Final Revised Essay

Digital Wreading

 

            The idea of Patchwork Girl is an interesting way to tell a story, but the translation of this story is a little lacking. This hypertext story is based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum. When I first opened Patchwork Girl I thought it was going to be a story in book form on the computer, but actually the electronic literature was more complicated and mysterious. When I say mysterious I do not mean it in the way Nancy Drew books are a mystery, I mean that figuring out how to read this hypertext is a mystery, there was so much information I had to sift through to understand the story. Although I liked interacting with the reading and trying to “solve the mystery” it was difficult to get the whole story, and understand everything that was going on.

             In Katherine Hayles book Writing Machines she writes about the differences in navigating between lexias in books and lexias in hypertext. “Navigation was envisioned as taking place not only between lexias but between images and words, and more profoundly between the text and the computer producing it. This was something very different than moving from lexia to lexia: it was an effect print could not duplicate. Jackson reinforced the point by writing passages that explicitly drew connections between the machinery and text, asking what happened to Consciousness when it existed discontinuously as screens with gaps in between”.  I agree this quote by Hayles, navigation is a very important part of this hypertext and this process of moving from lexia to lexia is very unique. This way of reading breaks the mold of how people usually read. In a lot of ways this type of reading held my attention because I was so anxious to figure out more of what was happening, everywhere I went in this hypertext I kept discovering new things.

The story is divided into five different parts, a graveyard, a journal, a crazy quilt, a story, and broken accents. By clicking on the different boxes you get led to more parts of the story. At first this way of reading was intimidating and pushed me away from wanting to read it. But once I actually put effort into this hypertext I began to enjoy reading. One of my favorite parts was the Graveyard section. In this section you get to learn where the different parts of the patchwork girls body came from. For example, I learned that the heart she had gotten had belonged to Agatha. This did not tell me a lot of information but it made me realize that the monster could be a lesbian. This would explain the very close bond the monster and her creator shared.

Reading Patchwork Girl is like a solving a mystery or playing a game, you have to interact with the program to get the whole story. In class we mentioned that Patchwork Girl was kind of like the computer game Myst. When I was younger I used to own Myst and my brother and I would play it all of the time. It always confused me because I never really knew what to do. It was full of puzzles and fragmented pieces of a story. For Example, in the game you had to go into a library and look at different books, they were in no particular order so you just had to guess and try to read and put together what you found. This was very difficult and frustrating but when I did fit together parts of the story, or figure one of the puzzles out I would get so excited. Patchwork Girl is a lot like the game Myst because you have to fit things together to understand what is going on.

            Although this story is fun to interact with it fails to achieve a lot of things as a novel. Since there is no definitive beginning and end I do not know when I should stop reading, or when I have gotten the whole story. The way this literature is set up makes it hard to go back to a certain passage if I want to. When I read I often forget what I have just read and in a written book you can simply turn the page back, but in this hypertext it is very difficult to go back. There are also many steps you have to take to get to a certain part of the story that it is hard to remember where a certain passage is. Another thing that makes this reading difficult is that you are not reading everything all at once. Moving from passage to passage often takes a lot of time and thought, and by the time you get to a new section, you forget what you have just read. How can the reader be expected to get the whole meaning and experience of the whole work when it is too difficult to find all of the passages? I do not even know where the beginning and end of this novel are.  I do not feel entitled to claim the experience of the work, I did not fully understand the story or read all of the important parts. Another problem with this reading is that too much time is spent searching for something to read; when in a book this is not a problem. I had to find a section to go to in patchwork girl that I thought came after what I already read. For example after I read the crazy quilt section I did not know where the story I had just read continued. I had to click on all different sections to try and find the next part of the story that made sense   Also, many parts of the story that I have uncovered make little sense with the rest of the story, or don’t really fit together. I felt like I was having random bits of information thrown at me and they did not flow together.

