These essays were submitted by students who took Arts One in 2015-2016 and selected to be published in this annual journal of Arts One student work, entitled ONE. Please see this page for more information about the journal.
Though the essays are provided here for public reading, they are all still copyrighted to their respective authors (listed on each article) and may not be reused or reposted without express permission of those authors. Of course, paraphrasing or quoting from them with proper citation is encouraged!
From Words to Images
June 1, 2016
On Auster’s City of Glass and Karasik & Mazzucchelli’s graphic novel adaptation
By Serena Huang
In Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli’s graphic novel retelling of the story, the plot, characters, and setting essentially remain the same as in the original text version, but the approach used to describe the protagonist, Quinn, and his attempts to solve a case differs noticeably due to the additional range of storytelling tools that the graphic novel provides. This essay examines the ways in which the graphic novel is either more effective or less effective in its message compared to the original text ….
Sylvia Plath: The Devil and The White Macaw
June 1, 2016
On Plath’s The Bell Jar
By Zorah Wiltzen
Esther’s enthrallment with Doreen’s life is comparable to her mourning of her father. Plath’s intense longing for her father’s presence in the poem “Daddy” therefore corresponds with Esther’s disconnect towards Doreen’s way of life in The Bell Jar. This comparison can be drawn from the symbolism of clothing adornments, physical appearances and telling actions.
Female Forces Behind the Mask
May 31, 2016
On Moore & Gibbons’ Watchmen
By Naomi Girard
Throughout the graphic novel, several women play influential roles in Rorschach’s life, each pushing him closer towards his crime fighter identity. By examining the ways that all these women drive Rorschach towards violence and his desire to claim a new identity, it becomes clear that his obsession with fighting crime is his way of grieving over and coming to terms with the injustice he experienced as a child.
Sebald’s Barbaric Poetry
May 31, 2016
On Sebald’s Austerlitz
By Helen Zhou
“Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch,” wrote Theodor Adorno. “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbarism.” With all due respect to Sebald, I will argue that in Austerlitz, he both seemingly complies with Adorno whilst contradicting his arguments, one, by imitating the pillaging of free expression experienced by Jews during the Holocaust, and two, by attempting to represent the unrepresentable.
A Smidge too Manly, A Smidge too Motherly
May 31, 2016
On Mulvey and on Hitchcock’s Vertigo
By Alexis Gervacio
Bespectacled, bold, and slightly boyish, Midge Wood does not easily fit into Mulvey’s analysis – she does not possess the “strong visual and erotic impact” characteristic of female characters (11). As such, this investigation will attempt to not only explain how Midge confounds the norm, but also why she is so different from the typical damsel-in-distress.
you burn me
May 31, 2016
On Faulkner and Sappho
By Graysen Currie
By placing As I Lay Dying beside Anne Carson’s translated work of Sappho, If Not, Winter, readers may come to find that Addie may not be truly dead, as vital pieces of her still remain. Many of Sappho’s fragments may even be read from the voice of Addie herself, even before her death. By taking a closer look particularly at Addie’s influence over her sons, the theme of travel, and at Addie’s desire for revenge against Anse, we may see that Addie’s influence is still potent, up until her body is put to rest in Jefferson’s soil.
Convergence of Meaning
May 31, 2016
On Auster’s City of Glass
By Jake Clark
Paul Auster’s City of Glass is a text that confronts a wide array of themes, two of the most prominent being language and identity. Language is presented as the conveyor of meaning, connected to the Biblical myth of Babel, whereas meaning is an evasive concept that is tied to the genesis of language, but ultimately distanced from it by the same connection. The three implications of ‘private eye’ form the facets of Quinn’s identity, with the overpowering search for meaning uniting and eventually deconstructing his investigative persona and his core identity.
Falling in Love with Siri
May 31, 2016
On Laura Mulvey and Spike Jonze’s film Her
By Grace Chang
Mulvey’s article, while intended to be a response to the films of Hollywood’s Classic Age of cinema (ca. 1930-1960), remains relevant. Hollywood remains a male dominated, dominatingly male, and heteronormative industry. However, a recent film, Spike Jonze’s Her, challenges Mulvey’s idea of physical pleasure and the gaze, seeking to break this erotic coding through the removal of the physical female form.
Midge’s Point of View
May 30, 2016
On Mulvey and Hitchcock
By Ali Byers
In her argument Mulvey makes no mention of Midge, the film’s only other female character. Midge’s character complicates the idea that this is a purely symbolic film, and even attempts to subvert the codes that make up the symbolic. Both the way that Midge is captured by the camera, as well as how she is implemented in the plotline, complicate the simple dichotomies between man/woman, active/passive, and holder/object of the gaze that supports Mulvey’s argument.
