May 29th 2014

Well, it's been a week or so since last semester, which was the Spring of '14. It had been a particularly painful semester in that I was all alone in my apartment without any friends who came over; I didn't have a large TV, and I had a laptop. It was isolation to the fullest extent, and I would never really feel at peace at my home. Later on during that semester, my dad visited me during lunch hours, typically, which was memorable, because we talked about what our plans are for next semester, my finances, and our vacation plans to visit Mexico and Atlanta, particularly. This conversation mostly entailed how we would not visit until December, repeatedly, as I had asked the same question more than once, which had irritated him. I had hoped we could go visit Mexico City at least--my top choice would be either Acapulco or Cancun, though. I also thought it would be a good idea to go on a bus ride through the scenic mountains on towards the Yucatan penninsula, which is very beautiful and handsome. He said that was impractical because it would take the better part of a day, so if we were to go from Mexico City to Cancun, it would eat up a large portion of the limited time we'd have for vacation with everyone--everyone includes whoever would want to go with us.
This Summer session was going to be different in that I was going to take an English course at the UI for four weeks, but feeling lazy, I decided to drop it--especially since I had worked darn hard the prior Spring semester. No one in my family objected to it after I broke to them the news. In actuality, my grade point wasn't as good as I had reported it to be, on facebook, because I had received a C average. My UI gpa as it stands right now is a C+, though. My relationship with the various professors had been strained that semester, I felt, and I had lost a lot of my will power to do better in those classes because of it. But, I would be unfair to blame everything on them (for essentially killing my desire to learn with their strict policies). I was an idiot to have registered for so many classes at once, thinking myself Godlike or a genius when in actuality I'm not.
What makes this nice month-long vacation before the main Summer session, which starts on June 16th, so nice is that, I will have a chance to visit my mom, sister, stepfather, step-grandparents, and my brother-in-law--Ted. It was rather unplanned, and I sensed right away that people weren't really enthusiastic about my decision to visit for a week and three-fourths. (I would return on the 15th via airplane and then drive back down to Atlanta with my Dad and Marcela on the 18th. How long we would stay there, I don't know, but my sister wants my Dad to stay longer so I guess I will have to stay longer myself too given that I can skip a day of computer science courses if there's no quiz).
I've set a few goals for myself this month-long vacation. One is to lose twenty pounds by reducing my carbohydrates intake and increasing my proteins to the point that my fat percentage is below 10 percent every day. This can be done, but the last few days has been difficult to break from my prior habbit of not thinking about my long-term goals. Second is to finish reading what was required for me to read last semester: Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa, William Morris's News from Nowhere, which is a Utopia-themed novel, and lastly, all the readings I was supposed to finish before the final exam for Intro to the English major. I care deeply about my learning, much more than what the grades show. It's just that I take a little bit longer than everyone else to get the job done.

With that said, my long sabbatical, if I may call it such, as a half-informed musician due to being there half the required time to receive my degree from the well-esteemed Florida State University school of music has helped me be more creative than ever. Perhaps I had written and composed more music with my lowly status as an uneducated, unproven pianist, than I would have had I stayed in the music program, giving the piano faculty my all, we'll never know.

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Achieving Peace with Aliens in Utopian Science Fiction, by Daniel Alexander Apatiga

Achieving Peace with Aliens in Utopian Science Fiction

Aliens are a lot like "savages" or the "others" from Utopian fiction, which is fiction about an idealized society dreamt up by an author.   While I feel Daniel Defoe's novel, Robinson Crusoe, is hardly a utopia/dystopic fiction since it's mostly based on reality,  An alien culture or person could be like Crusoe’s savages, to form a conceit, since some aliens are most unlike savages.  Conflict with aliens, which hopefully don't occur, requires a totally different approach than what humans are used to. In the 19th century utopia genre and earlier, before the advent of the science fiction genre, English authors have always assumed that technological supremacy was in England’s or in the heroine’s/hero’s favor.  Also, the concept of a culture more advanced than ours has been explored in Utopian fiction, but to a limited extent: the hero/heroine always encountered something familiar and "below" English scientific prowess. This essay is broken into three parts: 1) how are aliens different or similar to Utopians? 2) how are Utopian “others,” aka. “the savages” (like in Robinson Crusoe) similar to aliens? And, 3) how should NASA further the dream of science fiction utopia?  Which one should it choose?

As I explored in utopia fiction prior to the 19th century, human relations with the other, utopian societies led to mutual understanding, but sometimes this led to conflict. The conflict that occurred is going to be the topic of this essay and the ways in which it differed from the two novels by Niven with his various utopic/dystopic worlds. In Ringworld and The Mote in God’s Eyes, both of which are hardcore science fictions, advanced alien species are the ones with the advanced weaponry, technology, culture, etc and they outsmart us, if the game of survival is won by the most intelligent. Some would argue social Darwinism is illegitimate, and I am of the former camp in this case.


