The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus by Erin Morgentstern is a unique fantasy story with a few different lessons to be learned: your actions affect the actions of others, choosing what is right and what is wrong, and never letting others control your life.

            Prospero and A.H., the two magicians, have this cruel game that they play with each other in which their apprentices duel with wits and skill until one of them dies. Prospero is the one to bring up the proposal, using his daughter Celia, who has a raw talent and a temper. A.H. brings forward Marco, an orphan who must be freshly trained in the way of magic. As we follow Celia’s and Marco’s upbringing, we can see that the magicians torture and use them for their own selfish desires. What I thought was interesting, however, was that despite the magicians’ efforts to keep their wards anonymous from each other, they still happen to meet and become friends. This is vital to the plot because now that they are friends and in love, they will do anything in order to get out of the conflict they were placed in. They have this terrible destiny but they are able to challenge it and in the end do now have to battle each other. Celia and Marco actually choose death over conflict. They are wise and humble enough to know the difference between right and wrong are able to find the right resolution that opposes the magicians’ wrong ambitions.

            We see that the actions of the magicians affect Celia and Marco’s choices. Both A.H. and Prospero are cruel to them and mysterious about their ultimate destinations. This naturally gives Celia and Marco questions, and unanswered questions leave them dissatisfied and make them want to rebel, especially at older ages. Once they have this idea that they can rebel, they are able to imagine alternate choices for themselves and their fate together. They are able to defy their wicked destinies. After Celia dies trying to save Marco and they both die, their souls are tied to the circus in a way that they haunt it. In the event that they have both died, The Night Circus starts to fall apart and the entertainers of the circus seem cursed to fail. But Celia and Marco are able to will their spirits to bring the circus back to life and, under new management, bring back the magic and spirit of the beloved circus.

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

JRR Tolkien brings forth a revolutionary story about an incredible fantasy world with its own conflicts as well as an unlikely hero. The Hobbit was not the first, but it was one of the most influential fantasy fictions. It sets the basic and most popular fantasy tropes such as good vs evil, a hero that goes on a quest, and magic.

The Hobbit also perfectly defines the “heroic journey” that takes place in most fantasy literature. Bilbo begins in his comfortable little house where he is content with a modest lifestyle. Then trouble brews and the unwilling hero is forced into a conflict. Bilbo tells Gandalf repeatedly he is uninterested, but at the last second, decides to go.  He is afraid and uncomfortable, but over time Bilbo’s confidence grows, especially at the turning point in his character: finding the ring. This is a major character development in Bilbo because it gives him an advantage and makes him feel a lot less vulnerable. In the heroic journey, the character finding their true potential is vital to the story progression. With this advantage, Bilbo gets bolder and takes risks to help his friends. However, Bilbo is able to keep himself hidden and out of the way of most danger because he is invisible. This connects his original personality to his new change in attitude: he is still afraid but he knows he is able to make a difference.      

After the turning point, we see the action and tension grow until the climax happens. Luckily for Bilbo, he misses out on the climax because he is conveniently knocked out. When he wakes up and is told what had happened, he races over to Thorin on his deathbed and they make their final goodbyes- which I would say is the actual peak of tension because its very emotional and its sort of like the reader is saying goodbye to the story.

After all is said and done, Bilbo takes what he can carry from the rewards a new hobbit: he has been on an adventure and he has made a difference and helped the dwarves. Now he is on his way home after such a heroic journey, which brings us full circle. Bilbo is home and back to his old life, there is normality and peace. The heroic journey is complete.

Witch Craft by James Robinson

As we transition from horror to fantasy in our college class, we find ourselves halfway in-between: witches. As in classic horror, and modern horror, females are often portrayed as the victim, someone who blunders and gets in the way, or plainly as a helpless thing that is easily seduced and tricked. Witches, however, take that archetype and spit on it. Witches are women that often take revenge on men because they’ve misused the power that they’ve taken.  We see other examples in literature where women have taken prey to men: mermaids, spirits, etc. Witches are able to turn the tables and say no to the status quo. This time, women have the power and can make drastic effects.