When I was reading the “Crazy Quilt” section I got a lot of information on the relationship between the creator and the patchwork girl. Then all of the sudden without explanation the story starts to change and use quotes from The Patchwork Girl of Oz and goes in a completely different direction. For example one passage in the Crazy Quilt section talks about what the girl is supposed to look like when she is created. The next passage says “Yoop-te-hoop-te-loop-te-goop! Who put noodles in the soup? Dear me! Aren’t you feeling a little queer, just now? Dorothy asked the Patchwork Girl. Not queer but crazy, said Ojo…” This passage makes no sense with the passage before it. I do not even know who the characters are in this part. This story is so mixed up that I am not always sure what is happening. It would help if Jackson had first introduced the context of the Patchwork Girl of Oz. If someone, like myself, had never read it how could we be expected to know what was going on. She did not explain the characters in this section or tie the two stories together in any way. Jackson just jumped back and forth with out making any sense.

In Sven Birkerts novel The Gutenberg Elegies he talks about how if the context of readings gets more and more broad the reader will not be able to handle it.“ The horizon, the limit that gave definition to the parts of the narrative, will disappear. The equation itself will become nonsensical through the accumulation of variables. The context will widen until it becomes, in effect, everything. Technology may be able to handle it, but will the user? If they cannot, then what will be the new face of understanding? I agree with Bikert’s opinion that the user cannot really handle the context of this hypertext. It seems like a good idea but it is too difficult to be understood and seen has a novel.  The mysteriousness of this story makes it interesting and fun to interact with but when it is impossible to solve it is just frustrating, but the key problem with this story is less that it is a mystery, and more that there is too much information. Not only that there is too much information but the context that it is in. Like Birkerts said, there is just too much to deal will, the context is too wide, and this makes the context fail.

 

 

I have completed this work in accordance with the Honor Code.

Earlier Version

Digital Wreading

 

            The idea of Patchwork Girl is an interesting way to tell a story, but the translation of this story is a little lacking. This hypertext story is based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum. When I first opened Patchwork Girl I thought it was going to be a story in book form on the computer, but actually the electronic literature was more complicated and mysterious. When I say mysterious I do not mean it in the way Nancy Drew books are a mystery, I mean that figuring out how to read this hypertext is a mystery. Although I liked interacting with the reading and trying to “solve the mystery” it was difficult to get the whole story, and understand everything that was going on.

             “Navigation was envisioned as taking place not only between lexias but between images and words, and more profoundly between the text and the computer producing it. This was something very different than moving from lexia to lexia: it was an effect print could not duplicate. Jackson reinforced the point by writing passages that explicitly drew connections between the machinery and text, asking what happened to Consciousness when it existed discontinuously as screens with gaps in between”.  I agree this quote by Hayles, navigation is a very important part of this hypertext and this process of moving from lexia to lexia is very unique. This way of reading breaks the mold of how people usually read. In a lot of ways this type of reading held my attention because I was so anxious to figure out more of what was happening, everywhere I went in this hypertext I kept discovering new things. The story is divided into five different parts, a graveyard, a journal, a crazy quilt, a story, and broken accents. By clicking on the different boxes you get led to more parts of the story. At first this way of reading was intimidating and pushed me away from wanting to read it. But once I actually put effort into this hypertext I began to enjoy reading. It is like a solving a mystery or playing a game, you have to interact with the program to get the whole story. One of my favorite parts was the Graveyard section. In this section you get to learn where the different parts of the patchwork girls body came from.  Reading Patchwork Girl is like putting together a puzzle; it is really exciting when you find a new piece to add to the story.