In Ringworld and The Mote in God’s Eyes, and NASA, the means of achieving solutions by the protagonists are not through war. War does not justify the goal’s end vision. War is not a game that can be played against aliens who are more cunning and developed than us. And this is shown in hardcore science fiction that entertain the idea of conflict arising between aliens and humans rather than cooperation and mutual curiosity.


In the science fiction genre, which needed the utopian genre to build its ideas from, aliens exist. In Ringworld and The Mote in God’s Eyes, aliens were either not encountered by humans before, or are common. But as far as technology is concerned, us humans respond in a way that is inferior to the aliens in Ringworld and The Mote in God’s Eyes. In Ringworld, the story begins with a crew of about five—three aliens and two humans—they set out for a mysterious object on a super advanced spaceship with two aliens, of whose cultures have long been in correspondence with human civilization. This is similar to New Atlantis by Francis Bacon and Isle of Pines in that the islands that they landed upon always had more than one traveler with the protagonist/narrator. The hero and heroine humans in Ringworld discover that the heroine was chosen by the alien because she’s incredibly lucky by the alien who built the ship—the puppeteer he’s called. This luckiness is what sets her apart, much like how the wealth of the empress in the utopic The Blazing World sets the empress apart; the emperess’s charisma with the hybrid humans and the emperor also is similar. Of course, in a world where one is totally lucky, the heroine of Ringworld can destroy all barriers in front of her, survive death most likely, procreate with the most ideal, rare mate, all of which she does, for better or worse.


The two humans in Ringworld are not at odds against the more advanced aliens because they have matured to an extent far beyond what Emanuel Kant points out in What is Enlightenment? The hero is around two-hundred years old while the heroine is still yet twenty-two, so imagine how wise he must be! Regardless, they’re past an infantile sense of dependence. Without the insecurity of dependence, the protagonists and aliens are wholly independent of one another, while the humans on the galactic worlds enjoy trading with the puppeteers and the other alien, warrior race, as merchants mostly. A superior extraterrestrial race of the so-called “engineers” built the ringworld, but they’re do not appear until the later sequels, adding to the king-of-alien species mystery of who-built-it, similar to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama series.


The puppeteers, though advanced, are not as advanced as they would like to assume to be. The ringworld, which is the mysterious object in the sky they are bound for, is the new location of which the alien puppeteer, who’s the representative of his race, is desiring to occupy. The puppeteer-representative, as an incentive to the unique luckiness of the heroine, offers to her the advanced spaceship in return for the hero and heroine’s cooperation in exploring the relic which is the ringworld.


Similarly, the puppeteers from Ringworld, the moties in The Mote in God’s Eyes, and the Yahoos all are encountered by the protagonist(s) of each respective novel with curiosity. The humans those cases gradually begin to abhor and detest the “others.” But the mode of solving conflict is through extermination or war and kindling peace and cooperation are subdued voices in the protagonist’s persona.


In The Mote in God’s Eyes, the aliens, who are the moties, appear on the outside technologically inferior, which isn’t disproved at the end of the novel but instead, the humans are in ignorance of their own technological inferiority. Yet, the moties are at a strategic disadvantage from the perspective of the human general, because they lack metal. The narrator portrays this in a hidden way in the novel. The group of militant humans who wish to tactically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the moties justify their desires for exterminating them by fermenting the fear that the moties may gain faster-than-light drive, or light-speed travel to say the least. But the humans in The Mote in God’s Eyes, (themselves limited and this is the first contact anyone has made with extraterrestrial life), are placed at odds in terms of point of view with the moties, who are also analyzing the humans: they are in effect blinded by a tainted window, so to speak. The moties try to steal the faster-than light travel by the covert, pet-like engineers, but fail. Eventually, the humans and moties attempt to come to a diplomatic agreement that would place each other’s race at their respective domains in space, which would allow for galactic peace and trade. This, however, is not in the interests of the human generals of the human fleet of battleships, much like the empress in The Blazing World who wants to do things her way and her way only.


The moties hide the fact from the humans that their different breeds, especially the engineers, are not in fact pets that they own. They are able to hide this because of a profound language barrier, and this is different from any of the utopian fiction before the 1900’s in that the engineers of the moties are able to take apart any human tool, technological assemblage and put it back together in minutes—this, humans, have never confronted before and so naturally the general of the space fleets is concerned. The human general of the space fleets is concerned of the motie’s potential for rapid expansion, and he doesn’t want to trade with the moties for fear that this would expose human technologies to the engineers.


