Blog Entry 4.1

After spending a week trying to put together a list of monsters and their abilities I've decided to take a different path. I've decided to analyze the movie Clash of the Titans. Clash of the Titans was started when the titans were overruled by their sons Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Zeus became the ruler of the heavens, Poseidon became king of the seas, and Hades was left to rule the dreadful underworld. Clash of the Titans is about the greek mythology of the demigod named Perseus who is one of Zeus’s son.

Zeus whom created mankind was questioned by mortals on their abilities and their rights to rule over them, so to teach the rebellious king Acrisius a lesson Zeus impersonated Acrisius and slept with his wife Danae. This is the result of Perseus’s birth. As Perseus is born, Acrisius condemns the execution of Danae and her newborn child into the sea. This caused Zeus to zap thunder on Acrisius leaving him hideous for life. Thunder is the symbol of power and anger from Zeus.

Perseus’s life starts when he is founded and adopted by a fisherman named Spyros. He is known to be born so that he can defeat the Kraken. Perseus’s hero quest starts when his family and he were floating by Argos. As they are floating by Argos, they start to envy the statue of the Greek god Zeus. However, as they are envying the statue, soldiers of Argos are also declaring war against the gods, by destroying the statue of Zeus. This causes the underworld god to rise up to land in form of black pixies called Harpies to eliminate the Argo soldiers. When Hades finishes killing off the soldiers, he stares into Perseus’s face with a fierce look, Hades then turns into a fireball and strikes the boat which leads to the death of Perseus’s family.

Perseus is rescued by the remaining soldiers in Argos, whom are celebrating their act upon revolt. Hades returns once again in the shape of a smoky fog like hurricane. The wind in the hurricane symbolizes violence because wind is very active and can do rapid damage to mother earth. The smoky color that Hades gives off is the symbol of evil, unhappiness, sadness and fear. The reason behind this is because when the gods overthrown the titans, Zeus tricked Hades into becoming the underworld god. The Underworld god is an outcast to Olympus because he is to watch over the underworld and does not belong in the heavens with others. Hades comes just when Queen Cassiopeia finishes her speech on how her daughter Andromeda is more beautiful than Aphrodite. Hades makes the people of Argos fearful of him by killing off the soldiers around Perseus and aging Queen Cassiopeia to death. Hades warns Argos if princess Andromeda is not sacrificed the Kraken will rise up in ten days when the sun is eclipsed. Hades leaves by facing Perseus with the finishing quote, “this is the will of Zeus, the will of your father.” Another symbolism for Hades is when he appears in front of Perseus there is sparks around his aura which symbolizes chaos and war. This causes the villagers to plead for Perseus’ help in defeating the Kraken. Perseus refuses to help the villagers and the princess because he does not believe he is a demigod since his father is a fisherman. Perseus is locked up in a dungeon where Io finally introduces herself. Io who also is a demigoddess (part women and part goddess) reveals Perseus’s true identity about his mother and father. During Io’s image of the story of Zeus and Danae, Zeus appears in a shape of an eagle, while he is seducing Danae, it is thundering and raining outside. The eagle signifies inspiration, ruler, power, authority, community, masculinity, and guardianship. Io continues to meantion that Perseus was destined to defeat the Kraken. Perseus’ state of mind sets only to seek revenge for his family. Io helps determine Perseus decision on his adventure for vengeance.

While resting in the forest one of the Argo soliders tries to bring out the “god” out of Perseus by training him in using a sword. After Perseus’s training, Perseus encounters a series of items such as a shiny sword that only he can use and a flying black horse named Pegasus. A few seconds later Perseus hears two of his Argo comrades yelling out for help. Calibos also known as Acrisius appears to exterminate Perseus and the others. Calibos the demon like human being kills off most of the Argo soldiers and takes a bite out of Perseus’ flesh. Just then, Draco one of the praetorian guards, finds an opportunity to cut off Calibos’ hand, causing his blood to form giant scorpions. The scorpions in this film symbolize death, control, isolation, protection, and defense. Calibos is hung up on the fact that he is still defeated by Zeus because he murdered his wife for nothing. Being that Perseus is still alive, destroys his pride on what he fought for in the past. Calibos decides to flee because he is outnumbered with only one hand and six men. Perseus soon meets the guardian of the desert known as a Djinn. Perseus wants to thank the Djinn but cannot take another step due to the posion from Calibos. One of the Argo solider tells him to pray to his father. However Perseus does not believe he needs any of the help or gifts from the gods. He still thinks that he is a mere mortal man who can take on this adventure by himself. The Djinn helps heal Perseus’s venomous wound and controls the rest of the scorpions. The Djinn believes that the gods should be overthrown and in order to stand up to them they should all work together.

