Literary paper on Deliver Us from Evie

A Little Self-exploration through a Changing Society

Gender is a fascinating concept because it is an instinctual certainty on a personal level that only the individual knows and may share, hopefully without being met with confrontation: it is one’s own sexual orientation. More and more people, particularly adolescents, are coming out of the closet professing their true gender. Just recently, unfortunately, there have been many suicides by the LGBTQ (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and the queer identified or questioning) youth due to bullying and harassment because of their sexuality. Reading YA novels that describe the experiences of coming out, in English classes, is therefore pertinent to today’s society and can yield many insights that may broaden and enlighten the minds of students. More specifically, approaching those novels with a feminist/gender lens will be beneficial in gaining new perspectives that differ from the traditional way of viewing members of the LGBTQ community, which involves seeing those members as deviants from the so called norm, or “freaks.” M.E. Kerr is one writer of YA literature who provides an exemplar work that illustrates the coming out of a seventeen year old lesbian through the eyes of her younger brother. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie, should be viewed with a feminist/gender lens, as opposed to the traditional New Critical lens (with an emphasis on biblical symbols and references) because doing so helps to show the struggles that adolescents face when dealing with gendered expectations, as well as the way most readers, themselves, are gendered.

Viewing literary works under the feminist/gender lens produces an array of interpretations about the gendering of both women and men in the novel, as well as the readers. In her book, Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Deborah Appleman argues that is important for students to use feminist/gender lens when interpreting literature because they will learn how gendering is done and illumined in a literary work, and the influence of it by the gender of the author. This in turn will help them learn about new concerns of gender that are affecting the people in the society they live in:

There are at least four dimensions in which using feminist theory can transform students’ reading – how students view female characters and appraise the author’s stance toward those characters, how students evaluate the significance of the gender of the author in terms of its influence on a particular literary work, how students interpret whole texts within a feminist framework; and finally, and perhaps most important, how students read the gendered patterns in the world. (69)

Although feminist/gender lens used to be solely based on feminist theory, which focused on gender inequality and the social role of women in society (Cott 8), today that theory is becoming more generalized to accommodate the fact that not only do women face inequalities and criticisms about their gender, but so do men. Likewise, using the feminist/gender lens does not mean advocating for women’s right, but examining both men and women as they have to deal with societal expectations of their gender roles.

Using the feminist/gender lens to approach Deliver Us from Evie, readers can see how Evie and protagonist, Parr, deal with presuppositions about their expected gender behavior. Examples of subtle instances that reveal to readers hidden assumptions about gender roles pepper the text. Different characters’ actions and words touch stereotypes of women and men that can be broached when the text is being discussed with the feminist/gender lens. One example is Evie and Parr’s Mother’s expectations of how Evie should behave in terms of the clothes she (Evie) chooses to wear. Their mother, representative of the traditional way of viewing gender, always complains about how Evie dresses, and insists that she wears more feminine clothes. As an example, getting ready to go to a concert with Patsy, Evie wore kchacki trousers and a blue blazer. Her mother quickly insists that Evie wears a skirt instead: “Even if nobody dresses up, I doubt there’ll be anyone [women] wearing men’s trousers. I have a pair of good gabardine slacks I’ve hardly worn. Try them on, honey,” (37). This is but one of many cases in which Evie and Parr’s mother chastises Evie based on her clothes that men would usually wear. The stereotypes revealed through the mother’s reaction toward how Evie dresses revolves around the idea that even the way people dress is categorized, as in men are expected to wear certain types of clothing while women are expected to wear a different type of clothing and the two are not to be mixed, as we see that Evie’s mother tries to correct her. Parr notes this when he says, “She [his mother] was trying hard to change Evie that fall, trying everything, but it was like trying to change the direction of the wind,” (Kerr). Using the novel as a way to critically view our society, we can see why Evie’s mother is reacting this way: according to Estelle B. Freedman in her book, No Turning Back: A History of Feminism and the Future of Women, “in the West and internationally . . . most people consider lesbians as deviants, a threat to religious values and family stability,” (265). Evie’s behavior is upsetting a narrow status quo that her at first homophobic mother tries to fight. Upon reading the instances throughout the text, students will find that Evie is seen as going against the grain, deviating from what is expected of her.

