| User Name: | catch-katch |
| Name/Nick: | julia |
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http://okunenanime.com/ipw-web/gallery/FruitsBasket/kt13
http://www.geocities.com/classicmoviescripts/script/bigsleep.txt
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:LWz38WHA9rIJ:www.jcmeister.de/downloads/texts/jcm-narr6-intro.pdf+narratological+theory&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=5
http://home.cfl.rr.com/eghsap/apterms.html
Central Queensland University - http://handbook.cqu.edu.au/Handbook/programs_1.jsp?code=CU10
Griffith University - http://www.gu.edu.au/academicprogramsandcourses/
The University of New England - http://study.une.edu.au/course.php3?id=79&p=MCOURSE
The University of Queensland - http://www.uq.edu.au/study/program.html?acad_prog=2236&PHPSESSID=5a726c36e4627e158cfef859eedda4cc
University of Southern Queensland - http://apps.usq.edu.au/usqwebsite/aspnet/ProgramFinder/default.aspx?SearchOnly=True
University of the Sunshine Coast - http://www.usc.edu.au/Students/Handbook/Undergrad/AllUndergrad/
http://www.eurovision.tv/english/384.htm
http://www.eaglespiritministry.com/works/colorch.htm
Imaginative Task – Jacob’s Story
June 23
… You know, when we first found the money, it was almost like I didn’t know what to think. It’s not like you expect that sort of thing to happen very often, I guess it took me by surprise. Well, ok, it definitely took my by surprise. Four point four million? Who wouldn’t be a little gobsmacked if four point four million falls right into your lap one day? It’s pretty unbelievable.
After a while it sunk in, though. Four and a half million dollars. Lou found it. Started yelling and stuff. Just one of those little packets weighed more than you’d expect. Lou was the one who first suggested keeping the money. Then I started getting into it. I mean, what harm could it do? It’s funny. At the time it felt so easy to just… keep it. I guess I didn’t really think much at all about what harm it could do. Maybe I should have…
***
June 25
… And how was I supposed to know how to react when Dwight turned up? What was I supposed to do? He was headed right for Hank and the plane. I… I guess I just panicked. I didn’t know what else to do. I only did it because I couldn’t… couldn’t think, didn’t know what to do. So… I hit him. In the back of the head with one of the tools I was using to change the tire Hank set up. Don’t remember which one.
I hit him.
Hank was yelling, I could hardly think. I was babbling some thing, I don’t know. I got in the car like Hank told me, drove around the road near the bridge. Hank pushed Dwight’s snow mobile off the edge, it crashed into the ice. Looked just like an accident. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It wasn’t worth it, it had gone to far. I told him so, Hank so – that we should just call it quits, come clean. I guess I got a little angry. Then Hank told me he killed Dwight. But it didn’t matter. After that I didn’t want to think about it any more…
***
June 26
… Was thinking about what I’d do with the money. Funny how I hadn’t really thought much about the details. Just dreams of a new truck or some thing, joking with Lou and stuff. When we first found the money it just seemed like a generic problem solver. Like magic, it would make my life better, how I’d always wanted. So I was thinking about it – what did I want? Nothing much came to mind. Not stuff you could buy in any case. Then I thought the farm. Dad’s old farm. Perfect…
June 26 - still
… Ok, ok so maybe I shouldn’t have yelled at Hank. Didn’t mean it. I guess I just got frustrated. Like I didn’t know how much effort it would take to get the farm going again. Like I didn’t know it was a little far-fetched. But if he would help me, it could work. Do it up, have it just like it was before mum and dad died. It would be great.
And then Hank was just putting me down again, saying no, you can’t do that, you can’t to this. I didn’t want to hear it. I just wanted this. It wasn’t that much. Where I wanted to be. It was my home. I had nowhere else. No one else. Comes from the sort of life I live I guess. I calmed down after a bit, but Hank still didn’t say I could have the farm…
***
June 27
… Tried to make it up to Hank at the hospital. Brought him my old bear from the farm for little Amanda. But it was like I’d screwed up again already – he was going on about ‘betrayals’ and ‘sides’. Just like Lou, you know, it was seeming more and more like this whole thing was taking a turn for the worse.
