The student editors of FishHook believe strongly that USI’s student art and literary journal ought to be just as unique and inviting as the work it publishes.
A fishhook speaks to Evansville’s sense of place, tucked as we are in a crook of the Ohio River, and serves a rich metaphor for the process of being lured, hooked and changed by the images (whether visual or verbal) of our student literary journal.
Like a hook pulled from a river trout’s mouth before the fish is tossed back into the water, the fishhook does not pull cleanly free; the barb catches, leaves an echo of its shape in the cheek of the fish.
And that, gruesome as it may sound, is how we, the editors of FishHook , feel good literature and art leave us: changed forever, with an echo of its image and voice deep in our flesh.
We hope you will enjoy this thirteenth issue of FishHook as much as we enjoyed compiling it. And, more than anything, we hope you will get hooked!
—The Editors
Abigail
Nonfiction
Drake
Academic Essays
Peyton
The Depressive Life of a Poet as Seen Through John Keats
Chaucer’s Response to Masculinist Attitudes About Gender
2023 Ghost Story Competition Winners
1st Place
“Magnum Opus”
Hunter Greenwell 2nd Place
“The Shadow of a Feline” McKenna Love 3rd Place
“Living Was Such a Drag” Gage Lynn
A Note from the Editor
Looking through the contents of this volume, I associate memories with each piece when I first read it and the meetings held to discuss the work. I remember the Ghost Story Competition and reminisce about the Halloween party where we announced the winners. I think of all the conversations I had with students about creative writing. My junior year can be summarized with this volume of FishHook. In this way, I like to imagine these volumes as time capsules, ready to be burst open, explored, and enjoyed for years to come.
There’s a superstition that 13 is an unlucky number, but it doesn’t apply to volume 13 of FishHook. I’m thrilled to share this year’s volume. Our editorial team has curated a collection of emotional and captivating work. I’m so proud of not only our team but all our contributors. The creativity within my fellow students never ceases to amaze me and I’m eager to present their work to our community.
Many people deserve proper recognition for making this volume happen.
First, thank you to my editing team: Emalee, MonteLee, Kaitlen, and McKenna. They gave so much care and attention to this volume that it wouldn’t have been possible without them. I look forward to working with this great team again in the future.
Thank you to Professor Anthony Rintala, our faculty advisor, for his help in creating this wonderful journal. With his guidance, I learned how to navigate my new role as editor-in-chief and lead our team to create another spectacular issue.
A special thanks to USI Creative and Print Services for answering all my questions, helping compile this volume, and printing the final copies.
Thank you to all of our contributors, both published and unpublished. Without your time, effort, and trust within us FishHook wouldn’t be what it is today.
Finally, thank you to you, our reader. We hope this volume inspires you as much as it has inspired us.
—Denise McKenzie
Poetry
Living was such a drag. GAGE LYNN
No, I don’t mean that I’m glad I’m dead. And no, I don’t necessarily mean that I hated being alive. Death does come with some perks. Could a mortal float through walls and sink through floors? No, not in those fleshy bodies filled with organs and bones and blood and disease and emotions and heartbreak. Once you’re dead, most of that dies with you. You’re free to do anything you’d like as long as it is within your confined space. So, no, not necessarily free, but there is some freedom. Haunting mortals was a fun use of my time, but now mortals don’t seem to care that I’m here like they used to. They’d get scared and run away back then, but now they almost enjoy my presence.
It’s infuriating. How dare they, “welcome me into their home.”
The audacity—I built this home! They sleep in the rooms I made for my family, and those mortals— Those damn mortals remind me of a past I can’t escape. Most things die with you, but not memories or emotions or heartbreak. No, those linger long after flesh rots and bones decay and you learn to float.
When I see those mortals, curled together on a couch, I remember it all. It’s easy to miss the little things: the warmth of her in my arms or my dogs nudging me for pets— Yes, I do miss them dearly. And yes, life was worth living because of them.
I want to devour it like an animal, rip into it with pointed teeth, then ask the empty plate, “Am I waxing acidic, too heavily associating feelings with fruit?Or should I welcome these ties as proof that I have lived and known, connected and conquered?”
Welsh Lovespoon / Llwy Caru Cymraeg KAITLEN ELAINE WOOD
Handcrafted from the heart, whittled with a pocket knife or a chisel. My Welsh Lovespoon holds Celtic history within its wild cherry quiddity. Llwyau Caru possess unique engravings composed of distinct symbols and motifs, transporting one into the realm of seventeenth-century Celtic design: locks, horseshoes, anchors, and dragons. My Welsh Lovespoon simply embodies an intricate carving of a spherical heart, smooth to the touch.
Aforetime, Cymry natives of Wales received these as gestures of endearment and devotion. The intricate designs would reflect the delicate carver’s deliberate desires. My Welsh Lovespoon currently dangles and sways above my wooden windowsill. Oscillating between a traditionally significant romantic commitment or a cherished symbol of friendship.
Flourishing Visage
KAITLEN ELAINE WOOD
Fastened upon the beauty of these cobblestone villages, I fixed my gaze on the burning valleys of primrose, marigold, and wild meadowsweet. By virtue of the country’s authentic highlands, I found myself taken by this boundless kingdom. Breakfasted with figs and Fife Bannock, I feasted my gaze on a bowl of ripened plums and gooseberries. The village’s hamlet children were vigilant of this produce, making it impossible to breathe in the harvest’s exquisite fragrance. My voracious reading of this plentiful fatherland gave me a visionary idea to document the fables of this flourishing visage.
As I leered down at the vicious brook below, the restless waves engulfed my emotions as I became envious of the folklore once valued by the formerly cherished bagpipers in this vicinity. Their boisterous tunes of “Scotland the Brave” are still felt in the breeze; only inspiring my existence on this valiant Earth. Views of flora and fauna are visible from my Taobh na Mara cottage. I ventured blissfully toward my humble abode. I fear my vow to fabricate an archive for this vigorous land will never be sufficient. Yet, I perched below my tilted bookshelf on a velvet pillow and I wrote.
Golden-lit KAITLEN ELAINE WOOD
Shimmers of drifting dust floated high into the brisk morning haze, gleaming behind your sandy flaxen hair. My fingers traveled through your golden-lit locks hoping this gesture wouldn’t awaken such serene slumber. My pillow scented of Egyptian musk, while my lips savored yesterday’s embrace. Our linen drapery divided the sunlight pouring through the elevated window, comparable to the noisy alarm that will soon disrupt this quietude. A sweet tune filled a half-lit room.
How could such a charming melody be so cruel to sunder sleepy lovers?
Let us rewind and reminisce once again.
“Does it help when I talk?” His voice is so much kinder. than the sounds I’m pulling out of this Mini Cooper
Did I mess up your car? “No! It’s fine, nothing too serious.”
Epicyclic Gearing MACI CROWELL
I let out the clutch too fast because I’m afraid it will stall it stalls because I let it out too fast.
I never really know when to use the E-break. I just asked Luke to do it. Luke is nice. When do I go into second gear again? Oh now? Sorry.
“Okay now find the frictBRUMMM-DUM DUM-ERKKKK Don’t worry about it… let’s try that again.”
“Do you need a break?”
I always forget to suppress the clutch when I break.
I didn’t tell Luke that part, but I think he knows. His freckles make me zone out. I’m weak in the knees. The clutch is so hard to hold.
My foot slips and I stall…the quiet is a blanket, and I get comfy. You deserve a nice girl Luke… “You’re nice” We roll backwards. I catch the car with the hand break, not nice enough. I miss the engine sputter; I miss something he mutters. Listen, I wish I was nice enough, I don’t know why I’m not. I’m nice enough for someone who drives an automatic. “But you can drive a stick?” Well… I’m working on it.
His arm reaches over the median and turns the key, “Clutch please.”
Luke says I give it too much gas when I’m nervous,
I messed up Lukes’s car.
Nit & Gale MONTELEE NORTON
You, listen here, and I will share a tale of fair, young Nit and her sailor named Gale.
Nit adored Gale with every fiber of her being, but Gale had dreams of seeing everything worth seeing.
One day, Gale was set to sail off in the sea.
But before he left, Nit offered him a plea:
Love, please, do not go, it is far safer here. She gazed at her Gale, and shed a single tear.
Gale wiped the tear away, and held her very close. He promised to return; she was what he loved most.
But Gale did not return, for his ship was soon lost out in the vast ocean where the waves, they did toss.
Nit waited by her window, eyes always on the sea, crying to the gods with pleads of, Bring him back to me!
She died soon after, sickly on her bed, but those that die brokenhearted, are never truly dead.
Now Nit roams the streets with sad wails and moans, still searching for her sailor who never returned home.
So, if sometime you find yourself alone at night, do not allow Nit to give you a good fright.
She will look petrifying, her skin gone ghastly gray, with her mouth all agape, and her eyes staring, afraid.
Nit will ask if you’ve seen her lover, gone astray. Simply shake your head no, and send her on her way.
When she turns her back, and continues to roam, walk, do not run, straight back to your home.
In your home, you are safe from the girl turned pale. The once fair, young Nit, who still searches for her Gale.
Navigator NIKITA FISCHER
I set out a torch
At the mouth of my cave
A beacon, a guide, a reminder
I am still here, waiting
My adventurer, my troubadour
My sparrow now uncaged
Run off to find the great bear
Run off to find your brother
Run off to find the wild things
I know I cannot keep you
So I ask that you keep me
Look to the stars, bone-burner
Know that I do the same
Whisper your findings
I shall catch them on the wind
I watch as your gaze falls to the sea
Your first love and second home
We always knew this day would come
A sailor never feels steady on land
Your legs tremble as you hit the beach
So unsure, head buzzing with countless questions
Questions I can’t answer
You must go now, while the swift air sings
So roam on, Polaris, my northern star
Earn each letter of your name
Through trial and grave work
I wish for you calm seas
Down your brazen path
May the whales keep you company
While you search for everything
Remember the bear, your mother
Combing through familiar lands
Heart streaming outward
Forever a tether to the world
I trust in your word and await my proof
Though I won’t blame you for the storms you face
Your echo, your ghost
Runs wild through these trees
Promising life, promising return
You can’t take the shadows with you
Be strong, sweet dancer
Stay curious despite
You are not dust yet
I still hear your fantastic mutterings
I still keep the coveted flame
Growing Up PARIS WALLACE
Sobriety is PARIS WALLACE
Growth is painful, but so is staying in the wrong place. Flowers can’t bloom in poisoned soil. Take an opportunity to plant your seeds elsewhere. Breathe in the freedom you’ll get from being yourself. Show the world what you can do, and don’t be afraid to take up room.