Not only does Evie find herself subjected to traditional views of gender, so too does Parr. While going on a date with Angel (who comes from a traditional, Christian family who holds views similar to those of Parr’s mother), he is warned by Angel’s father to make sure she comes home at the curfew. When he does not, he is scolded at and blamed for it, even though the fault should have been on Angel, who wanted to stay and wait out the storm for a little while. After reading this section and specifically using the gender lens, students will see that Parr was expected to have a certain role in his heterosexual relationship with Angel by her father, even though Angel violated it. He is still blamed for bringing her late, because that aspect of the date is in his male domain.

It is no doubt that, throughout the novel, Evie and Parr remain close to each other. Why? With a feminist/gender lens, it could seem that they relate to each other in that they are imprisoned by the shackles of societal expectations of gender and may feel oppressed by them. Evie for example, after thinking that her mother believed that she (Evie) and Patsy would make a good couple (and thus suspecting that her mother knew she was a lesbian who was attracted to Patsy), found herself defensive, as if denying her lesbianism, that is, until her mother clarified that she meant to say that Patsy would be a good girlfriend for Parr (Kerr 12). Using the feminist/gender lens would result in our trying to answer the question of why Evie would become so defensive in this particular situation. Perhaps Evie is defensive because she is not ready to come out or that her particular context – a farm setting held down by patriarchal values – is not ready for her “radical,” true gender. If Evie were in a different setting, like a city where lesbians are a bit more acceptable than on a rural farm, she would not feel as defensive; nevertheless, when analyzing this scene, students will find that lesbians and members of the LGBTQ community would feel some degree of fearfulness, anxiety or shame to come out. They may fear violence, threats or unbearable scorn by all-too traditional (believe heterosexism is normal and homosexism is not) members of society who cannot find it in their hearts to the acceptance of members of the LGBTQ community. According to the editors of Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action, “these acts of violence are fueled by heterosexism – the assumption of the inherent superiority of heterosexuality, an obliviousness to the lives and experiences of LGBT people, and the presumption that all people are, or should be, Heterosexual,” (Hoffman 170). Upon close reading of this scene, students would broaden their minds to a different perspective – that of those of the LGBTQ community – and be more sensitive to the feelings of them. Thus, using the feminist/gender lens is important because using it to approach scenes like this would yield connections that students can make with certain people in their society, with whom a rise in suicides is occurring.

One classroom activity that I would engage students in involves seeing the novel through the perspectives of different characters. Rather than having students produce a written assignment, such as a re-writing of a chapter from the perspective of Evie or another member of her society who is against the idea of lesbianism (perhaps her parents or Angel’s parents – so long as their perspective is different from Evie’s), I believe an extremely beneficial activity would be a kinesthetic approach posed by Bruce Pirie in his article, “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” In that article, Pirie believes that students have different ways of learning since people learn from experience and experience comes in different forms, one of which is through the active use of the body. Pirie firmly feels that, “the body has its own kind of knowing that may tap into new levels of understanding,” (46). Thus, it would behoove some students to engage in kinesthetic learning activities to better understand the material being taught.

I feel the perfect activity to use for Deliver Us from Evie from his article would be one called, “Walk This Way,” in which students pick a character and walk the way he or she thinks the character would walk. However, before letting my students loose on this activity, I would have them make an in-depth analysis of the characterizations of the character of their choosing. This will be done by breaking up the class into groups based on the four main characters: Parr, Angel, Evie’s mother and Evie. I would ask them in their groups (one group for Parr, another for Evie, etc) to list characteristic traits that pertain to the character’s physical look and way of behaving, as well as their personality and possible views they (the students) can glean from the character’s dialogue and what other characters may say or imply about him or her that the character holds. As an example, I would recall a scene in the beginning of the novel in which boys at Parr’s school remind him that he has two brothers: Doug and Evie. I would ask the class, what underlying assumption is made here about Evie? She is masculine, as is described by society, in that she is considered as a brother instead of a sister. Another example of Evie could be the scene I had described earlier where Evie was preparing to go the concert wearing men’s clothing.

