I can hold my head up in geek circles again
I finished reading Watchman yesterday. I no longer have to duck my head in shame, or pretend like I know what other people are talking about when they mention it. hell, I even know the sooper-sekrit ending. Yay me.
Watchmen, Alan Moore
Watchmen is a comic about superheroes, but it isn't a superhero comic. Instead, it is Moore's playing with the genre to the point of awesome. Picture New York City 1980's; a New York where people really did (at one point) dress up in wacky costumes and fight crime. A New York (and a world) where superhero comics don't exist, because who wants to read comics about real life (people read pirate comics instead)? Of all the costumed crimefighters, only one is actually parahuman: Dr. Manhattan. Created by a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong (betcha never heard that origin story before, eh?), Dr. Manhattan exists outside of time, and can change the physical world on an atomic level simply by will and thought alone. America is using him to hold the pinko commie bastards Russia in check ("the superman exists and he is American"), leading America to behave like a spoiled brat who is always threatening to take his ball home if other kids countries don't play by their rules, and who keeps talking about his big brother who'll beat everyone up if they don't do what he says.
The comic opens with the murder of Edward Blake, the alter ego of the superhero "The Comedian," one of the two superheroes who works with government sanction. The other, is, of course, Dr. Manhattan; the rest were forced into retirement back in '77 after the passing of the "Keene Act" which basically just said no to vigilantism. The one costumed crimefighter (a more accurate term [though I use them pretty much interchangeably] than superhero since none of them have powers save Dr. Manhattan) who did not go gentle into that good night is Rorschach. Rorschach is, by my thinking anyway, the most interesting character in Watchmen. First of all, his moral code is awesome. On the one hand, he truly believes that the ends justify the means; breaking the fingers of a small time crook to get information is completely okay, but at the same time, he freaks out on another character for having an unlicensed gun. Rorschach never compromises; his entire outlook is purely black or white, right or wrong. If something is wrong, it must be persecuted to the fullest extent (and not necessarily by the law). Like his mask, which is a never-ending swirl of black and white, his views never mix into a neutral gray. Much like Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias, Rorschach never questions his actions or his motives--he is action, pure and simple. In order to find a missing girl, he tortures fifteen people for information; upon finding she has been murdered, dismembered, and fed to dogs, he kills the dogs, handcuffs the kidnapper, sets the house on fire, then hands the man a hacksaw and says, "Shouldn't bother trying to saw through handcuffs. Never make it in time." Brutal, man, but chillingly effective. His response to the Keene Act? To murder a serial rapist and dump his body in front of the police station, with a sign that says "Never!" pinned to the corpse.
Rorschach believes himself to be Rorschach; he refers to his mask as his 'face' and sees his alter-ego (who is not revealed for several chapters, but you can pretty much guess his identity right off) as the not-real him. This psychological break occurs during the the kidnapping scene, though it builds on several decades of fucked-uppedness: "It was Kovacs who said 'mother' then, muffled under Latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again....Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose...It is not God who kills the children. Not Fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us....Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach." Seriously, his psychology is amazing, and that's before we get into the crazy that was his childhood.
The whole comic book is a deconstructionist text (if there's one thing I can honestly say I've learned at Clark, it's lit. theory. Still don't like it, but at least I [sorta] understand it now), looking at the worth and value of superheroes. First, it looks at the kind of people who would become costumed crimefighters in a modern, fairly realistic setting, at the dark psychology behind such a drive and motivation. It's one thing for Superman and Spiderman to do so--they've got special powers that creates within them a special responsibility. Batman, however? Plain, mortal Batman? Fucked up in the head. It warns of the danger of having a weapon that we place all our hopes and power in because when it goes, or becomes obsolete, we have nothing left and our enemies swarm around us and our newfound (or even newly perceived) weakness. Lastly, this is also a cautionary tale; Moore is warning us about putting all our hopes and trust into powerful beings, either political or paranormal. By doing so, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and agency. First we give them the power to do as they please, and remove from ourselves the power to protest against them, and then we follow them down into moral decay since, freed from any notion of personal responsibility, we feel empowered to do as we please.