You may love someone, but you don’t need to keep them. Sometimes when there’s love, There’s toxic control. You can say I love you, and show them you’re willing to stay, but true love is not one-sided. Two are needed to change the game.
There will be tears that continue to fall, but it is better to be sad than not feel at all. I’m passing this down to you. The things I wish I knew when I was growing up.
Sobriety is giving up what you once found comfort in. Freedom from chains tightening around your neck.
Painful, hard, unrelatable to other battles. Releasing you from the cage you once had to rattle.
Freedom from the ones that held you back. Differences between now and past.
More than just traditional drugs. Those of us who are clean from other things, are left feeling swept under the rug.
It is difficult to reach out when you feel left behind. When there’s comfort in chaos, it may seem boring, but it’s taking a step toward something rewarding. It’s worth it, I promise, it just takes some time.
Sobriety is taking the challenge of loving yourself. It is scary I’m not going to lie, but take it from me.
It’s worth the feeling of being free.
A love like this PARIS WALLACE
A love like this lasts forever.
The one after heartbreak.
The one opening doors that weren’t there before. They teach you what love should be.
A love like this breaks down the walls you’ve built. The one working with you through everything. The one holding you tight and promising to never let go. They teach you there doesn’t need to be comfort in chaos. Remember to be grateful.
When you find a love like this.
When the flames grow PARIS WALLACE
Grow for you
Take time for yourself
It’s hard to love the world
When your hate forms like welts
When you are ready
So am I
The time it takes Is worth it in my mind
When the time comes feel free to grow on me
Like a subtle scent
I’ll be here waiting
Like a candle that has not yet been lit
Ready to take the flame’s heat
Finally knowing what it is like
To feel the fire of you and me
Let’s grow together
Never Have I Ever SHELBY TROTTER
Sometimes you have to take a step back to see they will never look for you in a crowded room
Never ask how you are and actually care to know Never wish to take the pain you don’t deserve away
To realize they could never love you
Like you love them is the most painfully beautiful feeling
For you know how to love yourself
But understand the love you deserve Cannot be given to you by the one person
You crave most
So you contently, sit With yourself in a room full of never’s
Love Like Wet Soap SHELBY TROTTER
Maybe I just have butter fingers
Because I can’t seem to keep ahold of your heart
Every time I think I have it, it slips and slides away
And I’m trying to catch it all over again
It whispers “I’m sorry”
But then starts falling again
And actions without change is manipulation
I can comprehend
But 17 years is too long
To beg for a love like wet soap
SHELBY TROTTER
I was erased from your life Like I didn’t exist
When My Grandpa Died, My Grandma Wanted a Whopper
TEGAN RUHL
My mom went to the worst Burger King in Olney to get it, waiting forty-five minutes for a flat diet coke instead of a nice, crisp, regular one like she asked for.
Mom sounded somewhat refreshed over the phone. “I’m oddly at peace with this. He can breathe again.” Trying her best to be strong and I tried to suck the tears back into my eyes to be strong for her because we understand each other.
Grandpa Shannon was too scared to hold me when I was born because I was too delicate.
I hope you’re sitting at heaven’s table in your old armchair with too much sugar in your coffee smiling at God in your decades-old suspenders because you’re not skin and bones anymore.
Worm Dirt
TEGAN RUHL
The mornings when I wake up from bliss, stress bubbles and drowns me, leaving me with an overwhelming feeling in my chest.
Not even the sunshine can make me feel better today. Take your worries to God, for He cares for you , the preacher cried. You were made to do hard things, said my counselor. But I can never find a sense of comfort or security in my own strength.
It’s always the worm dirt that I find my dependency in. Maybe it’s my idol, or maybe I’m just addicted, either way, it’s the cup of caffeine that makes me feel better.
If I go without it my head is in a frenzy like someone is trying to split it in two with an ax. It’s the worm dirt where I find my comfort.
It soothes me in the morning and aids me in my distress, or makes things worse if I have too much of it.
I love the sweet taste of bitter, black water in the morning into the late hours of night.
It’s my drug, it’s my disease. I can’t seem to break the cup of coffee over my head
Fiction
Without Klara GAGE LYNN
The clock behind the hotel’s bar did its job and counted the time, noting to the bartender the “of-age” date for newly legal drinkers. A damp Windham—not yet dry from the outside storm—stared at an envelope on the bar top as he picked at the wrapper from the beer bottle. Sealed within was something he had always wished to confess but never felt that the moment was right—as if such a moment could ever possibly exist. Though he didn’t believe this night to be the perfect moment, he couldn’t help but wonder if there would ever be another opportunity. The time continued to pass, and his heartbeat thumped louder with each second.
“What a day, huh?” a voice said from behind him. Windham turned around to see Maya, her hair up in a messy bun as she shook off the rain. Quickly, he tucked the envelope into his jacket pocket—hoping she hadn’t seen it.
“Old fashioned, please,” she said as she waved to the hotel’s bartender. She shrugged her rain jacket off, revealing tattoos along her arm. Windham had never seen them in person before, though she had always sent him pictures of the new additions.
“Hey—” Windham stammered. It had been a day. Nothing like reuniting with old friends under the worst circumstances—one of their funerals. “Yeah. I never thought I’d come back here like this. I didn’t think anything like that could happen to her…” He trailed off, shaking his head as he finished his bottle.
Maya raised two fingers to the bartender, who nodded and handed over the cocktail. The two large cubes clinked as Maya slid it across the bar top to Windham. He raised an eyebrow and shot her a look.
“I shared one with her only a week ago, and now…” She sighed. “It really does make you think about everything, though.” The bartender brought her the second drink. Maya swirled the skewered cherry around the glass—making it dance with the orange peel—as she stared into space. “What we do with what time is left, I mean.”
It wasn’t the first time Windham had seen that lost look in Maya’s eyes. It was as if she was drifting through the cosmos, hoping to find a planet on which she belonged. The same lost look she’d had when he first met her back in ninth grade. Instead of looking for a planet, she was simply looking for a place to sit at lunch— wandering through the cafeteria tables like they were an asteroid belt. Maya was a drifter then, too.
That was until Klara had called her over to their table.
“Oh, the time we have left…” Windham said. “I think about that every day.” That wasn’t a complete lie—he did think of the future and his purpose often, but not nearly as often as he got lost in his past. “Things were so easy back then. No stress outside of class. Life was fun.”
“Oh?” She laughed. “I don’t think you remember how things were as clearly as I do.”
Windham was going to ask what she meant, but just before he could, Maya reached into her pocket and pulled out a picture. Sitting atop a swing set were four high school kids. In the center was Windham and Maya, her head resting on his shoulder as they grinned for the camera. His heartbeat quickened, and the letter’s weight intensified.
“Think a bit harder. Remember what happened this night?” Maya asked.
Back then, the two of them would join Harris and Klara on adventures all over the town. Every time the four would sneak out and go to the lake, Windham’s anxiety would skyrocket. The only thoughts that had ever run through his mind were what would happen if his parents caught him leaving the house or coming home drunk. Most of the time, Windham would skip the late nights. He hated doing that, but it was easier than being on edge the entire evening. But on the night of this photo, Maya had knocked at his bedroom window and asked him to come out. Gazing into her stardust-sprinkled eyes, he agreed to go with them to the park. He could never turn her down.
“Maybe I wasn’t always easygoing,” Windham joked.
“You don’t say?”
He turned his attention to Harris and Klara in the photo. They had their arms out like they were the king and queen of the planet, and they had big, stupid smiles cracking their faces. They were always the most outgoing of the bunch. Harris was an all-star athlete, playing three different sports almost every year through middle school. That only changed whenever he met Klara freshman year. She had convinced him to try out for the drama club and—to no one’s surprise—he was great at that too. The two of them always got the lead roles. For a time, Windham believed that nothing could have stopped them.
If only that were true…but an aneurysm had proven that to be false.
“It’s nice seeing her like that,” Maya said. “We were all so close back then. Now, we can’t even get Harris to come down from his room to celebrate her with us.” She downed her drink and waved to the bartender for another round. “You know, I saw him checking his watch during the entire service. Who does that? Klara dies and he can’t be bothered to turn off his notifications? He loved her back then.”
As much as he wanted to see Harris and reflect on the past, Windham was almost relieved that he decided not to show up to the bar. It would make the rest of the night less complicated, he hoped. The moment he wanted would be without an audience. Plus, surely Harris had his own reasons for not wanting to join them. He had been dismissive at the funeral, but how could one put a standard on grieving?
Windham listened to Maya as she continued about how they’d witnessed mortality personified and that, no matter how hard they tried, their youth had vanished within a blink of an eye. It was all overwhelming, but she wasn’t wrong. Windham felt like he didn’t just see his friend buried, but his entire childhood.
The bartender arrived with another pair of cocktails for them, and they were just in time. Though he didn’t like to rely on liquor, a close friend’s sudden death seemed like an appropriate time to lean into the vice. Easing his nerves was just a bonus.
“At least you had the decency to care about the service,” Maya said. “I even saw some tears coming out of you.”
“You caught that, huh?” Windham asked, but he knew that she’d see through him. She always had.