Yeah, I’d told Lou about Dwight, how could I not? I needed to talk to some one. If I couldn’t tell Lou, my best friend, who was in on it all any way, who could I tell? I don’t know why Hank was so annoyed. I know he and Lou never got along, it’s pretty obvious, but I trust Lou. Hank should trust him. But then Hank pulls the whole “him or me” shtick. I mean, he’s my brother. So I had to pick him. Hoped he liked the bear. It would be cool with the baby having him like I did growing up…
June 27 - still
… I can’t believe Hank wanted to blackmail Lou. I can’t believe he wanted me to help him. This whole mess is getting way out of control. But he did say he’d help me with the farm…
***
June 28
… Oh god, oh god. What… I … Lou. Lou is dead. Dead. And it’s my fault. I helped Hank set him up. Played all that s**t out about imitating him. We got him. Lou. Got him on tape. I knew it wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Friends don’t do that. If we hadn’t done that… if we hadn’t killed Dwight… If we hadn’t done a whole lotta stuff, this would never have happened. He was looking at me with this look. I betrayed my best friend. Lou, he wasn’t no saint, but he didn’t… didn’t deserve that.
And now he’s dead. I shot him. I shot my friend. He… he was going to kill Hank, my brother… ‘Are you gonna be ok?’ No, Hank. I’m not…
***
June 29
… What I would give to have it how it was when we were young. Life was good then. Simple. I could use the money. I don’t care. It should be good for some thing – maybe it can give me a normal life. A simple life.
That’s all I want. Some thing normal to live for. Get a wife, have a whole bunch of kids. Live on the old farm, living it how we used to when we were kids. Hank and Sarah and Amanda could visit, just sit around, tell stories. Out on the back porch like Dad and Ted used to do. It’d be great. Happy. So what if it feels a little hollow now. So what if it seems like the money has only messed things up, not fixed any thing. So what if… if you killed your best friend, his wife, some farmer down the rode. So what if you stole four point four million dollars?
So what if you go to hell later as long as you make what you can of it now? Four point four million…
***
July 1
… Hank says the FBI guy from Carl’s office could be a fake. I hope every thing’s alright. He told me to stay home, that he had a plan to suss him out, that it would be ok. I’m sure he’s right. Hank’s smart like that. Sure it’ll be fine.
Oh, there’s the phone. What time is it? Ten past nine. Maybe it’s Hank. I’m sure every thing’s fine…
Advanced English – Transformations essay
A Simple Plan, as a transformation of The Pardoner’s Tale, has many values and issues that mimic those expressed in the original. But, as any transformation text does, A Simple Plan “reinvigorates the original ideas and values by creating a text that appeals to a new audience” – that is, the same ideas are expressed but have been adapted to fit the context of the transformation, creating a text that embodies the messages that still have value, but in a form the new audience can relate to and understand easily. Details in the plot have changed to embrace the differences in the contexts of the two texts, but the values that are the core of the stories remain the same. The medium and techniques used to express these values and issues has also changed to fit the times.
The Pardoner’s Tale has been transformed because it has ideas and values that are still popular today. These values and ideas revolve around the nature of humanity with elements of the nature of death, proven timeless fascinations of society, and thus still hold value for present day audiences, even if they were first expressed in a text hundreds of years ago.
One of the minor issues expressed indirectly, if still intentionally, in both texts is the common flaws in human nature, exemplified unflatteringly in the perceived ‘bad’ or dislikeable characters of each text.
In The Pardoner’s Tale there are two layers to the story, the Pardoner’s life and the story he tells, and in both this concept is evident. Fitting for the times, Chaucer used a poetic medium, designed to be spoken not read, as the story would most likely be recounted verbally, and from memory, for entertainment, and consequently poetic devices are used to express the author’s concepts and intent.
