Annoated Bibliography Robert Finch

The Martian Annotated Bibliography

Weir, Andy. The Martian: A Novel. New York: Crown, 2014. Print.

Robert Finch

The Martian is a piece that divided our group as an audience. Many of us found us found it far from an easy read, and were resistant readers, while I (Robert Finch, the writer of this section) found that the book was standard science fiction and thus I felt at home with the format. My goal throughout this document is to bring together my group’s collectives thoughts on the Martian as to build upon the analysis to delve into the four subjects assigned to our group, namely the “Reading for” or mimetic and thematic reading, the structure of the piece from the various forms (eg repetitive form), the intertextual codes, and finally an analysis of the narrative intentions of the author to his audience.

Section 1

The Martian, a book by Andy Weir, is a novel which in the mimetic register details an aborted human study of the Mars planet where Mark Whatney, one of the astronauts, becomes stranded on the planet with material designed to last several weeks at most.  His only choice is make-do with what he has to survive until the next manned-mission can picked him up, at the very least in several years.  It’s a race against time as NASA struggles to reduce that time-frame and Whatney struggles to grow food and survive in a hostile environment.  Thematically Alexis and I agreed in our value graph that his  predicament saddled Mark Whatney with an “instinct to survive” and that the controlling value is whether his fortitude will result in his living out the rest of his natural life.

The Value Graph is from the first three chapters of the book, where Mark is figuring out ways of creating food and surviving while being stuck on Mars.

This story is as many in our group described it a “science-fiction” novel. According to the Free Dictionary a “science-fiction novel” is “A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background. “ The Martian does fit this category, taking it upon itself to describe potential future technology that humanity (particularly NASA) will use to explore Mars via a manned mission

It was this particular aspect that created resistant readers out of my groupmates in their initial reading-fors (As well as throughout their reading experience). As Alexis states

“Throughout the first few chapters, I felt myself resisting the text, like when he was explaining how to separate hydrogen from hydrazine or how the equipment and supplies that he was using or wearing worked, like the MAV or his space suit. “

And for Laura

“As I continued to read on I noticed, I was not quite a resistant reader to the text, but more along the lines of an inauthentic submissive reader. I was mechanically going through each paragraph and then realizing I was not paying attention to the words on the page. “

The very subject matter, the science-fiction element, alienated many of us, from Alexis’s stated difficulty reading the scientific passages to Laura simply not connecting with the scenario.

However there was another aspect that did come up during our reading-for’s, and that was a feeling of a “survival story” aspect. As Brittany states

“Reading deeper into the book, I begin to think that it maybe more then just a science fiction book and maybe a book about a fight for survival.“

This consensus was shared by all of my group mates (with the exception of me) in regards to the idea that a Science-Fiction novel would involve something more than simply a man on mars trying to create the world’s first martian grown potatoes. In fact many of our group’s submissive reading followed when we see Mark Whatney’s emotions as he fails and succeeds in his attempt to survive. According to Laura

“Other times while reading, I felt as if I were becoming a submissive reader and allowing the text to work it’s magic on me. I was open to the narrator showing me the ways of which he was going to survive Mars with only a maximum of 300 days food. When he states, “Okay, I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and things don’t seem as hopeless as they did yesterday” (23). I can put myself into his shoes without being on Mars. I can feel him panicking the night before and falling asleep to some glimpse of hope to survive. “

As for my own reading-for, with my strong interest in Science-fiction I was submissive in different parts than my groupmates. I actually enjoyed the technical talk while much of Mart Whatney talking about his worries actually grew tired in my personal opinion since it felt repetitive. But that’s more of a subject to tackle in a future section on cultural codes, since the cultural codes I’m used to seeking are different than those of my groupmates who didn’t have much experience in science-fiction.

Section 2

The Martian in terms of Form had a very specific style.

In terms of Syllogistic progression the Martian often brings forth these Premises.  That Mark Whatney has suffered a major setback (I.E. his potato farm has failed) he mopes about it, feeling as if he’s about to die. And then he realizes that all isn’t hopeless “Well, I didn’t die” (51)  He decides that he isn’t going to die, finds a solution to the problem.

Often during this strategy Qualitative progressive form is used.  During Whatney’s journal entries in which he addresses the audience he often uses jokes and dry humor to convince him “I am one lucky son of a bitch [the potatoes] aren’t freeze-dried or mulched” and through this griping we laugh along with Whatney laughing at himself.

In true repetitive form disasters happen over and over again, and as these occur Whatney thinks, panics, and then resolves the issue.