After Klara had welcomed Maya to their group, she went with them everywhere. Every mall trip. Every late-night milkshake run. They’d sing songs as they drove around the town and played punch-bug. She always won those games— especially when she played against Windham. He had always hoped she’d see a Beetle when it was just them cruising the streets. He didn’t mind being slugged by her. Any time Windham was overwhelmed with life, Maya was there to be his shoulder to cry on.
It wasn’t a surprise that she recognized his pain. Though it was more extraordinary with the loss of Klara, Maya could still see Windham, the way that only she ever could.
“You held it together pretty well,” she said. “You know, considering everything that’s going on.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
The two sat in awkward stillness for a time, only the sound of glass clinking with the large ice cubes filled the silence. Neither were sober enough to tell just how long the silence lasted, but Windham saw a handful of rocks glasses sitting in front of them. Three or four drinks later, Maya cleared her throat as if she was going to make a grand announcement.
“Hear ye, hear ye, Sir Windham of the Middle West.”
Maya was truly gone. Windham had only ever seen her in the “Can-OnlySpeak-Like-A-Town-Crier” stage of drunkenness once before. It was a night he wished he could remember, but he was equally gone in his “Can-Only-Speak-Like-Jabba the Hutt” stupor. A video that Klara had taken showed that Maya pushed Windham into the lake and, just before he fell in, he had grabbed Maya’s arm and pulled her in with him. Klara and Harris whistled at them and made some suggestive jokes as the pair laughed with each other in the water, but Klara had stopped recording. Whenever Windham would ask them if anything else happened that night, Klara would say that they pulled the two of them out of the water and got them to bed. Harris’ sly smile always told another story, but he had never said anything.
“I hereby propose a toast,” Maya continued, spilling some of the bourbon on Windham’s pants as she raised her glass. She paused, and he could see her fighting back tears. She stifled the emotion and attempted to pull herself together. “To Klara. I wouldn’t be here today without you, and not just because it’s your funeral.”
He knew that she didn’t mean for that to be funny, but it was hard to hold back a laugh at the remark. She must have noticed it too because she smirked and shook her head.
“Without you, I would never have met the most incredible person I’ve ever known.” She nudged Windham with a coy grin, who raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t act surprised. Now stop, I’m getting thirsty and need to finish this.” Maya cleared her throat and searched for where she left off. “I’ll always remember you. I’ll remember everything that you did for me when we were kids. Thank you…”
Windham wasn’t sure if she had finished saying what she had in mind, but she closed her eyes for a moment before taking a drink. One thing had stuck out to Windham from her toast more than anything else: she thought that he was incredible. He had always thought she was that and so much more.
From the moment he saw her sitting on the opposite side of homeroom on the first day of freshman year, Maya had captured him. He’d always thought that love at first sight was unrealistic and cliché, but whenever his eyes first met hers, something he couldn’t explain happened. It was as if the rest of the world had faded into darkness and only the two of them existed, each under their own spotlights. He knew he had to talk to her, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t work up the courage. His legs had turned to noodles and could no longer carry his weight. When the bell rang and the class emptied, the moment was gone. Then came lunch, and Klara—being the supportive friend she’d always been since she moved into the house next door in elementary school—wouldn’t let Windham miss his chance to talk to Maya.
And they did talk. They had become each other’s closest friends. But just because they talked didn’t mean Windham had ever told her how he’d felt. That unbreakable barrier refused to budge. The more time that went by without him saying anything, the bigger the risk of losing his best friend became.
Never did he think that she thought that way about him. Maybe the night really would be less complicated than expected. Or—he feared—her saying he was incredible meant nothing more than just that, and he was only projecting his own emotions. The envelope weighed more heavily on him now than it ever had before. Windham’s heart jumped from his chest to his throat, and he felt like he was going to choke.
Windham sighed before he followed her lead and indulged in the beverage, smothering the anxiety. “So, what do you think you’ll do?” He asked. “With the time that we have left, I mean.”
Maya laughed. “Sorry, it’s just that…I don’t know. We all have these ideas of what we want to do, but how often do we get to do them? It’s hard to live whenever you have to suffer just to get to that point. So, like, does anyone really know what they want out of life?”
That was a question Windham had asked himself countless times, coming up with countless answers. After high school, he tried college and thought he’d become a teacher. Maybe that stability—which he now thought was laughable—would have made him feel better. A year later, he dropped out of school and moved far away
from his family and friends to see if he could figure out life. He’d kept in touch with everyone by calling or on social media—especially Maya—but all he found were more questions on his journey. Years were lost in his search, and so was time with Klara. What if Maya or himself were next?
Windham turned to Maya, and those stargazing eyes were looking directly into his—swirls of emerald and amber colliding like the northern lights. Her eyes weren’t lost like they had always been in the past—they were locked onto him. Before he knew it, her lips met his. All at once, he felt the stress of the unknown melt away, and he lived in this drunken, stolen kiss. No, he really didn’t know what he wanted out of life, but he knew that this could be a moment that would last a lifetime.
Maya pulled away, resting her forehead on his. There was something familiar about the way her eyes looked into his—like déjà vu.
“This reminds me of that night on the lake.” Maya said, a soft smile splitting her face.
All at once, Windham was transported to that forgotten night after they both fell into the lake. Maya had splashed Windham for pulling her in with him. He splashed back before Maya caught his hands and pulled him toward her, interweaving her fingers behind his back. They held each other for only a moment, but it had lasted an eternity. Everything else had disappeared as her head rested on his, noses touching. The moon served as their spotlight. Nothing else mattered at that moment.
That was until they heard Klara and Harris whistling at them. Windham’s heart had leaped from his chest and, instead of making his move then, he pulled away from Maya. They played it off and joined their friends after that, never to speak of it again.
“Sorry about that,” Maya said, snapping him back to reality. “Maybe I’ve had a couple too many. I think it may be best for me to call it a night.”
He couldn’t formulate any words before she began to make her way back to her hotel room. A thousand scenarios raced through his head, and every one of them was worse than the next. The most obvious—and probably the most likely—was that Maya didn’t mean anything with the kiss, and it was just a mistake made from her intoxicated state. What he feared most, though, was that he would never see her again. What then? Maybe he’d chase a different dream—he had thousands. Surely one of them would work out.
No. His stomach turned to lead just thinking of the possibility. He couldn’t back down—not this time. He had wasted too much time already.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the crumpled envelope addressed to Maya—a letter confessing his love to her resting within. Maybe the moment wasn’t perfect, but they were both here and alive. If Klara had taught him anything, it was to just go for it. Throw caution to the wind. Call out to that girl in the cafeteria and ask her to join you.
This was the moment.
The Shadow of a Feline MCKENNA LOVE
Annalyse was a cat. Average-sized she was, with an underbelly that swayed as she walked and paws that made the lovely pat, pat, pat sound when she trotted from room to room on old hardwood floors. Her soft orange and black hair left trails as she explored the halls, leaving evidence of her adventures all over the house.
Annalyse was loved dearly by her owner, seventeen-year-old Deliah. Indeed, Deliah would have done anything for her cat, her lovely princess, with her soft belly and padding paws. From crafting her hats and buying her new toys, Deliah loved Annalyse with every fiber of her being. They had been together since Deliah was merely twelve; the two had the inseparable bond only cats and their owners would understand.
This, however, was all in the past. As Annalyse had, from cancer, died at a mere five years old. It was Lymphoma, and it ravaged the poor kitty. She thinned out, shedding nearly ten of her twenty pounds, and her beautiful hair began falling out in tufts. Deliah was crushed. Though she spent all the money she could spare on her cat’s medical treatment, Annalyse passed away in her sleep. Deliah buried her in the backyard, next to the shady willow tree under which the two had enjoyed many afternoon picnics and quiet hours.
Since then, Deliah had been forced to go on with life. She graduated high school, moved to a new university, and made new friends. Despite this, Deliah made a great effort to keep Annalyse’s memory alive. She hung pictures of the lovely feline on her mirror, kept her photo in her phone, and vowed to never love another cat as much as Annalyse.
Others were not so heartbroken by the kitty’s sudden demise. For one, Deliah’s father Richard was upset for his daughter but pleased to see the cat go. He had never liked Annalyse, forcing her to get off the furniture and swatting her away from food on the counter. However, where the cat chose to explore was not the worst part. The hair the cat left around the house drove Richard mad. He despised not being able to sit down in his own living room without having to lint roll his suit, or having to vacuum every inch of his home for the existence of a cat. He refused to let the cat anywhere near him, and he would especially not tolerate her sitting on his lap.
No, when Annalyse died, Richard was none-too upset at all. However, Annalyse, the beautiful kitty, was not prepared to fully let Richard rest in her absence.
Despite Deliah’s departure, her parents kept her bedroom door open to let air flow better throughout the house, and to remind them to water their daughter’s succulents on occasion. Deliah’s father was in charge of keeping her plants alive, and he initially did so with diligence, as he did not want to disappoint his daughter. For the first couple weeks Deliah was gone, her father kept a watchful eye on her plants, removing dead leaves and ensuring they had enough sunlight. However, after the first month or so, her father began to get lazy, as we all do when faced with a monotonous task. He checked in on the plants occasionally, but usually did not even offer a sparing glance into his daughter’s room as he headed to his own bedroom for the evening.
Tonight, however, roughly three months after the death of Annalyse, and only six weeks after the departure of his daughter, Deliah’s father realized that it was time to pay more careful attention to the plants.
Glass of water in-hand, the middle-aged man made his way to his daughter’s room. Stepping into the opened door, he walked over to her windowsill where her prized plants sat, wilting a bit from their lack of moisture. He sighed, stepping forward to drench the plants in the water they so craved. Before he could do so, however, he was stopped in his tracks by a small pile of dirt on the floor, a shattered blue pot, and a withered succulent laying in the rubble.