            Although this story is fun to interact with it fails to achieve a lot of things as a novel. Since there is no definitive beginning and end I do not know when I should stop reading, or when I have gotten the whole story. The way this literature is set up makes it hard to go back to a certain passage if I want to. When I read I often forget what I have just read and in a written book you can simply turn the page back, but in this hypertext it is very difficult to go back. There are many steps you have to take to get to a certain part of the story that it is hard to remember where a certain passage is. Another thing that makes this reading difficult is that you are not reading everything all at once. Moving from passage to passage often takes a lot of time and thought, and by the time you get to a new section, you forget what you have just read. How can the reader be expected to get the whole meaning and experience of the whole work when it is too difficult to find all of the passages? I do not even know where the beginning and end of this novel are.  I do not feel entitled to claim the experience of the work, I did not fully understand the story or read all of the important parts. Another problem with this reading is that too much time is spent searching for something to read, when in a book this is not a problem   Also, many parts of the story that I have uncovered make little sense with the rest of the story, or don’t really fit together. When I was reading the “Crazy Quilt” section I got a lot of information on the relationship between the creator and the patchwork girl. Then all of the sudden without explanation the story starts to change and use quotes from The Patchwork Girl of Oz and goes in a completely different direction. For example one passage in the Crazy Quilt section talks about what the girl is supposed to look like when she is created. The next passage says “Yoop-te-hoop-te-loop-te-goop! Who put noodles in the soup? Dear me! Aren’t you feeling a little queer, just now? Dorothy asked the Patchwork Girl. Not queer but crazy, said Ojo…” This passage makes no sense with the passage before it. I do not even know who the characters are in this part. This story is so mixed up that I am not always sure what is happening.

“ The horizon, the limit that gave definition to the parts of the narrative, will disappear. The equation itself will become nonsensical through the accumulation of variables. The context will widen until it becomes, in effect, everything. Technology may be able to handle it, but will the user? If they cannot, then what will be the new face of understanding? I agree with Bikert’s opinion that the user cannot really handle the context of this hypertext. It seems like a good idea but it is too difficult to be understood and seen has a novel.  The mysteriousness of this story makes it interesting and fun to interact with but when it is impossible to solve it is just frustrating. Like Birkerts said, there is just too much to deal will, the context is too wide, and this makes the context fail. 

Self Reflection

One of my areas that I needed to strengthen in this essay was my critical application. My quotations by Hayles and Brikerts were good quotes but I did no realize that they were not introduced well to my readers, they were just thrown at them. So I went back and introduced my quotes and provided some context, so that they would make more sense. I also went back and added a whole new paragraph about an experience I had before with hypertext, and how it related to patchwork girl. A thing that I noticed when I had a friend review my paper was that I did not explain certain things very well so that someone who had never read Patchwork Girl would understand. I wrote that too much time was spent finding something to read. I went back and explained what I meant by giving an example that I did not know where the story I had just read continued and that I had to click on all different sections to try and find the next part of the story that made sense. I also provided an example of why I liked the graveyard section of this reading which I did not explain well either. In this writing I believe that I achieved a good balance of saying positive and negative things about Patchwork Girl. I think that during this term I have become a stronger reader and writer. I have really worked on my introductions and developing a strong thesis. As a reader I have been exposed to types of text I was not used to and overcame the intimidation I felt when trying to read the hypertext Patchwork Girl. I have achieved better writing skills and a more open mind to different styles of writing. I hope that as I go on through college I can become an even stronger writer.

A semicolon is a punctuation mark that indicates a division in a sentence where a more distinct separation is needed between clauses or items on a list than is indicated by a comma. Italian printer Aldus Manutius started the practice of using the semi colon to separate words of opposed meaning, and between interdependent statements. Ben Jonson was the first notable English writer to use the semi colon. The earliest general use of the semi colon was in 1591. The semicolon allows you to imply a relationship between balanced ideas without actually stating that relationship. The semicolon can also separate two independent clauses. This is especially true when the independent clauses are complex or when they have comma in them. When this is true it works well to beak them into two separate sentences. An example of a sentence that I would not know to use a semicolon would be one with independent clauses not conjoined with a co-ordinating conjunction. An example of this is the sentence “ I went to the library; I was told it was closed for remodeling.” In a sentence like this I would be confused on whether or not I should use a comma or a semicolon between those two statements. Another example of a sentence that I would not know how to use a semicolon in would be one with items in a series containing internal punctuation. An example of this would be the sentence “I have lived in Annapolis, Maryland; Chestertown, Maryland; Atlanta, Georgia; and Gaylord, Michigan.” Before I researched the semicolon I would not have known how to write this sentence, I would have used commas in place of the semicolon and made it completely wrong and confusing.   A third example of a sentence that used a semicolon would be to separate independent clauses conjoined with coordinating conjunctions. Once again I would not know where to use a comma and where to use the semicolon in this type of sentence. The correct placement would be between the two statements, for example in this sentence “ When I went to the store I bought, cereal, candy bars, and milk; but when I got home I realized I had left it all in the cart in the parking lot of the store.”