Oh, and let me talk about Tales of the Black Freighter for a moment, Watchmen's comic within a comic. The reader gets to read the story "Marooned," during several points of the comic, as the events in that story coincide with the events in the actual story. "Marooned" is about a sailor who washes up on an island (along with the bodies of his dead comrades) after the Black Freighter (the eponymous ship of evil from the comic) attacks his ship. The sailor realizes that the Black Freighter will be sailing towards his undefended home, and will kill everyone in the town, including the sailor's own family. In order to make it home before the ship, the sailor starts doing the most insane things, slowly stripping away him humanity (and sanity!) in the process. He makes a raft out of the gas-bloated corpses of his friends, catches and eats a raw sea gull, kills and eats a shark that has been drawn to the smell of his raft, and then, once he gets home, begins murdering his friends and neighbors who he assumes are collaborating with the pirate...who never came.
This theme of sacrificing everything to achieve victory has a certain central importance in the main-comic, as you can see if you read the comic yourself (I'm pretty sure that if I spoil the ending, I will be placed on the hitlist of the Geek Mafia). It's not exactly like a Pyrrhic victory--it's more of a deliberate setting out to do insane and horrible things, in order to bring about a happy ending. Ask doompuppy how that works out for his characters sometime.
Like Watchmen itself, Tales of the Black Freighter are aspects of the theater of the absurd. They illustrate that life is inherently without meaning, parodying reality, or using seeming absurdity to show the real absurdity that is everyday life (like a comic book about superheroes to hold up a mirror to Reagan-era politics, for example...) It's all about the tragicomedy, yo.
This is a very thought-provoking comic. On the one hand, the story is interesting, the characters multi-faceted, and the gimmicks (comic-within-a-comic, the text afterwords from the Watchmen universe, etc) both enrich and illuminate the story. On the other hand, this comic is a veritable treasure-trove of literary criticism. Two of my students are writing their major papers about Watchmen; the first is looking at Watchmen and comparing it to the Theater of the Absurd, and the second is reading this and V for Vendetta and discussing the concept of 'masking.' It's not a surprise that Watchmen is considered a 'literary' graphic novel. You can peel this text apart like an onion.
4.75 stars
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (reread).
I reread Mansfield Park for my Race and Imperialism in Romanticism course this semester, and I'm really glad I did. The first time I read Mansfield Park, I HATED it. Fanny Price is boring, self-righteous, ineffectual, and capable of suffocating you with her insufferable meekness (in fact, she does in Lost in Austen, my Jane Austen Choose your own Adventure book--which, if you're an Austen fan, you should go out and buy immediately). The ending seems forced, and the only likable character in the novel, at least IMHO, Mary Crawford, is disdained and vilified in the end. I'd read it the first time, and had been disappointed by Austen by it.
I believe that with Mansfield Park, Austen is getting as close to political as she ever does. The book explicitly mentions the slave trade (Sir Bertram has a plantation in Antigua which supplies the family with their money) and I think this is where Austen-as-abolitionist makes her views apparent. But, as with everything Austen, she does so quite subtly.
Many critics wonder about Austen’s seeming hostility to theatricals portrayed in Mansfield Park, when her own family indulged in the same pastime. It is my belief that it is not theatricals that Austen disapproves of, but rather, theatricals performed in a home that is already nothing more than a collection of lies, actors, and chosen roles. In this time, the home, especially the estate, symbolized England at large. Homes are meant to be efficient, patriarchal, and dignified, much like the face England attempted to show the world at large. However, Austen shows that a home-or country-built on imperialism and the slave trade can only ever be flawed. Thus, the face England wishes to show is nothing more than a mask covering up its true character.
In Mansfield Park, the Bertrams are neither an old family nor old money; their wealth and status has been built on the backs of slaves. The Bertram’s home is “modern-built” which is then later compared to Rushworth’s ancient family seat. The reader knows that Rushworth’s lineage spans generations, thus contrasted, the Bertrams’ obviously does not. With the Bertrams and their slave-tainted funds, Austen is trying to peel away that proper British mask and show what truly lies beneath it. The Bertrams appear to be good and proper British citizens, but appearance is all it is.