The humans decide to cooperate on the condition that the moties never be allowed to have faster-than-light travel. The human admiral, who is the hero of The Mote in God’s Eyes, has a huge say in this.


Now, usually, when a group of explorers typically, in a utopia fiction, meet the utopians, the explorers’ initial state of wonder upon meeting them is with friendliness, but with the Yahoos and Moties, curiosity and friendship quickly waned. A lot of it was due to there being a language barrier in both cases. A similarity can be drawn of the relationship between the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos in Gulliver’s Travels with the human reaction against the alien moties: the humans and Gulliver both have an “other” that is undesirable, an obstacle in the path to mutual understanding. This dilemma when in comparison between the two texts is similar because the Yahoos were being considered for extermination, as were the moties.


In contrast, Crusoe in Robinson Crusoe is the one who’s technologically superior to the “others,” for he has ships and gun powder while the savages had scraps of cloths and primitive knives, bows and arrows. But when Crusoe first encounters the Brazilian savage on his secluded-from-European-civilization island, he faces cannibalism from the savages who live on the continent; he is alone and so faces isolation from society (until he meets Friday), having to make do with what little he has; he has to reevaluate possessions that are treasures but to him, junk (aka. Spanish coin); and finally, he has to employ his intelligence and knowledge to survive. Crusoe is always, in an ethnocentric way, able to overcome any difficulty that any unsophisticated savage would be able to challenge him with, though at times, he narrowly escapes death. In short, the utopian novel is highly unlike the predicaments that the postmodernist hero/heroine(s) face.


Likewise, in Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, the empress has a large armada and hybrid humans to fight for her, so she is the one who’s technologically superior. In The Blazing World, the lady who is found in the northern ice caps on her boat and who discovers a kind of paradise, she becomes empress; she learns of the different races of men who are part animal, part man, in this feminized utopia; she becomes wiser and more knowledgeable of the corporeal spirits who she is able to commune with; and she asks questions to them about the nature of matter, to which they reply and answer; then, she sends her armada of half animal, half-human against Europe and conquers the continent, becoming empress by the monarchies of Europe. She is in short, a dreamer of war, an absolutist, and a megalomaniac.


Unlike science fiction, these three aforementioned utopia fictions written before the 1900’s had conflict arising between the protagonists and the “others” out of a desire for expansion and the extraction of wealth—it was not for mutual understanding. This foresight of the existence of aliens, this extrasensory inkling of an almost certain, alien presence, may one day be replaced by the paradigm that aliens exist, but in utopian literature. A utopia on another planet is possible as explored in Ringworld and The Mote in God’s Eyes¸ which is the next and last segment of my essay: how will NASA achieve a colony that’s a utopic?


The first people who are going to encounter aliens will most likely be NASA, if it hasn’t already occurred. In various space programs that were created after WWII, namely the USSR’s and NASA, the purpose has always been to outdo the other, one’s adversary—space exploration was not always a major concern; we were taking baby steps. When confronted with aliens or competition from other space powers, NASA should not take it to heart that it is technologically inferior in some areas. NASA first began mainly because of the Cold War, and they took infamous German Nazi rocket engineers to make their rockets, so ethics hasn't been a concern, rather, the interests of our presidents in defeating the Soviets (Jennings). So, we set goals to out-do them. Russia was the first to send a man into space (Jennings). We won this mostly because we had a German, former Nazi rocket engineer who designed the Saturn V rocket that propelled us to the moon (Jennings). With a war-like attitude in exploring space going into the next era of space exploration, it will be difficult to establish a long-lasting community that is welcome to people of different nationalities.


As a contemporary issue in terms of funding and its purpose, with the new cold war looming, the long-term strategies of NASA is now to set up greenhouses on Mars, sending astronauts to the planet for the first time, and increasing the chance of meeting aliens. Once countries are past the idea of war and arrive at the conclusion that we are all brothers and sisters, the desire for achieving peace through wars, which is paradoxical, this will be out of the question as there will be a lot of extraterrestrial-real-estate to choose from. That is to say one day, humans will put our presence on Mars. Hopefully we will not do so in the midst of a second cold war with Russia, and are alleged enemy, China, of whom I think should be our allies.


NASA, like some of the science fiction that NASA aspires to emulate, draws its elements from American history; America was not always a world power and it didn’t have an industrialization era as early as England had its. Historically, the final frontier was the American west, not to NASA, however. But now, NASA has redefined that to being space (Jennings). We would conquer and colonize other planets, search for life elsewhere, and we would do so mocking soviet Russia and the third world all the way for being incapable. According to the official NASA website, NASA was founded “partially in response to the Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite the previous year… in 1958… [by President Dwight D. Eisenhower]” (NASA). Later, its purpose grew with its budget to put a man on the moon by JFK.