Sigmund Tzu and the Dream World
May 30, 2016
On Freud’s Dora and Chuang Tzu’s Zuangzhi
By John Wragg
When examining Freud’s usage of the dream world in his diagnoses, it is fascinating to see the similarities in which he approaches dreams and Chuang Tzu utilizes dreams, as Chuang Tzu is quite famous for his passage in the Zhuangzi, the butterfly dream. Despite a couple of millennia, and drastically different cultures separating the two men, their approach and philosophy regarding dreams as a tool to connect the dream and real world, a tool to discover of oneself, and as a tool to heal is extremely surprising in their similarity.
Eyes to Watch
May 30, 2016
On Moore & Gibbons, Watchmen
By Anne Wang
Eyes are everywhere in the comic series Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. From the eyes of every character to the pupil-like circles of clocks and “fallout shelter” signs, figures of vision can be found throughout. The very cover of the publication depicts a minimalist eye of the iconic happy face, expressionless and abstract, anonymous as a civilian, watched by the outside world and watching it back. The series plays on the reversible identities of the watched and the watchers.
The Souls of Black Folk and The Essentiality of Human Connection
May 30, 2016
On Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk
by Sierra Robbins
Du Bois’ classic text The Souls of Black Folk does not at first read as a cohesive argument. Rather, each chapter offers a different style, a different purpose, and this makes for a complex and at times disjointed reading experience. The unifying factor in the text is the metaphor of the “Veil” – a metaphor which itself varies according to the scope of each chapter.
Anne Frank: The Young Girl and the Writer
May 30, 2016
by Tessa Mouzourakis
Instead of generalizing Anne’s self-awareness as a product of growing-up, her writing presents an image of division, as two versions of her character emerge throughout the novel. It is by reason of the small space the Annex provides and Anne’s own creative tendencies for self-reflection that her character separates between conflicting emotions and identities, that of optimism and realism; the young girl and the writer.
Where the Road Ends
May 30, 2016
On McCarthy’s The Road
Emily-Anne Mikos
The road keeps them moving forward, surviving the present and forgetting the past. However in sleep, away from the road’s security, dreams run rampant. Ghosts of dead loved ones, such as the man’s dead wife, exist in his dreams and bring the past to reality. Yet dreaming of the past can separate those who survive and those who die. Although presented as memory and nostalgia, the man’s dead wife is an omen of death that haunts his dreams and prevents him and his son from moving forward.
The Person in the Picture
May 30, 2016
On Plath’s The Bell Jar
By Sophie McNeilly
When Esther poses for photographs and sees photographs of herself, the camera makes Esther a stranger to herself. Esther struggles to recognize who she is when confronted with images of herself. In this way, the camera reduces Esther from a self to an image, onto which other people project their understandings and expectations of her. Even in the mirror Esther does not recognize herself, a result of her internalization of the camera lens and the eye of the outsider that it represents.
Backstreets: Shadows, Violence and Queerness in Watchmen
May 25, 2016
By Rachael McDaniel
The queer characters of Watchmen visually inhabit either the world of shadows and secrecy or the world of demonstrative color, but the deeper in shadow the characters are, the more explicit, dangerous, and violent their queerness is. In this essay, I will consider Moore and Gibbons’ portrayals of queer characters, specifically the Silhouette and Rorschach, through their connection to shadows and darkness, and explore the public violence inherent in the shadowy space of queerness that they occupy.
Opposing Oppenheimers
May 18, 2016
On Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer
By Jastej Luddu
Kipphardt’s play features many speeches and monologues concerning the accusations levied against Oppenheimer. These speeches also deal with larger thematic issues such as ideology, violence, and the purpose of science. The opening and closing speeches of the play, both spoken by Oppenheimer, illustrate the complex forces and motivations that influenced the physicist.
We Didn’t Start the Fire
May 18, 2016
on McCarthy’s The Road
By Emilie Kneifel
The father does not (or cannot) strictly follow the morality he teaches his son, as his decisions and actions are often borne of necessity. This willingness to compromise perfect morality for their survival means that the boy does not have to do so. Thus, the father’s tough decisions not only keep the two alive, but also keep the fire of old-world morality ablaze in the boy. They preserve the boy’s adherence to his strict moral code because he never has to compromise his beliefs.
Mulvey vs. Carter: The Power of the Gaze
May 18, 2016
By Vanessa Giesbrecht
Unlike Mulvey who makes sweeping general statements on how men act and react when with the opposite gender, Carter counteracts this by making her protagonists more complex with how they behave and react to different gazes. Although some of Mulvey’s concepts do fit with some of the situations presented in The Bloody Chamber, Mulvey’s concepts also prove to be oversimplified with how differently Carter’s female protagonists respond to their respective situations.