 

Reference:

Hacker, Diana (2002). The Bedford Handbook (6th ed. ed.). Boston: Bedford/St.

Martin’s”semicolon.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 01 Dec. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/semicolon>.

Writing Project #4

Digital Wreading

 

            The idea of Patchwork Girl is an interesting way to tell a story, but the translation of this story is a little lacking. This hypertext story is based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum. When I first opened Patchwork Girl I thought it was going to be a story in book form on the computer, but actually the electronic literature was more complicated and mysterious. When I say mysterious I do not mean it in the way Nancy Drew books are a mystery, I mean that figuring out how to read this hypertext is a mystery. Although I liked interacting with the reading and trying to “solve the mystery” it was difficult to get the whole story, and understand everything that was going on.

             “Navigation was envisioned as taking place not only between lexias but between images and words, and more profoundly between the text and the computer producing it. This was something very different than moving from lexia to lexia: it was an effect print could not duplicate. Jackson reinforced the point by writing passages that explicitly drew connections between the machinery and text, asking what happened to Consciousness when it existed discontinuously as screens with gaps in between”.  I agree this quote by Hayles, navigation is a very important part of this hypertext and this process of moving from lexia to lexia is very unique. This way of reading breaks the mold of how people usually read. In a lot of ways this type of reading held my attention because I was so anxious to figure out more of what was happening, everywhere I went in this hypertext I kept discovering new things. The story is divided into five different parts, a graveyard, a journal, a crazy quilt, a story, and broken accents. By clicking on the different boxes you get led to more parts of the story. At first this way of reading was intimidating and pushed me away from wanting to read it. But once I actually put effort into this hypertext I began to enjoy reading. It is like a solving a mystery or playing a game, you have to interact with the program to get the whole story. One of my favorite parts was the Graveyard section. In this section you get to learn where the different parts of the patchwork girls body came from.  Reading Patchwork Girl is like putting together a puzzle; it is really exciting when you find a new piece to add to the story.

            Although this story is fun to interact with it fails to achieve a lot of things as a novel. Since there is no definitive beginning and end I do not know when I should stop reading, or when I have gotten the whole story. The way this literature is set up makes it hard to go back to a certain passage if I want to. When I read I often forget what I have just read and in a written book you can simply turn the page back, but in this hypertext it is very difficult to go back. There are many steps you have to take to get to a certain part of the story that it is hard to remember where a certain passage is. Another thing that makes this reading difficult is that you are not reading everything all at once. Moving from passage to passage often takes a lot of time and thought, and by the time you get to a new section, you forget what you have just read. How can the reader be expected to get the whole meaning and experience of the whole work when it is too difficult to find all of the passages? I do not even know where the beginning and end of this novel are.  I do not feel entitled to claim the experience of the work, I did not fully understand the story or read all of the important parts. Another problem with this reading is that too much time is spent searching for something to read, when in a book this is not a problem   Also, many parts of the story that I have uncovered make little sense with the rest of the story, or don’t really fit together. When I was reading the “Crazy Quilt” section I got a lot of information on the relationship between the creator and the patchwork girl. Then all of the sudden without explanation the story starts to change and use quotes from The Patchwork Girl of Oz and goes in a completely different direction. For example one passage in the Crazy Quilt section talks about what the girl is supposed to look like when she is created. The next passage says “Yoop-te-hoop-te-loop-te-goop! Who put noodles in the soup? Dear me! Aren’t you feeling a little queer, just now? Dorothy asked the Patchwork Girl. Not queer but crazy, said Ojo…” This passage makes no sense with the passage before it. I do not even know who the characters are in this part. This story is so mixed up that I am not always sure what is happening.

