The Manuscript Found in Saragossa so far...

I am no where near being done with The Manuscript Found in Saragossa but I am absolutely loving what I have read so far.

One of the reasons that I have not been able to get as far as I wanted to in this novel is because I tend to fall asleep while reading. This is in no way a slight against Potocki's work but actually a compliment. I fall asleep and then I dream of the world that Potocki has created with the mere use of words. As we all remember I'm sure this class is built on the foundations of dreams and worlds within worlds. I always fall asleep and then have crazy dreams even though I have no idea what actually happened in my dream.

I am definitely having a hard time remembering all of the little details in this novel and keeping all of the stories and characters straight. I chalk that obstacle directly up to the repeating themes throughout this entire novel.

One thing that I am definitely liking, which Dr. S has pointed out, is the themes of initiation. They are everywhere and just completely make my day. Since becoming Obsessed with initiation rituals last year, I have always thought of them as actual planned out rituals but that is completely wrong to think of them like that. They are so much more complex and much simpler. I definitely don't have any clear and distinct answers about what exactly is going on in this novel but it has been fun exploring, meandering  and guessing my way through it. I will be very sad when we end working on it next week!

This is a really rough idea that has been playing in my mind since we started reading it. I feel like I could be completely off since I have not finished the book yet but I think I won't be able to work through it if I don't get it all out there. Our discussion of cautionary tales, relation to the Bible, initiation rituals, and so much more.

My idea is this: The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is a cautionary tale against all other religions. More specifically it is a cautionary tale against all knowledge that does not stem from the religion of Christianity. My reasoning for this is as follows.

1. Alphonso
1. He is safe until he takes off his necklace thus symbolizing his desire to have knowledge that is forbidden to him.
2. He is found in between two criminals when he wakes up which could be connected back to Jesus on the Cross.
3. His name: Alpha is similar to Alpha which is a name that is sometimes used for God meaning the beginning and the end. 
4. Alphonso itself as a whole means ready for battle. Is Christianity in this novel battling against all other religions and forms of knowledge?
2. Women are demonized in this novel as well as related to snakes
1. Snakes are directly related to the Garden of Eden which was the human races' fall from Paradise. 
2. Throughout this novel, women are either related to forbidden knowledge or else they are demonized. 
3. Anytime that anyone has any contact with anything that goes against the Christian religion that Alphonso follows at the beginning of the novel, they experience pain, horrible illusions, and confusion. 

I'm sure there are probably more connections that could be made but these are the main ones that come to my mind. However, like I said I could be way off thinking that this novel could be a cautionary tale against following religions other than Christianity. I guess I will just have to see how the novel progresses to see if my hypothesis has a good foundation or not! 

Final Thoughts for Little, Big.....for now

    After finally making it through Little, Big, I have had to completely re-evaluate my criteria on what makes a novel a great one. I realize now that it isn't if the book is entertaining or understandable but if it makes me think so much that it is a war to finish. I will be completely honest about the fact that at times I completely hated this novel. But like any relationship, you can only hate something/someone if at one point in time love was the primary emotion. Reading Little, Big was a roller coaster ride of emotions. One sentence, I would be enthralled and the next I would absolutely dread keeping reading. But as we have said multiple times in class, nothing is filler in the pages of Little, Big.
  
  Over the past few weeks, I have been working on further developing the idea of biological responsibility towards the mythical. When analyzing the characters in Little, Big, I see so many connections to the mythologies that have captured my attention these past few years that there is no humanly possible way for me to be able to remember and describe them all, let alone incorporate them into my final project. My analysis seems to be drawing me further and further into the theme of this novel. The closer I seem to be getting to a point, the bigger the whole concept seems to be. 

    One idea that is truly lodged into my brain is that the combination of anonymity was needed to combine with the fairy blood to create ultimate level of power. This idea cements Smokey's role in the novel as well as explains why Crowley had to incorporate the daily mundane routines with the magic of the fairies. The combination of the magnificent and the mundane create the most powerful ideas, objects, and worlds imaginable. In my opinion, the people who don't like or appreciate this novel, don't have or haven't allowed them self to taste the fairy blood or the imagination. We cannot escape the mundane but in my personal experience some people have managed to shut off the valve that allows their imagination to run freely. This is a horrible shame but I guess that the way it is. 

    Now I have a ton of more research to do but a few of the amazing mythological connections that I have made with Drinkwater family after coming into contact with Smokey are the Hymn of Demeter, the Three Fates, Mother Goddess, and King & Queen of the Fairies based on A Knight's Tale by Chaucer. There are many many more connections that could be related back to the mythological. 

