Final Blog

First off, I've really enjoyed this class. It has been a class where all the texts we read were wonderful, and left me wanting to read more. At times, I wish I would have done more research on my own and got a more wealth view of the tales and stories that we looked at. I guess, I shouldn't have to worry about missing any opportunities because these opportunities to learn are still available to me. It is sad however that I won't be coming to this class on monday, wednesday, and friday at 2:00 anymore.
I'm also going to miss the wide variety of people that were in the class. It is quite interesting to see how class material can be enhanced by the people that are in the class with you.
I felt that Dr. Sexson did a wonderful job teaching the course. Undoubtedly, he has a passion for the subject matter as well as an extensive range of knowledge surrounding not only children's lit. but English lit. in general. Some of the connections he established were great additions to the understanding and interpretation of the material. It was an overall good experience having him as a professor.
One of my favorite quotes from the semester was the T.S. Eliot quote from the end of his "Four Quartets". "We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time. It seems crazy that when I came into the class I was really doubting the "use" that children's literature could have. Now that I have returned to the wealth of child's stories however, I will hopefully always remember that these stories are told by all of us, heard by all of us, and lived by all of us.

Pullman's Writing

"I write with a ballpoint pen on A4 sized narrow-lined paper. The paper has got to have a grey or blue margin and two holes. I only write on one side, and when I've got to the bottom of the last page, I finish the sentence (or write one more) at the top of the next, so that the paper I look at each morning isn't blank. It's already beaten. That number of pages amounts, in my writing, to about 1100 words."-- Taken from Pullman's website.

I found this little section pretty interesting. One of the most provoking passages is where Pullman notes that, by writing, the paper is "already beaten". I found this notion of the paper as something that requires it to be beater as highly revealing of Pullman's feelings towards his work. I've never really thought that a creative writer would view his/her work as "beating" it. I guess it seems that he should be saying that his writing is like "creating art" or something like that. I guess when I think of writers I don't really consider them to be at odds with the process in which they do their work, but rather in a sort of harmony with it. Perhaps though, Phillip Pullman might say that writing a novel is sort of the same as reading it: it's like a journey in which you will not always be shown the clear and obvious path. Rather, you will need to actually struggle along with it and "beat" the challanges you encounter-- the blank page. The infinite possibility. The time constraints. Everything that makes it hard to write. However, as we have learned in the class, we should trust the tale and not the teller. Maybe then, it is not "the point" to look at the context of how the story was spun, but at the story itself after it's creation.



"I write books that children read. Some clever adults read them too."-- Phillip Pullman

My Daemon

If I had a daemon it would definitely be an owl. First of all, I really like owls. I know that you're not supposed to be able to choose what kind of daemon you want but since we get to, I want an owl. To me, owls symbolize a quiet and unobtrusive movement about the world. Owls are also commonly thought of as creatures of intelligence; i'm not saying that I'm particularly intelligent, but if my owl was smart then that would be all the better for me. I consider myself to be sort of solitary, much like the owl. I absolutely love the nighttime, much like the nocturnal owl. Unlike other predatory creatures, Owls kind of seem to be calm and laid-back. They give off an air of killing only for the aspect of getting food. I also would want my daemon to be able to fly. That would be really nice for seeing and finding things.



Interesting Owl things I didn't know until I looked Owls up on the Web:

*A group of Owls is called a parliament.
*They are found on all regions of the earth except Antarctica, most of Greenland, and some small islands.
*In Hindu Mythology, the barn owl is considered to be vehicle of Goddess Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth) and thus it is considered lucky if an owl resides near your house.
*In many parts of the world, owls have been associated with death and misfortune, likely due to their nocturnal activity and common screeching call.
*The reason that an Owl's flight is practically silent is due to there feathers which are serrated.

"I've read Animal Farm"-- My dream

This may not exactly be a "dream" but it was spurred on by my mind when I was asleep so I figured that it would count.
We were sleeping in the bed and all of the sudden, I began to feel slightly roused by all of my girlfriends animals. They are all making nosies, meowing and whining, because it's 7 in the morning and they haven't eaten yet. Since all the animals were hungry I did the responsible thing... try and wake up my girlfriend to feed them. (note: i'm not REALLY awake, but in that weird half-awake half-asleep state). So I try and wake her up, "Jill. Your animals want breakfast." She just rolls over and doesn't do anything. I try again: "Jill, get up and feed your animals." Nothing. No response. She's still deep in sleep. So finally, I try and rouse her from sleep by saying, "Jill. You better get up and feed your animals. I've read Animal Farm. I know what will happen if you don't." I don't really remember if I said anything after that or not, but she had woken up by that time and told me of it when I woke up about an hour later.
I thought that this story was hilarious. Somewhere amidst all of my information that I've piled up, the sleep managed to draw a parallel between the animals at our bedside whining for breakfast and the story Animal Farm by George Orwell.