After the groups have analyzed their specific characters, they would start “Walk This Way,” trying to be in character. Doing this activity involves the students’ walking as if they were the character their group chose. Each character, set with a different personality and way of being, has his or her own way of walking. For example, perhaps Evie may walk more like how men usually walk while the mother would walk more like how women usually walk. Students would break into pairs (of two different characters), taking turns walking as various characters. While one group member is walking, the other is taking notes about how that character is walking, and then they would pair up with another classmate of a different character. After about five to seven minutes, I would have the class switch groups to see how different characters would walk. Everyone would take notes all the while. The next day, the students will have to pick another character and get back in the same groups and walk as that other character, based on their notes, and again they would switch groups. Doing this activity helps students to see and try on different perspectives of characters who have polar views toward gender roles. Learning these perspectives is imperative because they will raise awareness in the students that society is very much gendered by traditional views that have suppressed latent differences in genders.

In keeping with perspectives, what makes this novel different from most books is the point of view M.E. Kerr decided to use, which can reveal how the readers, themselves, are gendered, as they read the book with the feminist/gender lens in mind. The novel is narrated by a central character who is of the opposite sex from the author: Parr is a straight male while M.E. Kerr is an out-lesbian. Why would Kerr write the novel with the protagonist being a straight male instead of a lesbian? In other words, why would she let the lesbian character, Evie, step aside so that we readers view the novel through a straight male’s point of view? Clearly, this is a strategic move by Kerr, a move that may tell us something about how we readers are gendered. Perhaps she is writing through Parr’s eyes instead of through Evie’s because she knew that reading through his point of view is more palatable for us readers, who are used to living in a patriarchal society, our views of genders being influenced by traditional and narrow beliefs (i.e. it is abnormal to be a homosexual). The fact that she wrote the novel this way supposedly for that reason tells us, inherently, that we are indeed gendered, that we need to be eased into the reading of a work of literature that deals with what is traditionally viewed as “out of the norm.” It is as if she were preparing us for what is the real issue, which is the fact that we need to broaden our minds to accept people of unorthodox sexual orientations. When students discuss the point of view of the novel, keeping in mind this possible reason for why it is written this way, they learn or may realize just how influenced by society they are, in terms of inculcated gender expectations.

Students may also realize how they are gendered, if they consider the gender of M.E. Kerr, as an out-lesbian of her time. After learning her gender, would they think that this kind of book – one addressing lesbianism – is expected of her? If so, what would that prove about how they themselves are gendered? Perhaps they find that they believe people of a certain gender only write about their own gender because it is a way of expressing themselves or opening up. In a different perspective, maybe some students might be turned off from the book upon learning Kerr’s gender. That would prove that they are reinforcing the idea that they are living traces of what a patriarchal society wants to make: people who believe in the same traditional views of gender roles. Students may find, therefore that they stand a chance of being homophobic, if they realize they do not want to read literature of a certain “deviant” gender. Likewise, students who find that they bode well with the novel may come to the realization that they are tolerant or accepting of people of the LGBTQ community. Therefore, using the feminist/gender lens is important when exploring Kerr’s book because students understand how they are gendered as they connect the novel to society and ultimately to themselves.

Reading, analyzing, and discussing YA novels about the coming out of members of the LGBTQ community is highly kairotic to today’s issues regarding gender. It would be a disservice to students if they were not approached – at least not briefly – in the English classroom, a setting where students not only learn to appreciate literature, but also to be critical and sensitive citizens of a changing society with respects to gender. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie is only one of many YA novels that, when approached through the gender/feminist lens, can expand the minds of students to new gender-related perspectives and refine their sensitivities in the process. If short stories are more appealing to the students, perhaps the anthology, Am I Blue? Coming Out of the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Baur, is more applicable. Containing short stories by authors such as, Nancy Garden, William Sleator, Jane Yolen, C.S. Adler, Bruce Coville, and M.E. Kerr herself, this anthology brings the same insights that Deliver Us from Evie can.





















Works Cited

Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modernism Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987.

Freedman, Estelle B. No Turning Back: the History of Feminism and the Future of Women. New
York: Ballantine Books, 2002.

Hoffman, Allan H., John H. Schuh, and Robert H. Fenske. Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action. GAithersberg, Maryland: Aspen, 1998. 170. Print.

Kerr, M.E. Deliver Us from Evie. New York: M.E. Kerr, 1994.