“Oh no,” he exclaimed, bending down to examine the carnage. The succulent and the pot were clearly past saving. He looked up at the windowsill, and wondered how, exactly, the plant had fallen. Picking up a piece of the broken pot, he walked out of the room and down the hallway to where his wife, Deliah’s mother, sat in their shared bedroom.
“Claudia,” he said, giving her a stern look, “why didn’t you tell me that you broke Deliah’s pot? Better yet, why didn’t you clean it up?” He raised an eyebrow, holding up the broken piece of clay and gesturing to it with a frustrated wave of his hand. His wife looked up from her book, lips pursed in obvious annoyance.
“Richard, dear,” Claudia said, brushing away a strand of hair, “I’ll have you know that I haven’t been in our daughter’s room for nearly a week.” She offered him an irritated smile before returning her attention to the romance novel in her hands.
Feeling dumbfounded, Deliah’s father let his eyes linger on his wife for a moment. She hadn’t nervously twirled her wedding ring or refused to meet his eyes, so he knew she wasn’t lying. “Well if you didn’t do it, who did?” he asked, feeling a touch concerned.
Not looking up from her book, Claudia reached for the wine glass on her side table. Taking a sip, she cleared her throat and stated, “I don’t know, dear. Maybe it was the housekeeper. I’ll talk to her next time she comes by.”
Richard stood for a second, pondering this reply. It was, of course, the most logical solution. But Francis had always been a very careful and meticulous housekeeper. Maybe in her old age, it was possible she was getting careless. He decided this answer
was acceptable, and nodded to himself. “Yes, that makes sense. Alright then,” he mumbled as he turned and exited their room.
As he left, he stopped briefly to enter the storage closet where he retrieved a hand-held broom and dustpan. Returning to Deliah’s bedroom, he flicked on the overhead light as he picked up and proceeded to toss pieces of the broken pot in the trash before turning his attention to the mess of dirt piled on the hardwood.
Getting down on his hands and knees, Richard began sweeping up the soil scattered across the flooring. From his position on the floor, he could see underneath Annalyse’s dresser at the many dust bunnies collecting in the corner. Maybe Francis isn’t doing such a thorough job anymore , he thought.
After rising from the floor and dumping the dirt in the trash can, he decided he may as well give the bedroom a good once-over. Deliah was supposed to come home for a short break relatively soon. If Francis wasn’t going to do the job properly, Richard would do it himself.
Moving the dresser away from the wall, Richard saw the mess that lay underneath. Dust, dirt, blond hairs that belonged to his daughter, and another kind of hair which was much shorter and finer. “That damned cat,” Richard muttered, “I thought when she died, we’d finally be rid of all this hair.”
As he began sweeping up the collection of dust and hairs, muttering to himself all the time, Richard heard a small crash behind him. Sitting up on his knees and turning to face the windowsill, he was met with the realization that another one of his daughter’s plants had fallen. The freshly shattered pot and mound of dirt laid on the wooden floor, almost exactly where he had just finished cleaning up the first mess.
“What the -” Richard cut himself off, rising to his feet and emptying the dust pan into the trash. He placed his hands on his hips and examined the fresh mess on the flooring.
Richard was no scientist; he had never been anything close. But being a businessman and a self-proclaimed sales master, Richard felt that he was a man of logic, of statistical reasoning. He told himself that the shattered plant which lay at his feet was the result of something logical, ignoring the nervous feeling that was creeping into his chest. He walked around the perimeter of the room, and felt a light draft coming in when he passed by the window. Ah , he thought, merely a result of the breeze. Nodding to himself, Richard was satisfied with his explanation. He quickly moved his daughter’s dresser back into place. Bending to the floor, Richard once again used the hand-held broom to clean up the mess.
He tossed the second shattered pot in the trash, not bothering to see if it was salvageable, and swept up the dirt as he had done before. Standing once again, he tossed the dirt in the trash and turned to examine his cleaning job. Feeling selfsatisfied, as men do when they complete such a simple task, Richard headed for the bedroom doorway.
A quiet sound stopped him in his tracks: pat, pat, pat. He froze in place, eyes wide as he looked around the room. The noise was familiar to him. Once again, the quiet sound filtered through the bedroom, pat, pat, pat.
He had to be losing his mind; the cat had been dead for months. He had forbidden another cat to ever live in his house, and his wife knew better than to bring another in without his consent. He looked frantically around the room, trying to determine the source of the noise, when a sudden indentation in his daughter’s bed caught his eye.
At the foot of the bed, perched on the very corner, sat something of a shadow. Nearly invisible to the human eye, but ever-present, the shadow sat quietly, examining the man with a certain disdain. Richard could not believe what he was seeing. A ghost? Impossible! But he found himself unable to move, eyes fixed on the tiny shadow peering back at him.
Suddenly, the shadow rose from its seated position and walked towards the head of the bed, jumping on top of the dresser and moving itself closer to the windowsill. “What are you doing?” Richard asked it quietly, not fully understanding what he was seeing. The shadowy figure hopped from the top of the dresser to the windowsill, where Richard had carelessly discarded the glass of water.
The shadow pawed at the cup, and Richard could see the glass move closer to the edge of the windowsill. “Hey…Hey!” he exclaimed in a frantic whisper, waving his arms around his head. “Don’t do that! Stop it!” The shadowy paw continued to toy with the glass, testing Richard’s patience.
“What do you want from me?” Richard pleaded. The shadowy feline paused, lowering its paw and tilting its head to the side. He shook his head in astonishment, trying to decide his next move. “Why are you here?”
The shadow continued to stare, head cocked with a mischievous glint in its little eyes. Though the shadow never spoke, he felt as though it was asking him a question: Do you know who I am?
“Of course I know who you are!” Richard exclaimed, “You’re Deliah’s cat… or some form of her cat, anyway… I think…” He stuttered, struggling to accept that he was talking to the spirit of his daughter’s deceased cat.
He felt as though he saw the shadow nod, a silent acceptance of his answer. The shadow leapt down from the windowsill, leaving the water glass untouched, much to Richard’s delight, and walked towards him. He wanted to back away, but he felt as though he was glued in place.
As the shadowy figure approached, Richard considered his options. Maybe he should scream. Surely his wife could hear him, and maybe she would come save him from this little ghost. But just as he mustered up the courage to shout for Claudia, the shadow did something unexpected: the figure simply rose up on its tippy-toes and rubbed up against his leg.
“Wha-” Richard stuttered, trying to understand what the figure wanted. The shadow hopped onto Deliah’s bed again, looking at Richard expectantly. He slowly, cautiously, approached the shadow, shyly offering his hand. The shadow leaned into
his touch, and he could have sworn he felt it purring in delight. He almost let out an audible laugh. The ghost of his daughter’s cat, the cat which he so despised, was haunting him with its love!
Richard quietly sat down on the bed next to the shadow, and gently patted his thigh. He felt the pressure on his leg shift as the shadowy feline took steps into his lap, and the final weight pushed down on his thighs as the cat made itself comfortable. He found himself smiling, and he almost swore he saw the cat do the same.
“Is this why you’re here?” he asked.
The figure looked up at him, as if to say, Yes, of course
In the gentle silence of the moment, Richard almost didn’t hear his wife coming down the hallway. The shadow’s ears perked up, and as quickly as it had sat down, it hopped off Richard’s lap.
“W-wait, I…” Richard struggled to express everything he wanted to say to the small creature. The shadow slipped into the corner, and Richard looked away for a moment as his wife entered the room.
“Richard, who are you talking to in here?” Claudia asked. She looked around the room with an eyebrow raised. “You’re disturbing my reading.”
Richard spared another glance at the corner of the room, where he had last seen the shadow. “Oh, nobody. Just… just thinking out loud,” he said with a nod.
His wife gave him an unsure look before she shrugged. “Just keep it down, dear.” She turned on her heels and headed back to their bedroom.
Richard stood from the bed, taking a final look around the room before shutting off the lights and turning to the door. As he stood in the doorway, he spoke into the darkness, “Annalyse, you were a good kitty for Deliah… even if I didn’t always see things that way.” He paused for a moment, taking in the room. As he proceeded back down the hallway, he could have swore he heard a quiet meow in response.
Deliah came home for break roughly a week later, and Richard resisted sharing his supernatural experience with his daughter. For one, he did not want her to think he was crazy. He also wasn’t sure he truly believed what happened to him, either.
As the family sat down for dinner one evening, Deliah sat at the head of the table, telling her parents about her new job, her new friends, and her new school. Richard, sitting to her left, noticed a small movement on the stairway behind his daughter. Focusing his eyes, a familiar shadow perched itself on the third stair from the bottom, cocking its head in his direction. He shook his head, trying to bring his attention back to his daughter’s story. Just then, Claudia spoke, “If you two will excuse me, I’m going to grab another wine bottle from the basement.”
As Claudia left the room, Deliah noticed her father’s eyes lingering on the stairs. She reached for his hand, “You see her too, don’t you?”
Richard’s eyes grew wide as Deliah giggled and offered a small smile.
“You mean-” Richard stumbled over his words again.
Deliah cut him off. “Yes, Dad, I see her too. I just didn’t know she let you guys see her,” Deliah giggled.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, rising from his seat and gesturing towards the stairway, “I thought I was going mad.”
Deliah shook her head, smiling at the shadowy figure examining them. “No, Dad. I think she’s always gonna be with us. Maybe you’ll like her better now that her hair isn’t getting all over the place.” Deliah stood from her spot at the table and approached the stairs. Bending down to the shadowy figure, Deliah allowed the apparatus to jump into her arms. “I think she would be less lonely here when I was gone if she had a playmate,” Deliah suggested. She proceeded to carry the figure up the stairs as it looked over her shoulder at Richard. It seemed to have a conceited, satisfied look on its little face.
Mouth agape, Richard shook his head. Just then, he heard a voice come from behind him. Claudia stood in the dining room doorway, bottle of wine in hand, “So, what did I miss?” She plopped down at the table and popped the cork out of the bottle.