In terms of genre and in terms of defining it, my groupmates and I had very different expectations and understandings. We agreed, the genre of The Martian was Science-fiction, but what we expected and saw the genre as was entirely different. Case in point, a quote by Alexis

“During the first reading, my initial reading for was the science fiction elements that are prevalent in sci-fi…but it surprised me to find out that it also seems to be more about the survival story of the main character, Mark.”

And then again coming up in Laura’s entry

“I started to see that maybe there is more to the genre than just science-fiction. This could be a story about Mark’s survival….This text might be dealing with the certain ways we must survive in a bigger genre [than] science-fiction.”

As these readers indicate, rather than what is commonly accepted as aspects of the genre (Ex. Epic space battles, future societies, alien beings) we have elements of survival fiction in here where the story focuses primarily on the survival of one man in the inhospitable environment of Mars.

But as we remember from section one, The Free Dictionary says science-fiction is

“A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background.”

As Laura states

“As I was reading, I started to notice that, yes, there is a lot of scientific information in the novel.”

and thus we have that quality down, that the book does focus on the science element.

To quote Laura’s quoting the text

“Hydrazine breaking down is extremely exothermic. So I did it a bit at a time, constantly watching the readout of a thermocouple I’d attached to the iridium chamber” (53).

referring of course to Mark Whatney’s effort to introduce water into the soil by burning rocket fuel (the Hydrazine). She explores this issue further in saying

“I started to see that maybe there is more to the genre than just science-fiction. This could be a story about Mark’s survival. “

In other words she noticed that her perception of the genre “science-fiction” was simply not the same as the text of The Martian was delivering.

This calls for a definition of the “Survival” genre. Book-Genres.com describes the survival fiction genre as

“… made up of stories where the main character or characters are trying to survive with little or nothing… who have gotten lost or hurt in a natural environment and have to survive on their own until rescued. The main theme… is the knowledge and how-to to make do with what one has in a limited environment and keep themselves and/or others alive.”

Concerning The Martian this is a very adequate description. Mark Whatney is stranded in a “natural environment” (you can certainly say that Mars is “natural” and he has to “make do” with materials he has on hand. Yet when you compare The Martian with other survival stories like…say the movie Cast Away, you realize that not only is the setting different (Cast Away takes place on an uninhabited island) but there is an element that simply isn’t there…namely the science!

Mark Whatney, our protagonist, is always explaining himself and his methods (see the early quote about the Hydrazine) and the fact that even manned travel to Mars is futeristic, many of the methods described in The Martian are simply hypothetical even if they are based on current science. While survival stories often take place in modern or past environments, The Martian takes place in a hypothetical future where this technology has been developed and is in use. Thus although we can state that the novel does have survival genre elements, the environment is not some frozen wilderness or an island but on a planet that as of this date mankind has never even set foot on personally. Thus the definition of “typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background.” is more defined here despite many in my group feeling that the survival elements place it in a different genre.

Section 3

Moving on from a discussion on genre we have the “intertextual code” or otherwise the question “how does this book relate to other texts?” or “ what outside sources or experiences can we use as a reference to better understand this book?” We have the genre, that being that The Martian is a Science-Fiction story with Survival story elements, but what does that tell us? It tells us the playground that Andy Weir, the author of The Martian is playing with in that genre narrows down the type messages and stories he can tell within his chosen genre. But now we dig deeper, what is Andy Weir trying to convey?

We of course know the structure of the story. Alexis, in her entry on the matter, writes on the proairetic code,

“From what I have read, there have been times when he finds ways of surviving, like when he figures out how to grow potatoes and make water while being stranded on Mars…”

bringing her to the conclusion that

“based on what I have already read, I can make a general prediction that the main character, Mark, will survive by the end of the story.”

But I personally think that The Martian‘s message is not necessarily about whether Mark Whatney will or not survive his mission. I’ll get more in touch with what Andy Weir is trying to communicate in the fourth section, but here I’m going to talk extensively on the cultural codes present in The Martian to give us a strong sense of, now that we know what the genre is, what Weir is doing with genre.

First we start with Mark Whatney. As I write on the cultural code

“Reading the story I find certain codes. For one Mark Whatney does not have the composure of a stereotypical scientist. He often makes off-color jokes, curses when angry, and acts genuinely emotional in ways coded for a sympathetic under-educated everyman than a loyal scientist and intrepid explorer. At the same time he’s coded as an underdog as well, experiencing several failures and realizing his own slim chances for survival while never given up and always trying for solutions. “

And why is he defined in this way, to be palatable of course. Most of the audience reading The Martian won’t be scientists, so an everyman character such as the underdog is needed, but it goes deeper than that. Andy Weir wants to, as I’ll explain later, to show us a human presence on Mars and he wants us to care.

