Lit?-Moore's graphic novel

When it comes to comic books like Light of thy Countenance by Alan Moore, there is the question of whether or not comic books are pieces of literature or in other words a literary text. To me, I consider anything that has a meaning about life and what it means to be human a literary work/text. If it has a meaning about life and human beings, then it has relevance. Therefore, I would consider Moore's Light of Thy Countenance a literary text.

I consider Moore's graphic novel to be a literary text because it puts forth a meaning about life and also a meaning about humans. It's saying that we as humans are being carried off into the future with the advancement of technology and how technology is controlling out everyday lives. Moore's graphic novel is showing us how we are controlled by a single television, centering our whole lives around it, even to the extent that we're relying on it. We spend more time with technologies than with actual human beings. This is what we as readers get from reading the graphic novel. Even when the television died, it came back to life, for we humans were to the ones to create it and bring it back. This demonstrates how we are relying on it for many things, paying more attention to it than our own kind-human beings, the people we actually live our lives with. Even the television itself says, "I am the last voice you will ever hear." This is furthering the idea that technology is controlling our everyday lives to the extent that it's the "last voice" that we'll ever hear.

Moore's graphic novel as a literary text offers more than just the idea of technology controlling human lives, but also visual representations of the idea itself. This is due to the way the story is formatted. It's a comic; therefore, there are images throughout the whole story to demonstrate to the readers what the narrator is actually talking about. It is showing images just like the way a television does, furthering that idea of technology.

With the idea of the advancement of technology and how it's controlling the daily lives of human beings in Light of Thy Countenance, there is that similarity to Capek's "R.U.R." In "R.U.R.", there is also the idea that technology is taking over the lives of human beings, even when the ones who created them were humans themselves. Technology is just growing and growing and dominating the ones who are controlling them, leading to a result where they are now the gods, though this may not be the case in "R.U.R."

It doesn't matter whether or not a text is read for fun; the thing that matters is whether or not it has a meaning and significance to it regarding life and humans. If it does, then that text constitutes as a literary text. Plus, I do believe that literature can still continue to be relevant even with media and technology rising, for literature comes in many different forms, not just necessarily in the forms of books.

Gender in Hwang's M. Butterfly

In David Henry Hwang's play, "M. Butterfly," there is the gender theme, especially when it comes to women, but it also concerns men, as well.

Women in the play are portrayed as weaklings. They are apparently dominated by men of superior power. When Marc tells Gallimard about the girls who came on trucks to the woods (8), there is the implication that women always give in to men no matter what, for when Gallimard starts to reject Marc's offer, Marc says, "You don't have to ask!" (8) Marc also says that "they [the girls] don't have to say yes" (8). This is making it seems as though men can always overpower women, because they are men and apparently they can do whatever they want without asking. There is that force that the men have over the women and the women always submit. When Gallimard requests that Song strips so he could see her naked body, he is utilizing the force/power that men has. As a result, Song submits to him and lets him, though he didn't strip her. This is because it is as Song thought, "once a woman submits, a man is always ready to become 'generous' '' (62). Regarding women, men often think that when "her mouth says no, [but] her eyes say yes" (83). They think that they understand women enough to assume that but they really don't.

As to Song Liling, he transforms into a woman and really do act like a woman. When Comrade Chin goes to visit Song to discuss business matters, Chin says, "every time I come here, you're wearing a dress" (48), for it seems as though Song is taking his acting really seriously. Song is really acting the way a woman would act. Throughout the play, we see him as a woman, always acting and dressing as one. It isn't until towards the end that we see him dressed as a man. It is also at the end that we see Gallimard, in his prison, dressing like a woman, even though he really is a man. He is then "Madame Butterfly" and Song is then in Gallimard's shoes.

