Performance Analysis- Hamlet

Hamlet, Scene 2, Act 2. Second soliloquy. “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”

David Tennant as Hamlet, 2009 RSC made-for-TV production. Director Gregory Doran.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyB4ktn7AIE

Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, 1980 BBC Shakespeare TV series. Director Rodney Bennett.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOsv66930eI

Performance Analysis

Derek Jacobi’s and David Tennant’s respective performances of Hamlet differ in one essential detail. Tennant focuses almost entirely on Hamlet’s madness and is a much more physically active performer than Jacobi. His pacing and raging and thrashing across the stage gives a physical outlet for the emotional turmoil Tennant wants to portray in Hamlet, and his wild movements and increasingly disheveled appearance provide the audience with visual clues as to the character’s disordered state of mind. That said Jacobi’s much quieter performance places the emphasis on Hamlet’s innate cunning and thought processes rather than solely on his gradual emotional disintegration, which serves to make his interpretation of the mad prince more interesting and evocative than Tennant’s admittedly still admirable work. Jacobi is a much more deliberate and conservative performer in this scene than Tennant, and though Tennant’s Hamlet is fun to watch and a strong portrayal of ever-increasing madness, he lacks the steadfast power of Jacobi’s earlier work. Jacobi’s Hamlet is more controlled and meditative, which allows Jacobi to work with Hamlet’s natural melancholy in a more self-aware way as an actor and as the character he is performing.

Jacobi’s Hamlet is more believable as a character who chooses to enact madness in order to pursue his purposes, while Tennant’s version truly appears to be mad or at least crazed enough by circumstances and legitimate emotional disturbances to be on the brink of real madness. There is little room in Tennant’s performance for subtlety and for deliberation about his actions. Once he has decided on staging the play for Claudius, Tennant’s Hamlet bolts from the room to put his ideas into action without further hesitation. Jacobi’s Hamlet is less certain of his course and maintains his doubts, pondering aloud if he can trust what he has seen or heard or if his emotional instability, of which he is aware, has become such a weakness in his character that he can be fooled by what he wants to see. Tennant’s Hamlet speaks the same lines but dismisses the concept of his possible self-delusion as soon as he speaks them while he jumps into action. In Tennant’s performance, Hamlet’s decision comes quickly and without taking seriously the sort of self-doubt and anxiety Jacobi dwells upon. Tennant’s brand of madness, weather real or feigned, permits his Hamlet to make wild actions and to have uncontrolled outbursts of energy and words, but does not allow Tennant to explore Hamlet’s character far beyond his basic desire for revenge. Jacobi’s steadier and more deliberate portrayal gives Jacobi time to take Hamlet up and down the emotional register and really invest every line with motive and thought. This has the effect of not only making his Hamlet easier to follow as his emotions flare and change and as he formulates his plan to reveal Claudius’ treachery, but helps the performance to make more sense of Hamlet’s decision to take revenge.

The actor’s attitudes toward and interactions with the camera, and by extension the audience, also differs quite noticeably. Jacobi maintains much steadier contact with the camera’s gaze which helps to humanize his performance. His Hamlet never strays far from the stationary camera for long before returning to re-establish contact through a close-up shot of his expression. His physical proximity to the camera encourages the viewing audience to pay close attention through his face and words, through which Jacobi does most of his characterization. This is particularly true of his tremendous vocal range which he uses to emphasize Hamlet’s every emotional fluctuation with both nuance and power. Tennant’s interaction with the camera is very different because rather than interacting with the camera, the camera interacts with Tennant. As Tennant moves back and forth and around the rather large, open set, the camera follows close behind him and continually changes angles and speeds to track his erratic movements. This aids in exhibiting Hamlet’s increasing madness and instability, and also makes those moments when Tennant deliberately chooses to turn and interact with the audience all the more shocking with their intensity. It also has the unfortunate side effect of making it difficult to track Tennant’s movements on the expansive, glossy set. This could be at least partially a metaphor for Hamlet’s own confusion and feelings of being alone and unmoored in his own kingdom, but mostly it serves as a distraction as the audience tries to reconcile the limited view on the screen with what glimpses of the set the viewers have been permitted.

Interestingly, both actors use violence toward the camera to break the forth wall at some point in their performances. In fact, Tennant’s performance of the scene opens with a sudden attack on the viewer’s “eye” when he grabs the security camera, through which the audience first views him, and rips it off the wall to throw it across the room. This fit of violent temper isn’t just an attack on the camera; it is an attack on the audience and their intrusion into his private battle with madness and vengeance. At the moment the audience switches from the grayscale vision of the security camera to the full-color gaze of the normal video camera, Tennant’s Hamlet looks the audience in the face and declares “Now I am alone.” The opening line of Hamlet’s soliloquy is made all the more chilling here because Hamlet is indeed not alone on the empty stage. Instead the audience is alone with Hamlet, who Tennant clearly wants to portray as capable of sudden violence toward those he knows are his viewers. Jacobi’s portrayal also features a moment of sudden violence toward his audience, but due to the rest of his performance and his earlier characterization of Hamlet the withheld sword strike halfway through the soliloquy carries a different note. By withholding the strike at the last moment, Jacobi emphasizes that his Hamlet is a man of calculation and thought in addition to being a man of action. While Tennant’s violent temper is chilling and his attack on the camera carries an implicit threat to the audience for the remainder of his time on stage, Jacobi’s calculated control when he pauses in mid-strike serves to remind the audience that this Hamlet is dangerous not only because he is a madman with a weapon, but because he is a madman with enough control to know when and where to deploy the weapon in order to achieve the vengeance he so desperately wants. The line between this Hamlet’s very real madness and his mad play-acting is so blurred that even Jacobi doesn’t seem to know exactly where it lies. If it’s difficult for Jacobi to parse out his character’s growing insanity, then it’s impossible for the viewer to tell if the Hamlet who threatens the audience with the sword or the Hamlet who throws the sword away across the stage is the real prince of Denmark, and that uncertainty is the source of much of the power of Jacobi’s portrayal.

Tennant’s portrayal of Hamlet is by no means a poor one. His capacity to portray mental instability and the breakdown of an intelligent if angry young man is excellent and his interpretation of Hamlet as a violent and unstable person is more than fair. However, it lacks the overall power and appeal that Jacobi manages with his steadier, lower-key performance. Jacobi’s Hamlet displays more self-awareness of his melancholic tendencies and the potential weaknesses they give him, and yet Jacobi manages to turn the self-doubt into a depth of character that still maintains integrity and appeal for the audience. His Hamlet’s sorrow and uncertainty work to enliven the character more than Tennant’s reckless physicality manages. Jacobi offers the audience no frills of rolling on the floor in an emotional outburst or racing back and forth before the camera as he gives voice to his anger and guilt. What Jacobi gives is a deliberately simple though hardly straight-forward portrayal of a depressive prince making a sincere attempt to plan the downfall of his murderous uncle. His stillness and resoluteness in his decision making are laced with sharp-edged bits of melancholy, madness, and self-induced anxiety, and these hard fragments of emotional turmoil make his performance more powerful and memorable than Tennant’s.