This is most aptly seen in the characters of Maria and Julia Bertram. They are pretty, accomplished, and generally pleasant, but there is very little character to be found beneath that pleasing surface; “[Sir Thomas] feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting; than they had never been taught to govern their inclinations and their tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice....To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments-the authorized object of their youth-could have had no useful influence in that way, no moral affect on the mind”. They do not love their father; in fact, they rejoice in his absence and regret his return; nor do they have much of a bond with one another. Though they have been companions since birth, it takes only one man to drive a wedge between them; “With no material fault of temper, or difference of opinion, to prevent their being very good friends while their interests were the same, the sisters, under such a trial as this, had not affection or principle enough to make them merciful or just, to give them honour or compassion”. They may act the part of obedient daughters when it suits them, yet in the end they show their true colors. Maria runs off with Henry Crawford, abandoning her husband, and Julia elopes with Mr. Yates, mostly out of a desire to avoid further restraint and rules at home due to Maria’s behavior.
Though the Miss Bertrams are perhaps the most obvious case of performance, no one else in the Bertram household escapes Austen’s eye. Tom is a shallow, selfish spendthrift who adds to the familial debt with no remorse for his actions. Lady Bertram is lazy, stupid, and greedy; to her, a trip to the West Indies is only an occasion of purchasing a new shawl or two. She is the perfect example of a wife and mother corrupted by luxury. Here, the human body stands in for the body politic; it is subjected to luxury goods (aka "agents of corruption, according to abolitionist and evangelical thinking of the day") and becomes, well, corrupted. Lady Bertram is all wives and mothers who ignore their children’s well-beings in order to gratify her own desires, Tom is every heir who has been brought up with too much money and too little sense. Even Sir Thomas, who wishes to do what is ‘right’ for his family, comes across as impotent and blind. He cannot earn the love or respect of his children, only their fear. Nor can he moderate their behaviors; the best he can do is repress them, only to have those same behaviors well up in his absence. It is not until his family is disgraced that he realizes those surface elements by which he judges his children and niece-their seeming obedience to his will, their appearance, their social graces-cannot give a true representation of the person within.
Edmund’s flaws are a little more subtle, yet still there to be seen. While he strives to do what is right, he is inconstant and easily misled. This is seen not only in his decision to act in “Lovers Vows,” and his subsequent crush on the highly unsuitable Mary Crawford, but also his acceptance of two livings, thus creating the need for a curate which, in prior chapters, he had said was an office he did not believe in. It seems slightly amazing that a man who refers to Fanny as "My Fanny, my only sister; my only comfort now!" can, within a mere two chapters, come to think of her as a wife.
However, Austen goes on to condemn British society as a whole. If the estate, Mansfield Park, is a microcosm of the effect the slave trade has on a family, she does not neglect to show its effect on those who are even peripherally involved with it. The Crawfords embody London society: silly, superficial, self-centered, and immoral, but with a charming and lively manner which hides those faults for a little while. London is depicted as corrupting and decadent, as it is a metropolis based around wealth and commerce. London is where Dr. Grant dies of apoplexy brought about by gorging himself on rich foods, and it is in London where Maria decides to run away with Henry and Julia decides to marry Yates. Even the Navy, with its own financial interests in the slave trade, is not spared-the Admiral is, by all reports, a man who was unconscionably cruel to his wife, and one who thinks nothing of moving his mistress into his home as soon as his wife is buried. Mr. Price, Fanny’s father, is an ill-bred drunkard.
Mansfield Park is a bit too circumspect to be described as ‘scathing,’ but Austen infuses the book with a real sense of disdain. There are no truly ‘good’ characters; even Fanny, while set up as the book’s conscience, comes across as both hypocritical and ineffective. Her moral judgments do no one any good when she refuses to act upon them. Austen firmly removes the fine outer masks of Britain to show the tainted inner layer below: the propriety of Britain’s citizens is only an act, and can be set aside with little reason and less compunction. This is why she seems so against the theatricals; it brings not only the individual flaws of the Bertrams to light, but also highlights the flaws of society as a whole. Imperialism and the slave trade can only create the illusion of peace and prosperity. With such an unworthy base as that, nothing good and lasting can be constructed; it is like building a house on a foundation of sand.