Blog Entry 3.5

In the novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Coraline is a wanderer archetype. Although she has a mother and a father, her parents often tell her to go play by herself. Since she had just moved into a new house she would often go exploring by herself. A wanderer archetype is a individualistic, pioneer, autonomous, divergent thinker, a loner, and a rebel. They are afraid in closeness and they also have trouble fitting in with others(the Heroic Myth Test). Out of all these traits I find that Coraline and I have the same archetype as each other.

In chapter one, “on the first day Coraline’s family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it.” However, despite the warning Coraline still explores for the well. This tells us readers that she is a rebel. Perhaps she is a rebel because she has no siblings to play around with. A wanderer’s negative traits are lonesome and they have trouble fitting in. Every time she tries to receive attention from her parents, they tell her to go occupy herself. Since she receives no attention from her parents, this could mean that her parents never taught her from right and wrong. Parents who do not give their child any attention and let them wander by themselves will often find that their children will grow up as rebellious. This trait of Coraline is the same as mine. My parents owned two restaurants while I was growing up. Therefore whenever I tried to get them to play with me, they would just tell me to go play by myself. This often led me to get into trouble because they would rarely keep an eye out for me. Coraline is also very curious, since she does not have any siblings to spend time with her she tries to learn things by herself. A child will always be a child, when a parent tells them not to do something, the child will do it. That’s because the child is still learning. If I were to tell someone don’t do this, of course that person will go ahead and do it because why else would you tell me not to do it. In chapter three, while Coraline is going school shopping with her mother Coraline exclaims, "But Mum, everybody at school’s got gray blouses and everything. Nobody’s got green gloves. I could be the only one." This quote helps us understand that she is different from everybody else. Although everyone is wearing gray blouses she rather have green gloves because she is rebellious and thinks differently from other children.

Another trait of Coraline is that she is an individualistic and a divergent thinker. In chapter thirteen when her other mother’s hand tried to get a hold of the black key. Coraline was the only one who thought of the brilliant plan of trapping her other mother’s hand down the well. She is individualistic because according to Robert Karen’s article on “Becoming Attached”, Coraline is represented as the ambivalent child. Due to her parents constantly working on the computer I can infer that Coraline’s parents were there occasionally from when she was an infant. This means that Coraline will grow up to only call out for help when she really needs to, other than that she was brought up to take care of herself. A great example of this behavior is when she asks for help from her other mother when she is trying to find the third missing child. After the trap that the other mother had set up for her in the basement she decides that she is unable to trust the other mother’s word. After this incident, she rarely asks anyone for help. Another example of Coraline’s ambivalent behavior is when her parents went missing. She was able to run to the store and pick out her own groceries so that she could feed herself. I can relate to Coraline’s individualistic behavior because as a child I could not work in a restaurant, so my grandmother was left at home to take care of me. She is old, so she practically laid in bed all day and watched television. I could understand that since she is old, I’d have to help my parents out by taking care of the house. The only time I called for help was when I needed help turning on the stove. Other than that, I had to figure out how to do laundry and many other things. I had trouble fitting in because I also did not have any friends who lived on my street. The neighbors I had were also one old lady and one old grumpy man. Which means as I grew older I became an individualistic with no friends that learned to trust myself than others.
    Coraline is a single child that has no friends her age. She learns to occupy herself with activities a normal child would do. If a child were to move into a new neighborhood, they would often explore to find if there is anything interesting they can go play with. It is normal for a child to wonder why there is a brick wall in a door and it is not occupied. A child always has new questions about the world behind them because they are still young. I find that most children are wanderers because  a lot of times they wander off in malls to find new friends or new toys. This archetype is very individualistic, they try to find a unique way of expressing themselves. Throughout this novel Coraline sets off to find something she is missing. Perhaps she really did want new parents that would play with her and cook her, her favorite food. But in this world, you can not always have everything your way. In the end she realizes she rather have two parents that let her do anything she wants to do rather than a bossy witch. She rather have her normal life than to be given everything she ever wanted because she is a wanderer, the other mother can not change who she really is. This is Coraline’s unique autonomous identity.

Blog Entry 3.4

Outline Progress
11/18 Watch movie
11/26 Rewatch movie and take notes
12/2   Write Essay and put pictures
12/9   present project

For this I will include the monolythic structures that Perceus takes to fulfill his quest.

Blog Entry 3.3

For my final project I will be making a card game on supernatural themes. Each individual card will have a supernatural theme and a description on what they are. Along with this deck of cards will come a list of rules on how the cards will be played.

EDIT**
For my final English 102 class I will be analyzing the movie Clash of The Titans with symbols, archetypes, and monolithic structures.