“Oh, not much. Just typical teenager stuff,” Richard said, trying to hide his amazed amusement. He ran a hand through his hair and sat next to his wife at the dinner table.
“Honey,” he said, struggling to find the right words, “I think we should get another cat.”
Magnum Opus
HUNTER GREENWELL
David is a piteous artist, and he only has five days to complete his painting. There is to be an exhibition in just a week, a show meant to display all sorts of artistic talents. The main subject pertains to the human figure, which is his area of specialty. Most people will treat this show as a quaint little distraction from life, but for David, well, this is his last chance to make something of himself. David hopes that he will catch the eye of some wealthy patron, finally get his name out in the world of art, and get a start on his career.
For you see, although David likes to call it a late start, the truth is that his life has thus far been a tale of utter mediocrity and disappointment. He once dreamt of much, like all artists, like all men. He dreamt of the artist talks in prestigious fireside lounges; he dreamt of always carrying the knowledge that powerful people proudly displayed his paintings in their illustrious private galleries; he dreamt of working on his own schedule, taking clients as he pleased. Indeed, he was once a dreamer that dreamt of much.
In his youth, those dreams were a goal at the end of the road, one that he thought he could easily travel. After he graduated university, those dreams were less of a road and more like a small cliff, an obstacle just out of reach. David naively thought that if he simply found a way to spring up, he could fully start his career. When a decade had passed, and his greatest accomplishments were displays in small coffee shops and purchases of smaller, cheaper pieces—certainly not enough to keep a living—that dream seemed less like a cliff and more like a forest. Not one of radiant beauty and chipper woodland creatures, but one of suffocating overgrowth and choking darkness.
By now, David is a middle-aged man with little to his name, still trudging through those foggy woods without a light in sight. He cannot admit to himself that his dreams have long become a bygone memory, a sad ambition that he could not and still cannot carry. He is no Picasso, no Leonardo nor Michelangelo. He has no “quirkiness” to make himself an eccentric artist. Everyone in his community forgets he exists half the time and eschews his presence whenever he desperately tries to sell any painting he labored over.
Now, to give fair credit to David, he is not a bad painter by any measure. He knows his craft well and has the appropriate tools to render the human figure, his greatest subject. But everything he did was never enough, not for himself nor for the people and organizations he begged to buy his work. Perhaps, in another place with different people, he would have seen greater success. Maybe if he had done things differently, things would have turned out better.
Maybe what is to come could have been avoided.
But that does not matter, for right now he paints haggardly in the confines of his aunt’s cabin, isolated from civilization within the woods. It seems to be an instinct among artists to go bigger for greatness, because David had been working on a massive canvas taller and wider than himself for the past month. His station, the living area which he converted into a temporary studio, is chaotic. Not like the messy-yet-organized shops of most painters one would expect, no. Sketches scribbled upon paper are thrown all around on the floor and dismissed, paints are slabbed on tables and walls instead of palettes, and some spilled bottles of oils leak onto the floor that he has long neglected to clean. Certainly, the whole room is as frantic and desperate as its inhabitant. Yet, still, he slaves away.
Even at the beginning of the month, he had toiled away at his painting, hardly leaving his studio. When he worked those first weeks, nothing stayed the same in his painting. The figure and background would change all the time, never landing on an idea that brought him joy. Last week, he paced around the curtains, sometimes letting light in, sometimes blocking it. Sometimes he had opened the windows to hear the “melody” of the woods in hopes of gaining soothing concentration. The noises of nature, the man discovered, were grating to his ears and he wished the rodents of the woods dead. He had even tried adjusting the canvas at different angles and places in the room, all in a bid for sudden insight, for hope that God would bestow upon him the answer and skill to do what he must, if only he had the room just right.
Nothing satisfied him.
So, now, he paints violently. David strikes the canvas harder than before, his movements a hailstorm of his frustrations and grief. It was not just for the fact that he could not satisfy himself with what he paints, but that his whole career is simply mediocre, as an indifferent art critic would put it. Throughout all hours of the fifth day does he paint, with barely a moment spared for food or rest. Only the sound of a beaten canvas and splotched paint reverberates in that cabin. Yet, no matter what he does, the figure never comes out right to him, especially the eyes. He just sees a splotch of colors and poor techniques, an adequate reflection of his sloppy life.
Truly, David has put his whole heart and soul into this one painting and has made it his passion. But this passion was not born of love nor humanity, but of hate. Hate of the wasted decades, hate for his own mediocrity, hate for the people who never acknowledged him, and, above all, hate for that very painting. Yet behind all that hate is fear, for in the bottom of his heart, he fears this final failure, for it will truly ruin him as a man.
And it is then that the shift happens.
David does not notice it, for it is impossible to perceive its beginning. It cannot be spotted nor heard, and it leaves no odor when it begins. Even if it could, he is so hopelessly lost in his despondent painting that he would never have known anyway. For you see, this shift happens within the painting itself. David does not know that his feelings and circumstances are the true medium with which he creates, not the paints flicked on by his brush. For as he paints, though he knows it not, his frustration and despair, cultivated in a somber heart for over two decades, and concentrated with absolute focus on the canvas, absolute passion, births something new.
See, in ancient times, before the sciences of man answered many phenomena and many mysteries went unanswered, leaving great fear in the earth that was infinite—when gods and demons lived in the hearts of men—fear and passion were powerful forces. They could motivate a man to do many horrible things, yes, but they held powers beyond man’s perception, beyond the tangible and earthly, to birth distorted things. Some ancient people knew this practice and were wary of it—most did not, and it has been entirely forgotten today. But in ancient cities of mud and clay, which archeologists would one day find, artists, who dreamed too much for their own good, erected monuments of their boogeymen out of fear and passion. The hearts of those ancient artists believed so fervently that, at some point, that fervor became a catalyst for unearthly things. It was the start of an unnatural process, leading to things that should not have existed.
Things that should not have been born from mud and clay.
It is not until the eighth hour of the fourth day to the exhibition that David’s baggy eyes blink slowly and he pauses in his painting that he notices something peculiar about it. In his previous rendition, he had painted the figure at a small distance away from the viewer, head tilted away at something out of frame. It is now looking at him.
For a moment, a tinge of unease worms its way past his steadfast hate, but he shuts it quickly. He reassures himself that he had not slept in a while. He convinces himself that he made the edit on the figure during some sleep-deprived trip. He did not.
When night arrives, he retires to bed, and he dreams. The artist’s dreams, previously empty or unimportant, are bountiful this night. He dreams of ancient devils, of abominations born from clay and mud. He dreams of crawling things and chanting people, of untrodden earth and lands he cannot pinpoint. He dreams of artists, like himself, creating things not from materials, but from their own sunken hearts, horrible things that God has damned.
When he awakes, more tired than rested, he quickly returns to his painting. Only half an hour into it, though, he finally notices another change. The figure is closer than it was just yesterday. Yet, with his lack of sleep and persistence to paint, he ignores the change and continues to paint. But on this day, although the hate and fear still lingered, he found that he could paint with some sense of clarity.
David’s strokes are calmer and concentrated, yet the passionate energy does not leave the marks on the canvas. His eyes focus as much as they can in his
ragged state. He can see what the painting is meant to become, even if the poor fool does not truly know what he is doing. With his clarity, instead of painting with reds and yellows as hues for the skin, he reaches for the blacks and whites, mixing them excitedly. He has realized that the figure is meant to have skin of black and grey. David’s hope is fragile, but he allows some sense of accomplishment to surge for finally doing something he thinks is right.
The haggard man does not notice the end of the day until the sun’s light wanes considerably, marking skipped meals and hurried bathroom breaks. He had, in previous days, taken the background into consideration, but now his attention remains wholly on the figure before him. For the first time in many years, the artist feels such surging, hot passion, such a desire to see a painting to completion. It is with great reluctance that he retires for the night, but this time, he slumbers on the couch shoved in the corner, looking at his painting one final time before closing his eyes.
He dreams again, of those same things he does not yet understand. Of wombs of passion and the unspeakable things that crawl out, abhorred by God Himself. This time, he sees the visage of the very figure he paints, faint in the distance, but it is there all the same. Incomplete, just like it is on the canvas. It does not move and speaks no words, as still as the paint that holds it, but David can feel it all the same, that nagging demand in the back of his head to get back to his painting, to birth it. David wakes up in a rush to near darkness, much earlier than on previous nights. The sleep deprivation will reap consequences, but David does not know this. He returns to his painting to complete it. It demands so.
The notion of running away, to realize what he is doing and what abominable thing is happening, never enters his mind, and it is not even for the lack of sleep. In his heart, David knows that this work will become his masterpiece, his magnum opus, greater than any work of the Old Masters of the Renaissance. He starts right away, forgetting about breakfast completely.
The poor fool.
By now, he is too far into the birthing process to notice that the figure blatantly stands before him in the canvas. He completely neglects anything else in the painting—only the figure matters to him. He refines and touches upon every detail. The wrinkles, the veins, the untrimmed nails, the crusted lips, the fickle hairs; everything is labored over tremendously. David moves about the canvas, up and down the figure, gently flitting his brush across. Sometimes a large brush for muscles, sometimes a small one for the tiniest strand of hair. David cannot remember if the figure was originally nude when he had started, but it matters little now. He believes clothes would only blemish its perfection.
Another night passes with even less sleep. He barely got a wink of rest before the figure intruded in his dreams again, demanding completion. So, he continues. It does not matter how frazzled or drained David has become—his creation requires everything of him, and as an artist, he will give nothing less. Night passes into day and then night again, painting and painting, refining and perfecting. No time
for anything else. Unlike his previous works, David can truly sense the approach of completion, of a new birth. This will be his greatest work yet, in all his career. He believes that his mediocrity will be left behind him.
To David, the figure is beautiful. It is neither man nor woman. To the average man, it would appear distortedly familiar, appearing human but not quite, held by skin of ashen gray and lifeless black. It walks the thin line of earthly and abnormal, balanced perfectly between the two. Truly the most realistic figure David has conjured, yet still, he paints, because he feels it is not yet perfect.