Pirie, Burce. “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” National Council of Teachers of
English. 84.8. 46-51. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. .

Procrastination is a killer identity

I just want to make sure that you know what they call me, the work that’s piled on my desk. They call me Princess Procrastination. Or Princess P for short (or, more embarrassingly, PP). I procrastinate more than I sleep. I know all to well how to slack off. I know all too well how to regret. I know all to well how to learn a lesson the hard way. I know all to well how to stay up at freakin’ 4:40 in the morning working on something that should have been done a few days ago, and that is now due just hours later. I go through the motions of procrastination as if that were the proper way to do work. It’s my nature to procrastinate, and it’s very hard to change. In fact, I think it would be easier to change the Earth’s axis than to change my way of working. Sad isn’t it. Yes, but I get by. Oh yeah, I also know how to pull off a bad attitude, or more authentic yet, I’m capable of having bad attitudes – who isn’t when they’re PP?

Poem - "Do you really know?"

"Do you really know?"
A poem, by Bernadette Tinio

So you think you’ve got me figured out when I haven’t even figured myself out yet. You swallow my words like clues when really they’re just words like nails for cereal – try swallowing that. But maybe my words are clues, but maybe they’re not. Who’s to tell – except me – because you can’t get inside my head. My actions are indirect; yeah, they’re just performance indicators, but not the actual brain itself, the words that line the folds of my mushy intellect or the thoughts that cloud my vision – like seeing across the world through the purple night sky.

A birthday card to me

Already I’m missing being 21 years old. I remember going into this year feeling like I was opening a doorway to a room full of fun and new experiences. Many firsts happened in that year. Let’s see. Where to begin!

1. I got my first pet – my lovely two goldfish, Gibralter and Dorian Gray. Sadly though, they both passed away within seven months; but still, I cannot deny the comfort I found in having their lit aquarium light my room, casting cute fishy shadows on my floor, calming me down for sleep.

2. I drank for the first time and got drunk. Yeah! Such an experience, simply put.

3. On a more unfortunate note, I also had my first hang over and learned that I’m more of a mixed drinker than a beer person.

4. I got my first drum set. Yeah! The hours I spent on them, bangin’ them in the afternoon when no one was home during my winter break. And I’d come back upstairs from the basement, all sweaty with endorphins running high.

5. I learned to drive. Seeing as my mom had knee problems and wasn’t allowed to drive for a few weeks, I had to learn quickly so I can drive her to all her errands; in fact that was how I learned. It was funny though, how I first started to learn. My mom and I had planned to practice driving in the parking lot of Sunken Meadow. We forgot to switch seats though when we were driving home and I ended up driving on the highway the very first day I started to drive. Needless to say, I learned to drive on the busy roads before the residential areas, ha!

6. I got my first real job, tutoring someone. Finally making money!

7. I started writing a blog.

8. I got not one but two djembe drums! Now I can pretend to be like Toca, Jason Mraz’s singing partner!

9. I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out. P-A-I-N-F-U-L. During that period of my life, you’d have found me a pitiful girl with bulging cheeks, despite their not being food in my mouth.

10. I went to my first concert – Jason Mraz at Jones Beach. Yup, that day Steph and I followed him from his guest appearance on the Today show to the Jones Beach amphitheater.

And finally,

11. I learned more about myself as I did a little self-exploring.

Being 21 was awesome and I expect being 22 to be just as awesome, as well as the many years ahead of me. Life, as I’ve figured by now, is nothing but a fun experience (at least overall) that never ceases to involve my learning something with each new episode to be added on this reel. Certainly, I’ve had my ups and downs as much as any person sitting next to me. But, in trying to be an optimist, I find that talking to people – new and former – provides as much comfort as writing or as lying on the couch watching a funny show or lying in bed waiting for sleep to arrive or listening to a song that I used to listen to over and over again and for some reason stopped. Yes, or playing tennis or drumming too.

My name is Bern and I am a lover of life with all my family and friends, happiness and sensualities.

This is my birthday card to me! Happy birthday, you reflective and nostalgic 22 year old!