“ The horizon, the limit that gave definition to the parts of the narrative, will disappear. The equation itself will become nonsensical through the accumulation of variables. The context will widen until it becomes, in effect, everything. Technology may be able to handle it, but will the user? If they cannot, then what will be the new face of understanding? I agree with Bikert’s opinion that the user cannot really handle the context of this hypertext. It seems like a good idea but it is too difficult to be understood and seen has a novel.  The mysteriousness of this story makes it interesting and fun to interact with but when it is impossible to solve it is just frustrating. Like Birkerts said, there is just too much to deal will, the context is too wide, and this makes the context fail.

 

 

I have completed this work in accordance with the Honor Code.

Works Cited

Hayles, Katherine. Writing Machines. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT P, 2002.

Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. Watertown, Massachusetts: Eastgate Systems, 1995.

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies : The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Danbury: Faber & Faber, Incorporated, 2006.

 

Self Evaluation: I established my focus and thesis well in my first paragraph, and my critical vision was good. Something that I could have done better was my development, I felt like my ideas were not very organized and I might have repeated myself at times.

            The idea of Patchwork Girl is an interesting way to tell a story, but the translation of this story is a little lacking. This hypertext story is based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum. When I first opened Patchwork Girl I thought it was going to be a story in book form on the computer, but actually the electronic literature was more complicated and mysterious. The story is divided into five different parts, a graveyard, a journal, a crazy quilt, a story, and broken accents. By clicking on the different boxes you get led to more parts of the story. At first this way of reading was intimidating and pushed me away from wanting to read it. But once I actually put effort into this hypertext I began to enjoy reading. It is like a solving a mystery or playing a game, you have to interact with the program to get the whole story. One of my favorite parts was the Graveyard section. In this section you get to learn where the different parts of the patchwork girls body came from.  Reading Patchwork Girl is like putting together a puzzle; it is really exciting when you find a new piece to add to the story.

            Although this story is fun to interact with it fails to achieve a lot of things as a novel. Since there is no definitive beginning and end I do not know when I should stop reading, or when I have gotten the whole story. The way this literature is set up makes it hard to go back to a certain passage if I want to. When I read I often forget what I have just read and in a written book you can simply turn the page back, but in this hypertext it is very difficult to go back. There are many steps you have to take to get to a certain part of the story that it is hard to remember where a certain passage is. Another thing that makes this reading difficult is that you are not reading everything all at once. Moving from passage to passage often takes a lot of time and thought, and by the time you get to a new section, you forget what you have just read. Too much time is spent searching for something to read, when in a book this is not a problem   Also, many parts of the story that I have uncovered make little sense with the rest of the story, or don’t really fit together. When I was reading the “Crazy Quilt” section I got a lot of information on the relationship between the creator and the patchwork girl. Then all of the sudden without explanation the story starts to change and use quotes from The Patchwork Girl of Oz and goes in a completely different direction. This story is so mixed up that I am not always sure what is happening. “ The horizon, the limit that gave definition to the parts of the narrative, will disappear. The equation itself will become nonsensical through the accumulation of variables. The context will widen until it becomes, in effect, everything. Technology may be able to handle it, but will the user? If they cannot, then what will be the new face of understanding? I agree with Bikert’s opinion that the user cannot really handle the context of this hypertext. It seems like a good idea but it is too difficult to be understood and seen has a novel.

            “What is the value of a symphony from which half of the second and all of the third movements have been cut? To what extent is the listener entitled to claim the experience of the work.” This idea by Birkerts can relate to Patchwork Girl because so many parts of this reading are cut out. How can the reader be expected to get the whole meaning and experience the whole work when it is too difficult to find all of the passages. I do not even know where the beginning and end of this novel are.  I do not feel entitled to claim the experience of the work, I did not fully understand the story or read all of the important parts. From what scattered parts of this story I actually read, I’m not sure if I could even explain the plot to anyone.

