253 - Hyperfiction

After reading 'Weaving Textual Webs' and '253'

We can see the novel 253 creatively disrupts textual linearity, being an instance of hypertextuality. By gaining  access to the different links, we get an insight into the lives and thoughts of each passenger in the seven carriages. As one link leads to the others, we can see the story of one passenger is somehow related to another, their lives being interrelated.

What is amazing about this kind of fiction is that the reader has the freedom to decide what to read next (which link to click on), thus unfolding a different plot each time, and weaving a web of intertextual parallels. We as readers feel excited to see a new world of meanings being created. The decision taken will influence the development, and we can decide when to put end to the narrative.

As regards the questions posed at the end of the article, answering to question 1, I feel that to read an inconclusive work is a really thrilling experience, as the reader feels intrigued as to which of the countless endings they will come across. Finding the same lexia again and again can lead the author to consider it in a new way each time, as the same choice of words can convey a wide variety of meanings in the same context.

About question number 3, I don't think hyperfiction really challenges our concept of narrative but, even if textual linearity is disrupted, we can reconstuct some form of narrative line, as there will always be a start with a setting, a conflict and some resolution.

For question number 4, hyperfiction can be very innovative in the pedagogical field in the sense that, when making Ss predict, teachers can be aware pupils are more likely to read a plot that matches their expectations, as they can go thought the same 'hypernovel' more than once in order to unfold a different story each time.

After reading To the Lighthouse...

The character of Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, reminds me a woman I know, a neighbour. She is always giving not asking anything in return, like Mrs Ramsay. She does this especially with her husband, son and daughter. But also, she is always ready to help any person she knows. She gives more importance to her family than to herself.

She is also in control of her family and home because she is the one who takes decisions and try to make life easier for the ones who live with her. 

After reading TTL

"It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on". (V. Woolf, TTL)

I have chosen this quotation because in many occasions I've felt exactly this way.

Mourning in To The Lighthouse

In 2011, Laura Filiputti wrote this post in connection with the topic

I was just re reading chapter 6 (or 7, depends on the copy) of To the Lighthouse and I remembered we discussed Grief and how the death of Mrs. Ramsay had  affected the Ramsays and Lily.
This is actually a transcript from Grey's Anatomy which has, what I believe to be, a very accurate description of how one feels towards grief and losing someone. I think that the different stages presented here can be traced back to Lily in particular and how she feels towards Mrs. Ramsay's death.
Hope you like it and find it useful!

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, when we're dying or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we all move through five distinct stages of grief. We go into denial because the loss is so unthinkable we can’t imagine it’s true. We become angry with everyone, angry with survivors, angry with ourselves. Then we bargain. We beg. We plead. We offer everything we have, we offer our souls in exchange for just one more day. When the bargaining has failed and the anger is too hard to maintain, we fall into depression, despair, until finally we have to accept that we’ve done everything we can. We let go. We let go and move into acceptance.
The dictionary defines grief as keen mental suffering or
distress over affliction or loss.
Sharp sorrow, painful regret.
As surgeons, as scientists, we're taught to learn from and
rely on books, on definitions, on definitives.
But in life, strict definitions rarely apply.
In life, grief can look like a lot of things that bear little
resemblance to sharp sorrow.
Grief may be a thing we all have in common,
but it looks different on everyone..
It isn't just death we have to grieve, it's life, it's loss,
it's change...
And when we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes,
has to hurt so bad, the thing we gotta try to remember is
that it can turn on a dime...
That's how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can't
breathe. That's how you survive...
By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you
won't feel this way. It won't hurt this much...
Grief comes in it's own time for everyone.
In it's own way...
So the best we can do, best anyone can do, is try
for honesty...
The really crappy thing, the very worst part of grief,
is that you can't control it...
The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it, when
it comes...
And let it go when we can...
The very worst part is that the minute you think you're
past it, it starts all over again...
And always, everytime, it takes your breath away...
There are five stages of grief.
They look different on all of us.
But there are always five...
Denial...
Anger...
Bargaining...
Depression...
Acceptance...

Literature in English 4th Year: Woolf's suicide note

Literature in English 4th Year: Woolf's suicide note

The only surviving recording of V. Woolf's voice

Criticism of the Turn of the Screw by Marcella Holloway

M.H focuses on the following points:

1)  Firstly, she states that there is a close resemblance between Douglas and Miles; she also points out that they are the same person. I agree with her first opinion because both of them have a younger sister who is at home, under the tuition of a governess. Besides, the two are studying away from their home, as boarders. Another similarity is that both returns home in the country, for their summer holidays. Regarding M. Holloway’s second opinion, I don’t think that they are the same person because of the following reasons. In the prologue, we read about Douglas who gathered for the Christmas season with his guests at his country house. One evening he says that he knows about two ghosts that appeared to two children. When the unnamed narrator asks him if such experience had been his own he said: ‘Oh thank God, no’. This means that that he had not gone through such disagreeable experience and had only read about it in a manuscript. Another reason why I believe that Miles is not Douglas is because if we take Miles's death into account, we cannot say that they are the same person.

2)  Secondly, M.H considers that what Douglas read aloud to his guests from the manuscript is the governess’s revelation of her truth for him. Before dying, she had wanted him to learn about her love. I support this point of view. This is because the governess had sent him this manuscript with her experience about ghosts which she had lived through a long time before.

M.H also  talks about the love between Douglas and the governess.Douglas accepts that between him and the governess had existed a strong attraction. But, he says that neither of them talked about it. In the prologue, he tells his guests: ‘neither of us spoke of it’

3)  Thirdly, Holloway also talks about the governess’s love for her employer.In my opinion, it was not real love what she felt for him, it was just a silly infatuation because she had only met him twice when she had her job interviews before working as a governess at Bly.

4)  M.H also claims that the governess loved Miles. I don’t agree with her choice of the word ‘love’. From my point of view, the governess must have felt affection for him as well as responsibility; all this made her rescue the child from what she thought was the possession of Peter Quint’s ghost.

5)   M.H also states that the employer resembles Douglas. I support her opinion. I believe that the employer is like Douglas in three main aspects. On major similarity between them is that they are both single. Another is that they are well-off. They both have a country estate and an apartment in town. They are also similar in the sense that they are both superior to the governess in social status. In my view, marriage would have never taken place because of their different social standing.

6)  Another comment that Marcela makes is about the governess’s sexual repression. I share her opinion with this aspect. I believe that she never had the courage to show her love for him; but by writing the manuscript, she indirectly confessed her love. If she had married Douglas, she would probably have smothered him.

  

Woolf's suicide note

As we are reading to the Lighthouse -a novel by Virginia Woolf-, I wanted to show you just a piece of Virginia Woolf´s suicide letter to Leonard Woolf.