With eternal glowing love and peace,
Bern

Clouds of intellect

Last Thursday, I met an interesting Filipino-American (wait hold on. Can I say American-Filipino if I feel more American, which I don’t; I feel completely balanced, but I’m just saying. Or is that politically incorrect?). He is a Professor here at Stony Brook University and he was offering a class on literature of people of color with a gender/queer critical lens. “¡La mejor combinación!” I thought. I wanted to take this course but it conflicted with one of my teaching classes. My goal in meeting this professor was to get him to change the time slot of the course.

So I went into his office.

Knock, knock. “Excuse me, Professor _______? My name is Bernadette Tinio. I’m an English major in the English teaching program. Actually I’m not one of your students, but I heard you were going to be teaching a literature of people of color class next semester and I was wondering –”

I abruptly stopped babbling and interrupted myself by asking, “Are you, by any chance, Filipino?”

“Yes, I was just about to ask you that.” I already knew he was Filipino; I did my research beforehand.

“Yeah, I am too. I figured maybe if you saw that my last name was Tinio . . .”

And so that’s how our meeting started, which lasted for almost an hour. We discussed the course he was going to teach and if he was going to teach it again (at a more convenient time for me) in the future. Realizing my deep interest in that subject, he recommended books that he was using for his class. They are mostly about finding one’s identity, exploring one’s sexuality and how one is perceived by others based on that aspect of his or her self. Not to mention a cultural/immigration lens added to it. There’s a lot going on, which make those books interesting reads!

We got into personal stuff too – like family.

“Do you say Tito and Tita and Lolo and Lola. Kuya and Ate’s?" I asked with genuine interest. We had already established, by then, that we were both first generation immigrants, our parents having migrated here from the Philippines and our being born here in America.

His nephews call him Tito Jeff.

“Yeah. I actually have a nephew who’s only about five or six years younger than I am. It’s funny because he asks me, ‘so do I have to call you Tita Bern?’ I tell him, ‘No, just Bern, no Tita. Too weird.’”

Not wanting to be rude and selfish, I think some time during our conversation, I crossed upon his name and asked if he would prefer it with a Filipino accent or an American one, for he was indeed half white, half Filipino.

With a Filipino accent it is, then.

In keeping with the subject of names, I put my last name up for dissection and discussion. “T-I-N-I-O. Tinio. I think Filipinos would pronounce it as if it were Tiño – with the tilde over the ‘n’ like it is in my middle name, which is my mom’s maiden name, Castañeda.”

Then, to show I have at least a basic understanding of the Philippines’s origins, I quickly added, “The Spanish have a very big influence on Tagalog. I realize when I ask my parents how to spell car in Tagalog, they say it’s ‘kotse,’ whereas in Spanish, it’s ‘coche.’ When both are said with a casual, native tongue, they sound almost completely the same. Just different ways of spelling it.”

Suddenly, this popped in my head and out of my mouth: “Professor, I have a question: when did the Philippines become an American colony?”

He opened up the wikipedia page. Around the 1940s. Coming back to my last name, we figured it might have been spelled ‘Tiño” before the Americans started to influence them and change it to ‘Tinio.’ And then that name stuck, as if the Americans stitched it on our skins and we started to sport it like a tattoo.

As I left his office by the end of the random meeting, I was dazed and filled with Filipino/queer/linguistic clouds. I didn’t know what time it was and for a few minutes forgot my plans for the day, my classes. To say the least, that was a very enlightening meeting that had a deep impression on me that only further fueled my interest in the subjects discussed.

That was definitely the highlight of my day.

Oh, and no, I didn't get him to change the time slot of the course. But, I did get to know him and he wants to keep in touch. That's a good thing!

Literary paper: Ice Haven

I'm not going to lie. The higher up I go in school, the harder it is. The bumps on this academic road are bigger and - indulge me a bit more as I delve further into this metaphor - sometimes I may fall into ditches or pits. Now the problem is getting out of those seemingly merciless traps, which could have been avoided through schoolwork-filled weekends and the eschewing from procrastination. It's too bad I'm not perfect, yet who wants to live a life of perfection? You should give Keane's, "Perfect Symmetry" a listen and you'll see what I mean, this whole business of mankind's imperfection as a definition of living. Yet a perfect GPA is every college student's dream come true. And what happens if that dream really did come true? Where do you go when you've reached the top? Stay there and look at the kingdom you've mastered? Or do you stumble and fall, hoping, desperately to climb back up again? What if you turn into a turtle and cannot get back on the right side, on your legs? You will need either external help or an extra push exerted by your own will and muscle. A slump in GPA is hard to pick up and much of the picking up is contingent on many factors, like the courses you take that are available to you, the professors, the subjectivity of the assignments. School is a jungle. A migraine-causing rumble that enlightens until you tumble.