Building off what I cited Alexis as stating earlier about the proairetic code, Weir is building up throughout the book to Whatney’s survival throughout the book, what with as each problem occurs a solution is presented. In other words, Weir wants to show us Watney’s success, and given his mission on Mars as well as him being representative of a NASA astronaut, he is showing a scenario where NASA successfully (though not without incident) has a successful mission to mars and is trying to persuade us, the audience, that NASA really is something to invest in. Because success does equate to viable in the eyes of the reader. I’ll go more into this in section four.

As for the Semic Codes, there is much to say as for the norms and structures of The Martian.  For one Mark Whatney’s habit for appealing to the reader in what we assume are audio-diaries are always accompanied by cursing and lingo.  For example

“Things aren’t as bad as they seem.  I’m still fucked, mind you.  Just not as deeply.  Not sure what happened to e Hab, but the rover’s probably fine.  It’s not ideal, but at least its’s not  leaky phone booth. “

These sections reaffirm the cultural code of Whatney as uncultured, frank, and direct.  From cursing at each failure (as he does above) to using as short-hand for a scientific distance formula named “Pirate-Ninjas” Whatney seems to joke or curse each time something bad happens to him, in a way reaffirming his sanity when later he solves the problem he once was cursing about.

Section four

This brings us to the narrative audience. What, in the end, does Andy Weir wish to convey and who is he conveying it to? As I state in one of my own blogs

“Weir’s audience, in a way, cares about the science and is able to digest the scientific bit to understand how amazing what Watney does is and ultimately how it’s doable. “

In other words, Weir intends his audience to care about the “science” elements of the story with his ultimate goal is (as previously stated) to convince his audience that NASA is viable and that in conclusion, a Mars mission is viable.

With the cultural codes I mentioned in the previous section, Weir has been predicting his readership. As stated, Watney is an “everyman” in that rather than having the qualities of a logical academic that puts all his faith in science. Most importantly though…Watney is a joker, a sort of “class-clown” character. For example when relating his plans to rehabilitate his own refuse to use as fertlizer,

“…Being completely desiccated, this particular shit didn’t have bacteria in it anymore, but it still had complex proteins and would serve as useful manure. Adding it to water and active bacteria would quickly get it inunudated, replacing any population killed by the Toliet of Doom”

We see hear not only casual speech (such as the use of the expletive “shit”)

So it can be safe to assume that Weir is targeting the same sort of audience who usually watch American action movies, the non—professionals who often see a movie to see action scenes and explosions. This is clearly evident in the constant explanation of science, since Weir expects the reader to be uninformed, but at least willing to learn. For example

“According to NASA, a human needs 588 liters of oxygen per day to live. Compressed liquid O2 is about 1000 times as dense as gaseous O2 in a comfortable atmosphere. Long story short: With the Hab tank, I have enough O2 to last 49 days”(106).

These sorts of fact are prevalent throughout the book and Weir expects his uneducated audience to follow the science involved in his use of laymans terms. However he is not effective in this capacity, as Laura states when reading over the aforementioned quote “I feel as if I just glanced over times like this in the text. This is supposed to be a vital moment in the book and I feel as if the author was repeating multiple times how this man is trying to survive. I could not keep an interest and, as a reader, I was not being ethical to the author at all in this novel. “

Thus as stated, although a layman or lowest denominational everyman is the target audience of The Martian there are resistant readings that my groupmates suffered throughout the story. Thus there is a gap in my reasoning, in that I have myself proved that although Weir intended his book to target the “average” person my groupmates being unused to the Science-Fiction genre were unable to receive the message of the book. As Alexis states “I had expected it to be really scientific and full of technical terms that I would not understand and because of that I would not enjoy the book because of those aspects. Those were my projections going into the book, and they were justified rather than being wrong as I started reading further into the story. “ Alexis therefore felt that the technical terms and the focus on them made the book difficult for her to read and delve into.
So who is the narrative audience…? I’d like to point to the book “The World is Flat” a book that I was recommended as a teenager which was a layman’s term book on globalization economics. The book expects the user to be unfamiliar with the internet and how it works, and thus goes into in depth explanations of many modern technologies and practices from the ground up. I found the book incredibly dull, but still very well written given its context, because I simply was not interested in economics. Thus I state that Weir intended the reader to not only be a layman, but willing to put in the effort and tolerance to understand the scientific aspects of the books to in turn be “taught” by Weir how NASA and a Mars mission are not only possibilities, but worthy goals. For many of us we simply weren’t interested enough in the concept, I know for me I found the stuff incredibly interesting and was able to finish the book in record time. In terms of mimetic, thematic, inter-textual and narrative the book delivered for me, mostly because I was able to become the audience the author expected me to be.

