Mother Mary

The summer before sophomore year we had to read one of Freud's books which was a collection of his studies, one being the "Interpretation of Dreams". When I read this study I assumed Freud would translate dreams and tell his patients that they needed to decrease the amount of stress in their life or something mild like that, but wow was I off, Freud directed each patient's dream to the tiniest detail and could trace it back to the libido, or the sex drive, even though they had these dreams when they were children. I was stunned that he could relate the smallest details like a girl's yellow dress or climbing a tree back to the patients sexual manners. But most of all I disgusted at humans in general and that we could be possible of these thoughts subconsciously at such a young age. Why so young? Why so driven? Reading Freud's discoveries, I could only agree with some of them because of how disgusted I was, but now I am slowly accepting more and more of those ideals and teachings that almost anything can symbolize sex.

Foster explains that since these discoveries were thrown out in the world, literature has used them to their advantage to symbolize sex when they couldn't show sex. He reminds us that they weren't always allowed to explain the actual sexual intercourse, but instead use sexual references like a key and a bowl. Also, on the screen directors would use specific shots to indicate what was going to happen and foreshadow what could happen. For example the shot would be a train entering a tunnel and leaving it to the viewers for translation. These symbolic references to sex were encoded daily to protect innocence. It is something we don't cherish enough and throw away to quickly. Innocence should be praised rather than discouraged. For example the Catholic church honors and praises the most innocent and pure human they know- the Mother of their God, Mary. I think its important that writers preserve this innocence by continuing to write in a symbolic manner that allows only those looking for it to understand. If they don't then we would be desensitizing the youth and allowing for undesired behavior  because of the knowledge gained from literature and eventually the media.

The one who got the whipped cream in the kisser

After reading this chapter I became a more aware viewer of the lesser important characters in movies and I learned that Foster is right. Yesterday, my dad was watching the over-dramatized and Hollywood-enhanced movie, "Into the Storm". This movie shows the journey of a camera crew chasing a violent and dangerous series of tornadoes. One of the crew members, Jacob, was not fully on board with the mission, but the two other main actors convinced him to continue with the project. The next scene shows Jacob getting to close to the overwhelming, flaming tornado for the shot and all of a sudden he is swooped up and never seen again. As Foster explains, the script writer included this so the main characters can grow, learn and develop. But poor Jacob, he was sweet and innocent character that just stood a little to close to the heroes.

In this chapter, Foster changes topics, and he explains to us that "characters are not people". We cannot think they are real ordinary people that you would see strolling down the street. They are creations of the authors imagination, that are then adjusted and filtered through ours (the reader) to form our own personal image and ideal of this character. Foster tells us its okay to care for the characters because we created them, with the author's help of course.

Every time I finish a television series I'm left with sadness and not because there aren't anymore episodes, but because I am going to miss the characters that I have enhanced through my imagination. When you invest time into characters, you add your own thoughts to what your idea is of what the character does when it is not specified. We are "reshaping characters", so we can make sense of them.

Foster switches gears and again focuses on the heroes' friends. He references to the classic "pie in face" bit. Someone is aiming the pie at the youthful naive hero, but he ducks and hits the wealthy woman standing behind him. I go so excited when I read this because I automatically could reference this to one of my favorite movies- "Singin' in the Rain"! They are all at the after party and Don is giving Kathy a hard time at the afterparty so she aims a pie at Don's face. He quickly reacts and ducks leaving Lina with a "whip cream in the kisser".

When I was reading this chapter I all of a sudden felt bad for all the characters, besides the hero. Foster assured me that they had small parts and smaller significance for a reason. He made four good points that include focus, where reader's attention needs to be directed towards, labor, to much work to develop each character to that extent, purpose, too much detail would confuse the purpose of each character and length, all that detail would turn a novel into the length of the Bible. My favorite explanation that Foster gave was that, "its nonsense with a purpose". Even though it seems unfair that the lesser roles get the shorter straw, its always purposeful.