Blog # 7

Since my last post I have started reading Wicked. I have read a good amount of it I am on a chapter called Geographies or the Seen and the Unseen, which is the sixth chapter, and I am on page 38. The book starts out talking about the Wicked Witch of the West’s parents who are Frex and Melena. Melena and her husband are thinking that they are going to have a boy, but they end up having a girl and she has a green face. They decide to name her Elphaba, and both parents are disappointed about her face being green. They try to get rid of it through different methods, but they have no such luck. Elphaba is a very interesting baby she has sharp teeth and likes to bite things and she does not like water.
As far as the paper goes I am thinking of two ideas right now. The first idea is writing a paper about symbolism and talking about how the symbolism has a deeper meaning and does not just stand for flowers or being descriptive. For example as I talked about in a earlier post the flowers in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister not only stood for beauty I thought, but I thought they also stood for freedom. Its what made Iris and Ruth feel good and feel free from being kept inside with the painter and for Clara it stood for getting a sense of the outside world and being free from being looked in her room. Also the idea of a changeling child stands for in real life someone with a disability or someone who is mentally challenged and how parents guard them and want special attention for them. I have not noticed too much symbolism in Wicked, but I have realized that this clock that is coming up could stand for something more. On page 16 to the top of 17 Gregory Maguire says
He wouldn’t move, so he was bundled unceremoniously from his perch. The dwarf gave a poetic welcome. ‘All our lives are activity without meaning; we burrow rat like into life and we squirm rat like through it and rat like we are flung into our graves at the end. Now and then, why shouldn’t we hear a voice of prophecy, or see a miracle play? Beneath the apparent sham and indignity of our rat like lives, a humble pattern and meaning still applies! Come nearer, my good people, and watch what a little extra knowledge augurs for our lives! The Time Dragon sees before and beyond and within the truth of your sorry span of years here! Look at what it shows you!’ The crowd pushed forward. The moon had risen, its light like the eye of an angry, vengeful god. ‘Give over, let me go’, Frex called; it was worse then he had thought. He had never been manhandled by his own congregation
This Dragon clock is not really a clock it has a dragon on top and then it has a painted on clock. Then at certain times there are people that put on a puppet show which is the person talking in that block quote. The dragon clock reminds me of a dictator or president how they in a way hypnotize people and try to get people to believe stuff that they say and how it’s a good thing. Just like this clock some people are inspired and get drawn in when a dictator or president is talking and can’t take there eyes off and are under that persons control, but I need to pay attention and start thinking of some more symbols in this second book, because right now I just have a lot of ideas for the first book. So maybe a thesis could be Gregory Maguire uses a lot of symbolism in his books that stand for deeper meanings. It ranges from flowers meaning freedom to a clock meaning a dictator and then go on to prove this and why I think that.
The second idea I had was to talk about how Gregory Maguire twists these common known fairytales and peoples reactions. In these books he focuses on the villains and there lives before they met the main characters, like the evil stepsisters before they met Cinderella and their story and the wicked witch before she met Dorothy and her story. These villains have had really bad pasts and it makes you feel sorry for them in from the way Gregory writes it, because from his view he is writing about them and how they had a bad past. In Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister the sisters are first working for a painter and they don’t have much freedom and then they go on to live with this family where they are stuck inside and Iris has to teach Clara english and try to get her to come out more. In Wicked the witch is born with a green face and the parents think she was cursed. On page 27 the Nanny say ‘Well…’ “Nanny asked practically, ‘if through a curse the goods were damaged, then through what might the ill be overturned.’ They think that she is cursed and the dad gets used to it, but the mother hasn’t really and does not pay much attention to the daughter and it makes you feel bad for her. I mean yes she is not such a good child and she bites things, but if her parents paid a bit more attention to her maybe she would be friendlier. So a thesis could be something about how all our lives we watch these movies and are taught to hate the villains, but what if they did really have a bad past like this and does it make you feel different about them? I could look up other peoples reactions to the books and see if they felt the same way as me, but also be persuasive in the paper and prove to people how this manipulates you’re thinking on the characters and how you can start to feel sorry for them in a way.