2 stars on first read, 3 on second
Happiness meme:
Log the Things That Make Me Happy for a week
1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for a week without fail
1. Finished Watchmen. I am once again secure in my geek cred.
2. LAST DAY OF CLASSES, BABY!
Watchmen, Alan Moore
Watchmen is a comic about superheroes, but it isn't a superhero comic. Instead, it is Moore's playing with the genre to the point of awesome. Picture New York City 1980's; a New York where people really did (at one point) dress up in wacky costumes and fight crime. A New York (and a world) where superhero comics don't exist, because who wants to read comics about real life (people read pirate comics instead)? Of all the costumed crimefighters, only one is actually parahuman: Dr. Manhattan. Created by a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong (betcha never heard that origin story before, eh?), Dr. Manhattan exists outside of time, and can change the physical world on an atomic level simply by will and thought alone. America is using him to hold the pinko commie bastards Russia in check ("the superman exists and he is American"), leading America to behave like a spoiled brat who is always threatening to take his ball home if other kids countries don't play by their rules, and who keeps talking about his big brother who'll beat everyone up if they don't do what he says.
The comic opens with the murder of Edward Blake, the alter ego of the superhero "The Comedian," one of the two superheroes who works with government sanction. The other, is, of course, Dr. Manhattan; the rest were forced into retirement back in '77 after the passing of the "Keene Act" which basically just said no to vigilantism. The one costumed crimefighter (a more accurate term [though I use them pretty much interchangeably] than superhero since none of them have powers save Dr. Manhattan) who did not go gentle into that good night is Rorschach. Rorschach is, by my thinking anyway, the most interesting character in Watchmen. First of all, his moral code is awesome. On the one hand, he truly believes that the ends justify the means; breaking the fingers of a small time crook to get information is completely okay, but at the same time, he freaks out on another character for having an unlicensed gun. Rorschach never compromises; his entire outlook is purely black or white, right or wrong. If something is wrong, it must be persecuted to the fullest extent (and not necessarily by the law). Like his mask, which is a never-ending swirl of black and white, his views never mix into a neutral gray. Much like Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias, Rorschach never questions his actions or his motives--he is action, pure and simple. In order to find a missing girl, he tortures fifteen people for information; upon finding she has been murdered, dismembered, and fed to dogs, he kills the dogs, handcuffs the kidnapper, sets the house on fire, then hands the man a hacksaw and says, "Shouldn't bother trying to saw through handcuffs. Never make it in time." Brutal, man, but chillingly effective. His response to the Keene Act? To murder a serial rapist and dump his body in front of the police station, with a sign that says "Never!" pinned to the corpse.
Rorschach believes himself to be Rorschach; he refers to his mask as his 'face' and sees his alter-ego (who is not revealed for several chapters, but you can pretty much guess his identity right off) as the not-real him. This psychological break occurs during the the kidnapping scene, though it builds on several decades of fucked-uppedness: "It was Kovacs who said 'mother' then, muffled under Latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again....Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose...It is not God who kills the children. Not Fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us....Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach." Seriously, his psychology is amazing, and that's before we get into the crazy that was his childhood.
The whole comic book is a deconstructionist text (if there's one thing I can honestly say I've learned at Clark, it's lit. theory. Still don't like it, but at least I [sorta] understand it now), looking at the worth and value of superheroes. First, it looks at the kind of people who would become costumed crimefighters in a modern, fairly realistic setting, at the dark psychology behind such a drive and motivation. It's one thing for Superman and Spiderman to do so--they've got special powers that creates within them a special responsibility. Batman, however? Plain, mortal Batman? Fucked up in the head. It warns of the danger of having a weapon that we place all our hopes and power in because when it goes, or becomes obsolete, we have nothing left and our enemies swarm around us and our newfound (or even newly perceived) weakness. Lastly, this is also a cautionary tale; Moore is warning us about putting all our hopes and trust into powerful beings, either political or paranormal. By doing so, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and agency. First we give them the power to do as they please, and remove from ourselves the power to protest against them, and then we follow them down into moral decay since, freed from any notion of personal responsibility, we feel empowered to do as we please.