David smiles at his painting. It has no smile. David begins to love his painting. It does not love him.
David does not notice the sun rise again, nor the ache in his veins, the begging of his eyes to rest. He paints, and he paints, and he paints. He forgets that the show was two days ago. He forgets about his dreams and ambitions. The only thing he remembers now is the painting; more specifically, the figure. Paint and more paint are brushed upon it. Everything is nearly perfect. All except for the eyes. Everything had come to David in a stream of clarity, of what to do and what not to do, what to include and exclude, guided by the figure’s own will. But the eyes, oh, he was still so hopelessly clueless on how to even begin.
See, David always found the eyes so daunting—they can elevate a person or ruin the painting entirely, depending on how well they are handled. And David cannot let them be anything less than perfect. So, he stalls, perfecting the rest in hopes that some sort of guidance will come to him.
He does not notice the first round of knocks on the door. He ignores the ensuing pounding. When he hears the insistent irritated shouting of his aunt, something snaps in his already fragile mind. He stomps over to the door and swings it open. There is a loud altercation between David and his aunt. The figure listens. Talking turns into shouting. Hate-filled words are hurled. The aunt threatens to destroy everything of his, including the current painting, if he does not immediately pack and leave. It frowns. It hears David’s enraged and desperate yell followed by a loud thwack. The woman screams, growing quieter as she runs off. David returns seconds later with drops of blood on his hand. The figure is pleased.
The artist paints, frustration and fear mounted upon the hand with which he brushes. He knows he does not have much time; not for the show, of course, but for when he is forced away from his painting. Fear and passion fuel him again, and when night comes, the figure is perfect.
David has done it. The figure is marvelous in its depiction; the figure is more realistic than any he has done before, more so even than what the Old Masters had made. David has surpassed them. So real is the figure that the smell of oils and paints no longer penetrates David’s nostrils. Instead, a dirty and sour scent, like the soil of a dead land, invades the room. So real is the figure that David feels he could step through the canvas and touch it. Everything is perfect, all except the eyes.
Upon this harrowing and crushing realization, he weeps. He weeps like a newborn lost from his mother. He cannot complete his masterpiece. So close to
perfection, is all he can think in his distraught mind. Everything he had done, everything he had poured into the painting, was ultimately not enough.
Yet as he cries, eyes blinded by tears, he does not feel the warm, rotten exhale of breath hit his face. He does not see the figure slowly, stoically, reach its arms out through the canvas, as if it had been an open doorway to another land all along, and wrap its gnarled fingers around the frame. David only stops crying when he hears a wooden creak as the figure places a foot onto the floor, and then the next. David blinks the tears away, but he does not move, even as he sees the figure pull its head through. The poor fool is too far gone to react with fear and run away. Rooted by absolute shock, he never blinks as the wrinkled figure raises its eyeless gaze to David. Its mouth opens, but it does not speak. And in that moment of gazing and connection, despite the thing’s lack of sight, David finally realizes that the birth is complete.
The figure raises both arms of unearthly gray and black towards David’s head. He does not flee, does not scream, does not fight. The fool is in such wondrous awe. The hands grasp the side of his head; they feel shriveled and dry like a dead animal, just like he painted them. His eyes bounce around his creation until finally looking it in the face. There is no love in its eyeless gaze. It moves its hands to the front of David’s face, placing a thumb and finger of each hand around David’s eyes, and he is filled with elation.
He could never paint eyes, never mold them to the perfection he felt the figure deserved. But every good artist would suffer for their work, and David would do the same to bring the figure to perfection. There is one way to give the figure perfect eyes. A sacrifice must be made. He smiles when the figure grips his eyes.
He does not scream when it pulls.
David had done it. He had received the fame and recognition he had desired for so many years. Not in the way he imagined, nor in the way he would have preferred, but he had succeeded, nonetheless. He was like Van Gogh, only becoming known to many after an unfortunate death. Every piece made by him had quickly been guarded closely or sold for exorbitant prices, much more than David ever made in life. He became a great figure of wonder and mystery not just in his community, but in the world of art in its totality. His name was on the tongues of many news outlets, renowned artists, and even the occasional theorist. All of this, not because of a sudden surge of positive opinions towards his pre-existing paintings, but because of the revelation of his final masterpiece.
Even when days had passed, the cabin was still swarmed with investigation, and the officers within could not shake the air of unease and uncertainty. They were originally sent after David’s aunt called them, but they certainly were not prepared for what they found in the cabin. They believed a human altercation took place, of course. They believed that their earthly methods of science would track the “human” culprit that executed this crime they don’t quite know what to label. They will never find it, no matter how hard they try.
Yet, what unnerved them the most, even the most hardened officers on the scene, was the painting. None of them could look away from it, even when they were supposed to look elsewhere for clues. The style and technique were beautifully done, they all silently agreed. Heart and labor had been poured in, that much they could tell for certain. They were entranced by the beauty of it, but also disturbed.
Days had been spent searching for an unknown culprit, but also for David. No analytics or DNA testing of any sort would lead them on the right path. But, in their heart of hearts, try as they might to ignore such dark thoughts, like a child convincing himself that monsters don’t exist, they knew David will never be found. He was already before them.
A dried dribble of blood led to the edge of the frame. David’s figure, as gaunt and tired as he was when last seen, stood within the canvas. It was a perfect representation of the man, as if photographed by a quality camera. He leaned against a wall, as if ashamed to confront the befuddled authorities before him. Blood led into the painting, too, and up his garments. His hands covered his eyes, but they could not stop the blood flowing around his fingers.
Art and Photography
Magdalena River ABIGAIL KERCHER
Inversion
EMALEE JONES
Sylvester
EMALEE JONES
Tulips
EMALEE JONES
MCKENNA LOVE
Thorns and Vines
PARIS WALLACE
Nonfiction
The Art of Letting Go
PARIS WALLACE
The Unrivaled Beauty of Sneezing DRAKE HUBERT
There is an endless array of involuntary physical actions that the human body undergoes on a regular basis. A great many of them go entirely unnoticed, for they often can not be observed by the human eye. We, for example, do not stop and take time to celebrate the beauty of neurons firing off in someone’s brain, because it’s not something we can actively observe. We can observe the results of it in the form of, say, an interesting thought that is expressed. But the physical act itself of the neurons is not impressive in any visible way. Therefore, we neither celebrate nor lament this involuntary physical behavior.
Of the involuntary physical actions we can observe, virtually all of them are, at best, merely unimpressive and, at worst, unpleasant to see or experience. Breathing is the magnum opus of an impressively unimpressive physical action. No one is going to be praised for breathing, nor are they going to be discouraged from it or shunned in any way for doing it. In fact, no one in their right mind is going to have any opinion whatsoever on their own breathing or someone else’s (snoring or excessively loud breathing/sighing notwithstanding). Breathing is merely a bodily function; it holds no sway over us. Other physical actions, however, do sway us, and they sway us in a negative way. A small list of such actions include:
1. Vomiting
2. Release of gas/urine/excrement
3. Burping
4. A nose bleed
5. Running a fever
The simple act of typing these physical reactions the body undergoes leaves me wanting to take a shower. The human body (along with most creatures) is a rather disgusting vessel in many ways. All of these actions can briefly disrupt even the most sexually desperate person’s attraction to a human body. If the love of your life is deathly ill: running a fever, vomiting relentlessly, and plagued with diarrhea, your attraction to them on the physical level is certainly going to be inhibited. When you see or even imagine them going through these experiences, the last thought on your mind is how attractive they are. All of this is to say that most bodily reactions are
testimonies to how fragile someone’s attractiveness is. Attractiveness here, I must clarify, goes beyond sexual attractiveness. This is why we don’t want to be in the presence of someone who is using the bathroom: it’s unpleasant (though, if you’re in a minority of people who find this pleasant, I am not going to do any shaming here). This is why we don’t want to be around someone who is deathly ill; although we may subject ourselves to their presence out of a desire to help them that usurps our aversion to their body itself.
Despite all of this, there is still a certain beauty to even these abhorrent bodily functions. The beauty of them comes from the fact that they are all distinct and unavoidable reminders of one’s humanity. The act of using the bathroom is not a beautiful act, but it is one that gives us a strange sense of connection to our fellow humans and, indeed, a connection to all other animals as well. We all are “victims” of these involuntary acts, and we all know what it’s like to go through them. The acts themself are not beautiful, but the sense of connection they cultivate is. In other words: taking a piss builds community.
Now then, there is one bodily function that achieves this sort of peculiar community building and, in fact, succeeds exceptionally, while managing to almost entirely evade being deemed a disgusting bodily function in any way. This function is sneezing.
Sneezing finds itself as a very unique bodily function in many ways. Perhaps the most unique aspect of sneezing, and the aspect that gives it its shield from the label of disgusting, is that it’s mysterious. Most bodily functions have a clear cause. Needing to use the bathroom is a result of food and drink, vomiting is the result of a stomach bug or eating bad food, etc. Sneezing, however, just....happens. It can happen at any time in any environment regardless of what we are doing or what we have put into our body. Of course, its cause can be explained, but there is a suddenness to it that all other bodily functions lack. In that way, it is also the most involuntary physical reaction. Something like a fever is also entirely involuntary, but it is not able to affect us in the same, completely random way that sneezing does; i.e. we don’t run a fever often, but we do sneeze frequently. It is the sudden, inevitable, yet completely unpredictable nature of sneezing that makes it a particularly jarring reminder of one’s fragile mortality.
