Summary:

Today, we continued our discussion of Hedda Gabler by trying to characterize Hedda as a hero, coward, or villian. We said that she was a coward because she was afraid of what others thought of her and because she took the easy way out by killing herself. We decided that she was also villainous, by considering how she displayed traits that showed her manipulation of others, her tendency to instigate (including going so far as persuading Lovborg to drink again), and her general sabotage of others in the story. However, despite the negative characteristics Hedda was reknowned for, we also decided that she did display a few heroic traits. These being that she used metis successfully to manipulate others and when she kills herself, she is ultimately protesting society’s view on a woman's role in that time period, for she does not do the normal thing which women are supposed to do within the society she is living in.

Following our discussions on Hedda, we then discussed the question "Do heroes do what they're supposed to do?" Some examples of heroes who do not do what they are supposed to do are Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther, the American revolutionaries, and Robin Hood. We determined that these people are heroes because they resist or rebuke society in order to further their causes, ultimately preforming the heroic task. On the other hand, we also discussed various examples of heroes who actually do what they are supposed to according to society, but they are deemed heroes because the tasks that are required of them are often difficult and dangerous, however these heroes persevere in order to overcome these obstacles.  Some examples we chose were the Army, firefighters, missionaries, Rama, and Jesus.

Word Count - 291

Passages:

1) "I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past." 

(Explanation 1)  Before Yu Tsun gets to Albert's, and has the swarming sensation there, he realizes that he has to pretend that he has already committed the awful deed of murder and that he is living in the future already.  

2) "We descendants of Ts'ui Pen,' I replied, 'continue to curse that monk.  Their publication was senseless.  The book is an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts.  I examined it once: in the third chapter the hero dies, in the fourth he is alive."

(Explanation 2)  Yu Tsun and all of the other descendants of Ts'ui Pen all wish that Pen's book was never published for they believe that it does not make any sense because it is a never ending story.

3) "Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite.  I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one.  A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely.  I remembered too that night which is at the middle of the Thousand and One Nights when Scheherazade (through a magical oversight of the copyist) begins to relate word for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing the word for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing the risk of coming once again to the night when she must repeat it, and thus on to infinity.  I imagined as well a Platonic, hereditary work, transmitted from father to son, in which each new individual adds a chapter or corrects with pious care the pages of his elders."

(Explanation 3)  It was said that Albert was the first to establish that Ts'ui Pen's book was the same thing as his famed labyrinth, for the book was ultimately a maze that went on to infinity.  This passage that Albert says Yu Tsun, are his ideas on how a book can legitimately be infinitely long.

Terms: 

We didn't discuss a lot of new terms this class, however we did discuss what we typically thought of when we are looking at books in the detective section of a bookstore or library.

Detective Story:

Starts with a Mystery- reader is then presented with Clues-that lead up to a big Reveal