NASA can provide humans with the desire to create another utopia elsewhere, say, on a planet, an exoplanet, or a moon, in different ways than what the past utopian fictions portray, but it would be better to do so with cooperation from other 2nd world countries. The various settings of utopian fiction are so radically different than what’s out there in the “final frontier” (Will). What’s out there in space isn’t necessarily going to be top-rate real-estate. The utopia of the future can only be achieved by perceiving that the real people we should be worried about are not people at all, but aliens who are far more technologically superior to us. NASA has been a way of achieving a different kind of Utopia, one with potential to be radically different than Crusoe’s dytopic island.


Until recently, NASA spending has declined, perhaps as a result of there being no more cold war: “Our study revealed a clear downward trend in federal aerospace procurement and R&D expenditures during the past decade” (Hogan). NASA’s dream has always been to achieve space exploration to the extent that we at some point colonize other planets. But, what kind of society would be set up at these planets? Would the exoplanet weals/Utopias be much more advanced and transcendental compared to the societies back on earth? Or would they be similar to ours? Certainly, the United States, for instance, is somewhat of a utopia. The United States follows a utopian doctrine of nationalism, patriotism, religion, and it allows its inhabitants to follow things freely, for the most part. It is also a dystopia in the sense that we aren't perfect, and there are always faults to be found, which would be undesirable in a society, say, on Mars. It only makes sense that we spread our ideals to other planets, when the time comes. But, this could be detrimental and cataclysmic in a society where survival is far more paramount and difficult than it is on Earth. And this has been the subject of hardcore science fiction novels for quite some time.




Works Cited




Niven, Larry. Ringworld. USA, The Random House Publishing Group, 1970. Print.


Niven, Larry and Pournelle, Jerry. The Mote in God’s Eye. USA: Amazon inc., 1974. Kindle

file.




Hogan, Thor, Fossum, Donna, Johnson, J. Dana, and Painter, Lawrence S. “Scoping Aerospace:



Tracking Federal Procurement and R&D Spending in the Aerospace Sector.” Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2005. Web. May 5th, 2014.




Greenblatt, Stephen ed. The Norton Anthology: English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton &



Company, 2013. Print.



NASA. “About NASA.” May 11th, 2014. Web. May 13th, 2014 <http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/what_does_nasa_do.html#.U3A-ofldVCo>



Clarke, Arthur C. Rondevouz with Rama. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. Print



Jennings, Will. Interview. Danny Apatiga’s interview with Will: about NASA and Russia. 2014.



Personal notes.

The Persona in Margaret Oliphant’s Autobiography (Revised)

Daniel Alexander Apatiga

Professor Stapleton

Large Essay (Revision)

May 9th, 2014

The Persona in Margaret Oliphant’s Autobiography

Margaret Oliphant’s persona is like that of an archaeologist.  She tries to uncover her past and is discerning which memories to reminisce, and at times, she discovers that she doesn’t want to forego her piousness, but to instead face the same, futile hardships (regarding the death of her children) that would be hidden or obstructed from view.  Her persona’s unifying theme is her children, and her persona is not intended to say that the moral lesson is to not have children, but that one should come to a state of equilibrium when confronted with loss.  Her persona’s carefully chosen memories that seem happy are when she is not talking about her love life or them: “[the autobiography] was written for my boys, for Cecco in particular” (Oliphant, 1990 86).  Her persona had to deal with a lot of unfairness wherever she encountered it, losing her children and husband to diseases and not getting a few of her works published, less importantly.  The loss of her family gives her persona a distraught, edgy tone throughout the autobiography.  This causes the reader to empathize with her persona, strongly, as it often takes a lamenting tone for long periods of the narrative.  Also, some of the mishaps she encountered with publishers may have been due to her being a woman in a patriarchal society.  Oliphant wants her readers to take away her life, to immortalize it into the English canon, but more importantly, to remember her children. 

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeologist persona is paradoxically wrong and paranoid at times.  She is wrong about people believing that she is murderous—not because she is in reality responsible for her children’s and her husband’s deaths: “I did not know where to go in Paris, as I could not go back to the same hotel where we had been when my husband was with me; and in our innocence we went to the Bristol!—my sister-in-law having been advised to go there, at second or third hand, through Mr. Pentland” (Oliphant, 1990 88).  Without medication to save her loved ones, she tries to not appear in any way responsible for her loved ones’ deaths.  This however is not in reality how she is viewed, though one person she mentions calls her responsible: “One cruel man the other day told me I had ruined my family by my indulgence and extravagance” (Oliphant, 1990 79).  But, the events that unfolded seem to warp her mind into thinking she is responsible, as evidenced by her often times trying to forget the past and her persona takes a guilty tone often right after a death.  Margaret appeared capable of handling herself and her family, there were times that this was questionable to a psychologist, or anyone who saw her suffering. 