And let me tell ya. I've been tumbling down those pits like a shameful turtle knocked and turned on its shell.

But I, for a brief moment however it may be, saw my potential. I got an "A-" on a paper. It was the first "A" I've gotten in a long time. Yes, I needed that.

So I proudly present to you that paper. This place will serve as my refrigerator.

"Ice Haven’s Men, Women and Children – Many Dark Lights"

What makes Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel, or comic as he would prefer it be called , Ice Haven, immensely creative and thought-provoking is its many characters and the breaking of the fourth wall by Harry Naybors, a comic critic (one of the main characters who in particular representative of Clowes himself) at the beginning and end of the story. Naybors harbors views similar to those of Clowes. One example is where they share what they think comics really are. Naybors directly says to the reader:

While prose tends toward pure ‘interiority,’ coming to life in the reader’s mind, and cinema gravitates toward the ‘exteriority’ of experiential spectacle, perhaps ‘comics,’ in its embrace of both the interiority of the written word and the physicality of image, more closely replicates the true nature of human consciousness and the struggle between private self-definition and corporeal ‘reality’. (Clowes 4)

This comic reveals, explicitly and intriguingly, Clowes and Naybors’s high value on human consciousness and their belief that the conventions of comics provide the perfect way to delineate the inner workings of the mind – our thoughts, internal imprints left only in ourselves, unless we leave some kind of legacy in the world in any form including our impact on relationships and society. In other words, how can we touch the lives of others in our world, if we keep ourselves to ourselves? Unfortunately, for the citizens of Ice Haven, the world they live in is not happy and perfect. As the narrator, Random Wilder puts it, “Our [the people of Ice Haven] lovely name, intended to conjure a wondrous winterland, [brings] to mind only gloom and frostbite,” (Clowes 6). Through many characters (over twenty – nine of whom are protagonists) and their relationships with others, this comic powerfully shows us why Ice Haven is a place of “gloom and frostbite.”

The comic revolves around the kidnapping of David Goldberg, a highly reserved boy who separates himself from society, rarely saying anything until the end. The nine idiosyncratic, central characters provide various perspectives on the crime, some directly relating to it and some briefly only mentioning it. Random Wilder is a frustrated writer whose rival is Ida Wentz, Poet laureate of Ice Haven and grandmother of Vida, a visitor to Ice Haven, who dreams to be a writer, but without immediate success. Charles is a boy who is outwardly quiet to all but his younger neighbor, George, to whom he confides his deepest, intellectual and secret thoughts. He is also friends with Carmichael, a creepy boy whose actions and thoughts perturb Charles. Charles’s older sister, Violet is the typical seventeen year old girl who hates her step-father and mother and wants to escape her home troubles to run off with her boyfriend. Lastly, we have Mr. and Mrs. Ames, detectives who have problems in their own relationship as they investigate the kidnapping of David Goldberg. All these characters are in one way or another connected to the kidnapping of David, whether they are directly investigating the case, like the Ames or if they have a friend who is friends with the owner of a stationary shop, from which the paper of David’s ransom note was bought. All of these characters, not coincidentally, also have relationship problems.

Although Ice Haven can be approached in a myriad of ways, new critical and gender/feminist provide the best basis for analysis. From a new critical perspective, one of the main themes is nature versus human consciousness. Nature can be stipulated as embodying the concept of sexual desire, instincts and fate (how events ended up), while human consciousness can be connected to the thoughts, feelings and intellectual capacities of humans, as well as how humans can project those to their environment, that is, their society, by means of their legacies. Throughout the comic, human consciousness is favored or seen as superior over nature. However, as the comic unfolds, nature ultimately triumphs. Subconsciously, characters think they could beat nature with their legacies; but, nature punishes them in the form of empty and troubled relationships that they cannot avoid (it is fate). This is seen most prominently with Random Wilder, Charles, and Rocky, who appeared only once (though effectively) in the comic.