Intertexuality and Star Trek: DS9

Intertexuality in Star Trek: Deep Space 9

Star Trek as a franchise belongs to the tradition of those frequently derided, brightly-painted monthly science fiction magazines and their descendants, weekly space opera television shows like Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon. The writers of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, more so than any other Star Trek series, were aware of the pressures of genre and canon on the show and the need to play to the audience to build and sustain success. This was especially true after the writers brought on board characters from earlier series who required careful attention in characterization for the sake of the fans, such as the beloved Lieutenant Worf from The Next Generation, but from the start DS9 catered to its audience of Trekkies, Trekkers, and people who just like sci-fi by providing viewers with “a completely furnished world so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were aspects of the fan’s private sectarian world” (Eco, “Casablanca” 199). From the first episode, “The Emissary”, Deep Space 9 displays a close knowledge of Star Trek history and careful attention to detail that gives each major character a role in the recent history of this future. However, no DS9 episode reaches so far into Star Trek and science fiction history as does “Far Beyond the Stars”, which manages to intertextualize science fictional history from the boom of genre magazines in the postwar period onward to the creation of Star Trek itself while still managing to pay homage to ‘traditional’ science fictional tropes such as time travel in the midst of a metanarrative about science fiction.

“Far Beyond the Stars” features the usual cast members of Deep Space 9, albeit in new guises, “to remind the reader that mediation/representation [as] the name of the game [is], in itself, nothing new” (Delany 223). In this case it is the viewer rather than the reader who comes to realize that who and what is present on the screen is infinitely transmutable into new forms and interpretations and that Star Trek is by its science fictional nature open to altering characters and changing actors in order to have them represent whatever it is the story needs. DS9 in particular is exemplary for reusing actors in a multitude of roles. Actor Jeffrey Combs plays a major villain in the series, but reappears under heavy makeup as a number of other characters not only in DS9 but in other areas of the Star Trek franchise such as The Next Generation and Enterprise. He shows up in “Far Beyond the Stars” playing ‘himself’ as Weyoun in addition to portraying a violent, racist police officer who brutalizes Avery Brooks’ Benny Russell. Other actors double their roles in the episode as well, playing both characters fans recognize from the show and new ones created just for the episode’s story. Doubling the actors’ performances like this brings the viewer’s attention sharply into focus on the narrative and highlights not only the natural intertextuality of the episode’s toying with established Star Trek canon, but also jars the viewer into recognizing that what the viewer is seeing is, after all, a televised science fiction show. Samuel R. Delany calls this textual mediation, and claims that “textuality is mediation per se. To experience textuality for moments as invisible is to confirm mediation’s strength—not to deny it” (221). However, the audience never escapes the text, even when as a reader or viewer the text seems most obvious in its rhetoric of self-referencing, nor are they meant to in works like “Far Beyond the Stars”. The self-references are part of the story and an integral element in building the narrative around the idea of the episode being Star Trek as Star Trek and science fiction as science fiction. The audience at some point will begin to recognize the textual building blocks of the episode, regardless of how many viewings it takes, and at that point the episode transforms from a simplistic space adventure to a more complicated story about space adventures and the people who create them.

To experience textuality as visible likewise confirms the strength of textual mediation by giving the audience a significant amount of room to interpret the episode. According to Umberto Eco, audience members can be divided up into two categories- the first level of readers or viewers simply enjoy the episode as it is written and the second level of audience members who get the jokes and bring into their viewing a background which allows them to put the show in context. Eco does not push the idea that either level is necessarily a ‘superior’ method in which to read a text or watch a movie, though he does explain that “the first-level model reader wants to know what happens, while the second-level model reader wants to know how what happens has been narrated” (Eco, “Intertextual Irony” 223). To become a second-level reader one must have been a first-level reader, perhaps for a long time in order to accumulate the sort of knowledgeable background a text may need for a second-level reading. “Far Beyond the Stars” is no exception. It is perfectly possible to watch the episode as merely a progression of plot- aliens make Captain Benjamin Sisko hallucinate he is an African American science fiction writer in post-WWII New York, and in addition to deciding which reality he belongs to he must come to grips with his responsibilities in the ‘real’ world as a space station captain. Taken this way, the plot is rather campy but still an enjoyable watch, even if the viewer fails to recognize Sisko’s fellow writers as being stand-ins for genre greats like Issac Asimov and Leigh Brackett, not to mention that the characters are played by other members of DS9’s main cast, adding another layer of complication and self-awareness for the alert viewer. Eco’s second-level viewer, however, would bring to the table a working knowledge of the early magazine history of science fiction as well as familiarity with Star Trek canon, especially that of the series in question. In theory, this viewer would notice and understand the show’s many references to the shoddy pay and disrespect given to early magazine writers, and perhaps make the jump to thinking about how genre fiction and those who create it are treated now, especially by more mainstream readers and critics. This reader would perhaps recognize the allusions to Bradbury, Sturgeon, and Heinlein and probably the namedropping of W.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright as well. Perhaps some viewers would even have had direct contact with the works of some of these authors and could delve deeper into the literary heritage this episode has to rifle through so quickly. Though these references have little to do with the main storyline of Sisko’s struggle and are not strictly necessary to a viewer’s first-level interaction with the episode, those viewers who do carry with them this body of knowledge will have a very different experience than those who come to the text empty-handed, looking for straight-forward entertainment that involves green alien women, disruptor blasts and warp-core breaches.

In addition to classifying and defining readers, in discussing the fragmentation that often creates cult hits such as Star Trek Eco defines his own breed of modernized intertextual archetypes which some contemporary writers make use of in order “to indicate a preestablished and frequently reappearing narrative situation, cited or in some ways recycled by innumerable other texts” which “can belong to a rather recent textual tradition” (Eco, “Casablanca” 200). Star Trek is a model example of this complex incorporation of a multitude of literary work, including itself. Star Trek: The Original Series calls on famous works ranging from Hamlet to The Bible in order to legitimize its place in storytelling and literature, and every subsequent series has followed suit. The Next Generation turns to Melville’s Moby Dick to explain Jean-Luc Picard’s obsession with the Borg, and DS9 repeatedly calls on poetry from both World Wars to make a case for universal peace. Meanwhile, Captain Benjamin Sisko can no more escape the shadow of one James T. Kirk than Sisko’s analogue Benny Russell can hope to buck the racial and artistic codes of his day. Both characters played by Avery Brooks invoke a particular ‘new’ archetype here. Sisko retains echoes of those Star Trek captains who have gone before him in the canon, namely Kirk and Picard, and hybridizes Kirk’s swaggering captaincy with Picard’s intellectual leadership into his own blend of rough-and-tumble adventurism and thoughtful humanism. Benny Russell epitomizes the ostracized Sensitive Artiste who suffers grandly for his creative vision in a conservative society that is simply not ready for his groundbreaking masterpiece about race relations in a utopian future. Both characters are meant to “[provoke] in the addressee a sort of intense emotion accompanied by the vague feeling of déjà vu” that hopefully keeps the audience coming back for more adventures of Sisko and his crew (Eco, “Casablanca” 200). In Sisko, audience members are supposed to see both the captain they would want to have and the captain they would want to be, while Benny seems to more closely represent the audience members as they are. He’s the quiet nerdy type who likes stories about extraterrestrials and ray guns, and is trying to make a living through writing science fiction. His character is clearly aimed at garnering sympathy from the literate audience member who is presumably well read in science fiction and perhaps interested in producing more of the fiction he or she finds so intriguing. Any of these representations are also generalizations, all of which play off of stock characters, situations, and concepts that can be found in the best and the worst of not just genre fiction but literary works of all stripes. These intertextual archetypes are not meant to be mythic in scale, but are merely intended to characterize a person or situation the audience will recognize and respond to, presumably due to earlier encounters with similar representations in other works. Every audience member who meets DS9’s Captain Sisko will remember his notorious predecessor due to his ubiquitous presence in contemporary pop culture. Watching Star Trek: The Original Series is not a prerequisite to understanding Sisko as a Star Trek captain when Kirk is so well situated in his own archetypical role as The Captain.

