas was with a young baritone on Rigoletto's aria "Cortigiani, vil razza dannata" ("Courtiers, you cowardly and damned race"). Rigoletto, the Duke of Mantua's court jester, sings it when he discovers that his daughter has been abducted by the very noblemen he's been ridiculing mercilessly. He can barely contain his anger even as he abjectly begs them to take pity on him. Callas tells the student to sing the notes, but to forget about his voice. "Be like an animal when you sing this aria. This would be my version. I think that this should be a real animal that's trying to dominate himself. He's hating being obliged to beg them. Because it's his own daughter, so he's fiercely savage. . . . You're crying, but you hate the idea, eh?" Then she tears into the aria… with an uncanny mixture of ferocity and almost unbearable pathos…. "Who'd have thought the world's greatest Rigoletto would be a woman?" someone remarked.
Maria still had her fans, but her voice had been declining in quality for years, and she held high standards for herself. If she could not keep those standards, she would not perform. Her mother’s pushing, her own ambitions, and her choice in roles all had taken part in damaging her voice. Many of the superhuman things she did with her voice exceeded the ability of the vocal cords to heal. She ruined her voice by forcing it beyond its natural limits. She might have continued singing at a lesser level (less challenging music and a less challenging schedule), but the disappointments of life and the unwillingness to accept her declining ability destroyed her will. Without will and confidence, she lost the energy to meet the physical demands of the job as well as the energy to go on living life. There was nothing left to live for. Onassis was not there for her, she had left her husband, and her voice was gone. She wanted revenge on Onassis, but at the same time wanted him to come to her side again. Maria thought everyone had forgotten her and spent most of her time listening to old recordings of her voice. On September 16, 1977, at age 53, she died in seclusion, longing for the old times when her career was at its highest.
At the end of her life, Maria thought no one remembered her, but after her death, everyone remembered her. Although her talents established her fame, her story and her passions added fuel to the fire. Over one hundred biographies detail her life, along with several documentaries. The way she performed, the effort she put into everything she did, and the story she left behind made her the nonpareil, setting standards and examples for future singers. Maria’s life not only inspired her to sing, it inspired her singing itself as she used her circumstances to her advantage, drawing muse from her own feelings. Music consumed her life as she labored to conquer the opera world. Her loveless life gave her ambitions, and she accomplished them; but as she lost her dreams of love and emotional security, she lost her self. Her life had operatic twists and turns and a tragic ending, but it lives on as a legend.

Works Cited
Edwards, Anne. Maria Callas: an Intimate Biography. New York: St Martin's P, 2001.
Stassinopoulos, Adrianna. Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend. New York: Ballantine Books, 1981.
Tommasini, Anthony. "Maria Callas: a Voice and a Legend That Still Fascinate." Serendipity. 15 Sept. 1997. New York Times. .
Maria Callas: Passion Callas. Dir. GéRald Caillat. DVD. EMI Classic, 1997.
“Lucia di Lammermoor." Opera News 71.7 (2007): 52-52. Academic Search Premier. 19 February 2007. .
Whitson, James C. "The Callas Legacy. (Cover story)." Opera News 70.4 (2005): 18-24. Academic Search Premier. 19 February 2007. .
Schwartz, Lloyd. "Class Act: EMI Releases Rare Set of Maria Callas At Juilliard." The Phoenix. 1995. The Phoenix Media/Communications Group. .
Callas, Maria. Interview with Hy Gardner. EMI Classics. 26 Feb. 1958. .

Copyright © 2007 Harmonious Glow Writings

Drowned by Memories

J.M. Barrie once said, “God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.” Our childhood memories, particularly, tend to follow us throughout our lives. Whether bad, or good, we cannot help but looking back at times. Every once in a while, memories will bring comfort in times of trouble. Childhood memories tend to be what shape us as we grow older. They make us who we are. Lydia Sigourney said, “In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry or idleness, good or evil.” I have several memories that would illustrate this point.
When I was about three years old, my parents signed me up for a parent-child swimming class at the YMCA. My dad gently held onto me in the water. He was careful to hold on tight; he knew that he held a precious life in his hands. All was going well until he accidentally slipped on the floor of the pool, causing him to drop me for only moment so he could gain his balance. Even though it was for such a short time that I remained underwater, and though I was only three years old at the time, I have remembered this childhood incident to this day. It has affected me in every way possible and led to a part of who I am today.
Ever since that “near death” experience, I have hated swimming. It took my parents a while to get me back in the pool again. Once they did, I was older, and still reluctant to swim. I hated holding my breath and going under water. I took a few lessons, but was the lowest in my class. I distinctly remember crying because I was afraid of just putting my face in the water. My swim class teacher picked me up and held me, face towards the water. I had to put my face in and out of the water and kick my feet at the same time as the instructor walked around the pool. I was afraid of being dropped; I was afraid of drowning.
Since then, I have learned to enjoy swimming at a slow pace. Water aerobics can be a good work out. I often go to the gym for that purpose. I also enjoy swimming on my back, backwards. However, I still will not go underwater without goggles on that cover my eyes and nose. I can swim underwater with those, but am still a terrible swimmer.
The childhood incident of almost drowning has followed me for my entire life. Now, I look back on it and laugh, as I do with many other memories. I often remember tough times I spent with my friends and how they shaped me. I went on vacation with my best friend once. It was the worst vacation ever! I was very selfish, and we did not get along at all. Since then, we have become good friends again and have learned to put up with each other. That fateful summer brings chuckles to me every time I think about it.
I cannot wait to pass these memories on to my own children. My parents have told me so many stories of their past. When I was younger, I would look forward to them as bedtime stories. Some day, I hope to bring this joy to my own children. Rosa Parks said, “Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.” My memories, even bad ones such as almost drowning when I was three years old, have followed me all my life. I have laughed about them, cried about them, and been indifferent about them. It is all the same. I cannot help but reflect on them at times. They have made me who I am. They brought me up. Anne Rice puts it well in saying, “No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