The Witness and the Need for Companionship

Nora Roberts is known as an author writing for a female audience.  Her style has been termed “romance” and by this reader’s impression, “romance” is a genre seeking to find an outlet for sexual fantasies.  However in this, the first romance novel I have ever read, it is more than an author seeking to take advantage of base desires in her audience.  Instead it is a matter of composing a narrative that her female audience would be accepting of, or would consider being “true” or “sublime.”  Even in the midst of a woman on the run for her life there is one message or theme that holds true, that concludes the novel.  That is that a “perfect” life for a woman is not, as expressed in the beginning, that of a Harvard degree influenced living or even the flair of independence and strength as Elizabeth/Abigail demonstrates throughout the book.  Instead there is one message, and that is that despite everything in one’s life connecting with one’s match is the most important.  Although definitely writing her audience, this goes beyond what I had expected in terms of “base thrills.”

To explain lets summarize the four named sections of the story.  I went over these sections in my previous post, but let me clarify that these are thematic and represent approximately one fourth of the book per part.  Of these parts the first part chronicles Elizabeth’s teenage rebellion and the crime she witnesses, causing her to have to on the run.  The fourth part revolves around Elizabeth confronting the Russian Mob to use the crime she witnessed to destroy the cartel.  But what of the other two parts…?  Elizabeth is under the assumed name of “Abigail” and lives her life in seclusion, until Brooks the chief of police becomes interested in her and inserts him into his life with persistence and genuine caring for her well being.  In other words a good half of the novel is spent primarily on Abigail opening up to this suave man and developing a romance with him.  Of course, it’s more complicated than that.

Knowing her audience Roberts has an interesting back and forth, being the controlling value of isolation versus companionship.  The book opens with Elizabeth under the guardianship of her masculine mother, a woman who puts her own career and her daughter’s academic future over her emotional needs.  This results, in addition to her trauma of witnessing a murder and finding herself hunted, in her developing a personality as an adult that’s rather cold, controlled, and awkward in social situations.  Thus Elizabeth/Abigail slowly becomes a more “normal” human being.  Towards the end she loves her betrothed, loves her betrothed’s family, loves the town that they both live in, and although she continues financially supporting herself she finds herself emotionally happy as well through human contact.

So in targeting a female audience Roberts creates a scenario where a woman, living a very abnormal life, slowly finds herself entering a “normal” life that most of the female audience Roberts is targeting could relate to, that being that their lives as married women in small towns is depicted as idyllic and enviable.  Rather than a steamy romance, instead we have a typical romance leading to a typical life, an encounter that takes up most of the book rather than focusing on Elizabeth/Abigail’s struggle with the mafia.

However, as part of a male demographic whose ideal of life is not simply living at home and growing flowers (as the protagonist does at several points) felt myself resisting the message at several points and overall not enjoying the novel.  I guess after reading “exciting” novels for the previous three books in the course which take place on Mars, in a apocalyptic setting and an “evil” sort of high school setting that eventually I would find something that didn’t interest. But, such are demographics.

 

A Female Code in the Witness

When speaking with my groupmates who were also reading the witness, a small observation evolved into a larger issue, that is that I hated the book while my co-patriots enjoyed it.  I think it is fair to assume that, I being male and all of the rest of the group being female, that there elements of the plot, archetypes and themes that are readily accepted by the female reader, that I as a male am questioning, resisting, and hating.  Although I did not have the opportunity to properly grill my classmates, I did learn a few things that I found interesting.

One of them was he idea of Elizabeth’s mother as the ultimate evil.
Elizabeth’s mother is brought up many times in the novel, with the general consensus among the many characters being some variation of , as the character Brooks states

“She may never have raised her hand to you, may have kept you clothed, fed, with a nice roof over your head, but honey, you were abused for the first sixteen years of your life.”

I of course had different opinions of “mother” a character who so micromanaged her daughter’s life that she felt stifled with a schedule filled with studying and learning and bereft of human interaction such as sleepovers, play dates, and romance.  As she herself states

“Independence comes in degrees, as does responsibility and freedom of choice.  You still require guidance and direction.”

This sounds more like a mother prodding her child into a productive direction than an evil “bitch” of a parent.  In fact not only does Elizabeth run away and never return, allowing her mother to think her dead, but her boyfriend Brooks agrees that she doesn’t deserve to see her again.  Although I don’t like the mother character or condone many of her actions (She hardly contacts her daughter after she is put into witness protection) I think this viewpoint of the strict mother is somewhat underserving.  Yet without fail, and without even going far into the book all three of my group-mates felt that the character was “evil.”