Too many Mysteries to Solve

Throughout William Gibson's novel, Pattern Recognition, there is always a mystery when it comes to Cayce's father, Win Pollard. He disappears on the morning of September 11 and no one knows what happens to him. No one knows whether he's alive or dead. There's that uncertainty in which leads to the mystery of it. Cayce has hired investigators to investigate the situation; yet, nothing was found regarding Win's disappearance. That then evokes more mystery. What could have happened to him? And then, there's Cayce and her dreams. Win appears in her dream once. Cayce was dreaming about seeing here father and the "twin towers of light" (227). He was "dressed as she's imagined him to have dressed in that morning" (227), extending his hand out and holding a Curta calculator and saying "Ask him [as in Hobbes/Baranov]....The dead can't help you and the boy's no good" (227). It may be that Win is really dead, for he did say in the dream that "the dead can't help you," in which he may be referring to himself. But again, he may not be dead, for there isn't sufficient information to make that conclusion. That is also a mystery along with why he's telling Cayce to ask Hobbes and suggesting that the boy is of no use, in which he may have been suggesting Boone Chu, for we do find out later that he was just into money and really didn't know anything. Win seems to be leading her in the right direction, but why and how is the mystery, since there isn't really any evidence as to what happened to him. So why and how is he doing this? Or in other words, why or how is Gibson doing this, not telling the reader what happened to Win, leading it to be a mystery that doesn’t get solved, even as the story ends.

Then there's the event where Cayce breaks away from the Dream Academy. She just kept on walking until she couldn't anymore and sat down during sunset, exhausted. As the stars starting coming out and as Cayce's eyes started to adjust to the lighting, "she realizes she can see two towers of light, off in the distance, in the direction she thinks she's been walking in" (323). It was just like in her dream when she was in London. And there and then, she sees her father, Win. She says to him, "You aren't supposed to be in Siberia" (323) knowing that he's really there. Yet, he's not really there, for he seems to be a "hallucination" (323). He even says that it's "hard to say" (323) whether he's really dead or not when Cayce asked him. He then leaves her, telling Cayce the reason, which is just to "listen" (324). That just leaves so many questions unanswered. Why was he there? Why didn't he know whether or not he was alive? What is Gibson doing portraying Win to be this sort of character, never showing his true colors to the readers? It may just be suggesting that even though we try to investigate a mystery to a certain extent, it may never be solved and that maybe we should just accept this mystery to be the way it is, Cayce certainly has, for when he leaves her, "she somehow knows [that it was], for good" (324).

In Pattern Recognition, there's also the mystery of who's the maker of the footages that have been gaining so much attention, leading Hubertus Bigend to hire Cayce and Boone. Bigend wants to know who the maker is. Cayce, too, wants to know who the maker is because she's lived her life on F:F:F, in which contains the footages and she absolutely loves watching them. Having accepted Bigend's job opportunity, she goes into this adventure of trying to find out who the maker is, where he/she is, and of course, whether the footages are a work in progress of not. Within trying to figure out these mysteries, she encountered many obstacles; yet, in the end, she was able to figure out who it is. She first had to go through so many things to get to where she was, in which suggests that along with the desire to solve mysteries, there can be a lot of complications. There is this interconnectedness from one mystery to another, even when only one mystery gets solved. This is fully demonstrated starting from when Cayce accepted Bigend's offer. From there, everything starts and she's on her way into finding out who is the maker. But from then on, she's also on the investigation of who is spying on her. It turns out to be Dorotea, just as she expected. But that mystery doesn’t end there, for there's an even greater mystery behind it all, in which turns out to be the Russians, who were keeping an eye on her. They have also entered her apartment where "devices were installed" (339), trying to monitor her. These were things she were unaware of; yet, in the process of investigate one mystery, she ended up encountering many others.

By starting to solve the mystery of who the maker of the footages is, Cayce was also able to find out who Parkaboy really us. She finally got to meet him, not just talk to him on the phone or email him. The same goes with Mama Anarchia. Dorotea ends up being Mama Anarchia and that mystery was solved as well, when Dorotea, herself, revealed how she worked it, having graduate students help her. But then by starting to solve the mystery of the maker, another mystery also arises. Did Bigend already know who the maker is? Cayce did take this into account, too, of course, for "she wonders about Bigend, and Volkov, and whether Bigend could have known from the start that the maker, makers really, were Volkov's nieces" (355). Even though this is a possibility, she chose not to believe in this since she "always comes back to Win's dictum of there needing to be room left for coincidence" (355). This certainly another mystery, but Cayce chooses not to treat it as one and comes up with another reason for it not to be one, leaving it just as it is and nothing more.