Family Reunion

A Family Gathering

From the moment we start to exist, we belong to a family. Small or large, blood-related or adopted, our family influences much of who we are and what we experience in our lifetime. Before December 2004, much of my family didn’t know me. I had only met a few of my relatives when I was younger. The visit of my great grandmother for Christmas that year brought about the opportunity to meet several new family members.
Knowing how much it would mean to my great grandmother (whom I call Grandma Luellen) to see her brother Ernie and sister Ruth, my mom and dad arranged with my great, great aunt to have dinner with them and to let my grandma stay with them for two days. When the time came, it took us about an hour to drive to their home in Oakley, California. The outside area of their small farm home had a good first impression on me, although it was hard to see because rain clouds darkened the evening sky. There were two houses, one in which my great, great aunt and uncle lived, and the other in which their daughter lived with her family. Once inside my uncle’s house, my mom, dad, and I met the family. There was Grandma Luellen’s brother, Ernie, and his wife, Louise; Grandma Luellen’s sister, Ruth; Ernie’s daughter, Sandy, her husband, Rick, and their daughter, Megan.
At any family gathering, you will find that talking and “chit-chat” is a major pastime. With the snap of a finger, we all found ourselves snacking away while we talked about various things. We got a tour of the house, and soon sat down for dinner, accompanied by more discussion. After a meal similar to Christmas dinner, we all sat down to talk some more.
It was very interesting to hear my great grandma, great, great uncle, and two great, great aunts talk about life during the Depression, but after a while, I got bored. Unfortunately for me, when I get tired or bored, it is very noticeable. Rick seemed to recognize this, and, in a kind effort to cheer me up, he offered to take us on a tour of his house. First, we went to his office where he kept his bird, Sunny. He had Sunny shake hands, and, along with a few other tricks, even had him poop on command for us! He also had a salt water aquarium filled with all sorts of marine life. Rick showed us the rest of his house and let us pet his black, curly-haired dog. As it began to rain again, we trotted our way back to the other house where everyone still chatted.
Even with the excitement of the “party,” there always comes a time to say goodbye. We were leaving great grandma behind. I knew I would miss her. Leaving, no matter how badly you want to go, is always a hard thing to do. We discussed many last minute topics such as my great grandma moving to South Dakota, and getting together again. It was late and raining outside; and after a few final farewells, we left.
Even with the hard, pouring rain, we managed to get home safely, and I went to bed thinking about the wonderful time I had had, hoping to do it again soon. It was a significant change for once, to know some more of my family. Still, I was not as close to any of them as I was to Great Grandma Luellen, but more of these family gatherings would surely change that. It had been a gathering to remember.

The Woman

I was driving downtown the other day when I saw something, or rather someone, that quite surprised me. At first, I thought the woman was just an old, unhealthy smoker, talking to a homeless man sitting on a bus stop bench. Soon, however, I figured her to be much more. She didn't quite look like a woman. When I first saw her I thought she was a man. Her hair was short blonde, colored with a bit of gray and black in it. It was tattered and messes as though she had come out of a tornado. The hair was a tornado itself. Her clothes were basic denim pants, a button up shirt, and a vest. The clothes were baggy and dirty. For a moment I thought I saw a ame tag on her. Perhaps she did come from a care home. After what happened next, it seemed highly possible. It became evident that she was a woman, or at least was trying to be one. She thrust about from place to place. Here a thrust, there a thrust. Every once in a while she would pose, and thrust again. It was like she was trying to be picked up by some sick, perverted person, man or woman. Then, like a snake, she stuck her tongue out. But she did it randomly in the open. There was nothing sneaky about her. She was right out in the open. I thought it obscene, but a touch of compassion reached my worn out heart. I couldn't stop, though. The light had turned green and I had to continue driving with the rest of the traffic. I left the crazed woman behind, but she remained on my mind for days to come.