Eco’s idea of intertextual archetypes ties in to his concept of the intertextual frame, which differs from what he calls ‘common frames’ by representing scenes and situations drawn from literary traditions rather than real-life experiences. Naturally, Sisko’s alien-induced hallucination falls more into the science fictional tradition than into what most people would consider reality or realistic fiction. However, it’s not such a strange idea for audience members who are familiar with such science fictional concepts as aliens, time travel, and the role-playing of historical and fictional characters. That isn’t to say that DS9 viewers, even those most thoroughly seeped in Star Trek lore and science fiction history, believe what they are seeing is true or based in some kind of reality outside the text and those texts preceding it. Rather, the episode is tailor made to invoke those earlier literary works, either indirectly by having Sisko ‘time-travel’ to postwar New York or through characters on screen directly referring to H.G. Wells and his science fiction involving time travel. Not only do these invocations amuse and interest viewers who can relate them to their experiences with these earlier texts, but by referencing science fiction’s traditional works the episode actually explains its own plot. The episode’s straight-forward evocation of H.G. Wells is a perfect example of such a draw on literary canon. Even non-readers of science fiction have been exposed to Wells’ socially far-reaching work, either by children’s storybook editions of his more famous tales or through any of the multiple movie adaptations, including several remakes in recent years. Many viewers of DS9, even those who aren’t habitual watchers of science fiction, probably know The War of the Worlds and, here more importantly, The Time Machine. Wells provides the framework to understand one of the trickier parts of the episode’s narrative, that of scientifically improbable time travel, simply by being the H.G. Wells who provided so much literary material for later modern science fiction to build upon. The point viewers are to take home after the episode isn’t that time travel is impossible, it’s that within the tradition of Star Trek and science fiction at large there exists a narrative language that seeks to accomplish and explain the impossible within the texts themselves.

Star Trek comes from a rich background of literary history encompassing a huge range of legitimate speculation and fanciful misapplication of science and reason, and the show itself has used this background to inform its own growth, sometimes even turning to feeding on itself when its storylines demanded it. This maze of self-references and cross-references to other texts have kept fans busy since the show first aired over a quarter of a century ago, and every subsequent series, movie, book or comic adds yet another twist to the labyrinth. Fans have kept the show alive to this day because of their love of Star Trek’s free use of trivia and information. Alternate histories, alternate futures, alternate universes, and holodeck illusions merge with legitimate scientific inquiry and exploration to entertain and inform multi-generational audiences. Episodes such as “Far Beyond the Stars” up the ante on the monster-of-the-week episodes that characterized The Original Series and strive for a more inclusive view not just of overreaching storyline but of the genre as a whole by incorporating the literary traditions that gave rise to the show in the first place. There is no question that Star Trek owes a great deal to the Golden Age science fiction magazines and the writers and editors who built the genre from the basic building blocks of rationalism, modernism, and romanticism, and there’s no doubt that Star Trek has in turn influenced later works of science fiction, not least of all itself. The writers of DS9 would have written a very different show if H.G. Wells, Theodore Sturgeon, and Ray Bradbury had never written science fiction and if Gene Roddenberry had never dreamed of making the world a better place through space exploration. If the goal is to seek out new life, Star Trek has succeeded by giving new life to old and new literary forms alike.

Works Cited

Delany, Samuel R. “Sex, Race, and Science Fiction: The Callaloo Interview.” Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994: 216-229.

Eco, Umberto. “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage.” Travels in Hyperreality. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986: 197-211.

---. “Intertextual Irony and Levels of Reading.” On Literature. Trans. Martin McLaughlin. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 2004: 212-235.

“Far Beyond the Stars.” Star Trek: Deep Space 9.Writ. Ira Stephen Behr and Hans Beimler. Dir. Avery Brooks. Paramount, 1998. DVD.

R.U.R. and the Mechanization of Humanity

Karel Capek, the playwright of R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots (1921), wasn't a scientist like Issac Asimov or Arthur C. Clark, both of whom came along later to redefine and streamline the modern concept of robotics in fact and fiction, but he was still a concerned intellectual living in a changing world. He was the first to coin the term "robot", but his concept of the word differs slightly from what modern audiences associate with it. To Capek, the term merely meant an artificial human, almost a golem from Jewish mythology, created by humans through rapidly growing knowledge of science and technology and destined for a short lifetime of servitude and dismissal. To a modern audience, a robot is an entirely mechanized creation, lacking organic substance and composed entirely of artificial elements. The creation of robots in his play borders on the mystical, the alchemical, and the unknowable, which may have been how the advent of science looked to those people living in the early part of the century. Science was taking humanity to new and frightening places, and the increasing mechanization of the workforce and the rise of military technology in World War I gave the future a grim face. To Capek, the ability to create a life solely through the use of new technology was a terrifying prospect, both for what it meant for humanity's future and for what it would mean to the things which were to be brought to life. Capek feared that humans would become both neglectful tyrants and ineffectual antiques if a new class of inhuman worker drones was to be created, and he was deeply concerned about what it would mean to the everyday human to be replaced by this new class.

Modern robots are mechanical structures formed of inorganic materials and pre-determined programming. Most modern robots cannot perform tasks or learn new skills unless they are programmed with the ability to learn. Most robots are not programmed to do this, or are programmed to learn in a very limited way, and science fiction films and books are full of examples of robots and computers gaining sentience and taking over the world. Capek's robots are organic constructions, supposedly made of the same or similar biological substances as human beings and seemingly lacking in what a computer-age scientist would recognize as programming. To modern eyes, Capek's robots are closer to clones or androids than to mechanical robots, and are really more frightening because of it. Helen, upon her arrival on the island, cannot distinguish the robots from the human workers and scientists who live on the island. He deliberately leaves the process behind the robots' creation vague, letting neither the audience nor the robots themselves know what the source of life really is. Left in ignorance of their origins, the robots have no history, no culture, and no way to find autonomy from human rule. They are forced to obey their human creators and exist in a state of almost feudal serfdom and dependency. Capek did not believe that such a society, where the underclass relied so exclusively on the upper class for protection and procreation and where the upper class relied so heavily on the lower class for consistent productivity and obedience, could function efficiently for long. This is especially true for a society in which the oppressed underclass, in this case a very inhuman and dehumanized underclass, begins to grow a very strong, and very human, desire for autonomy and the right to exercise free will. By claiming the right to enjoy basic human freedoms, Capek's robots move themselves up to be equals with their human creators. In fact, the robots are almost humanity's superior in that they are faster, stronger, and smarter than the average human. However, without the ability to procreate without human ingenuity, the robotic race has little chance of survival. This almost complete dependence on humanity prevents the robots from fully achieving autonomy. Even in the ending scene where the robots Primus and Helen discover love, it is uncertain whether they will manage to find the secret to propagating their species. Capek leaves their fate vague, allowing the pair to journey into the future beyond the play either to die alone in a wilderness devoid of humanoid life or to found a new Garden of Eden for future generations of artificial life.