One possible explanation is the masculine nature of the mother.  She is an independent, workaholic surgeon who at one point gives up her own vacation simply so a colleague can have her own.  She also, when dealing with her daughter, prefers “logic” over emotional appeals.  When explaining the lack of break to Elizabeth she states.

“A girl of your age, physical condition and mental acumen hardly needs a break from her studies and activities”

And when Elizabeth is obviously emotional affected by their conversation and is of need of reassuring the mother declines to intervene, thus going against the “norm” of a reassuring, sensitive mother who is skilled in knowing emotional needs.

Perhaps it is that, as a man, I see the logic in much of what the mother says and although I fault her for not thinking of her daughter’s personality, I don’t see it as a primary fault, nor do I fault her mother from working so much and thus putting her professional needs first.  However, I can only guess that the idea of a mother who does not nurture her children would go against how a daughter would want to be raised.  Thus the hatred of that archaetype and perhaps an explanation of my softer feelings towards the character.

 

 

The Structure of The Witness: Evolution of a character.

In Nora Robert’s the story is broken up four parts:  Elizabeth, Brooks, Abigail, and then Elizabeth again.  These segments serve to illustrate different elements of the plot as they are revealed one by one, particularly her evolution as a character..

In the first “Elizabeth” narrative we are introduced to a personality that, even as the character outgrows it, is repeated again, and again, and again.  That is the “Elizabeth” introduced to us is the sixteen year old version of the same character we’ll revisit over a decade later and, in the narrations own words

“She was, at sixteen years, eight months and twenty-one days, a product of her mother’s meticulous and detailed agenda”

Or in other words, a person not in control of her own life or of her own person.  This is our starting point for the character, but what is more important is the statement that’ll become a repetitive form

“I’m tired of having every minute of every day organized, orchestrated and choreographed to meet your expectations.” is what Elizabeth says to her own mother.  It is somewhat ironic that, later on we see this as a very eloquent foreshadowing or qualitative progressive form.

In the second section “Brooks” we see Elizabeth under an assumed name, Abigail in a very “organized” life in order to escape depiction from the Russian Mob.  She wakes up at the same time every morning, takes her dog for a walk at the same time, works at the same time and has a tight schedule that is delayed by even minor distractions such as trespassers.  Although no longer a part her “mother’s agenda” she is in a way a product of her training as, when she was a child having an exhaustive school schedule and having little time for herself even for watching movies.  However here there is progression, she makes time to watch movies (something her mother would never allow her to do) and although she’s on a schedule it is one that she decides herself.  This is changed when her love interest, Police Chief Brooks enters her life and questions why there shouldn’t be spontaneity in her life in the form of whims or socialization.

In the third section “Abigail” Elizabeth/Abigail reveals that she is sought after by the Russian mafia due to her having witnessed a brutal murder.  Even as by this point Elizabeth/Abigail has grown accustomed to doing things for pleasure and for adjusting her schedule to meet the needs of her now lover Brooks (Such as frequent urges to have pancakes in the morning) we are still brought back to Elizabeth’s life at 16 in the form of her mother.  Upon recollection from her Brooks comments

“She’s a fucking robot and tried to make you one too.”

But at this point the comparison is made to compare the robotic, on schedule Elizabeth to whom at this point Elizabeth/Abigail had surmounted, even to the point of going out in public for the first time

Finally in the fourth section, Elizabeth, Abigail/Elizabeth goes on trial as a witness and brings down the Russian Mafia with assistance from Brooks and law enforcement.  To complete the narrative arc as well as the repetition one sees when Abigail once again in a way becomes her old self in the form of Elizabeth she arranges for her death to be faked, thus ending her “Elizabeth” personality forever.

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to Women’s Pulp (Not too dissimilar to Men’s pulp)

For our final book we read as a group in class is Nora Roberts’s The Witness.  To explain the trepidation I’ve felt since this book was chosen by one of the members in my group, one must explain how enjoyable it was to read the other three pieces.  Or to be more succinct, how familiar they were!  The book I chose, The Martian by Andy Weir, was a science fiction now about a spaceman stranded on Mars having to survive based on his own bravery and science knowledge, and I chose such a book because frankly I love books such as Starship Troopers that explore technology and have always been a speculative fiction fan.  The second book was Carrie by Stephen King, was a no brainer since I’m a big King fan and enjoy his focus on character narratives in the midst of fantastical, often horrific happenings that test resolve and morality.  The third, a wild card for me given I have never heard of it, was Station Eleven, a book that compared life after a flu bug had wiped out 99% of humanity between the carefree life that had came before.  I would actually classify that book as good literary fiction since it focuses so much on the thematics on how it means to live a full life or an empty one, from traveling the country preserving the last of the arts to being a strong woman independent from relationships (in contrast to said woman’s exhusband whose life felt empty no matter how famous he got).  As a fan of all three kinds of books I enjoyed all three.