Oh, and let me talk about Tales of the Black Freighter for a moment, Watchmen's comic within a comic. The reader gets to read the story "Marooned," during several points of the comic, as the events in that story coincide with the events in the actual story. "Marooned" is about a sailor who washes up on an island (along with the bodies of his dead comrades) after the Black Freighter (the eponymous ship of evil from the comic) attacks his ship. The sailor realizes that the Black Freighter will be sailing towards his undefended home, and will kill everyone in the town, including the sailor's own family. In order to make it home before the ship, the sailor starts doing the most insane things, slowly stripping away him humanity (and sanity!) in the process. He makes a raft out of the gas-bloated corpses of his friends, catches and eats a raw sea gull, kills and eats a shark that has been drawn to the smell of his raft, and then, once he gets home, begins murdering his friends and neighbors who he assumes are collaborating with the pirate...who never came.
This theme of sacrificing everything to achieve victory has a certain central importance in the main-comic, as you can see if you read the comic yourself (I'm pretty sure that if I spoil the ending, I will be placed on the hitlist of the Geek Mafia). It's not exactly like a Pyrrhic victory--it's more of a deliberate setting out to do insane and horrible things, in order to bring about a happy ending. Ask doompuppy how that works out for his characters sometime.
Like Watchmen itself, Tales of the Black Freighter are aspects of the theater of the absurd. They illustrate that life is inherently without meaning, parodying reality, or using seeming absurdity to show the real absurdity that is everyday life (like a comic book about superheroes to hold up a mirror to Reagan-era politics, for example...) It's all about the tragicomedy, yo.
This is a very thought-provoking comic. On the one hand, the story is interesting, the characters multi-faceted, and the gimmicks (comic-within-a-comic, the text afterwords from the Watchmen universe, etc) both enrich and illuminate the story. On the other hand, this comic is a veritable treasure-trove of literary criticism. Two of my students are writing their major papers about Watchmen; the first is looking at Watchmen and comparing it to the Theater of the Absurd, and the second is reading this and V for Vendetta and discussing the concept of 'masking.' It's not a surprise that Watchmen is considered a 'literary' graphic novel. You can peel this text apart like an onion.
4.75 stars
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (reread).
I reread Mansfield Park for my Race and Imperialism in Romanticism course this semester, and I'm really glad I did. The first time I read Mansfield Park, I HATED it. Fanny Price is boring, self-righteous, ineffectual, and capable of suffocating you with her insufferable meekness (in fact, she does in Lost in Austen, my Jane Austen Choose your own Adventure book--which, if you're an Austen fan, you should go out and buy immediately). The ending seems forced, and the only likable character in the novel, at least IMHO, Mary Crawford, is disdained and vilified in the end. I'd read it the first time, and had been disappointed by Austen by it.
I believe that with Mansfield Park, Austen is getting as close to political as she ever does. The book explicitly mentions the slave trade (Sir Bertram has a plantation in Antigua which supplies the family with their money) and I think this is where Austen-as-abolitionist makes her views apparent. But, as with everything Austen, she does so quite subtly.
Many critics wonder about Austen’s seeming hostility to theatricals portrayed in Mansfield Park, when her own family indulged in the same pastime. It is my belief that it is not theatricals that Austen disapproves of, but rather, theatricals performed in a home that is already nothing more than a collection of lies, actors, and chosen roles. In this time, the home, especially the estate, symbolized England at large. Homes are meant to be efficient, patriarchal, and dignified, much like the face England attempted to show the world at large. However, Austen shows that a home-or country-built on imperialism and the slave trade can only ever be flawed. Thus, the face England wishes to show is nothing more than a mask covering up its true character.
In Mansfield Park, the Bertrams are neither an old family nor old money; their wealth and status has been built on the backs of slaves. The Bertram’s home is “modern-built” which is then later compared to Rushworth’s ancient family seat. The reader knows that Rushworth’s lineage spans generations, thus contrasted, the Bertrams’ obviously does not. With the Bertrams and their slave-tainted funds, Austen is trying to peel away that proper British mask and show what truly lies beneath it. The Bertrams appear to be good and proper British citizens, but appearance is all it is.