Also, society did not understand illnesses as we understand them today: for instance, antibiotics were not widely available, which could have prevented many of her loved ones’ deaths, and the theories surrounding the spreading of diseases would have been primitive.  Essentially, she was very lucky to be alive even though she thought of her having survived the diseases that befell her children and husband as a curse.  She was driven to the point where she could not handle her misfortunes, and temporarily denounced and renounced God even though He was central to her life; she regains her piousness when she finds a way to forgive herself. 

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeologist persona appears to self-reflect at the dig site of her past memories about her youth, gloomily, as though there were few positive things to remember.  Early on in the autobiography, when she is young, she chooses to remember her deceased sister, Isabella, with despair.  At the time, in the autobiography, of when Margaret Oliphant narrates her youthful years living with her parents, the persona sort of daydreams, melancholically about if one were not dead but alive: her “[mother] had lost three children one after another—one a girl about whom I used to make all sorts of dream-romances, to the purport that Isabella had never died at all…” (Oliphant, 2002 56).   And she reflects that she had few friends while growing up: “I grew up without any idea of the pleasures and companions of youth… I had nobody to praise me except my mother and Frank” (Oliphant, 2002 66).  At times she foreshadows the terrible troubles that awaited her: “But there is always a prophetic ache in the heart when such calamity is on the way” (Oliphant, 2002 68).  Margaret Oliphant lacked persistence at climbing up from a deep cataclysm; she regressed into the shadows of the mind. 

Margaret’s archaeologist persona finds sharp objects that poke her and hurt her often as she digs around—not only are these symbolic of life’s events, but failed relationships.  “Now in this innermost chamber of the heart which no man except a husband can enter and he but a little, I am alone always, alone in the world for ever.” (Oliphant, 2002 46).  This also suggests her persona is heterosexual and that she guards her feelings from strangers. Earlier on in her autobiography, before she met her future husband, Frank, she had a failed relationship with a man whom she considered to be very unattractive.  After she gets published for the first time, she at times does not understand why publishers publish lower people on her idea of intellectual merit instead of her own works, too.  She feels betrayed by the publisher’s lack of confidence in her art.

Margaret Oliphant’s youthful quality talks about the past in a humble tone to others; she has this innocence quality of who is intelligent and inexperienced at the enjoyments of life  When she had some guests over to talk about “books and the finest subjects… [she] had not the least idea how to [amuse her guests]” they most likely were not good friends and she repeatedly said that she was friendless for long times, withdrawing from society essentially (Oliphant, 1990 39).  The fact that her parents were poor most likely contributed to this sense of inexperience: “[My mother] was a poor woman all her life, but her instinct was always to give” (Oliphant, 2002 62).  And when she finally came across death, she innocently expresses it: “I never had come within sight of death before” (Oliphant, 2002 75).  Even as a married woman she viewed herself as unworldly:  “I did not know where to go in Paris, my husband was with me; and in our innocence we went to the Bristol,” she writes (Oliphant, 1990 88). 

By contrast, the persona of Margaret Oliphant reminisces about her past with envy towards the end of her autobiography, since it took her thirty or so years to finish her autobiography.  Her older persona paints a landscape of a happy time when travelling abroad: “I think with pleasure of the pleasant tumult of that arrival, --the delight of rest, the happy sleepy children all got to bed, the little party of women, all of us about the same age, all with the sense of holiday, a little outburst of freedom, no man interfering, keeping us to rule or formality” (Oliphant, 1990 107).  Albeit, this is a memory of a time when she’s alone and everyone she loved is dead.  She also later portrays herself as a thoughtful, imaginative lady who is capable of imagining other points of view with immense skill. 

Margaret Oliphant’s persona places blame on herself and shows this by repeating her stories often for many of life’s injustices that were thrown her way.   Effectively, her persona highlights the events that have led up to the deaths of her children, or the death of her husband, through this literary style.  She repeats the story of Maggie’s death twice—once in the beginning and once towards the end.  At the beginning, she explains her death with a large sense of loss and what-if melancholy: “[Maggie] was just beginning to sympathize with me, to comfort me, and at this dear moment, her little heart expanding, her little mind growing, her sweet life blossoming day by day, God has taken her away out of arms and refuses to hear my cry and prayer” (Oliphant, 2002 37).  Towards the end, she remembers Maggie again in a more constrained and almost frank tone, but still melancholically and lamentably: “On the 27^th of January 1864, my dear little Maggie died of gastric fever” (Oliphant, 1990 108).  Happier moments in her life she avoids while she’s lamenting, because she’d rather cause a pang about these misgivings.  But this does not stop her from continuing her for-her-children theme.