This week I read a 1994 comic called Witch Craft, about the goddess Hecatae, and how she tries to get revenge over three reincarnations for one of her followers, Ursula, who was raped and slain by a man, Cooth, and his band.  Hecatae is made up of three goddesses, each representing the stages of a woman’s life: maiden, mother, and crone. Throughout Ursula’s reincarnations, Hecatae each make a plan in which she can find Cooth’s reincarnation and kill him. In each generation, the goddesses manipulate and twist Ursula’s fate to make sure she is pushed towards the way of revenge. For example, in the first reincarnation of Faith Armatage in the 1300’s represents the maiden, and as a young child, her life is influenced in that she must grow up in a with community. Here, she learns skills that will help her in her revenge, and also exposes her to the knowledge of Hecatae.

In each of her stages she is given the chance to avenge her death and kill the man that started it. The witch gave power to the woman, which is the whole idea of a witch. It's pre-modern feminism.

H.P. Lovecraft

This week I read The Unnamable and What The Moon Brings by H.P. Lovecraft. Fitting in the category of New Weird, we can see differences from classic horror. Instead of huge scary beasts that jump out or seek revenge, New Weird brings mystery and some psychology into play, we are not sure what we are seeing. is it real or in our minds? And if it’s in our minds, what does that mean?

            In Lovecraft’s What The Moon Brings, we are presented with an eerie atmosphere. The protagonist right away tells us that the moon scares him, letting us know that perhaps while he is walking along, his mind is agitated and uneasy; he’s not thinking rationally.  Then he sees dead faces in the flowers, leering up at him. Are there really faces there? When he describes the water he is painting a picture for us: the moon rippling in the shallow water. He explains this terrible something under the water waiting to grab him, but that thing is not really informative and Lovecraft allows us to create our own monster in our minds; he leaves it up to us. This allows us to see what we personally think is scary and in turn creates a larger emotional impact and reaction.

            The Unnamable does something very similar. But instead of leaving it completely up to the reader to decide what the creature may be, the protagonist describes what the specter looks like and talks about the lore to his friend. After a while his companion gets to thinking about the ghost, which is where the mystery comes in. After the attack, the protagonist is unable to tell what had happened because he had fainted right away and we do not know for sure what the friend saw, though he says it was the ghost they had talked about earlier. There is no way for the reader to know for sure because we know those thoughts were in his head and he was paranoid. This allows us to speculate and decide for ourselves if what had happened was a ghost or something not so supernatural.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn

The Japanese ghost stories of Kwaidan are not your average haunting tales. Most horror stories are simply good verses evil, but in the stories of Kwaidan, this is not the case. For example, in “Yuki-Onna,” or “The Woman of the Snow,” the spirit it is not evil, she is personified winter. She killed the old man because it was cold and he was weak and the storm would have killed him. The stories of Kwaidan focus greatly on a person’s morals. If someone makes a promise, like when Minokichi told the Woman of Snow he would never tell anyone of what had happened, he is expected to keep that promise, and if he broke it there would be dire consequences.  In “The Story of Mimi-nashi Hōichi,” or “Hoichi the Earless,” Hoichi tells the samurai and the nobleman that he will come back a second night to play for them. But when the priest discovers they are actually ghosts, he puts protective symbols on him to make him invisible so he wont have to go back. The samurai comes to get him and only sees his ears, and rips them off. The spirits were not evil, and Hoichi is wounded because he did not keep his word.

            My favorite story in Kwaidan is “The Dream of Akinosuke.” The fable was a bit too descriptive in its explanations that I thought was unnecessary but I loved the fantasy of it, especially towards the end when his friends pictured the butterfly as his soul. It’s strange and wonderful that everything in his dream had turned out to be real and in a bug version. It was interesting and surreal, and all of the Kwaidan stories are uncanny.