            The idea of Patchwork Girl is an interesting way to tell a story, but the translation of this story is a little lacking. This hypertext story is based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum. When I first opened Patchwork Girl I thought it was going to be a story in book form on the computer, but actually the electronic literature was more complicated and mysterious. The story is divided into five different parts, a graveyard, a journal, a crazy quilt, a story, and broken accents. By clicking on the different boxes you get led to more parts of the story. At first this way of reading was intimidating and pushed me away from wanting to read it. But once I actually put effort into this hypertext I began to enjoy reading. It is like a solving a mystery or playing a game, you have to interact with the program to get the whole story. One of my favorite parts was the Graveyard section. In this section you get to learn where the different parts of the patchwork girls body came from.  Reading Patchwork Girl is like putting together a puzzle; it is really exciting when you find a new piece to add to the story.

            Although this story is fun to interact with it fails to achieve a lot of things as a novel. Since there is no definitive beginning and end I do not know when I should stop reading, or when I have gotten the whole story.   Also, many parts of the story that I have uncovered make little sense with the rest of the story, or don’t really fit together. When I was reading the “Crazy Quilt” section I got a lot of information on the relationship between the creator and the patchwork girl. Then all of the sudden without explanation the story starts to change and use quotes from The Patchwork Girl of Oz and goes in a completely different direction. This story is so mixed up that I am not always sure what is happening.

• Patchwork girl is an interesting reading but it fails to achieve a lot as a novel
• you have to interact with the reading to get the story
• it is a mystery and is in different parts, like the character of the patchwork girl.
• confusing to navigate
• hard to piece together the whole story
• Agree with Birkert’s idea that reading should be in book form and left uncomplicated
• I like to get the whole story in order so I do not miss important parts.
• no difinitive start and end
• as a digital text it is not set up in a orderly or attractive mannor
• pg isn’t even as complicated as a lot of new technology now, which makes you expect it to be harder to use, when it is simple in some ways.
• it confused me when she used quotes from the different book (ex. the glass cat?)

When I first started to read The Gutenberg Elegies I thought it was monotonous and annoying. I did not understand what Birkert’s hated so much about electonics. I thought that he was living in the past and that there was not a big difference in reading on a computer and reading from a book. But after reading Writing Machines and attempting to read Patchwork Girl I realized that there was more to electronic literature than I thought. The one thing that I liked about Writing Machines was that the author did not complain about stuff all of the time, she truly loved to talk about her electronic interests such as Techno-Texts. But the things she wrote about were really confusing, I had never heard of Techno-Texts or Media- Specific Analyses, I can’t understand why somebody would want to deal with things that are so overly confusing when you can learn just as much from a simple book. I realize now that like Birkerts, I enjoy keeping things simple, I do not want to have to put a puzzle together in order to read a story, I want to read it in a linear fashion like I have been taught too. 

In Chapter 8, Bikerts talks about his library that he was in charge of that bought used books. He tells a story of a man who wishes to sell his entire library, pretty much because he is only interested in his new computer. Yes, the computer is a great thing, it is full of more information than any book can hold, but this part of the book makes me cringe. Maybe this is because I have a librarian for a mother and I have always been taught to respect books, but I cannot imagine getting rid of your entire collection of books. I do not understand what is so wrong with old fashioned reading that someone would do that. After reading about and experiencing electronic literature I am on Birkerts side of the argument. I feel his frustration and anger a lot more now after trying to read Shelley’s work. 

In Chapter 11, Birkerts discovers the audio book on tape. For once he is not complaining about all electronics, he really enjoys listening to his books while he is stuck in traffic in his car. I remember the first time I discovered the book on tape, my mom would listen to them when we rode in the car together and I really enjoyed being able to just sit back and listen. But to me, the book on tape isn’t really a new technology, it seems very similar to the older traditions of oral story telling. The only thing confusing about a book on tape is using the cassette, besides that there isn’t anything too confusing, it is a book, read in a linear fashion just like it is written on paper. This is the type of electronic literature that I enjoy, it is not unnecessarily confusing like Patchwork Girl. If Shelley had written her story in a more linear, straightforward manor I would have been more inclined to finish it. But instead, I try to figure out the confusing puzzle, read a few sentences, and give up in frustration.