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeological persona digs further into the earth to find alternative answers of if her children were still alive.  She pictures herself as being instead dead or her and her children are all happy together in the grave—she is nonetheless dead.  The most moving of her sub-plots was when she loses her husband, which happens basically in the climax of her story, which caused me to feel goose bumps when I read it.  She has lost her lover not by divorce or separation, but by the injustice of terminal illness—much worse than most of us can experience.  Death comes into her life unfair-like, which produced a sad sensation in me very profoundly, where she says: “when his father was dead,” speaking of her boy (Oliphant, 1990 78).  The hidden, moral message in her persona seems to be that the most important thing in life to cherish every moment and be strong. 

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeologist persona places the urn of religion closer to her body, accepting that God can decide who dies when, but she doesn’t think any of her children will go to hell and that they are at some kind of happier place.  Also, her persona blames a lot of her unhappiness on God, who wants to take her children away from her, basically.  At times though, she uses her belief in God to get through the tough moments in her life, to essentially set aside the grief.  This can be seen by her mentioning the chapel where she walked every morning at one point, in England.  She probably was a church goer, though she does not explicitly state this. 

She blames God often destroying the religious pots, finally accepting her children’s death to be the will of God, though she thinks him unjust.  She doesn’t trust him: “She is with God, she is in his hands… Can I trust her with him?  Can I trust Him that He has done what was best for her, that He has her safe, that there has been no mistake?”  I don’t think her persona portrays herself as thanking God for anything she has been given, because they are all taken away… In one of her most despairing moments, she says, “It seems as if God had broken his word to me, leaving me here helpless with my hands stretched out, refusing me with an unreasonable silence” (Oliphant, 1990 80).  She is indeed a fatalist, a victim to God’s plan, like a damned Calvinist.   

Whereas earlier in her story, where she was more submissive to the will of God, she in her older age becomes more thoughtful with viewing her life’s struggles.  She begins to see herself from a bird’s eye perspective, thus, more clearly.  “I feel myself like the sufferers in Dante, those of whom we have been reading, who are bent under the weight of stones…” (Oliphant, 1990 99).  Her piousness has not waned, however, since she quotes the bible still rarely and only when doing so closely summarizes her past and foreseeable future (when she has begun to picture herself dead): “I was still young, and all was well with the children.  My heart had come up with a great bound from all the strain of previous trouble and hard labor and the valley of the shadow of death” (Oliphant, 1990 104).  Though she has will power to overcome her suffering, she ends the sentence on a sad note: a synechdoche of her life and an allusion from the bible. 

Often, her archaeologist persona befriends other non-archaeologists from a vain perspective of similar experiences and characteristics, giving herself a warm, friendly tone.  She, at one point, mentions that she became friends with a woman who had similarly lost her children due to disease early on.  Later, she makes friends with a woman that reminds her of her mother, and they became close.  Her brother, Willie, who she is friends with throughout the narrative is always there to take of his sister.  She also takes note of female infantilization in Mr. Blackett’s behavior towards his wife, which she finds irritable: “Mrs. Blackett was about my age, and a fine creature, very much more clever than her husband, though treated by him in any serious matter as if she had been a little girl.—a thing quite new to me, and which I could not understand” (Oliphant, 1990 100).

At times in the autobiography, she becomes politically concerned about events like for instance the procession in Rome while she’s with her husband.  And she uses Marxist terminology, who evidently influenced her, such as the motif of “Bourgeois,” twice throughout the novel—once while commenting on female infantilization as I mentioned above, and the second time, while talking about her father’s spend-thrift habits: “[My mother] would have borne anything and everything for her children’s sake, to keep their home intact, and her youth had been troubled and partially dependent one—dependent upon bourgeois relations on the other side” (Oliphant, 2002 57).  According to the annotation, she was referring to a middle-class family, however, I think she was making a larger argument that there was some kind of economic injustice in her family. 

Towards the latter half of her autobiography, her persona begins to recognize that focusing on the sorrows of the past will not get her very far and is not in her own interests, perhaps health-wise.  She finds an age-old remedy—laughter—to brighten her day, laughing again after a long time of seriousness, at a time after she lost her last child.  She even makes a self-reflection about how she keeps over lamenting, “But I must not begin to write of my boy, or I will not be able to think of anything else—not five months yet since he has been taken from me” (Oliphant, 1990 74).  Her persona also begins to focus on day-to-day activities, though at times, the narrative returns right back to despair of loss concerning another child who’s dead.