The story of the Pardoner travelling with his companions on a pilgrimage embodies this message fairly strongly. From the beginning the Pardoner exemplifies many of the bad attributes of Man, portrayed as such through the unflattering depiction of the Pardoner who expresses them. For example he is portrayed as cowardly - after his humiliation by the Host of the inn he does nothing to defend himself or retaliate. He is conceited, manipulative and a liar – he continually and blatantly boasts about his long history of deliberately tricking other, using the power of his occupation as a Pardoner. Dramatic, descriptive poetic language is used to convey this – “by this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer/ an hundred mark sith I was pardoner”. The rhythm and rhyme of the lines, combined with emotive first person expresses these faults clearly to the audience, and creates a mocking, light, proud tone in the Pardoner’s words, highlighting the ease of which he tricks others.
But the most strongly expressed and all-consuming sin of the Pardoner, supporting the concept of ‘greed is the root of all evil’ I discuss later in my essay, is avarice – depicted as his motive for constantly preaching and manipulating others purely for the financial gain in doing so. Clearly expressed in the lines “al my prechying, for to make hem free/to yeven her pens, and namely unto me”, the use of first person and quick-paced rhythm gives the Pardoner a particularly mean tone.
All these traits are expressed through the text as negative, as they are depicted unfavourably to describe the dislikeable character of the Pardoner, the vehicle the author uses to express the message of his unfavourable opinion of such traits. Besides the critical depictions of all his faults in nature, to further enhance the perception of his corrupted personality he is also described as physically pathetic and ‘unmanly’ – “By ounces henge his lokkes that he hadde, and therwith he his shuldres overspradde… A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot… I trowe he were a geldyng or a mare”. The language used is descriptive, with strong imagery, and has a critical, negative, mocking tone, reinforcing the negative depiction of the Pardoner. There is almost a suggestion that his unfavourable traits are synonymous with his unfavourable physical appearance, almost as an example of what would happen to you if you endorsed such traits personally.
Similarly, unfavourable traits are also embodied in the rioters of the Pardoner’s story. They are violent - they quickly turn to hunting down death after they hear their friend is dead, are swift to accuse and threaten the ‘old man’ along the way, and then just as quickly turn to betraying and murdering each other over the money they find, drunken - the three are in a bar at the beginning of the story and act very rowdy and intoxicated throughout, greedy - their want for the money leads to their selfish actions of betrayal to keep it to themselves, arrogant - they superciliously wage war on ‘death’, and blasphemous - they casually use oaths in various Holy name’s sake. One line exemplifies several of these traits all at once – “I shal hym seke by wey and eek by strete/I make avow to goddess digne bones!” The line is said by one of the rioters, while drunk, proclaiming arrogantly and blasphemously to hunt death down and seek vengeance (one can assume violently). The use of the direct, emotive dialogue and the exclamation mark expresses directly to the audience the mind of the rioter, and creates an outraged tone.
Their story seems to suggest that all these sins lead them further and further down a path of ‘evil’ that results in their punishments of death without atonement and subsequent afterlife in hell. The old man, who can be perceived as representing Death, or even one suffering a ‘living hell’, even makes a reference – “to fynde Deeth, turne up this croked wey’, , implying their turn to evil ways will result in a just punishment. Strong, dramatic language is used to reinforce the weight of his statement and add an element of foreshadowing and suspense, clearly and strongly expressing the author’s message to the audience. The author uses the characters as examples of what not to do, his story serving as a lesson for the audience.
In A Simple Plan the characters, Hank, Sarah, Lou and to a lesser extent Jacob all have similar attributes portrayed unfavourably in their characters to express the negative nature of such attributes. To achieve this, the producer of the transformation, Raimi, has used cinematography, incorporating the differences between the transformation’s context and the originals – using a popular, modern technology to appeal to the audience and express clearly the values embodied therein.