6 Impossible Things Before Breakfast...

6 impossible things before breakfast...

1. It is impossible that I will have "free time" where I feel motivated to record music.

2. It is impossible to wake up when my first alarm goes off.

3. It is impossible that I will make my bed.

4. It is impossible that I will have more money than the day before... (except on the 11th!)

5. It is impossible that the ride to MSU from my apartment will not be windy.

6. It is impossible that I will actually eat breakfast.

Proposal Abstract Submitted to NCUR-- sort of has to do with children's lit...

Smear the Queer:
The Cultural Shadows of a Child’s Game


*This is a proposal abstract that I sent to NCUR in order to be considered for their conference.


Famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget suggests, “it is through game playing, that is, through the give and take of negotiating plans, settling disagreements, making and enforcing rules, and keeping and making promises that children come to understand the social rules” (“The Moral Judgment of the Child”). This may be, but how do violent children’s games fit into the understanding of social rules? Carl Jung suggests there is an element of our society called “shadows” which are the aspects of our individual and collective psyches that we do not wish to acknowledge about ourselves. I contend that violent children’s play is a portrayal of those cultural shadows found in our social rules. For a more focused evaluation of the role of violent children games, I will examine the game Smear the Queer; the specific rules of the game will be provided to the audience so as to create a standard by which to focus the reading of the game. Also, I will take the important step of having the audience understand my focus of the word Queer as referring to the broad representation of Other rather than to a difference created by sexuality. By using various schools of thought on difference such as Queer Theory, Gender Studies, and Postcolonialism, I plan to dissect the various roles of the Other and the processes in which they are formed in the game. Upon further understanding of the various parts, I will portray the in-game journey of the “Queer” under the guide of Joseph Campbell’s theory of monomyth to assert how the child’s game is didactic in the ideological formation of the Other. By doing so, I will be able to show hoe this ideological formation manifests itself in the shadow world of cultures social rules.

Adam G. Benson



*I have actually already written most of this paper for my Advanced Comp. class. I'm pretty excited to have submitted a paper to an academic conference. Getting accepted would be a really cool and unique experience. This year, the conference is being held in April in the state of Wisconsin. If I get the opportunity to go, I would have a 15 minute presentation in which to discuss my paper.
It seems like one of the most relative questions for this class is if Children's games are as relevant as children's literature? I would argue that they are as important. We have touched a little on the rhymes that children incorporate into their games and how that is a form of literature.
Piaget's statement of understanding the social rules seems fairly accurate to me; their does seem to be a connection between child's play mimicking the adult world. If this is so, that play helps children understand the adult world's "social rules", could play be one of the losses in innocence that seems indicative of adult-hood? It seems possible, though I would highly doubt that it is the primary vehicle for loss of innocence. I believe that we try too hard to explain the loss of innocence as happening instantaneously. Rather than understand it as a process, we search for ways in which it happens instantly. For example, as people we want. The instantaneous loss of innocence is definitely more literary, but I doubt whether or not it is actually valid. Even the eating of the forbidden fruit was a process; Eve had to be tempted by the snake, which must require some loss of innocence to be able to be tempted in the first place. In my opinion, the loss of innocence is always going to be a process that will be represented in the popular conscious as occuring in a single moment.

*Interesting "loss of innocence" visuals.

Thoughts on Presentations...