The Communist Manifesto and its earlier drafts
May 18, 2016
By Emily Dishart
The Manifesto was not written in just one sitting: Marx and Engels underwent a long process of editing in order to produce this short text. However, earlier versions allow the reader to grasp a more complete version of Marx and Engels’ ideas, although certain discrepancies are present, forcing the reader to probe the reasoning behind these variations. Engels’ “Principles of communism”, written shortly before The Communist Manifesto, may be seen, in several key aspects, as a more detailed and practical version of the later piece of work, clarifying certain aspects of communist thought ….
Voices Rolling in the Deep
May 18, 2016
On Sebald’s Austerlitz
By Elliott Cheung
Sebald creates a work of poetry that battles the barbarism of unintelligibility and gives the atrocities of the Holocaust a thoughtful and appropriate interpretation. Sebald infuses the fictional character of Austerlitz with an authentic and personal voice, conveying his story through an interweaving of words and images that, in their use of various literary devices, is highly poetic in form. In doing so, he rebukes Adorno’s pronouncement, using this poetry to revive the victims of Auschwitz from the unintelligibility and destruction brought on by both time and the Nazi oppressors that attempted to bury them.
“He’s Coming to Steal my Eyes”
May 17, 2016
On McCarthy’s The Road
By Daisy Couture
Vision is so important and omnipresent in the novel because of the multiple, essential functions it has. Sight is necessary for survival, especially in a post-apocalyptic world in which one’s sight is constantly being obscured by darkness. At the same time, vision is also intrinsically connecting, playing a huge part in relationships. Through the strength of sight, one can tie things to existence, both through memory and acceptance. As a force, vision is also linked to time, a way to direct focus to the past or the future.
From Bodies Politic to the Body Politic
May 17, 2016
On Hobbes’ Leviathan
By Cora Hermary
The Hobbesian state of nature both begins and ends with human nature. While Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is widely regarded as advocating a pessimistic view of human nature, Hobbes’ pessimism is not directed towards human nature, but towards the state of nature. Nevertheless, Hobbes tempers his pessimism for the state of nature with a subtle yet equal optimism for humanity, whose status as a creation under God guides his solution to the state of nature: art.
Technicolour Ideals
May 17, 2016
On Plath’s The Bell Jar
By Claire Lloyd
Colour permeates Esther Greenwood’s narration in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Esther often articulates her visual perception in vivid colour. She particularly emphasizes the aesthetic of a film she watches with the Ladies’ Day girls. The film is in technicolour; its colours are saturated. Esther is sickened by the film’s bright portrayal of disparate gender roles…. Plath shows that technicolour is psychological poison—its consumption results in a widespread sickness.
Forget the Juice Cleanse
May 11, 2016
On Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
By Tati Chavitage
The ability to embrace femininity has always been a uphill battle in relation to the issues women have dealt with in Western society: in recent years, liberating ourselves through our sexuality has become apparent through movements like “SlutWalk”, a march that demands an end to rape culture, or even “free bleeding”, in which women refuse to hide their menstruation by allowing themselves to bleed without the help of tampons or other methods of concealment.
The Decolonization Manifesto: Marx and Muslims
May 11, 2016
By Moneeza Badat
In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon enhances a Marxist analysis by addressing the intersections of race, colonialism and capitalism. Fanon uses the terminology of Marx and Engels but applies it in different ways. By ‘stretching’ Marxist analysis, Fanon makes it relevant to decolonization (Fanon, 5). Though Marxism provides a competent analysis of capitalism, it does not fully address the intersections of race and colonialism.
Asserting Meaning in Dabydeen’s “Brown Skin Girl”
May 11, 2016
By Madeline Klintworth
David Dabydeen’s Slave Song addresses the dilemma of how to identify the ‘true’ voice of a Guayanese culture that has been clouded and corrupted historically by the voice of colonialism. Dabydeen, born in Guyana to Indian parents but having emigrated with his family to England as a young boy, expresses this conundrum in the three separate voices, all of them created by Dabydeen himself, that are intricately intertwined throughout the book ….
Dreams We Must Loathe
May 11, 2016
On Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
By Alexandra Cooper
As the Man attempts to walk the narrow line separating blind optimism and consuming despair, he uses his dreams and memories to keep him situated on the difficult path of realistic survival. The combination of the will to survive and unavoidable despondency yields a certain type of recollection of memory. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy uses the Man’s philosophy on dreams to follow the state of mind of his own characters.