Though Capek may not have feared the robots themselves, either of his own brand of or the mechanical variety that followed, what he did fear was humanity's reaction to the creation of robots. He believed that the invention of robots would make it far too easy for humans to give up toil and struggle, which have classically given humanity its definition. Human society is not equipped to deal with a majority of humans who have no jobs, no need for work, no jobs at anything approaching a 'lower level' and nothing to do with copious amounts of spare time and energy. These elements have sparked countless labor strikes and protests, and have led to violence against the offending class on many occasions. Robots may make a life of luxury possible by taking the detestable, unwanted jobs no human should condescend to do, but without a severe restructuring of human society those humans who would normally be forced to take those jobs would have nowhere to turn to, no one to help them, and nowhere to place their frustrations except on the class of cheap, efficient, inhuman workers who replaced the more 'deserving' human laborers. The same arguments have a long history of creating violence and hostility toward Irish American immigrants, people of African descent, or in contemporary politics against Mexicans and Mexican American laborers, as well as many other groups around the world. Perhaps Capek was attacking capitalism by highlighting these growing frustrations in the human community. When a business cares more for cutting production costs than for creating a job market for human workers, humans are placed out in the cold so robot laborers can produce more items faster and for less money than the old outdated model of humanity. The robot underclass is just one more victim of human prejudice in this case, one more instance where greed, fear, and resentment come together to spark a war not of ideology or resources but of hatred and desperation.

War may have been another of Capek's concerns. He wrote the play shortly after the end of World War I, where new advances in modern technology were put to use on the battlefield, leading to devastating results for the human combatants and even those people who never saw a killing field. Medical technology had also advanced to a point where soldiers could survive the infections that would usually follow an injury, so they were able to walk, or crawl, off of the battlefield and tell tales of the new horrors of war, tales of machine guns and air raids and miles upon miles of entrenchments, bare fields, and barbed wire with an enemy on the other side. War had reached a new brutality unmatched by the bloodletting of the past, and to Capek and his contemporaries technology was to blame. Capek's robots may look human, but at least initially they really were little more than machines, built with a specific purpose in mind. Among the various reasons why robots could be desired is the possibility of sending the robot to war rather than a human soldier. Not only is a commander assured of obedience, but an artificial soldier would not feel fear, nor pain unless it was the pain warning of injury, nor anxiety about preserving its own life. A robotic soldier is the perfect soldier, and the perfect replacement for the human soldier. However, if that perfection was to be turned on a civilian human populace, the devastation would be incalculable and, of course, perfect. Capek, along with a number of other writers in the early and mid part of the century, feared that humans were creating technology they would not be able to control and would ultimately be the undoing of humanity. By replacing human soldiers with robotic ones, humanity would be saving generations of young men and women from shell-shock, death, and battle scars, but without some element of humanity in the robot warriors, war would become even more horrific and devastating. Even if warfare should avoid conflict with humanity at all, the havoc caused by battle would disrupt daily living for humans. Travel, food distribution, even politics would be affected by the creation of a war that has no need to end. When all of the soldiers can persevere despite conditions that would break down even the heartiest of human warriors, and when the soldiers can be replaced with relatively little difficulty or expense, whatever forces and motives behind the war effort can push on more or less indefinitely. With no human cost, the only issue is acquiring the resources to continue the manufacturing of robot soldiers to throw at the enemy's gates, possibly for the reason of acquiring the resources to create even more soldiers. Such warfare would begin a dangerous cycle of violence that would be exceptionally difficult to break, especially in a world of growing technological capability where the manufacture of these robots would become easier with every successive year.

Capek's concerns did not come to pass in the way he feared they would. Many factories switched to mechanized labor with relatively little violence from disgruntled workers, and human soldiers still fight and die on the frontlines of a dozen different wars every day. Modern robotics has provided humanity with a number of comforts as well as inconveniences, but adaptability to an ever changing environment is merely another part of humanity's ability to survive almost anything, including, mostly, itself and all its clever ideas. Capek's play addresses humanity's attitude toward itself as much as to any burgeoning relationship toward advancing technology. He believed technology, while dangerous in the wrong human hands, would ultimately rely on human goals and ambitions to actually be dangerous. After all, robots must be programmed for their tasks, and if a robot cannot learn how to program another then it is up to a human creator to set forth a robot's tasks and goals. Now the field of robotics has advanced to the point where there are robots building other robots, but there are humans involved in manufacturing every step of the way. Perhaps this isn't quite the future Capek envisioned when he sent Primus and Helen into the unknown in R.U.R., when he foresaw either robots wiping themselves out along with humanity or robots surviving alone after the destruction of the last human. Rather, it is a future where humans and their robotic creations live more or less harmoniously, at least for the time being, and few of Capek's fears have truly come to fruition. Nonetheless, his play still stands as a formidable warning to those who care to think about what human abuses of technology could lead to.

The Crucifixion of Bartley in Riders to the Sea

The final three pages of Synge's Riders to the Sea depict a scene which portrays an uncanny resemblance to a much older work of literature- the Biblical record of the Crucifixion of Christ. Synge achieves this through invoking echoes of the tradition of the Crucifixion in his dialogue, his stage setting, and his selection of prop pieces. Synge does not necessarily push the imagery of the sacrificial ceremony to the audience, but he leaves enough creative space for the director and actor to explore various possibilities of depicting this final scene. Bartley's death and the ceremonies devised to mourn his passing play a vital role in solidifying Christian custom in Maurya's household, and in turn the entire spiritual tradition of Western Ireland.

There are a number of things a director can do in this play to emphasize the visual idea of a crucifixion on stage. Lighting would play an enormous part, as would the positioning of the characters. Certain props could also permit a certain emphasis on the ritual sacrifice of Maurya's youngest son. Lighting permits the director to focus the audience's attention on certain actions or props, such as the approach of the mourners in the final scene or the white boards in the background throughout the play. A low, mellow light with a slowly increasing intensity as they get closer would go a long way in directing the audience to follow the procession's movement. As for the white boards, a steady white spotlight would prevent the boards from fading into the background while still permitting the action around the boards to continue uninterrupted. Staging the characters' movements would also be key, especially during the keening ceremony in the last scene. Ranging the characters, under half light, in a half circle around the drowned Bartley, with the spotlight still emphasizing the white boards in the background, would invoke neoclassical paintings depicting the crucifixion of Christ without requiring much exaggeration in the set itself. By allowing a certain simplicity in the set, the director would find more room to work with the props permitted by the play's stage directions. The red sail, white boards, and forgotten nails all provide creative fodder here. The red sail, besides being a memorable color, acts as a classic shroud and also coordinates with the red skirts of the mourners. Red has the advantage of being associated with blood and violence, which works exceptionally well with the concept of a sacrificial crucifixion. The white boards would, of course, play the stand-in of an actual cross, warranting the constant spotlight. The nails would be a bit trickier to emphasize, since they are never shown on stage. Bringing the audience's attention to these non-existent bits of metal would rely on a certain stress on the dialogue which would depend on the relative acting abilities of the performers.