In her autobiography, Margaret Oliphant’s persona is pious to a large extent and is critical of herself in her way of responding to life’s misfortunes.  She tries to portray herself in as realistic light as possible, being self-critical of her faults and asking large questions regarding her misfortunes in life.  Why did He (God) take away her children?  By these sorts of rhetorical questions, her persona asks for forgiveness and empathy from the reader, though she expects nothing in return.   Her despairing persona, which at times appears to be tamed by time, can sometimes revert back to remembering someone who is dead 30 years later, however, since the memory is of her son.  She presents herself as a hard worker and as a deep thinker as a writer should be.   

Works Cited:

Oliphant, Margaret.  Jay, Elisabeth ed. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant.  Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990.  Print.

Oliphant, Margaret.  Jay, Elizabeth ed. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant.  Mississauga, Broadview Press Ltd., 2002.  Print.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in terms of Chivalric Rituals

Daniel Alexander Apatiga

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in terms of Chivalric Rituals

The green knight was in opposition to British, chivalric values and rituals, which Sir Gawain symbolized.  The characters had differing views in terms of the purpose of chivalric rituals, specifically with respect to homage. The green knight, who was unknown to King Arthur’s audience, viewed his visit to King Arthur’s court as a challenge to an acclaimed group, since he viewed everyone else as being arrogant compared to himself (Greenblatt 143.258).  According to Knighting, homage and the meaning of ritual: The kings of England and their neighbors in the thirteenth century, the chivalric purpose that homage would have had, which was to maintain peace between rulers, was irrelevant to the green knight (294).  King Arthur’s court of lowly and exalted people was engaged in observing the chivalrous ritual of homage, even though the homage ritual was unofficial in the initial setting of the epic poem.  In my essay, I will be using the connotation of “chivalry” to mean the customs and practices of knightsaccording to the Oxford English dictionary, of which is a word that has been used since the 1300's.   More denotatively, chivalry means simply: men in arms and men and "fully armed men" (OED).  However, in my essay I mean the word “chivalry” to refer to the third connotation: "the position and character of a knight, knighthood” (OED).  

Chivalric rituals such as homage and knighting only had symbolic power because they were done before large audiences.  Rituals by knights were done in public settings and occasions, being typically planned beforehand.  They were done to prepare an heir to the throne for rule, for instance.  “A noble could only fully exercise his functions after he had been dubbed a knight”(Weiler 280).  And also, “dubbing” (in knighthood) “cemented concord and peace” between kingdoms (Weiler 292).  Not only that, but knighting “[denoted] both submission and honor” for the knighter and the knightee (Weiler 277).  Knighting was seen by many as an entrance into a kind of adulthood in which one could take up arms.   Young princes who weren’t knighted were largely seen as unable to rule unless they were knighted, except in the case of Alexander III of Scotland, who was 8 years old when he became king without being knighted (Weiler 281-2).   But there was a difference in hierarchy between the knighter and knightee that would have been stressed, for instance, in King Arthur’s court.  The knighter was always considered the superior in the hierarchy of knights (Weiler 276).  

By 1375-1400 a.d., the epic poem aforementioned was written and the importance of chivalric rituals would have been waning (Weiler 277).  This ridiculous ritual, because no one was expected to come out of it alive, of giving one blow of the axe for another at a later said dateset by the green knight would have been satirical in a world where written communication was becoming the dominant messaging mode in an increasingly complex social network—not official chivalric ceremonies such as the ritual of knighting or paying homage.  Nonetheless, in determining social position and maintaining relationships with other kingdoms, homage would have still been paramount during the medieval period the epic poem is set.  Cutting off the green knight’s head would have been parallel to other chivalric rituals such as knighting and paying homage, but most likely, it was intended in this fictional plot to have been satirical, making fun of chivalric rituals. The evidence for the satire latent in the aforementioned epic poem can be seen by the green knight possessing immortality (he was still alive after his head was chopped off), the fairy and the magical girdle could also be construed as being satirical about ancient medieval relationships.  

The green knight, magical like a headless horseman because he could survive his head being chopped off, was part of another non-vassal, dominion outside of King Arthur’s kingdomand would have been in opposition to King Arthur’s court.  King Arthur’s court, whichrepresented British values, was also the setting for the chivalric ritual of homage for other lords and kings to visit.  According to the perspectives of King Arthur and Sir Gawain, the green knight was engaged in a chivalric ritual of homage to their court.  This, however, was not the case according to the perspective of the green knight.  From the perspective of Arthur and his court, homage was done to maintain ties between rulers, and they were bound, by honor, to maintain the tie they had with whatever ruler the green knight was subject under (Weiler 294). The green knight’s presence reminded them of their status in the hierarchy of knights (Weiler276).  The difference would have been unimportant to the green knight, who was not a member of the round table, where the knights of the round table were famously attributed with equalityby their King.  Sir Gawain, being knighted by him, would have had to be submissive towards his King even if he weren’t his King (Weiler 280).  This important fact, however, was elided.  