For The Witness I had get used to a new kind of submissive of reading.  While I felt like the intended audience of the past three books due to my love of science-fiction, Stephen King, and literary fiction, The Witness is a pulp romance novel geared towards a female demographic which, obviously, I do not belong in.  Lets start with the mimetic elements, that of a young woman on the run from the Russian Mafia due to witnessing a double homicide by one of their agents.  The story from the mimetic elements resembles an action-drama not unlike, dare I say it, a pulp novel from what I now consider Roberts’s masculine equivalent Clive Cussler.  Both have a focus on the actual rather than thematic, with sequences like teenage rebellion (Roberts) or investigating ancient ruins (Cussler) happening simply cause it’s “natural.”  Roberts, when explaining her teenage protagonist’s rebellion from her mother, has this to say.

“She didn’t want to be a genius or a prodigy.  She wanted to be normal.  She just wanted to be like everyone else”

Never once is this thought process explained, it just is, and such is the book regarding motivations that just are and are explained.  This, in my experience, is what makes pulp.  We see club scenes, we see murder, we see what it’s like to be in policy custody.  But never do we ever explore the underlying feelings and thematics behind these elements.

This is what makes pulp.

A Tragedy and Life Goes On, an Analysis of Station Eleven and intent

The cover of Station Eleven that I am in possession of does not align with what I, as a reader, think of concerning the end of the world.

We see a beautiful star filled night, and tents like that of a traveling people, like gypsies, camped in comfortable tents set against a crumbled wall.  I must’ve thought to myself when I first saw this cover, “The end of the world is very nice isn’t it?”  It’s like civilization hasn’t ended at all.

I believe in the end, Emily St. John Mandel had intended it this way.  While a submissive reader would be enthralled with the emotions of each of the characters, from a woman going through a divorce to a young adult living at the end of civilization…if one goes deeper one may find that there is a different world and intent beyond the emotion of each of the characters.

A perfect example lies when Kirsten, during the time after the great United States had fallen as a country, encounters an unusual house with a friend, August.

“It was a driveway, so overgrown that it had nearly disappeared.  The forest opened into a clearing with a two-story house, two rusted-out cars and a pickup truck slumped on the remains of their tires.  They waited a while at the edge of the trees, watching, but detected no movement.

The front door was locked, an unusual detail.  They circled the house, but the back door was locked too.  Kirsten picked the lock.  It was obvious from the moment they stepped into the living room that no one else had been there.  Throw pillows were arranged neatly on the sofa.  A remote control lay on the coffee table, blurred by dust.  hey looked at one another with eyebrows identically raised over the rags they’d tied over their faces.  They hadn’t come across an untouched house in years.”

The one word I think of is simply, beauty.  A house, overgrown by nature (A quaint house in a forest) is preserved with all the appearance of a world that by the story’s present time-line has all gone away.  There is a focus on ordinary amenities flavored by the excitement of the two explorers over a great find, our very society.  While the cultural code we’re saddled with regarding the end of the world often makes us afraid of the present, here the author gives us wonder to our own world, to an outsider looking in.  While at first glance a reader may be frightened by a world with most of its people wiped out, instead Mandel is, by painting our world as beautiful, trying to give us a sense that for all our talk a decadent world removed from a glorious past that someday our own existence will indeed by a glorious past in itself.  Mandel is trying to get us to appreciate our present existence, and her world, tents before a star filled sky, is not an entirely scary or unlivable world in itself, primarily a different culture with less access to technology.  Mendel, in one hand communicating with us how beautiful our world is, in describing our explorers is telling us how beautiful the world will be in the future even while having nostalgia for the past.  It is a very interesting way, to describe the end of civilization as, although difficult, a world of beauty.

Station Eleven as loss

Launching off from my last post I talked about the fact that Station Eleven has, at its center-point, the death of the actor Arthur as he plays the lead role in King Lear.  I mentioned a little (but I’ll elaborate now) how every single character has some passing or major relationship with Arthur, from Kirsten who watched Arthur die on stage as a little girl to Miranda who was Arthur’s first wife.  As I mentioned Arthur’s death occurs EXACTLY when a flu breaks out and annihilates approximately ninety nine percent of humanity, but as I read the story I realized that the story is not entirely centered on the apocalypse.  Towns are portrayed as small affairs and spread out living a sort-of backwards existence without electricity or gas powered technology, however as people they seem to act just like everyone else.  There are no new countries, new philosophies, or anything the reader may be unfamiliar with.  If there’s anything different, it’s mood.