The real beauty of sneezing does not come, however, from its humbling reminder of our mortality, though that is certainly beautiful in its own right. The real beauty of sneezing comes from how those around us feel about us sneezing and how we react to someone sneezing. When someone sneezes, virtually no one resents them or judges them for it. This is because there is nothing inherently wrong with someone sneezing in public (assuming they have the decency to cover their mouth and not sneeze on someone else). If someone were to start using the restroom in public, they’d be detained. If someone burps in public without quickly correcting themself, they are sure to get dirty looks. If someone vomits in public, they are going to have others’ sympathy, but everyone will agree that they need to be removed from the public’s view until they are in a state where they will no longer vomit. Sneezing, therefore, stands alone as the only bodily function that brings no shame with it.
Sneezing does not just carry with it a lack of shame. It also carries with it a quaint privilege. When you sneeze, you are essentially deemed a victim of the sneeze, and those around you have an obligation in the social contract to take pity on you for your victimhood and thus, we say, “Bless you.” Once this pity has been administered, however, the obligation then falls onto the sneezer to say, “Thank you.” What a beautifully simple interaction that celebrates a mutual appreciation of our humanity!
When someone has to use the bathroom, there is an unspoken sense of commonality that is built between us and our fellow person; we just don’t say it. However, when someone sneezes, there is a spoken sense of commonality between us and our fellow person. We have all been on both ends of the “Sneeze Interaction” and we use this understanding of one another not only to build camaraderie but as an opportunity to be kind to each other, further strengthening our innate bond as humans.
Sneezing, therefore, reigns supreme as the bodily function that successfully and directly builds both community and kindness among humanity. It succeeds at this both because of and in addition to being not at all a grotesque bodily function. Sneezing is a harmless event that has gained incredible value by being the easiest and most common way for us to feel connected to our fellow person and to have an opportunity to show kindness to them.
The Depressive Life of a Poet as Seen Through John Keats
PEYTON PETERS
In the introduction to John Keats the Norton Anthology states, “[John Keats] finds melancholy in delight and pleasure in pain; he feels the highest intensity of love as an approximation to death; he inclines equally toward a life of indolence and ‘sensation’ and a life of thought; he is aware both of the attraction of the imaginative dream world without ‘disagreeables’ and the remorseless pressure of the actual; he aspires at the same time to aesthetic detachment and to social responsibility” (Lynch 477). John Keats was a Romantic poet who suffered a tragic career and life. The Romantic period spanning roughly from 1785 to 1832, was a complex time to be a poet. The characteristics that once defined medieval romances, adventure, chivalry, and love, were reevaluated, and seen in a new light. The medieval romances were being praised for their “idealization and visionary imagination,” leading writers to propose that “modern” literature should keep to that blueprint (Lynch 4). Poets like William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, and Percy Shelly attempted to define what it meant to be a poet. Keats followed the thoughts of poets like Wordsworth who believed poems originate from emotions and reflection with spontaneous composition—that “‘if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all”’ (Lynch 14). Keats looked to others for inspiration to find a new way of writing; however, as Harold Bloom writes in The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, “Romanticism, for all its glories, may have been a vast visionary tragedy, the self-baffled enterprise not of Prometheus but of blinded Oedipus, who did not know that the Sphinx was his Muse” (10). John Keats represents the darker life of a poet during the Romantic period, as he experienced the pressure, the anxiety, and the melancholy of such a life.
Premodern writers wanted “modern” literature to become, in a sense, more romantic with adventure, chivalry, and romance. Meanwhile, Keats wanted to break away from being inspired by romance. Keats relied more on creativity, turning to Shakespeare’s King Lear for ingenuity and individuality. “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” reflects the high level of respect Keats held for Shakespeare, the “Chief Poet” (Keats 9). There is a small level of irony with King Lear being Keats’
work of choice—a tragedy of joy, misery, and family. The themes in King Lear are reflective of Keats’ own life. While short of funds and walking the line of poverty, Keats became the supplement for family income when his brother, George, and sisterin-law lost all their money (Lynch 477). In addition, Keats was pursuing a woman, Fanny Brawne. The pressure was on for Keats to make money from his writings.
Keats began with planning plays, which perhaps is why he gravitates towards Shakespeare’s King Lear. In the poem Keats says, “must I burn through; once more humbly assay / The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearean fruit” indicating this is a craving desire of his (6-7). This Shakespearean tragedy is so immensely important to Keats that he sets aside his life’s work just to read it one more time. Keats no longer wants to “wander in a barren dream” of his life without writing a monumental work that is comparable to Shakespeare’s tragedy (12). By reading King Lear once more, Keats wishes to be “consumed in the fire” and be given “new phoenix wings to fly at my desire” (13-14). This means he wishes to be brought inspiration from reading the play and be given a new and inventive way of writing.
Despite Keats’ revival after reading King Lear, ingenuity continues to allude to him. In his ballad, “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” Keats records accounts of “pleasure and pain with extraordinary sensitivity, pondering the destructive aspects of sexuality and the erotic quality of the longing for death” (Lynch 18). The ballad is very representative of Keats and his relationship with poetry. The lovely lady, “la belle dame,” depicts his inspiration while the Knight portrays Keats. The Knight has an obsession with the woman, who he cannot have. In Keats’ case, he cannot find inspiration. This obsession is present like an addiction. Without it, life is hopeless and colorless. The Knight’s description portrays a sense of melancholy, illustrating Keats’ internal struggle:
“I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.”
(9-12)
The Knight has no color to him like he is lifeless. A rose, typically associated with love, is fading away indicating that his love is deteriorating. In addition, lilies are typically funeral flowers. There is an undertone of death in this poem which is similar to Keats’ life. The Knight is aware that he is coming upon death and must accept that he will be without the woman’s love. The Knight’s deterioration reflects Keats and his lack of inspiration for poetry and his premonition that he would die at a young age.
In Keats’s poem “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” we can see how Keats feels inferior after looking to other poets for inspiration. In the very first line, Keats writes, “My spirit is too weak.” He believes his spirit, or poetry, is weak in comparison to such a great work of art. The poem goes on to say,
“ – mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.” (1-5)
Many pieces of this quote allude to death. The weight of mortality Keats feels is caused by the pressure of wishing to live up to such great artists. This feeling for Keats is like being lured into death. He is an eagle unable to fly because he is a poet lacking the inspiration to write. Even if Keats were to compose such a great work of art, he notes how it will never stand the test of time. Lines 12 through 14 say, “That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude / Wasting of old time—with a billowy main— / A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.” Despite the Elgin Marbles’ power and beauty, they still decay over time. If something as magnificent as this could not last, Keats wonders how any of his works would in comparison.
Keats is suffering from what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence. In his book, Bloom describes this phenomenon as, “…a kind of separation anxiety and the beginning of compulsion neurosis, or fear of a death that is a personified superego” (58). Perhaps the problem with Keats was that he did not understand Bloom’s definition of poetic influence which, “…involves two strong, authentic poets,—always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually a necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence, which is to say the main tradition of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, wilful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist” (30). Poetic influence in short, is the reader’s response to another poet’s work, whether it be a misinterpretation of it, or disagreeing with it in general. Keats tried desperately to meet the expectations of a poet while also trying to find individuality. As Bloom puts it, “Keats is so moving because he is so detached towards what is required of him as a poet, yet so faithful in the fulfillment of requirements” (84).
Finally, Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” depicts his friendship-like relationship with death. After Keats’s mother and brother died of tuberculosis, his mortality became an ominous shadow over his life. Keats opens the poem sharing his “drowsy numbness” (1) as he tires from hearing the nightingale’s song of happiness and writes, “’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, / But being too happy in thine happiness” (5-6). In lines 11 through 20 the speaker longs for alcohol so he can disappear. The speaker goes on to talk about the struggle of human life which the nightingale is lucky to never have to experience, “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” (23). Keats admits that he has “been half in love with easeful Death, / Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, / To take into the air my quiet breath” (52-54). The nightingale will get to forever sing its song that has been heard by kings and peasants, but Keats’ works will never be heard to such a great degree (63-64). In the last stanza, when the nightingale leaves, Keats’ imagination is gone once again.
Keats died of tuberculosis on February 23, 1821 (Lynch 478). The life of a poet was not as grand for him as others. He looked toward other great poets for inspiration, but in turn, felt inferior. He even went so far as to scrap his Hyperion after achieving the Miltonic manner after he recognized it as a threat to his individuality (Lynch 476). Nonetheless, Keats’ life reflects what it meant to be a writer during the Romantic period, abandoning careers, in Keats’ case medicine, and trying to find the meaning behind poetry. For Keats, the meaning of poetry was found within one’s inspiration. Lynch wrote a great description of Keats saying, “At times the agony of his disease, the seeming frustration of his hopes for great poetic achievement, and the despair of his passion for Fanny Brawne compelled even Keats’s brave spirit to bitterness and jealousy, but he always recovered his gallantry” (478).
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, New York, Oxford University Press, 1973, print.
Lynch, Deidre Shauna. “John Keats.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol. 2, edited by M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, New York, NY, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, pg. 475-478.
Lynch, Deidre Shauna. “The Romantic Period.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol. 2, edited by M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, New York, NY, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, pg. 3-27.
Keats, John. “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol. 2, edited by M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, New York, NY, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, pg. 497-499.
Keats, John. “Ode to a Nightingale.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol. 2, edited by M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, New York, NY, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, pg. 501-503.
Keats, John. “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol. 2, edited by M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, New York, NY, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, pg. 480-481.
Keats, John. “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol. 2, edited by M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, New York, NY, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, pg. 485.
Chaucer’s Response to Masculinist Attitudes About Gender
PEYTON PETERS
Literature in the Middle Ages was restricted to members of the Church, so published literature would often reflect Christian thinking. These ideals can be found by studying texts written during the period. Certain concepts can be found again and again throughout different writings that reflect the thinking of the Catholic Church and those in authority. Topics like religion and gender roles can commonly be found in the Middle Ages, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth-Century literature and mirror certain attitudes during that period. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales , written in the Middle Ages, reveals the masculinist attitudes about gender nurtured by the Church by demonstrating the traditional role of women, male supremacy, and male power.