This is most aptly seen in the characters of Maria and Julia Bertram. They are pretty, accomplished, and generally pleasant, but there is very little character to be found beneath that pleasing surface; “[Sir Thomas] feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting; than they had never been taught to govern their inclinations and their tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice....To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments-the authorized object of their youth-could have had no useful influence in that way, no moral affect on the mind”. They do not love their father; in fact, they rejoice in his absence and regret his return; nor do they have much of a bond with one another. Though they have been companions since birth, it takes only one man to drive a wedge between them; “With no material fault of temper, or difference of opinion, to prevent their being very good friends while their interests were the same, the sisters, under such a trial as this, had not affection or principle enough to make them merciful or just, to give them honour or compassion”. They may act the part of obedient daughters when it suits them, yet in the end they show their true colors. Maria runs off with Henry Crawford, abandoning her husband, and Julia elopes with Mr. Yates, mostly out of a desire to avoid further restraint and rules at home due to Maria’s behavior.
Though the Miss Bertrams are perhaps the most obvious case of performance, no one else in the Bertram household escapes Austen’s eye. Tom is a shallow, selfish spendthrift who adds to the familial debt with no remorse for his actions. Lady Bertram is lazy, stupid, and greedy; to her, a trip to the West Indies is only an occasion of purchasing a new shawl or two. She is the perfect example of a wife and mother corrupted by luxury. Here, the human body stands in for the body politic; it is subjected to luxury goods (aka "agents of corruption, according to abolitionist and evangelical thinking of the day") and becomes, well, corrupted. Lady Bertram is all wives and mothers who ignore their children’s well-beings in order to gratify her own desires, Tom is every heir who has been brought up with too much money and too little sense. Even Sir Thomas, who wishes to do what is ‘right’ for his family, comes across as impotent and blind. He cannot earn the love or respect of his children, only their fear. Nor can he moderate their behaviors; the best he can do is repress them, only to have those same behaviors well up in his absence. It is not until his family is disgraced that he realizes those surface elements by which he judges his children and niece-their seeming obedience to his will, their appearance, their social graces-cannot give a true representation of the person within.
Edmund’s flaws are a little more subtle, yet still there to be seen. While he strives to do what is right, he is inconstant and easily misled. This is seen not only in his decision to act in “Lovers Vows,” and his subsequent crush on the highly unsuitable Mary Crawford, but also his acceptance of two livings, thus creating the need for a curate which, in prior chapters, he had said was an office he did not believe in. It seems slightly amazing that a man who refers to Fanny as "My Fanny, my only sister; my only comfort now!" can, within a mere two chapters, come to think of her as a wife.
However, Austen goes on to condemn British society as a whole. If the estate, Mansfield Park, is a microcosm of the effect the slave trade has on a family, she does not neglect to show its effect on those who are even peripherally involved with it. The Crawfords embody London society: silly, superficial, self-centered, and immoral, but with a charming and lively manner which hides those faults for a little while. London is depicted as corrupting and decadent, as it is a metropolis based around wealth and commerce. London is where Dr. Grant dies of apoplexy brought about by gorging himself on rich foods, and it is in London where Maria decides to run away with Henry and Julia decides to marry Yates. Even the Navy, with its own financial interests in the slave trade, is not spared-the Admiral is, by all reports, a man who was unconscionably cruel to his wife, and one who thinks nothing of moving his mistress into his home as soon as his wife is buried. Mr. Price, Fanny’s father, is an ill-bred drunkard.
Mansfield Park is a bit too circumspect to be described as ‘scathing,’ but Austen infuses the book with a real sense of disdain. There are no truly ‘good’ characters; even Fanny, while set up as the book’s conscience, comes across as both hypocritical and ineffective. Her moral judgments do no one any good when she refuses to act upon them. Austen firmly removes the fine outer masks of Britain to show the tainted inner layer below: the propriety of Britain’s citizens is only an act, and can be set aside with little reason and less compunction. This is why she seems so against the theatricals; it brings not only the individual flaws of the Bertrams to light, but also highlights the flaws of society as a whole. Imperialism and the slave trade can only create the illusion of peace and prosperity. With such an unworthy base as that, nothing good and lasting can be constructed; it is like building a house on a foundation of sand.
2 stars on first read, 3 on second
Happiness meme:
Log the Things That Make Me Happy for a week
1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for a week without fail
1. Finished Watchmen. I am once again secure in my geek cred.
2. LAST DAY OF CLASSES, BABY!