The green knight departed from the traditions of medieval chivalry multiple times: he did not plan his meeting with King Arthur, which would have been traditional when paying homage; and he did not fully explain what was required of sir Gawain before he took up the challenge of striking a blow with the green knight’s axe.    The green knight says to Sir Gawain right after he has taken up the wager (that he could not do it), “…except for one thing: you must solemnly swear that you’ll seek me yourself; that you’ll search me out to the ends of the earth to earn the same blow…” (Greenblatt 145.394-6).  Of course, sir Gawain feels obliged to accept the challenge, but this is a large request to make.  During this time, the identity of the green knight has not been mentioned though it is at the end of the aforementioned epic poem.  The question asto who knighted the green knight has also been omitted, though it probably would have been on the minds of the low and high people of King Arthur’s court.  

The green knight’s idea of honor was less than that of the knight from King Arthur’s round table, or sir Gawain, because his honor depended on a lowly bet that sir Gawain would not find the green knight but would instead run away because he was a coward.  The green knight didn’t have a higher cause in his ritual of self-sacrifice, except to see who was manlier or morehonorable in his lowly knowledge of honor. Futhermore, the green knight underhandedly, secretively withheld the knowledge that his wife was playing a role with a grander purpose beyond just looking pretty.  Bertilak de Hautdesert (aka the green knight) mentions to sir Gawainabout how he had set him up with his wife to test his chivalry: “And I know of your courtesies, and conduct, and kisses, and the wooing of my wife—for it was all my work!  I sent her to test you—and in truth it turns out you’re by the far the most faultless fellow on earth…” (Greenblatt 185.2360-3).  The green knight here takes a higher position in terms of honor than sir Gawain, but overall, the green knight thinks that honor can be played with as though it’s a game.

Throughout the aforementioned epic poem, Sir Gawain, unlike the green knight, consistently showed great honor to King Arthur.  For instance, when Gawain takes the place of King Arthur because he thinks it’s unbefitting of a king, during the challenge, sir Gawain’s honor becomes more evident: “For I find it unfitting, as my fellow knights would, when a deed of such daring is dangled before us that you take on this trial—tempted as you are—when brave, bold men are seated on these benches, men never matched in the mettle of their minds…” (Greenblatt 145.348-52).  Essentially, Sir Gawain would have preferred to take the bet to save his knighter (person who knights someone, which would have been King Arthur most likely), as a good knight should feel towards his superior.  For Gawain says, “I stake my claim, may this melee be mine” (Greenblatt 144.341-2). He followed through with the challenge that the green knight hadset before him, facing the green knight one year afterwards, which prevented any dishonor from shaming Gawain and King Arthur’s court.

Sir Gawain honored the challenge set up by the green knight exactly one year after Sir Gawain cut off his head, thus maintaining his notion of integrity as a knight.   When Sir Gawain meets with the green knight, the green knight says to him, “you have timed your arrival like a true traveler, honoring the terms that entwine us together…” (Greenblatt 183.2241-2).  Sir Gawain considered his obligation to the green knight fulfilled, taking the blow to the head yet surviving because of the green knight’s wife, who had given sir Gawain a magical girdle.  

Sir Gawain doesn’t recognize the wife of Bertilak de Hautdesert (the green knight), nor his wife’s girdle that saves sir Gawain’s life.  The green knight, though, had sent her to “to test [him]” (Greenblatt 185.2362).  The fact that Sir Gawain kissed her does not hurt the green knight’s feelings, as he merely brushes it off because he knows his wife would not commit adultery.   Sir Gawain feels as though he has somehow become less of a knight because he does not follow “the freedom and fidelity every knight knows to follow,” which somehow was at the expense of another fellow knight.  Nonetheless, Sir Gawain is forgiven by the green knight, who considers the situation with his wife “healed.”  Sir Gawain had cheated the outcome of the betjust as much as the green knight had cheated death with his magic, and so Sir Gawain is in thewrong to assume he did anything dishonorable. 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a satirical piece about the abandonment of reason for the purposes of homage and chivalric rites that were common in the period of King Arthur reign.Sir Gawain embodied those idealized chivalric values, but the green knight satirized them and was a force of fear amongst King Arthur and his knights.  Because chivalric rituals had fallen outof favor by the time written communication became the preferred mode, the author of this epic poem was able to make to poke fun at them without fear of reprisal (Weiler 277).  King Arthur, who may have been merely a legend, would have been long dead by the time this epic poem was written.   

Works Cited

Weiler, B. (2006). Knighting, homage and the meaning of ritual: The kings of england and their neighbors

in the thirteenth century. Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 37, 275-299.

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed.  Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors vol. 1.  New York:

Norton and Company, 2013. Print.

Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford U Press, 28 April 2014.  Web. 28 April 2014