When I first opened Patchwork Girl I did not know what to do with it. A picture of a naked woman popped up, which surprised and confused me, and to read this story I had to click on random words on a chart. There was no particular order to what I was reading and the story made no sense to me. This program is very fragmented and I did not know where to start or where to go. Some of the things I read were far ahead in the story and things I did not mean to read. This way of reading encouraged me to jump around in a unlinear fashion. The point of writing this was was clearly so that the reader does not get the entire picture, and so that there is confusion at all times. Maybe this confusion is supposed to help us relate to how the creation feels, the creation is fragmented and confused, she doesn’t really know exactly where to go or what to do.

In class we mentioned that Patchwork Girl was kind of like the computer game Myst. When I was younger I used to own that game and my brother and I would play it all of the time. It always confused me because I never really knew what to do, it was full of puzzles and fragmented pieces of a story. But when I did fit together parts of the story or figure one of the puzzles out I would get so excited. Its was like solving a little part of a mystery. Patchwork Girl is a lot like the game Myst. You have to fit things together to understand what is going on. It is kind of like a less advanced game. Once I figured Patchwork Girl out a little bit I came to enjoy it more. I found a Journal link and followed it to many journal entries of the creator. I figured out how to read them in order and I came upon a really interesting part of the story. The creators feelings toward her creation in this story is completely opposite of Victors feelings towards his monster. She is everything I wish he had been when I read Frankenstein. She sees her monster at the end of a path and instead of fleeing she walks towards her with curiosity, compassion, and a kind of fellow feeling. She refers to her creation of the monster as the “sewing of a great quilt”. When she sees the monsters naked body she is not disgusted with her work, she thinks that she is beautiful, because her different skin hues are like the autumn foliage. The monster and the creator are friendly to each other, they are continuisly side by side. She refers to her as her child, and feels responsibility for her. Her creation is in the persuit of knowledge and pleasure, and she helps feed her hunger. Compared to reading Frankenstein the Story of Patchwork Girl makes me feel happy and comfortable, and now that I have figured it out, I am excited to read more and fit together more of the puzzle.

 

Writing Project #3: Remediated Wreading

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

 

Overall I thought that the film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was fairly accurate in its interpretation of the text. The primary interpretation of this film is that the monster is born rather than created. This film focuses a lot on reproduction, and on birth scenes. Victor even refers to his creation as “the newborn.” The Birth scenes are the most horrific parts of this movie; they are all loud and bloody.  In the novel the creation scene is very brief, unexciting, and not gory. In the movie the creation scene is loud and chaotic, the monster is in amniotic fluid, and is a mess when he is “born.” The fact that the monster is naked and that Victor is shirtless adds a more natural feeling to the whole scene. Births in this novel are correlated with death and despair. In the scene when his mother gives birth she dies, in the and in the creation scenes of both the monster and Elizabeth there is blood and fluids everywhere and it is scary.  

One aspect that is significant in the birth scenes is the use of close-ups. The birthing scenes in this movie are all portrayed as stressful and horrifying. Giving birth is a stressful and exhausting process, but usually it is happy and calms down when the baby is born, but not in this film. Every birth scene, even the obscure one when Victor is collecting amniotic fluid, is tragic and disgusting. This film has many close ups of Victor and other characters, which adds to the intense mood of what is going on. In the first creation scene the camera focuses on just Victor, then will back away to show the entire scene, and then close up on Victor again, and so on.  One part in particular that stands out when this happens is when Victor is trying to help the creation stand up. They are both covered in slime, and struggling to move around. Seeing this whole scene played out makes me think of a giant baby, or like a baby animal when it first stands after birth. When I read the creation scene in the novel I did not picture it this way at all, or even like a birth. I pictured a clothed monster getting electrocuted, then standing up.  The book made it anti-climactic and dull, by elaborating the gory details and showing the monsters birth in a realistic way it made the story make a lot more sense. I felt that this made the monster seem a lot more real and natural than he was portrayed in the novel.