Believing that he is better than Ida and should therefore be the Poet laureate of Ice Haven, Random Wilder epitomizes the idea of humans’ being capable of producing refined artistic visions, coming from the mind. Being a writer, Random Wilder has his mind wrapped around his poetry – words brought to life by his thoughts and creative writing. However, his constant need to be superior to Ida causes endless frustration. Nature has produced for him a place in which he self-destructs because he is extremely focused on his legacy – his poetry – and he realizes that he cannot beat her. Because of his obsession of wanting to leave a legacy, nature punishes him by making him go through the motions of hating himself for (upon realization and resignation) being a worse or unpopular poet, compared to Ida.

Unlike Wilder, Charles is punished by nature by his uneven relationship with his older step-sister: he is in love with her, but she does not realize this and does not return the love. He tells George how he absolutely refuses to let sexual desire (nature) control him, and yet he is so deeply in love with Violet, so much so that he desperately hopes their parents would break up so that it would not seem so outrageous if he were to be in a romantic relationship with Violet when he grows older. He is trapped in his self-denial. What is ironic is the fact that he explicitly realizes this. He says, “Nature laughs at our suffering,” (Clowes 38). Charles overtly tries to fight off sexual desire, but ultimately he cannot. He must endure what cruelties nature has in store for him: unrequited love that is also frowned upon in society as it is taboo to romantically love your sibling.

Perhaps the most explicit form of the defeat of human consciousness and legacy at the hands of nature can be seen in the scene with Rocky, a Fred Flintstone look-alike, whose clip is set in prehistoric times. This one panel is obviously a deliberate inclusion made by Clowes, as its setting differs substantially from the rest. Rocky is a caveman who has grown tired of nature, when he says, “I’ve had it,” (Clowes 49) and decides to die in a symbolic fashion: he digs a hole for himself to lie in. This action signifies his perpetuating himself in human society so that his body will remain, as if it were a legacy, on earth. Upon lying down in the ground, he says, “This hole will be my monument. It will erode one day into a bottomless pit or an ocean,” (Clowes 49). Even when he dies, he will remain in society.

Ice Haven’s bleak society, filled with failed relationships, can provide rich insights when approached with feminist/gender critical lens. The comic’s ending makes it seem as though women ultimately were superior to men. After all, the only two characters who were able to escape Ice Haven were women and the only person who was truly happy was also a woman. One of Vida’s magazines was recognized by a producer who then wanted her to help in the making of a film about it. Violet was able to move to Hawaii, after giving up on her dissolving relationship with her boyfriend, Penrod, without missing anybody but her younger brother, Charles. Finally, throughout the comic, Ida was the only character who remained happy: she got to see her grand daughter and remained the most liked Poet laureate of Ice Haven.

One reason why women seem to dominate over men, ultimately in this comic, could be because the original crime, off which the crime involving the kidnapping and possible murdering of David Goldberg was inspired (by Clowes), was done by two intellectual men, Leopold and Loeb. They are mentioned in the comic through the book Carmichael gives to Charles. There is also a panel containing solely their story (of their crime), although they are not present in the comic plotline itself; their crime is set in the 1920’s. They had kidnapped fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks and murdered him with a chisel, after luring him into their car . Not only that, the men of Ice Haven have ignored woman (as when Penrod stopped speaking to Violet), and were seen as turning women into sex objects (when Carmichael arbitrarily makes love to Paula and when Harry and the police officer implicitly has affairs with Mrs. Ames). Perhaps society is now against men because of that crime, which seems like an original sin, and is now favoring woman, as punishment. Men’s punishment can be seen in the men of all the relationships: Charles and Violet, Random Wilder and Ida, Random Wilder and Vida, Mr. and Mrs. Ames. Charles can never be Violet’s boyfriend; Wilder’s works can never match the popularity of Ida’s; Wilder self-destructs when he sees that even Ida’s grand daughter, Vida, writes better than he; Mrs. Ames cheats on her husband, through affairs with Harry Naybors and the police officer.