The Fuel of Sleep, Dreams, and Visions in Macbeth

In the play “Macbeth,” sleep, dreams, and visions are popular elements. Sleep represents peace. When you sleep, you dream. If you do not have that peace with yourself, or your soul fills itself with guilt, you are not going to sleep well. You may even have nightmares. Events also drive dreams and sleep. If you feel guilty, odds are you feel guilt because of something you did or something that happened. In Macbeth, the prophesies are what fuel the plot and lead to ultimate, eternal sleep, peaceful sleep, and disturbed sleep.

Sleep has many meanings. In act two, scene one, Macbeth says that half the world is sleeping, as he gets ready to murder Duncan. In this sense, sleep refers to night, and night refers to darkness and evil. The darkness covers the evil deed because it occurs when most people are sleeping. When someone is sleeping, they become tuned out from what is going on around them. It will be unlikely that they will witness the murder or hear the cries of a victim. This is evidenced by Lady Macbeth’s fear of her guests awaking and finding out the truth in act two scene two. She says, “I am afraid they have awakened, and tis not done: th’ attempt and not the deed confounds us.” Once Duncan is murdered, it is implied that he is in an eternal, peaceful sleep. Because he is dead, he will never wake up; he will never stir and thus will be still and peaceful. Because he died unjustly, and he was a good king, he will sleep peacefully. In act three scene two, Macbeth says, “better to be with the dead, whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.” The way that Macbeth manages to get past the guards is by his wife drugging them. When he goes to commit the murder, they are fast asleep. However, when they wake in the morning, Macbeth kills them too.

After the murder is committed, Macbeth talks to his wife. He tells her that he heard someone say, “Macbeth murders sleep.” In this case, sleep symbolizes rest, feeling good, and having something you deserve, something you have earned by being noble. When Macbeth hears someone say that he will not be able to sleep, it furthers his fears. He knows that his guilt will keep him from having true happiness. Lady Macbeth pushes her husband’s worries away. She refers to an eternal sleep of the dead. She says, “The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures.” This is ironic because she soon finds that she herself cannot sleep because of guilt. In act five scene one, she is seen sleepwalking and talking about things that she meant to hide. She is ill, which keeps her from sleeping peacefully. She also commands to keep a light next to her at all time. This shows her fear of darkness; but she cannot escape it. The evil of the darkness is stuck on her by this time, and it manipulates her mind until she makes her own way to eternal sleep, although not so peaceful. Sleep is represented in natural ways as well. These natural ways are relevant to the eternal peace or rest that comes from sleeping. In act three, scene four, Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth that he lacks the season of all natures, sleep. Among other uses of it, sleep symbolizes ignorance. When you are asleep, you know only lies, but when you wake up, you realize the truth. It takes Macbeth so long to see this, that when he does realize it, it is too late to turn back. As foreshadowed in act three scene six, Malcom is the restorer of peaceful sleep. The Lord says, “That by the help of these – with Him above to ratify the work – we may again give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights.”

Dreams are not as evident in “Macbeth” as sleep. There are no actual dreams that occur in the play, but there are references to nightmares and visions. In act two scene one, Macbeth sees a dagger floating before him. It is clean at first, and then covered with blood. Because it is pointing towards Duncan’s room, Macbeth takes it as a sign directing him towards murdering the king. Later, in act three scene four, he hallucinates, and sees the ghost of Banquo. He knows that he hired the murderers to kill Banquo, and thus fears the ghost. He tries to deny his guilt, but it plays on his mind even further until Macbeth appears to be mad. Later, in act five scene seven, Macduff says that if he does not kill Macbeth, his family will haunt him forever. Such fantasy and magical things are very evident in the play. Witches (1.1), prophesies (1.3), and apparitions (4.1) are all present. Separate from that dreams are only present one time in the play. In act three scene two, Macbeth says, “But let the frame of things disjoint, both the world suffer, ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake me nightly.” He has nightmares and does not sleep well because of his guilt.

Guilt and evil are what draw the line between peaceful and disturbed. Macbeth does not exactly regret what he has done, but knows that what he has done is wrong. Because he, and Lady Macbeth, are unable to be at peace, they cannot sleep or go without hallucinating. The visions of the witches are what led to this, causing the events that follow to happen. Sleep, dreams, and visions symbolize the difference between good and bad. They are used in the plot to create an image of actions resulting in consequences. Because these elements give depth to the plot, and even teach a lesson, they make good, popular pieces to add to the puzzle of “Macbeth.”