It may seem that Bartley deviates from the standard Christ mold, as he does not die with any sort of blatant promise to pave a path to safety and security for his family. His death instead appears to leave his mother and sisters stranded in a dangerous world without any sort of protection and without anyone to provide for them. However, Maurya's last, mourning speech gives a few clues into the truth. Instead of bewailing her sudden bereavement, Maurya views the death of her last son as a step toward reuniting her family, emphasizing the connectedness of the Irish family over the isolating experience of living and dying. As she stands over the corpse of her youngest son, Maurya states that her children are "all together this time, and the end is come…Michael has a clean burial…Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely…No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied" (p 67). Though the physical bodies of her children are scattered through the world, in death they have rejoined one another and reinforced the bonds of the family. Bartley's death offers hope, in a way, of an eternal life where the family cannot be separated again. However, until she and her daughters die as well, the family will indeed be separated, which is where her final "we" comes in. Her concern in providing her sons with a proper Christian burial, though purportedly for her sons' sakes, is in actuality simply a way for Maurya and her daughters to come to terms with the loss of Bartley and his brothers. Maurya's love for her family and her belief in the Christian God are closely intertwined, even in the face of overwhelming grief, and through Bartley's death Maurya's family is able to prepare for eternity. Throughout the play, the family is concerned with providing a proper Christian burial to each of the fallen sons in order to ensure that Maurya's family will be guaranteed a place in eternity with the family members who have already died.

Bartley makes for an unusual Christ. The audience is only exposed to him as a living character for a short period of time, so his death relies heavily on cultural familiarity with Christian tradition in order to carry the concept of crucifixion. He never stands before the audience to preach about universal love or proper Christian behavior or even the importance of a decent burial. He merely asks one sister where a bit of rope is and tells the other sister to get a good price for the pig, before he goes off to die at the hands of his ghostly brother. Left to fulfill a role which has been traditionally unusual for women, Maurya is left to teach her daughters and the audience the importance of observing traditions and holding tight to family connections, because to Maurya there is nothing in this world worse than being left alone. Her identity is the group identity, and the idea of undergoing something like death by herself is unbearable. Now she faces the isolation she so fears, and she turns to the traditions of her culture to empower her and her family in their time of need.

Auden and the Politics of Creativity

W.H. Auden's "The Novelist" reads both as an assault on the militarism and conformity of mainstream popular fiction and as a guide to his fellow writers who may be seeking something more from their work than simplistic popularity and shallow gratification. Auden's dismissal of 'hacks' from the ranks of his contemporaries is followed closely by a description of what a writer actually is and what he or she seeks to accomplish, with or without the adoration of either an audience or even the approval of other writers. To Auden, mainstream success does not connote immediate status as a 'real' writer as to him a writer exists to write, even if the book or poem never sees publication. Creation, creativity, and maturing as an artist are far more important to Auden than public recognition and success. "The Novelist" explores Auden's idealism and details his perception of what it truly means to be a worthy, creative writer.

The first two lines of the poem introduce Auden's seemingly negative attitude toward his fellow poets and artists:

Encased in talent like a uniform,

The rank of every poet is well known.

By invoking this regimented, militaristic image of his contemporaries, Auden implies that most poets of his day seem more interested in mass producing acceptable, popularized and 'safe' works than in breaking ranks and exploring unmapped territory. The public that consumes his contemporaries' works has come to expect a certain product from each writer, and now that these writers have discovered these expectations, they pander shamelessly to them in order to maintain popularity. It is interesting that Auden uses the work "rank" to describe the standing of these poets, as the word could have two readings here. In one sense, it indicates that the writers march along in perfect lock-step with one another, producing the same book or poem again and again in a bizarre sort of production line until authorship is irrelevant as the works are inseparable clones of one another. The other reading would imply that as though authorship may be irrelevant, brand-naming of popular authors creates a kind of hierarchy with writers 'ranked' by their popular status and financial success rather than by actual talent and real creativity. As each writer in these ranks is "well-known" to create a certain product, and the product itself is "well-known" for being a certain type of novel or poem, any deviation would frustrate readers and publishers and would ultimately be detrimental to the writer's rank. By sacrificing creativity for marketability, poets deny both themselves and their audience a chance for growth. It would be an unfair and untrue generalization to accuse all of Auden's contemporaries as lacking originality and creativity, but as with every generation of writers there were certainly a fair number of pretentious, derivative hacks and 'popular' writers with little interest in enlarging the literary canon and a great deal of interest in financial gain and public notoriety. Auden's lines would appear to be a shot at these poets, a challenge to take off those encasing, imprisoning uniforms and step out of the tightly regimented lines in order to create something worthwhile. It may also be something of a warning to these poets to get out of the way of those writers who have the will and the talent to break formation.

The next two lines seem to act as a bridge between Auden's stern-faced warning to his declaration on what a poet should be:

They can amaze us like a thunderstorm,

Or die so young, or live for years alone.

Here, Auden precludes the idea that a poet must live a certain way in order to be a poet. He dismisses the concept that in order to write, one needs to be an emotionally sensitive, opium smoking odd-man-out with an overwhelming sense of doom and injustice. This stereotype does nothing to help a poet actually accomplish any noteworthy work, and Auden sees it as little more than a self-harming lie that inhibits creativity and originality. Some writers may find comfort in this cycle of self-creation and self-destruction, but others may find it to be a hindrance which interferes with creative productivity. The idea that every artist must suffer for every piece of his or her art has no hold with Auden and contrasts sharply with his view of how writers behave. What is ultimately important isn't the way a writer behaves or what he or she does when not writing. The only thing that matters is the art the writer produces, and biography and personality are secondary elements in the creation of poetry.

Following this pair of lines is Auden's description of what a poet is, rather than his attack on the popular notion of what it means to be a poet:

They can dash forward like hussars: but he

Must struggle out of his boyish gift and learn

How to be plain and awkward, how to be

One after whom none think it worth to turn.

Auden knows how important it is for a writer to grow through his or her work. Though some might read these lines as reinforcement of the very stereotype of the struggling, agonized artist Auden spent the previous lines shooting down, it is possible to instead see them as both clarifying and expounding on the first two lines of the poem where Auden attacked false poets and writers. Here, Auden contrasts a truer definition of the creative writer against those authors with little sense of art. Auden's ideal poet does not seek adulation for writing his or her works, unlike the fashionable poet with a great deal of nothing to say. Auden would say that a poet would not care if any audience found him or her worth turning to, as popularity is not this poet's goal. Publication and recognition are always welcome to the writer who deserves it, but if achievement alone is the writer's mission than the work will suffer and fail to take root in order to grow into a larger, more complex form. To leave the childish need for attention behind while still remaining accessible to the reader is a worthy though likely difficult goal for any writer, and to complicate that goal still further is Auden's declaration that the writer must also change as he or she matures. To write the same first novel over and over again must be a kind of purgatory for any writer who wishes to accomplish something beyond mediocrity, though it may be a satisfactory existence for a writer with few desires beyond popular acceptance and notoriety.

Auden's final stanzas continue his examination of what it means to write as a creative form of art, but on a more personal level with the writer:

For, to achieve his lightest wish, he must

Become the whole of boredom, subject to

Vulgar complaints of love, among the Just

Be just, among the Filthy filthy too,

And in his own weak person, if he can,

Must suffer dully all the wrongs of Man.