    One thing that really made me fall in love with this novel was that it treated the mythological or the fantastical as the religious. For everything there was rituals, reverence, and respect towards the Them. In my mind, I equated Them to the Christian God. Now I am not going to delve into my own religious views as that is not the point at this time. The point that I wish to make is that all religion is mythological based in the sense of it incorporating parts of the fantastic into it. This was overt to me but I am not sure if it would be as obvious to one who has not studied mythologies and religion from an academic standpoint instead of just as a follower. This may be one more reason that people don't gravitate towards this novel and that they struggle to finish it. I know that it caused me some distress to focus on Them, even though I knew, or had a good idea of what was taking place. It is almost like a subconscious impulse to fight imagining a different entity that controls the universe or created the world. Something to look for in future books, especially in this class as I'm guessing we will encounter more materials that are similar to Little, Big.

    This summary seems a little all over the place but in keeping in line with the format of Little, Big, I decided not to edit it to make it flow more smoothly so I hope that you were able to follow my train of thought without too much stress. 

August's Request

   I just love it when inspiration strikes, even when it happens at the most inconvenient moments. I don't remember what Hunter's exact words were yesterday that inspired me but all of a sudden in the middle of class I got a brain-flash that may (hopefully) lead to a possible project/paper idea for this class. At this point I have no idea if I am even on the right track or off on some tangent that is not related at all.

  We have talked extensively about Little, Big and by extension the character August. This character intrigues me but not for his ability to create so many offspring but for one simple request that he made. " All of them...Anyone I want. Power over them" This was his one request of the Kingfisher. One the surface level it seems that he just wants to have power over the Meadows girls but as we have all learned in this book there is always multiple layers of meaning to almost every single word. 

  The level that I wish to focus on is a deeper one than just sexual power August has over teenage girls in the surrounding areas. Whether consciously or subconsciously  I think that August was asking for power over the women in his family and maybe possibly the fairies. We have established at this point that no prior male relative had been able to converse or have interactions with the fairies of Edgewood. The males of this family had felt this absence consciously as shown by Rev. Bramble and the first John Drinkwater. Both had sought to find a connection to this other realm but could only find it through the women of the family, specifically Violet and Nora Cloud. However, August's wish to have power over  Cloud & Violet is thwarted because they possess even more stronger magic than the Kingfisher. This stronger magic is the knowledge given to them from the Tarot cards. Even though they lose possession of the cards in order for August to gain his power, they still retain the knowledge of the cards. 

  Through August's actions, the future generations would be able to strengthen their connection to the fairy world. It seems almost as if because the children were conceived under the influence of the Kingfisher's magic, they themselves would be able to have a much closer connection to the mythical. As the generations follow August, the relationship to the fairies seems to become more concentrated. John Drinkwater II is able to converse with animals. He is the first male that is able to have direct contact with this new realm. Daily Alice is able to converse with animals as well. Sophie was able to do so as a child and her own child becomes so important that it is actually taken by the fairies. Daily Alice's children come to represent the Three Fates or women who can control destiny. Alice's Auberon searches until he finds himself in a position to be considered to be paralleled to a Midsummer Night's Dream Oberon. A person cannot get much closer to the mystical than to be the king of the fairies. 

  These are the connections that popped into my head during class yesterday. I have no idea if they are right or not but I do think it is interesting to consider. However after putting this together into a cohesive format, I have ended up with more questions than I started out with. It is hard to see all of the symbolism in this book, much less to understand it all. I wonder what the actual role of feminine vs masculine when following the train of thought that August changed the natural path of knowledge through the family? By asking for power over them, did August realize that he was seeking power over his mother and sisters? Or the fairies? Are the two mutually exclusive? Can power and knowledge somehow become more concentrated through the generations? Are power and knowledge one and the same in relation to Little, Big? 

My Questions about Little, Big

My six questions/comments about Little, Big thus far

1. The three sisters remind me of the Three Fates with the way that they "made knots, they snipped threads,  they knew all". Am I reaching with this connection or is it one that should be made?
2. I'm still curious about Grandfather Trout. We have established he is probably Aurberon but why is Daily Alice the only one who seems to know who he is?
3. Why is Somehow always capitalized? What does it represent?
4. Why did her Ariel Hawksquill's memory mansion fail? What was the block that caused this to happen?
5. Is the City House (George Mouse's House) somehow in the house in Edgewood?
6. What happened to the real Lilac? Is she going to come back? Lily seems to know that Lilac is going to leave but that she will eventually be back, which circles around to my connection with the Fates. 

Article on Fairy tales from A&L Daily

Here is an interesting article that I found on Arts & Letters Daily. Some of the points in it are pretty intriguing. So if you have a little extra time on your hands, this is an article about fairytales that you might find to be worth a read.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/fairy-tales-zipes-adam-kirsch/