I found Kyle's study of lucid dreaming to be very interesting. Part of the reason that I was able to find it so interesting was that I found it could be closely tied to my own topic of mobility in dreams. One of the claims I make in my paper was that dreams are most often "recollected" rather than experienced as if they were present. Kyle's discussion of lucid dreaming really got me thinking if lucid dreams are the sort of answer I was searching for. Could lucid dreams be what I was trying to get at? It seems highly likely. One of the most intriguing things that Kyle said was that usually trying to lucid dream, the dreamer may wake up. Possibly then, what is important is to be able to actively lucid dream without actually waking up. If people commonly wake up right after attempting to lucid dream, it seems possible then that lucid dreaming and actual reality are very closely . One of the terms that come to mind is that of the "twilight state"-- the state of mind that one is in minutes before actually falling asleep. If the lucid dream is an experience closely tied to reality with an emphasis on the dream, then the "twilight state" seems to be an experience that has emphasis placed on reality.
People often find didactic value in these type of states. I would say that many types of meditation are dream-like in a way. Also, in the movements of the 1960's, people took drugs as an attempt to go into a dream-like world in which they would learn the greater truths. It can be surely asserted that dreams and being awake have much in common and that understanding one of these will lead to better understanding of the other.

Final Copy of My Paper!

Becoming and Retaining the “Queen”:
the unique perspective of dreams in the Alice texts