Here Auden dances again with the Romantic stereotype of the poet, and this time the purpose behind the writer and his or her work is called into question. A common belief holds that a writer's job is to explore humanity and enrich the human experience, but this task is far more complex than it may seem on the surface. Every human experience is the human experience, and to express them all has taken lifetimes of work from talented individuals and will continue to do so, as this mission to encompass every human story is an impossible one to finish. Auden surely knows this, yet he recognizes that there may be something to it all the same. However, here he seems to advocate something a little different from the usual frivolity and sentimentality usually associated with the fiction or poetry commonly associated with writing about the all-important 'human experience'. He seems to advocate a kind of normality in the writer's life, going back again to his declaration that a poet or novelist does not necessarily need to feed back into the unhealthy and unproductive cycle of the damaged artist in order to experience the best and the worst offered by the gamut of average human emotions and come out on the other side with something to show for it. In this way he gives permission for the writer to be a normal human being, and for the normal human being to be a writer. There is nothing for a writer to fear in undergoing the everyday trauma of human living, and if the ultimate goal of writing is to portray the human experience, then there is no reason to avoid human life. The writer is and should be no different from other human beings, and this is what makes the writer's work possible in the first place.

Auden's "The Novelist" spans a wide array of topics without ever really leaving one. Altogether, the fourteen lines of "The Novelist" read as a manifesto of what a writer can expect from a creative lifestyle in a modern context. In a world of shallow bestselling lists, print-on-demand vanity presses, and ever-increasing competition from both worthy contemporaries and the ever-present derivative hacks, no imagination, no creativity, is needed to see why poets, novelists, and writers of every other description might struggle with the pressures of creating meaningful work and finding meaning in creation. As a poet and a devoted conversationalist, Auden knows the importance of creativity and expression and knows the impact that being a writer can have on an individual. Over the course of his life, he also saw how that impact could alter his fellow writers, leaving them encased in uniforms of conformity or perhaps outgrowing boyish talents into fully fledged artists. He acted as a mentor and a friend to dozens of writers of many types and interests, most of whom were either already respected or would achieve some status as worthy creators. Some, of course, never made it as household names, but Auden still saw real talent where real talent wrote and certainly wouldn't have held any lack of fame against his cadre of 'true' poets.

Genre and Literature

To start off with, I want to make this clear that this isn't a scholarly essay of any sort- I'm just blathering about something that's been on my mind lately. For the last month or so I've been coming across various blog posts and web pages discussing the differences between 'genre' fiction (science fiction, mysteries, romances, etc.) and 'literary' fiction (a bit of a redundant term meaning anything that isn't sf/f, mystery, etc.) and why the two are for some reason considered to be antithetical to one another.

Now wait just a damn minute.

While I agree with everything Hal Duncan says on his examination on literary fiction (not all that surprising- I tend to agree with him on most things) I can't help but wonder- why isn't anyone else talking about how literary fiction is, by it's very nature of being fiction, a fantastical genre? That's right, I said it- literary fiction is the same basic thing as that oft-derided 'genre' of fantasy fiction.

Why do I make this claim? Well, it's an argument of semantics, really. Fiction is made-up. You can dress is up as 'contemporary' or 'classic literature', you can call it slipstream or urban literature or whatever-the-fuck-else, but at the end you're still left with fiction. Fiction isn't true. Non-fiction is true (don't get me started on that 'creative non-fiction' crap. That's a separate blog post of fussiness) and can be considered to be in the same realm of literature as, well, literary fiction. However, if you're writing non-fiction... and unless you're writing 'creative non-fiction'... you're writing something that's well researched and created in order to inform or incite, and you're presenting it as truth and usually not as entertainment. There are exceptions to this, of course, in the form of gossipy bio-pics and collections of trivia and humorous tales that have no point other than to amuse. But, I'm wandering. My point is that while non-fiction can be just as literary as, say, Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, fiction in general is a sort of fantasy by virtue of being made-up, no matter if it contains dragons and elves or soccer moms and knitting clubs (which is another trend which pisses me off- but again, different topic).

And do you know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The whole swords-and-sorcery connotation associated with the fantasy 'genre' is off-putting to many readers, I know, but at the heart of every novel, regardless of its literary aspirations, there is an echo of the word 'fantasy'. Hal Duncan mentions the suspension of disbelief being vital to reading fantasy (as we know the genre), but I can't help but ponder about all those slightly odd 'contemporary fiction' novels, those classified as 'strange fiction' or slipstream'. Does 'legitimacy' in the more 'literary' fiction depend on being 'predictible' and 'realistic'? Or can we admit that simply by being fiction, even the most literary novel has a little spark of the fantastic at its core?

The Search for Meaning in "American Beauty"

Throughout the film “American Beauty”, the audience watches as the characters argue, fight, cry, and seduce their way through life, seeking to understand what it all means and why sometimes life has to be so difficult. As friends, lovers, and family members, they use one another as scapegoats and as modes of escape to avoid dealing with life- or, perhaps, to deal with life in the only way they know how. Most of the characters are self-obsessed, materialistic, and insecure to the point of neurosis and are completely unable to connect with other people, or really even themselves.

Carolyn Burnham is one of the neediest, most insecure characters in the movie. She spends most of the film trying and failing to find some source of reassurance to offset the isolation she feels. She chants mantras to herself, promising that she will do one thing or she will not do another, though she can’t fool even herself into thinking she has a chance of following through and finding happiness. The only character Carolyn connects with for even a little while is the arrogant Buddy Kane, who winds up abandoning her when her husband discovers their affair. Kane is far more concerned about his professional appearance than his romantic entanglements, and he selfishly leaves Carolyn behind to deal with the mess their affair has created. On the other hand, Lester Burnham, Carolyn’s husband, is not terribly upset about his wife sleeping with another man. He has felt isolated from his unfeeling wife for quite some time, and in fact finds it liberating that Carolyn is no longer trying to bend him to her idea of what a proper family is. He takes his new freedom from his wife’s control and runs with it. He starts smoking pot, working out, and quits his white-collar job to flip burgers, all in order to relive the happiest time of his life- his teens. He then takes the hunt for his lost happiness and youth a step further and seduces (and allows himself to be seduced by) his daughter’s best friend, a terribly insecure ‘beauty’ named Angela. Angela, meanwhile, is using both Lester and his daughter Jane to fuel her own search for herself. She puts up a front of confidence and success, when really she’s a scared little girl who is desperate for a way to feel special and loved. Angela feeds off of Lester’s sexual attention and off of Jane’s ‘plainness’ in order to separate herself from the ‘ordinary’ people she sees every day. The arrival of Jane’s new boyfriend, Ricky, makes this increasingly difficult for her. He calls her out on her behavior, declaring that Angela was never actually Jane’s friend but was really using her to increase her own confidence. Ricky also sees through Angela’s pretentious disguise and says to her face he finds her boring and plain. Ricky is himself an odd character. He toys with the emotions of other characters on several occasions, from egging his father on into two unnecessary physical confrontations to exposing Angela’s cruel method of finding self-assurance. On the other hand, he seems to be the only relatively happy character in the movie. His obsession with filming ordinary and sometimes gruesome things stems not just from a morbid sense of curiosity, but also from a deep-seated appreciation of the beauty that exists in the everyday world. He alone has a sense of self-confidence, and doesn’t feel ‘exposed’ or ‘naked’- even when Jane is filming him when he is very much physically naked.

Ricky is, sadly, the only character in the movie with a perception of his own self-worth. The other characters spend the entire movie flitting from one argument to another as they try desperately to find their calling, their soul mate, or their place in the crazy world they live in. Like families and neighbors often do, these characters have formed tight relationships- or perhaps just loose ones- which enable them to find new ways of learning about themselves and each other in meaningful ways. Even the missteps and missed opportunities offer lessons in how human beings interact with one another and how those interactions change the way people see each other and themselves.