Hank is proud - he considers himself better than Jacob or Lou because he has a job, greedy - he helps steal the money found in the plane, violent - he resorts to killing several people to save himself and the money, and manipulative - he lies to avoid suspicion and convinces Jacob to trick Lou into confessing to the murder of Dwight. Filmic techniques are used to express these traits in Hank – when he murders Dwight an angled, mid close-up shot from below hanks as he looks down on Dwight empowers Hank and gives the shot a sinister atmosphere. The increasing pace and violence of the music creating rising suspense and drama, using the shrill, high-pitched strings to reinforce the violence, drama and significance of the scene to the audience, as the moment Hank takes a big step in the direction of ‘sin’ in the name of the money. The use pathetic fallacy in the empty, dismal white of the snow in the setting used throughout the entire film represents Hank’s desolate soul (expanded to encompass Jacob, Lou and Sarah) as he turns down the path of ‘evil’ for his ‘ill-gotten fortune’. Hank’s voice-over at the beginning of the story creates a tone of depression and darkness, and adds a strong sense of foreshadowing and mystery, drawing the audience in and reinforcing the dramatic issues of the text.
Sarah has elements of greed - she strongly craves the money found in the plane and is the driving force behind Hanks desperate actions to keep it to themselves. She is also very manipulative - she manipulates Hank throughout the whole movie to make him do as she wishes, she manipulates Jacob into going to the plane at the end of the movie to help Hank and the fake FBI man, she lies to and manipulates Carl the cop to protect herself, Hank and the money. Sara, as a woman, and a possible softening of the party as a compassionate character, is portrayed very critically. Just after she had given birth and is nursing her child, an image usually considered the epitome of gentleness and motherhood, she is convincing Hank to use Jacob to betray Lou, the use of claustrophobic, confronting close-ups of her agitated, angry face expressing strongly her faulty nature in a very unfeminine, unflattering way.
Lou has elements of drunkenness - he is drunk when he threatens to kill Hank, and is known to be a habitual drinker, greed - he strongly covets the money found in the plane and convinces Hank and Jacob they should keep it, and violence - when betrayed by Hank and Jacob he flies into a drunken rage and tries to kill Hank. Jacob has a small element of greed in wanting the money from the plane. The story revolves around the destruction of these characters because of their imperfections, with money and avarice as the catalyst, and their rewards of either physical death or Hank’s ‘spiritual death’ where he is suffering a ‘living hell’, indicate the repercussions of possessing such flaws.
The motifs of the crows and the fox symbolise the decay of the party’s nature into evil and wickedness, emulating the natures of the crows and fox whose images have often been associated with evil and trickery. The nature of the film, focusing on the destruction of the characters, the stark contrast of the white of the snow and the dark shadows of the land and buildings, and the colouring of the crows, creates a strong film noir tone. The juxtaposition of the white and black is also visually jarring and confronting for the audience, emulating and reinforcing the nature of the film and making it memorable in the audience’s minds.
Through the relatively minor message of the flaws in human nature are over-arching concepts like the nature of death and ‘radix malorum est cupiditas – greed is the root of all evil’.
In the texts the nature of death is slightly altered due to the significant evolution of the contexts (and subsequently the audience) in which they were created. In The Pardoner’s Tale the nature of death is very religiously based, as was appropriate for the predominantly Christian audience of the time. The concept revolves around living a good life or a bad life, with heaven or hell in the afterlife resulting, depending on whichever path one has chosen. The characters in the Tale, the rioters, live lives of sin, which lead directly to their prompt deaths. It is implied that their souls will go to hell in the afterlife for living such sinful lives and not atoning. Their actions in life lead directly to their spiritual fates.
In A Simple Plan there is no indication of the after life, as is appropriate for an audience that is not nearly as religiously focused as Chaucer’s time. Whereas in The Pardoner’s Tale the soul of the characters went through two transitions, life and the afterlife, the characters in A Simple Plan cover both aspects during their physical lives, as, to them, there is nothing beyond death. The concept of death in A Simple Plan, like The Pardoner’s Tale, revolves around one’s action directly affecting the fate of one’s soul. The punishment of living a sinful life, has two forms, either in the form of an early death – the ‘death’ of the soul, like Lou’s and Jacob’s or in the ‘living hell’ Hank suffers – the emotional punishment of overbearing guilt on your soul for the rest of your life. This second punishment, Hank’s, revolves around the modern idea of the sentence of ‘life’ being worse than ‘death’. In this sense there are great similarities between Hank and the old man from The Pardoner’s Tale, whose continual, torturous wandering could be perceived as a ‘living hell’.