Dreams open an immense portal of imagination and fantasy in the human mind. The subject of dream has fascinated human discussion and been pursued by both academic intellectuals and creative artists in a wide variety of mediums that attempt to “portray” dream and “understand” its functions. However, a problem surrounding the discussion of dreams is that too often they are “recollected” and not transcribed or presented as if the dream was presently occurring. Sigmund Freud states how “we very often have an impression that we have dreamt a great deal all through the night and have forgotten most of what we dreamt. On this view, the dream which we remember when we wake up would only be a fragmentary remnant of the total dream-work: and this, if we could recollect it in its entirety, might well be as extensive as the dream-thoughts” (Freud, Sigmund. “The Dream-Work”). Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, perhaps two of the most memorable dream-based texts , display the dreams of Alice in this rare form. The understanding of the dreams of Alice as being “entire” provides the reader a rare opportunity to view the dream from this perspective.
One of the key characteristics of this “entire” dream is how it is framed in the present. Instead of being in the more common form of dream “recollection” which is past-based, the dreams of Alice are laid out for the reader in a linear fashion; this gives the reader the ability to experience the dream along with Alice. In the recollected dream, which is the way we often think of dreams, the listener is passive; the listener does not attach the story to himself or herself. However, in the present-based dreams of Alice, the observer of the dream has an active role. This allows the reader to view the dream as an experience that they’re involved with rather than the retelling of a story to them. By becoming involved in the story the person is able to have a sense of “ownership” of the story. The story becomes engrained as part of the “self”. This “ownership” of dreams is a similar to the idea with which people attach history, religion, and other myths to themselves.
The similarity in all of these is the way in which people cast themselves and their interests into the stories. Often times, an observer of history or religion will note that this is the history of his/her people, or that by understanding the certain dictates of a religion they will live a better life. The observers of these types of myths will contend that they play a role in the formation of their future life whether it is through the understanding of history or religion. Yet, the notion of “my dream”, the acknowledgment of attachment, does not seem to be as prevalent in the mind of contemporary humanity as these other similar sorts of myths; the dream seems to have been demoted to a realm of “fantasy”, with a conception that the dream was not a part of them, but rather something imposed upon them. This view of an experience of a dream leads the dreamer to categorize it as being “untrue” due to its fantastical nature. With this view of the dream as “untrue” the dreamer also becomes persuaded that the dream is useless and cannot be used to help them understand their “future self” in the same way that other myths like history or religion can.
In the chapter “Advice from a Caterpillar”, Alice finds herself in a conversation with the philosophical hookah-smoking caterpillar. The caterpillar asks Alice “who are you?” to which she replies “I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then” (Carroll). Alice is acknowledging that she has changed since her departure from her normal world and her arrival in Wonderland. Although she states that she knew the state of her “self” in the morning, she now understands that she has changed, but appears at a loss of an exact answer to who she is—the loss of understanding of “self”. One of the reasons for this loss of understanding of the “self” could be because of her adventures thus far, which had shaped her “self” but without her having noticed. Upon further reflection, she would discover that the events in Wonderland had changed her and that she was becoming an entirely different person altogether.
The loss of “self” seems to be countered by an aspect of learning. By looking at Through the Looking Glass, it seems that much didactic value is to be found in the realm of dreams. Alice reveals her desire to move forward on the chessboard when she states how much she wishes that she “was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, at best” (Carroll). Not only does this seem to be hinting at becoming a Queen, but also it actually portrays Alice as desiring to become a Queen; she has set a goal for herself to attain and only through the process of working towards that goal can she find it reachable.
In a game of chess, the Pawn can only move forward and has a goal of trying to reach the end of the board and gain the status of a Queen. The idea of moving across the board suggests that this process is reminiscent of the learning process. By becoming the Queen, the former Pawn is then able to move back and forth across the board with ease. The Queen then, with her ability to navigate the board fully, could be seen to represent the application of knowledge. The only reason the Queen can move anywhere on the board is the Queen, while under the status of Pawn, has been there before. As learners, we can only successfully apply knowledge that we had learned of prior to its application. By moving across each square, the Pawn has gained “experience” in the journey of moving from one end of the board to the other. By moving across each square, Alice seems to be learning, for her movement is not aimless—it is directed forward, in a “progressive” manner that will lead her closer to the status of Queen. This progressive nature of movement suggests that the shift from Pawn to Queen does not only occur on the move from square 7 to square 8 but that the shift occurs during the movement over all the squares; the movement from square 1 all the way to square 7 is just as important as the final move. By “being closer” at square 4 than at square 3 can be understood to mean that the Pawn is different on square 4 than on square 3. As each move “gets closer” to Queen status the Pawn becomes more “Queen-like”.
The didacticism of dreams seems to be common to the theory of monomyth, which argues that all human journey consists of the three parts: Separation, Initiation, and Return. These three parts of journey are easily identified in the Alice texts. Separation occurs when Alice falls down the rabbit hole and when she enters the looking glass. When she goes through these “portals” she is removed from her world and placed into a new one that is unfamiliar to her, meaning new possibilities. Initiation occurs upon her exploration of the new world. Return occurs when Alice awakes from her dream, thus leaving the world to which she was transported, and returning to the one she left in the first place. The purpose of the journey is to learn. Upon Separation, the adventurer is removed from their world and placed into a new world, open to new possibilities for learning; the portals lead not only to a new physical world, but a new educational world as well. Initiation occurs in the immersion of the adventurer in that world. Having entered this new educational world, the adventurer will be able to go through many different “experiences” that come along with being immersed in a foreign place. Upon Return, the person who has undergone Separation and Initiation will be able to use the “experience” gained during those stages to apply it in future actions and decisions that come with the Return.
Is her journey really different than the one that we make each night? We subject to Separation when we fall asleep, Initiation while we dream, and Return when we wake. What then is our objective? Our task seems to become the Queen (during Initiation) and retain our ability to move freely across the board (upon Return). We are to do this by becoming active dreamers— by being able to recall dreams in their entirety and understand them in relation to our lives, not only through the lenses of past and present, but also of future. Perhaps this task is too difficult. Perhaps one may say it is an unattainable goal. But why is this so? We have seen it done with the Alice texts. Alice dreams become “real” and “true” through the daydreams of Lewis Carroll. If Lewis Carroll, who is not so unlike us, can dream actively then why would we view this as something unattainable? . It could be that we need to act more like the song and row our boats gently down the stream—with great care, caution, and attention. Lewis Carroll knows that life is dream-like. He concludes Through the Looking Glass with the line “Life, what is it but a dream?” (Carroll). Why do we not understand this? How often have we sung “life is but a dream” to ourselves and to others without questioning those infamous lines of wisdom? When we are able to view our dreams from a “present” perspective and understand our dreams as an active experience, we will be like Eve eating of the tree of knowledge, like Lyra with the Aliethiometer who remembers what was forgotten, and like the child who has just discovered the letter “A”.
T.S. Eliot writes in the last of the Four Quartets that “we shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring we will be able to arrive at the place we left and know it for the first time” (Eliot). In the morning, during our waking, we should view the world with the new perspective allowed to us by the new outlook of our dreams. We should view waking as the return from a long journey in which our minds were illuminated by the new sights, feelings, and experiences gained during the course of our journey. Like what Dorothy discovers in Oz, the only way for her to understand “there’s no place like home” was to leave Kansas and go to the dream-like land. Likewise, a necessary way to discover what our lives are made of is to fall asleep and dream and discover what our dreams are made of.



Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Ann Arbor: Borders Group, Inc. 2007
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. pg. 39.
Freud, Sigmund. “Creative Writers and Daydreaming.” The Critical Tradition. 3rd ed.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007
Freud, Sigmund. “The Dream-Work.” The Critical Tradition. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martins, 2007