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I wrote this one for a sociology class (Marriage and Family Relationships). Again, I had a two page limit, which I went over by just a tiny bit, once I put in the heading and everything. I'd never seen the movie before, and I've got to say- it's delightfully screwy.

Parallels and Dissimilarities in Babylonian and Biblical Myth

Mythologies from around the world have a surprising number of similarities, from trickster characters to malevolent water demons and from sun gods riding through the skies to creatures ferrying the souls of the dead to the underworld. Two mythologies with obvious, though often ignored, parallels are Babylonian myth and Biblical myth. Though the two have their differences, as evidenced by their disparate creation myths, they have strong correlations with one another in several other major legends, especially through their flood myths and through their God resurrection cycles. These three myths- the creation story, the flood myth, and the resurrection of the God figure- form a trinity of mythological similarity and possible one of continuity, as the Babylonian version of these tales predate Biblical records by approximately a millennium and a half (Gilgamesh 99). Other mythical traditions from across the globe have their own varieties of these three stories, but rarely are the parallels as predominant as they are in the Babylonian and Biblical accounts.

The Creation

The creation story of the Babylonians starts out using very similar language as what would eventually be used in the Biblical version. Sandars’ translation states that “when there was no heaven, no earth, no height, no depth, no name…” the gods existed in an empty void with no humans to worship them, and proposes that the entire story reads more like a hymn than a work of literature or even a fairy tale, with no main character or plot tension (11, 16-17). The tale goes on to describe how the Babylonian gods battled one another to establish dominance over primordial forces- which they also created- and each other. Mostly at this stage, the gods are not concerned with intentionally creating the universe or mankind, but are far more concerned with establishing a sort of hierarchy between themselves and with carving out a niche of influence within the new world they will create. It isn’t until the end of the tale that one of the gods, Marduk, having achieved his victory over the goddess Tiamat, takes her remains and splits her body in half, using one half to create a roof for the sky and one half to make the earth to keep the subterranean waters below. He uses her saliva to make clouds and rain, her ‘poison’ to make fog, and her slit eyes to form the Euphrates and Tigris rivers (McCall 52-59). Having built the world on the body of the defeated goddess, Marduk calls for the creation of followers and worshippers to revere him and his compatriots in their victory. He also wants these followers to do the mundane daily work that is beneath the status of a god or goddess, such as growing crops and herding animals. Of course, these new creations are human beings, formed out of clay by the gods to act as servants (Sproul 114-116). Though a foreign idea to most people living with religious thought today, to the ancient Babylonians the idea of being created for the sole purpose of serving the gods was not only generally accepted by the Babylonian people, but was in fact the principle theology of the day (King 65).
The Biblical myth is very different in many ways. Springing from a monotheistic religion, the Judeo-Christian God did not have other deities to battle against in a primordial war for control. There were certainly other religions, and therefore other gods and goddesses, to contend with on the mortal plain, but as far as the Judeo-Christian tradition went their God was the only God with any real power over the world. Still, the language used to describe the Biblical creation of the world closely parallels the Babylonian tradition. Bierlien’s account of the Genesis story reads “[in] the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the water” (73). This water may possibly be a throwback to the subterranean waters covered by the body of Tiamat, or it may be a reference to the primordial forces that the Judeo-Christian God was meant to rule alone. The reference to water as part of the creative process is not an uncommon one in mythology. Neither is the reference to clay- like Marduk, God creates mankind out of earth, first molding a bit of clay into the form of man then breathing life into the figurine (Gabel 114). Again, earth is a recurring element in creation stories from around the world, and in this case may be a bit of a stand in for the goddess figure- being the only deity in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God has no feminine force to correspond to his masculine principle, and most earth deities are regarded as female in nature. This includes the goddess Marduk killed in order to form the earth.
Though the stories themselves are very different, the presence of these creation myths is a powerful indicator of a universal truth- all complete mythologies have a creation legend. It stems from a worldwide need to explain the origins of humanity and the world itself, which is the strongest correlation between mythologies of any source. Often these stories share common threads, such as the presence of certain elemental or primordial forces influencing the formation of the world. These elemental forces can be men made of earth, rivers made of tears- the most human source of water- or the battle for order and civilization to emerge from chaos and wilderness (Stewart 11, 13). In any instance, the creation story is itself a sign of similarity between cultures which may have never been in contact with one another. In fact, it is a worldwide testament to human curiosity and the need to name and explore the unknown.

The Flood

Unlike the creation story, which varies in its explicit content, the flood stories shared by Babylonian and Biblical tradition have such direct, obvious parallels in the way they are structured and in the events that transpire within the tales that when the first tablets containing the Babylonian flood myth were discovered and then translated in the early years of the last century, interest in comparing the Old Testament story to the ancient Babylonian tale surged (King 58). The Babylonian story can be found today in the epic poem documenting the adventures of the ancient hero Gilgamesh. In one tablet describing his journey though the Underworld in search for a way to achieve immortality, Gilgamesh seeks out his ancestor, Utnapishtim, who received warning from the god Ea that the world would soon be flooded and destroyed due to the capricious whim of the gods. Utnapishtim, with the help of his family and a few friends, built a boat and filled it with all of the known animals of the world, then sought refuge within the boat themselves when the gods sent massive storms to drown the world (Gilgamesh 79-80). The floods were so severe that the gods themselves were frightened- Ishtar, or Inanna, whose complaints had convinced the other gods to allow the flood, was so appalled to see her ‘children’ killed she wept with grief and shame (Bierlein 126). Seven days and nights passed for Utnapishtim and his family in their boat before they came to rest on a mountain peak. Utnapishtim sent out a dove, a swallow, and a raven in succession over the next few days to see if there was enough land for his passengers to leave the boat and begin their lives again. The dove and the swallow came back, signifying that the floods hadn’t abated enough to leave, but the raven never returned and Utnapishtim allowed his family to leave the boat (Gilgamesh 79).
The Biblical story covers much of the same territory. Noah, who alone of the men of his day had ‘found favor’ with God, received warning from his God that a flood was on its way to wipe out the corruption, violence, and evil in mankind. God directs Noah to build an ark and fill it with all the animals in the world, and to take on board his family as well. Like in the Babylonian account, for seven days and nights it rains in a torrential downfall that wipes out all life on land, and when Noah’s ark finally lands it comes to rest on a mountaintop. This time, Noah sends out the raven first. The bird does not return, not because it found land but because it flies back and forth across the sky until eventually the land dried enough for the bird to find a roost. Noah then sends out a dove, which returns the first time it is released but not the second, showing that there is finally enough dry ground to live on (Bierlein 121-124). The reversal of the crow and dove’s roles in the Biblical account, if the writers of the Old Testament story were aware of the Babylonian account, could have been an intentional way to subvert the older myth. The dove is a popular symbol among Christians, while the crow is often viewed as a negative harbinger of death or at the very least an unattractive animal.
The similarities between the Babylonian story and the Biblical account of Noah’s ark are startling. Both are warned in advance by a god that tragedy is imminent, both build a boat to save their loved ones and the animals of the world from destruction, both are stranded on a mountaintop at the end of the flood, and both release birds to determine if it is safe to leave their haven. The greatest difference between the two stories lies in the reason behind the flooding- in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God sent the flood to wipe out evil men and corruption, while in the Babylonian tale the gods send the flood essentially because a goddess complained about having a bad day with the mortal servants. Though in both cases it is the folly and sin of mankind that causes the flood, it is only in the Biblical story that the sin is named and the punishment is sent for a specific reason. The Babylonian account also claims that the floods were sent as a result of mankind’s offenses, though what those offences are remain abstract (Heidel 225).