“A late-afternoon torpor had fallen over the town, the light thickening and shadows extending over the road.  The read was disintegrating here as everywhere, deep fissures and potholes holding gardens of weeds.  Here were wildflowers alongside the vegetable patches at the edge of the pavement, Queen Anne’s lace whispering against Kirsten’s outstretched hand.  She passed by the Motor Lodge where the oldest families in town lived, laundry flapping in the breeze, doors open on motel rooms, a little boy playing with a toy car between the tomato plants in the vegetable garden.”

This is not a foreign land where, like Mad Max, everyone had dyed hair, skull masks, and spikes on their cars.  This is simply a ghetto, and abandoned place, a world of lesser living conditions.  Reading this piece I get the sense, not of an abandoned place, but of a place in mourning for the world that once existed there.  Recently, after remembering my previous post I realized that Station Eleven is more than focused around Arthur the actor, instead his death signaling a great death of humanity suggests a larger truth, that it isn’t Arthur that’s being mourned.  In fact Arthur is only the representative of a general context, that the story is about remembrance (with the scenes where Arthur is alive) and mourning (Where the world is picking up the pieces after his death) with the mourning of Arthur himself paralleling the mourning of the world that he lived in.

Another segment from the beginning comes to mind, in closing.

“When they broke into houses now, August searched for issues of TV Guide.  Mostly obsolete by he time the pandemic hit, but used by a few people right p to the end.  He liked to flip through them later at quiet moments.  He claimed he remembered all the shows, starships, sitcom living rooms with enormous sofas, police officers sprinting through the streets of New York, courtrooms with stern-faced judges presiding.  He looked for books of poetry- even rarer than TV Guide copies and studied these in the evenings or while he was walking with the Symphony ”

Reminiscing over something no longer there, scrambling for traces in physical memory (if only the memory present in books) of a concept or person no longer there and who will never come back.  This, if anything, is loss.

Mark Whatney

Last post I talked a little about Mark Whatney, the protagonist of “The Martian” who finds himself stranded on Mars with no way to contact home.  I spoke of the need of the audience to want a capable man on Mars but…I didn’t really go into detail who mark Whatney is, what makes him capable and what makes him an endearing character to audiences.  What shocked me though upon reading about Whatney is that he doesn’t come across as a typical scientist at all.  The typical codes, such a scientist who focuses on the big picture rather than what is immediately in front of him (Think Dr, Frankenstein who thinks about all the “good” he can do with creating life but not realizing the responsibility he has for his “monster” as his creator) or even an unlikely or even laughable socially awkward nerd (Dr. Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters fits the bill, a monotone speaking character who collects spores and fungus in his spare time) don’t exactly apply here.  Instead we have a protagonist who’s coded, not as a scientist as we know them in fiction, but as an innovator, an everyman, even a guy we’d get drunk at a bar with.  To be more specific we have the Fonz as Mark Whatney, a cool, slick dude who aways defies expectations but never fails to attract you with his charisma (Whatney even references the Fonz writing “Ayyy” on a card for a promotional photo of himself).  It is very easy to imaged Matt Damon as Mark Whatney (a superb casting choice by the filmakers!  We have a very interesting combination of an intelligent man and a class clown all in one.

Lets start with the “official” description of Whatney that is portrayed to the public that, despite being something that’s supposed to appeal to a mass audience as propaganda, is actually a pretty decent description of the man.  Here a “flight psychologist” explains to the general public her experiences with Mark Whatney and clarifying why he was chosen for the mission.  “He’s very intelligent.  All of the [the astronaut crew] are, of course.  But he’s particularly resourceful and a good problem solver…Also, he’s a good-natured man.  Usually cheerful, with a great sense of humor.  He’s quick with a joke.  In the months leading up to launch, the crew was put through a grueling training schedule.  They all showed signs of stress and moodiness.  Mark was no exception, but the way he showed it was to crack more jokes and get everyone laughing…He was chosen for the mission in part because of his personality.  An Ares crew has to spend thirteen months together.  Social compatibility is key. Mark not only fits well in any social group, he’s a catalyst to make the group work better.”

Now here are words directly from Mark Whatney himself describing his situation. “So that’s the situation.  I’m stranded on Mars.  I have now way to communicate with Hermes or Earth.  Everyone thinks I’m dead.  I’m in a Hab designed to last thirty-one days.  If the oxygenator breaks down , I’ll suffocate.  If the water reclaimer breaks down, I”ll die of thirst.  If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode.  If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.  So yeah.  I’m fucked”

(This blog was posted to the wrong one.  I’m reposting it here.)