Hank, established as the main character in the party, exemplifies the extremes of the messages in the original and the transformation. He makes the greatest transformation of good to evil because of avarice, he even ends up murdering his own brother, and he subsequently suffers the most horrendous and extreme of the punishments for doing so – the tortuous ‘living hell’. In comparison Lou’s and Jacob’s deaths, and Sarah’s surly dissatisfaction with life pale in comparison. The weight of Hank’s punishment is reinforced by the voice over at the film’s conclusion, using direct speech and first person to clearly express his feelings and thoughts and the weight of his pain, reinforced by his weary, resigned tone. The wide panning shots of the empty, white, barren fields Hanks walks and the fade-transitions from mini-shot to mini-shot in a montage effect emphasise the seemingly endless punishment Hank suffers.
The concept of greed being the root of all evil is also clearly expressed in The Pardoner’s Tale. The Pardoner directly quotes it as the theme of his story, stating ‘therfore my theme is yet, and evere was, radix marolum est cupiditas”. This statement can be expanded past his story to encompass his own life. The phrase ‘my theme is yet, and evere was’ indicates the timeless nature of the concept, as one of the inherent elements of the nature of man. The rhythm and rhyming of the lines reinforce the message by making them memorable in the audience’s mind.
Also, as previous stated, the character of the Pardoner is conveyed as unfavourable to the audience - he embodies avarice very strongly and seems to be the base of his perversion of religion. He is depicted as very unreligious and amoral, possibly even religiously ‘evil’ and his avarice is clearly the centre of this. The rioters in his story are an example of the more deliberate ‘black and white’ example of greed being the root of all evil – their desire for the money they find leads to their bloody deaths at the hand of each other. Their desire drives them to become scheming murderers. The old man makes a direct link between money and death, or the hell beyond it which the rioters will undoubtedly suffer because of their evil ways, prompting the rioters down a path he says leads to death, under a tree, and in that exact spot the rioters find many bushels of gold. This obvious metaphor clearly expresses the destructive potential of avarice.
In A Simple Plan the gradual transformation of Hank from a supposedly moral and happy man to a manipulative murderer is spurned by his and his companions discovery of the money in the plane. It is clear that the money is the direct cause of his actions, leading him further and further down a dark path, which results in his murdering his own brother. His voice-over dictates how he suffers a ‘living hell’ because of what he has done in the name of avarice. The comparison of the opening and closing scenes, similar but with entirely different atmosphere’s, further expresses the repercussion of this evil. Both his and Sarah’s faces are blank and weary in the conclusive shots as they go about their work at the mill and at the library, Hank works alone in the conclusion where was talking happily to a man in the opening, emphasising his feeling of aloneness and depression, and Sarah is putting book on the shelves at the library, blocking herself off from the audience in the conclusion when, in the opening she was taking them off the shelf, revealing and framing her happy, smiling face as an introduction to her character.
So as you can see, there are several differences between The Pardoner’s Tale and A Simple Plan, ranging from plot details, to the slight variation in the nature of some concepts featured, with A Simple Plan still embodying the ideas and values in The Pardoner’s Tale that are still popular in it’s more modern context. Because, as all transformation texts, it pays homage to the original text and reinvigorates the original ideas and values by creating a text that appeals to a new audience, by adapting the same ideas to fit the new context, in a way the new audience can relate to and understand.
Hi Julia
Hoping you'd email. I hadn't saved your address!
Its not as bad as you suggest. Covers most needed area. I'd suggest two things
a) work langauage and tone to be more Jacob like
b) last entry might look to Jacob's distress and reaching his decision to end his life through Hank
Some ideas:
June 23
line 1 like ...
2 well...
June 25
gone too far
June 26
Dad's old farm, our farm, Perfect
June 27
But then hank pulls the whole 'him or me" ???? check that word |
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