The Resurrection of God

Most of the world’s most exciting and enduring literature revolves around a hero or god descending into the Realm of the Dead and rising again, forever changed. Though it is impossible to tell if the story is the first of its kind, one of the oldest surviving stories of such a journey is the account of Inanna’s voyage into the Great Below. The Babylonian goddess, also referred to as Ishtar, sets out for the underworld to console her sister Ereshkigal, the ruler of the Great Below, over the death of Ereshkigal’s husband. Before she leaves, she instructs her servant to wait for three days and, if Inanna doesn’t return from her unpredictable and dangerous sister’s realm, her servant is to go to the gods Enlil, Nanna, and Enki to beg for help so Inanna does not die. As Inanna enters the kingdom of her sister she must pass through the seven gates of the underworld. As she enters each gate, another symbol of her office is stripped from her. Her crown, her lapis beads, a double strand of beads, her royal robe, her breastplate, her gold ring, and her lapis rod and line, all of her accoutrements signifying her rank and divinity, are taken from her before she is allowed into her sister’s presence. Ereshkigal rises from her throne upon seeing Inanna and “[fastens] on Inanna the eye of death. She [speaks] against her the word of wrath. She [utters] against her the cry of guilt. She [strikes] her” (Wolkstein 60). Struck dead where she stands in her sister’s throne room, Inanna collapses and is hung on a hook on a wall like a butchered sacrificial animal. When three days have gone by, Inanna’s servant goes to the three gods specified by Inanna. Enlil and Nanna refuse to help, claiming that by setting foot in the Underworld Inanna doomed herself to die and she deserves to get what she set herself up for. Only Enki takes mercy on Inanna’s plight and forms a plan to revive the goddess. He creates two creatures, the galatur and the kurgarra, who are neither male nor female. He sends them to the Underworld after Inanna with the water of life and the food of life, and with instructions on how to please Ereshkigal so they will be able to retrieve Inanna’s body. When they enter Ereshkigal’s throne room, they sympathize with her various pains and ailments, offering her their complete support and understanding for everything she wants to complain about. Pleased that these two strangers empathize with her so much, she offers them any gift of their choice. They ask for Inanna’s body hanging on the hook, and insist that it is all they will take. She complies, and the galatur and the kurgarra feed Inanna’s body the food of life and the water of life. When she rises, restored to life, the Annuna, or the judges of the afterlife, proclaim that if Inanna wishes to rise from the Underworld she must find someone to take her place. She is chased through and out of the Underworld by demons who scream out at her the names of people, all beloved to her, who could take her place in death. She refuses to surrender her closest friend and her sons, but when the demons turn to her husband, Dumuzi, she relents, and the demons snatch her husband and beat him mercilessly. Dumuzi escapes, but only by turning to Inanna’s brother, Utu, the God of Justice, and begging for help. Utu turns Dumuzi’s hands and feet into snakes, making it impossible for the demons to keep hold of him, and Dumuzi runs for his life (Wolkstein 52-73).
The Biblical story of resurrection differs from that of Inanna in a variety of ways, most notably in that Jesus’ story does not include a true voyage through the Realm of Death in the sense that the Realm of Death is a physical place, as in Inanna’s tale. Like Inanna’s Jesus’ body is left on display for all of his enemies to see his apparent defeat, and like Inanna, his loyal followers and companions anticipate his return. Jesus knows in advance that he will die and that some of his most trusted companions will turn on him or deny their connection to him. He tells Peter, one of his disciples, that before the rooster crows on day of Jesus’ arrest that Peter will deny three times being acquainted with Jesus. Jesus is arrested, Peter denies knowing him, and Jesus faces trial before Pontius Pilate, Herod, and the Jewish leaders of the day who demand his execution. Convicted of inciting rebellion, Jesus is condemned to die by crucifixion. After nine hours of hanging on the cross, Jesus dies and is placed in a tomb. When three days pass, the women who followed Jesus to Galilee enter the tomb with spices and perfumes to adorn the body of their Messiah only top find that his body is no longer in the tomb and only a few strips of linen remain. Excited about Jesus’ apparent resurrection, they spread the word to his disciples. Jesus himself then appeared to his disciples and instructed them one last time on the meaning of the Scriptures before ascending into the heavens (Holy Bible 584-586).
Though different in content and in purpose, both of these stories exhibit striking similarities in structure. In Jesus’ resurrection in the New Testament of the Bible, the act of dying is a metaphor. In Christian doctrine, bodily resurrection isn’t the same thing as immortality. Immortality is achieved by the soul, which goes on living even after the body has been killed (Gabel 179). Inanna’s death was meant a bit more literally. When Ereshkigal killed her, it was a complete physical death as well as the termination of her soul, and Inanna needed the help of a living god to rescue her from death’s grip. Jesus also relied on the power of living divinity to return from death in order to spread his final teachings before leaving the land of mortal humanity behind. Just as her journey through the Realm of the Dead forced the goddess Inanna to determine what the price of life really is, Jesus’ death was the final chapter in his own voyage through mortality and human suffering. Another interesting parallel between these two stories is the re-occurrence of the number three. Inanna’s servant is to wait three days for the goddess’ return, then she is to go to three different gods in search of help. When Jesus speaks of Peter’s upcoming denial, he predicts that his disciple will deny Jesus a total of three times. Then, after dying on the cross, Jesus returns to the world of the living after three days in the tomb. The number three is a popular, powerful number in myth and spiritual teachings, and its appearance in these stories lends a feeling of completion.

Babylonian and Biblical Myth

Though it is impossible to determine how much influence the ancient Babylonians ultimately had on the stories written into the Bible, it is obvious that despite contrary belief systems and religious origins, the two traditions have an astounding number of parallels in their teachings and stories. Naturally they have their differences, as do any two systems of belief and mythology, but, as according to Leonard W. King, a British classical scholar at the turn of the last century, the striking similarities between the two traditions “…leave no doubt that the Hebrew cosmogony…[is] derived ultimately from the same original as the Babylonian narratives…” (7). Other mythologies have stories revolving around the creation of the world, tales about floods that wipe out entire civilizations, and epics about heroes and gods who rise from the dead and return to the land of more ordinary mortals. These stories even take shape in modern literature and entertainment, such as in fantasy novels and disaster movies. Tales like these capture the human imagination, ensuring that they will be passed on from generation to generation and across cultural barriers. No matter what forms they take, some element of these myths will live on in the world’s mythology.

Works Cited

Bierlein, J.F. Parallel Myths. New York: Ballantine, 1994.

Gabel, John B. et al. The Bible as Literature: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University, 1996.

Gilgamesh. Trans. Herbert Mason. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,2003.

Heidel, Alexander. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1949.

The Holy Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001.

King, Leonard W. Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition. Forgotten Books, 2007.

McCall, Henrietta. Mesopotamian Myths. Austin: University of Texas, 1990.

Sandars, N.K. Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia. London: Penguin, 1971.

Sproul, Barbara C. Primal Myths: Creating the World. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.

Stewart, R.J. The Elements of Creation Myth. Dorset: Element Books, 1989.

Wolkstein, Diane and Samuel Noah Kramer. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer. New York: Harper & Row,1983.