However, seeing women portrayed as the ones who were successful in one of Clowes’s works seems unfitting because he often wrote about Generation X , the generation born after the baby boomers of the 1950’s, particularly from 1965 to 1976 (Ortner 416). One characteristic of Generation X’s women is that they were the generation who never really fought hard for women’s rights. In other words, they were not the strongest feminists time has seen. “Many Boomers saw the critical issues of their youth (. . . feminist, sexual freedom) as moot,” (Tulgan 45). What does the inclusion of this outlook of women – their ascendency over men – say about the author, Clowes himself? Is he a feminist? Or is he mocking Generation X for not continuing, fervently, the breakthroughs women were making before that generation? Perhaps he is reacting to the harshness and ingenuity of Leopold and Loeb, whom he had heard of since they went to the same University as he did, although at different times . Clowes would then be writing this comic as a stand (defending women and society) against men like Leopold and Loeb.

One class activity that I would engage the students in if I were teaching this graphic novel involves the teaching of the gender/feminist lens. I would first explain to the students the concept of using a gender/feminist critical lens, emphasizing that the point of using that lens is to see different perspectives of the graphic novel from both male and female views (as opposed to just female). I would ask them, in particular, as a model, “How would the story be like if it were told by David Goldberg? Would David see the world full of people who were exactly the same? Or would he lean toward certain people and describe certain others in negative or positive ways, based on their gender?” In other words, I would get the students thinking in terms of gender/feminist lenses. We would brainstorm possible answers as to how the story would have been different and write it on the board. After looking, physically, at all the possible solutions that the students come up with, I would explain to them how looking through different lenses can produce many different perspectives. With this in mind, the students would be ready to work on the following activity. I would break the class into groups. Half of the groups would choose a different female character and re-tell the story solely from that character’s point of view. The other half of the groups would choose a different male counterpart of the female characters and re-tell the story solely through that point of view. We would then go from group to group, discussing what they had come up with, writing short summaries of their responses on the board. This activity highlights the benefits of using different perspectives, in this case, in the gender/feminist lens. When students use a different lens, other than the traditional new critical lens, they begin to approach the graphic novel in a way that makes them think deeply and find connections to society and its expectations. They begin to open their minds wider as they see the story differently.

If this comic were to be taught in a high school class, there is no doubt that the students would find the text both entertaining and enlightening. However, they would have to know additional intellectual skills that are required to read graphic novels. One main intellectual skill that I have learned while reading graphic novels or comics myself, is the ability to make inferences between what is being said and what is going on in the picture. Students should not only look for actions being described but how the actions are displayed. They would have to understand what is going on when the characters discuss something in one box and then just stand, looking at each other in the next, for example.

Given this valuable skill – making inferences – some parents, teachers and principals might still make some objections about using graphic novels in the classroom. As McCloud, author of Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form, puts it, “The revolution in public perception has been a SLOW and difficult one, but at least some recent trends have been encouraging compared to what came before,” (82). He means that comics have been traditionally viewed as non-serious fictitious pictures of violence and sex. However, more graphic novels are deviating from this stereotyped view. Still, some have these aspects – violence and sexual content – but in a more rich and insightful way that renders a worthwhile read in the classroom. For example, Ice Haven in particular has some sexual content that parents might not want their children to read or be exposed to. However, it is up to the teacher to justify still using the graphic novel. Effective arguments she might make to counter those objections, specific to Ice Haven or any other graphic novel, include arguing that the content alone without a particular critical lens (in the case discussed in this paper – new critical and gender/feminist) may be obscene, but with the lens, it will be fulfilling and worth the reading and teaching of it.















Works Cited
Clowes, Daniel. Ice Haven. New York: Pantheon Books, 2001, 2005 by Daniel G. Clowes.

McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form. Canada: REINVENTING COMIC BOOKS, 2000.

Ortner, Sherry B. “Generation X: Anthropology in a Media Saturated World.” Cultural Anthropology 13.3 (Aug., 1998): 414-440.

Parille, Ken. “A Cartoon Wolrd: Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes.” Boston Review. January/February 2006 < http://bostonreview.net/BR31.1/parille.php>.

“Daniel Clowes.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedi. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 October 2010. Web. 20 September 2010.

“The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 15.3 (Nov., 1924): 347-348.

Tulgan, Bruce. Managing Gernertaion X: How to bring out the best in young talent, revised and updated. New York: Norton paperback 2000, 1996 by Bruce Tulgan.