Another aspect that is significant to this film is the sounds. When reading the book you set the tone of a passage by how you feel about what is going on. For example, when reading the creation scene I thought of it as tense and quiet, with Victor concentrating on making the monster. In the film the music often foreshadows what is to come and sets the tone for you. In the birth scenes in this movie the music is always loud and ominous, along with a lot of screaming and loud noises. This automatically sets the tone of all birth scenes to come. In the creation scene in the movie the music is blaring, there are all kinds of sounds coming from the equipment, Victor yelling, and the monster moaning. The only quiet part is when he is trying to help the “newborn” up, it is like the calm after the storm, which is a lot like actual births when the baby finally comes out and the mother can rest.  The scary and frantic music gives away that the monsters birth is going to be cause bad things, if the music was happy it would make you think it was going to be great. That is one thing that is better about the novel, you can make your own assumptions about how something will turn out, instead of having it revealed through music.

            All of the birth scenes were realistic and natural in this novel. There were no hospitals or medicine to make them less painful and traumatic. Even the birth of the monster seemed natural because of the fluids and nudity. But the last birth scene, the re-birth or Elizabeth seemed unnatural and wrong.  I knew that the first creation was made from corpses but they were not from a character that I had known, I just thought of them as materials. I had seen Elizabeth get killed, and when she was brought back I thought of her as a corpse, which was gross, creepy, and seemed completely unnatural. 

Something didn’t seem right about Elizabeth after she was re-birthed and it made the viewer come back to the realization that life and death are not to be played with. Bringing back the dead was not natural and nothing good came out of it. Throughout the entire film there was nothing that came out of the birth scenes except tragedy and death, If Victor had never tried to play god his life would still be going well, he would have his family members, and his love, Elizabeth.  I think that the ending of this film was a good closing statement to the viewer that something that is meant to be dead should stay dead.  Everything was finally at peace when Victor and his child were put to rest at the end of the movie. The monster was finally dead, the way he was meant to be.

Works Cited

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. TriStar Pictures, 1994

 

Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. 2^nd ed. Boston: Bedford/ Saint Martin’s 2000.

 

I have completed this work in accordance with the Honor Code.

When I first started to read Writing Machines by Katherine Hayles, I liked it. Compared to the Gutenberg Elegies it was a lot more positive and more enjoyable to read. Now that I have read farther into this book I have a lot of questions and concerns. Hayles uses many vocabulary words pertaining to technology and computers that I do not completely understand. An example of this is technotexts, which is defined as “when a literary work interrogates the s technology that produces it, it mobilizes reflective loops between its imaginative world and the material apparatus embodying that creation as a physical presence.” All that this definition did for me was confuse me more. Her definitions of her strange new vocabulary words, are confusing in themselves, she uses more vocabulary words that I do not know.

In Chapter 3, Hayles reflects on how difficult it was for her to program in assembly code. If this type of thing is hard for her to understand, that should tell her how difficult it is for her readers to understand. She then goes on to say how she demonstrated this technology to one of her professors to show how easy and fun it was compared to typing and retyping drafts. He was not persuaded, nor were many others she worked with. Her way of writing on the computer seems pointless and difficult to me. Computers help my writing a lot, but I still think it is much easier to write something by hand, or to just use Microsoft Word to type out a paper. I do not really see what can be much different between electronic literature and written literature. They were both written by a person, just one is on a computer and one is on paper. I can see the difference in how the literature is set up, for example in Patchwork Girl one screen showed a large head divided into sections after the style of a phrenology chart. Clicking on them took you to stories of the women whose body parts were used to make the monster. This is a really cool idea and something that a book could not show in the same way. But I still do not see what could be so different about this electronic literature that it could not be written on paper and be the same. Hayles says after her definition of technotexts that the physical form of the literary artifact always affects what the words mean. Once again I cannot see the how the form of something could change its meaning so much. If Frankenstein was written as electronic literature I don’t see how you could change its meaning. It would have the same story and the same characters, how could it be so different. I just don’t understand what she is talking about!