And later when discussing his plan to stimulate an Earth ecosystem for growing plants. “The Hab has sophisticated toilets.  Shit is usually vacuum dried, then accumulated un sealed bags to discarded on the surface.  Not anymore!  In fact, I even did [a trip outside] to recover the previous bags of shit from before the crew left.  Being completely desiccated, this particular shit didn’t have bacteria in it anymore, but it still had complex proteins and would serve as useful manure.  Adding it to water and active bacteria would quickly get it inunudated, replacing any population killed by the Toliet of Doom”

This is not the prim and proper, almost military decorum we expect from Astronauts.  This is something we expect a mouthy Arnold Schwarzenegger to say or practically…now that I think about it…some sort of snarky catch-phrase saying action hero.  He curses, he talks casually, he lets his emotions, in this case his rage, rise to the surface and assault the reader (he does this equally with his positive excitement before long as well).  Believe it or not whether you think of it consciously or not, this is the sort of personality we associate with a capable person.  You wouldn’t want to put a guy from the science club on Mars, he can’t even defend himself from bullies stuffing him into lockers.  No, you’d want to send the jock into space, some guy who handles himself and succeeds in our modern day society as is.  Being in a social society, we like guys who give good impressions of themselves socially as we believe it hints at their overall capabilities.  Thus we get a guy we’d generally like.  For example when trying to find a simpler way to refer to a calculation he made concerning how long it’d take him to reach the mars lift off site he dubs this unit a “Pirate-Ninja.”  Given that I wonder if any of Rowans athletes will make it to Mars…who knows?

Station Eleven Form and Structure

Station Eleven has a particularly odd way of presenting its story.

We start from what we think is the beginning, but really is simply the centerpoint that provides purpose for the entire narrative, namely the death of a famous film actor dying on the stage playing King Lear.  This is the centerpoint in the story, as from this point the story goes both forwards and backwards through the eyes of several main characters who in fact never meet.

With the actor, Arnold Leander’s death literally comes the end of the world.  A superflu strikes the civilized world, with the story literally following Arnold Leander’s decent and then fall from the hollywood scene and then with his death, leaping into a scenario where most everyone is dead, almost in the structure of people recovering after a familial loss.

The story follows each character’s “coming of age.”  Margaret, Leander’s first wife, goes through an arc where she starts the story simply drifting through life, depending on her steady boyfriend for moral support.  After not doing well as a “hollywood wife” and realizing that her husband is growing tired of her she divorces him, becoming a high powered businesswoman.  Through her we learn about Arthur Leander as a person but also learn about Margaret as she comes into terms with how she wants to live her life.  She draws a comic book that is only given out twice, thus influencing two other primary characters.

Other characters are simply affected by Arthur’s death, with Kirsten, a child of eight at the time of Arthur’s death and having experienced it first-hand, in her own way grieving over his death along with the entire world as she travels the world as apart of a traveling group of performers who preform orchestral arrangements and Shakespearean plays.  Her story is that of, in a way, carrying on Arthur’s profession of stage actor and in her way coming to terms with not only his death, but the death of the previous world state.

Other characters are introduced, each telling a bit of Arthur’s story as well as their own as each are affected by Arthur Leander in some way, in both past and present.

Beginning Station Eleven

I have to say, it was very hard to be a submissive reader while reading Station Eleven.  Within the first fifty pages it’s been, well, several types of stories.  We have the story of a paramedic realizing his role in live is to be a paramedic, a story of a girl in a apocalyptic land years afterwards living day to day as an actress in a traveling playwrights guild, and we have a woman years before the fall and her romantic escapades.  The story keeps on becoming different stories to the point that, aside from careful connections to other segments, seems more of a collection of novellas tied together than an actual narrative.

Reading it at face value first and forcing myself to enjoy the story the narrative is all about the human relationship.  Kind of like most of King’s work actually, there’s a heavy focus on people’s struggle to live day to day that makes the novel seem literary.  Yet at the same time the author, Mandel, has a positive side to it.  Rather than peppering the story with unspeakable acts of horror and violence as King does, Mandel takes a world of impeccable sadness and splashes it with happiness and hope.

A perfect example is in the beginning, when a famous stage actor passes out in the middle of King Lear and eventually dies.  The paramedic (Jeevan)(actually in training) has run out into the stage and is comforting a young girl (Kirsten).

“Is Arthur going to be okay?”  Kirsten had climbed up on the chair beside him and was clutching the fabric of her dress in both fists.

“Just now.” Jeevan said, “he was doing the thing he loved best in the world.”  He was basing this on an interview he’d read a month ago, Arthur talking to The Globe and Mail- “I’ve waited all my life to be old enough to play Lear, and there’s nothing I love more than being on stage, the immediacy of it…”

There doesn’t seem to be any darkness in this book that isn’t peppered with light.