The Wife of Bath was created by Chaucer and inspired by traditional misogynistic writings that were tended by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. The main argument in her prologue is experience versus authority. Throughout the prologue, she attempts to disprove the ideologies of those in authority, the Catholic Church. The poem opens with the Wife establishing credibility through her many experiences with marriage:
“Experience, though noon auctoritee Were in this world, is right ynough for me
To speak of wo that is in mariage: For lordinges, sith I twelfth yeer of age –Thanked be God that is eterne on live –Housbondes at chirche dore I have had five.”
(1-6)
Due to her many marriages, she is allowed to speak on the topic of marriage; however, to the men in the Church who have never been married, those in authority are not allowed. As well as being a marriage expert, the Wife has authority over love and sex. The Pardoner interrupts her prologue asking her to teach him, and other young men, her practices (184-187). This goes to show the effectiveness of having experience
and how it makes you more credible to others, proving the Wife’s argument that experience holds more power than those in authority.
The medieval Church believed that men were rational, intellectual, and spiritual; meanwhile, women were considered to be irrational, material, and earthly (237). Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” references many works worshipped by the Church and uses them as a way to commend the Wife of Bath’s actions. The Wife of Bath starts her tale by mentioning women in the Bible who have had more than one marriage:
“Biside a well, Jesus, God and Man, Spak in repreve of the Samaritan:
‘Thou hast yhad five housbondes,’ quode he, ‘And that ilke man that now hath thee Is nat thyn housbonde.’ Thus saide he certain. What that he mente therby I can nat syn,
But that I axe why the fifthe man Was noon housbonde to the Samaritan?
How manye mighte she han in mariage?
Yit herde I nevere tellen in myn age
Upon this nombre deffinicioun.”
(15-25)
The biblical woman is told by God that her fifth and current husband is not her husband. The Wife questions why the Samaritan’s fifth marriage is invalid to God considering that no one has told the Wife how many marriages a woman is allowed to have. Not only women, but men too have had multiple marriages in the Bible. “Lo, here the wise king daun Salomon: / I trowe he hadde wives many oon,” (Chaucer 35-36). Solomon had seven hundred wives, and yet the Wife is frowned upon for having more than one marriage. The Wife of Bath quotes St. Paul: “For thane th’Apostle saith that I am free / To wedde, a Goddes half, where it liketh me. / He saide that to be wedded is no sinne: / Bet is to be wedded than to brinne” (55-58). According to the Wife, St. Paul said himself that she is free to marry whomever she wants, and that to be married is not a sin. Texts that the Church nurtured were used against the convention that women were to only marry once. Since literature was restricted to members of the Church, the writings followed their ideals (8).
Moving into the tale itself, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” demonstrates misogynistic standards and male supremacy. The Wife’s tale begins with a knight raping a maiden he finds in the woods. Already, women are set apart from men due to the dominance of the knight who overpowers the woman. There is also a dynamic of male supremacy evident when the crime is presented to King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. A suitable punishment for rape in the Middle Ages would have been death. This is even mentioned by Chaucer, “That dampned was this knight for to be deed” (897); however, the lesser woman begs the king for mercy, and wishes to do as she pleases for the punishment:
“But that the queene and othere ladies mo So longe prayeden the king of grace, Til he his lif him graunted in the place, And yaf him to the queene, al at hir wille, To chese wheither she wolde save or spille.”
(900-904)
This interaction between the king and queen shows that they are unequal in power. Kings are seen as powerful figureheads, only second to God. Meanwhile, female monarchs are seen as inferior. Chaucer uses the word “prayeden,” portraying that the queen and other court women must pray to the king, giving the king a divinity status with women being inferior. While the knight commits a heinous crime, he escapes his harsh punishment when the queen decides to set him free for a year and a day, forcing him to return only once he figures out what it is that women truly want (915). This is a weak use of the queen’s power and ultimately is used to benefit the male.
Throughout his travels, the knight is taught an important lesson from a woman: shriveled, aged, and deceitful. “A fouler wight ther may no man devise,” is the description given (1005). The woman, or hag, is stereotypically unattractive to the knight. This is representative of the beauty standards held to women in the Middle Ages and throughout history. The knight and woman strike a bargain: the woman will give the knight the answer to Guinevere’s riddle in exchange for whatever the woman desires. Once the knight correctly answers the Queen’s riddle, he is pardoned for his crimes; however, the woman decrees it is time to call in her repayment. The woman requests that the knight marries her: “Quod she, ‘that thou me take unto thy wif, / For wel thou woost that I have kept thy lif. If I saye fals, say nay, upon thy fay’” (1061-1064). This conveys a common misconception of a woman’s purpose: that all they are interested in, or made for, is marriage.
The knight is further rewarded at the end of the tale. The woman provides the knight, her now husband, with an opportunity to choose what type of wife he would like her to be: old, ugly, and loyal, or beautiful, unfaithful, and treacherous.
“ ‘Chees now,’ quod she, ‘oon of thise things twaye: To han me foul and old til that I deye And be to you a trewe humble wif, And nevere you displease in al my lif, Or ells ye wol han me yong and fair, And take youre aventure of the repair That shal be to youre hous by cause of me –Or in some other place, wel may be. Now chees youreselven wheither that you liketh.’”
(1225-1233)
According to this thinking, a woman cannot be beautiful and loyal or ugly and unfaithful. The knight is continually handed power despite his crimes, and now can
choose his wife’s appearance. When the knight says he has no preference, his wife turns beautiful anyway. Despite the knight’s terrible actions, he is never treated like a criminal nor punished.
The Wife of Bath satirizes the shallow stereotypes of women and marriage and demonstrates the complexity of women (238). In addition, the Wife’s tale reflects the power of masculinity and the ideals of the medieval Church during the Middle Ages. The tale and prologue reveal masculinist attitudes and stereotypes of women, mirroring topics of thought in the Middle Ages. “The Wife’s Tale” brings into question the role of women and demonstrates the power men inherently possess. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer challenges the patriarchal attitudes of the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages through the use of irony and symbolism in the tale told by the Wife of Bath.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.” The Canterbury Tales. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol 1, edited by Meyer Howard Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, W.W. Norton, 2019, pp. 237-257.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol 1, edited by Meyer Howard Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, W.W. Norton, 2019, pp. 257-266.
Simpson, James. “The Middle Ages to ca. 1485.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors , 10 ed., vol 1, edited by Meyer Howard Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, W.W. Norton, 2019, 3-26.
Reframing Pain in Sports Memoirs
AUBREY SWART
Stories of athletes persevering through hardship dominate the world of sports, and women’s distance running is no different. Female runners are subtly influenced by Western society to perpetuate an idealized version of their athletic identity, which adheres to a performance-centered narrative structure and grossly oversimplifies the complexity of emotional pain by framing it as a precursor to athletic success. While the message of “overcoming” pain in female distance runners’ memoirs may not appear problematic at first, placing emotional pain as a precursor to athletic achievement perpetuates the toxic notion that athletes need to be “mentally tough” and “push through” emotional pain to achieve athletic success. As Fenton phrases it, female runners’ life writing is poisoned by the American national myth that anything can be accomplished through “self-determination” and “rugged individualism” (70). Similar to “mental toughness,” self-determinism itself is not harmful, however, when used to rationalize bulldozing through the physical, emotional, and/or mental pain of life as opposed to processing it, self-determinism becomes toxic.
Even though there is an increasing amount of literature analyzing the patriarchal implications of the “overcoming” narrative in female runners’ memoirs (Arail; Heinecken, “Empowering Girls Through Sport? Sports Advice Books for Young Female Readers”; Heinecken, “Gender and Jockography: Post-Feminism and Resistance in Female Sports Autobiographies”; Jutel), there remains surprisingly little research examining how the performance-centered narrative employed in women runners’ life writing can shift the “push through” pain mentality idolized in sports into a toxic method of coping with physical, mental, and/or emotional trauma. The research that does exist still focuses on how the performance-centered narrative is influenced by patriarchal gender roles (Fenton).
As a female distance runner myself, I understand the importance of representation within the women’s running. In this paper, I do not aim to critique female runners’ ways of representing themselves in life writing. Rather, I will call attention to the mindless perpetuation of a harmful trope that dominates sports media as a whole and argue that influential life writers (e.g., elite athletes) have an ethical obligation to realize their responsibility as role models for young readers. In the subsequent sections of this paper, I establish the prominence of the “overcoming”
trope within sports films as well as memoir, then elucidate how elite athletes are ethically inclined to use their prestige to set a better precedent of what it means to be an athlete for future generations. To further support my argument, I comparatively analyze two elite female runners’ memoirs—Kara Goucher’s The Longest Race and Alexi Pappas’s Bravey —to demonstrate how the organizational and stylistic choices associated with the “overcoming” trope project an unrealistic notion of the female athletic identity and inadvertently promote unhealthy ways of coping with pain outside of running. This paper concludes with a call for change, not only in how elite female runners structure their memoirs, but also in how society as a whole frames pain in the world of sports.
1. T he “Comeback” Story: Sports Movies and Memoirs
Western society is founded upon the idealized myth that anything can be accomplished through hard work and determination, otherwise known as the “American dream.” While mostly used in an economic context to promote the upward social mobility of American citizens during the early 1900s, the notion of the “American dream” has become a trademark of the United States, and remnants of this ideology are embodied in Western society’s infatuation with tragedy to triumph stories, especially within the realm of sports (“A Brief History of the American Dream”). The tragedy to triumph or “comeback” story is an especially popular cliché of the sporting world, as most sports stories follow the narrative structure of an athlete or team “overcoming” adversity before ultimately achieving athletic success. More important than what the athlete or team has to overcome is the trope of “overcoming” itself, because the emotional complexity of athletic adversity is what draws the audience in. As a culture, we are “hungry for tales of the tawdry and the traumatic” but also for the “promise of rehabilitation, transformation, restoration” (Mintz 53). It is emotionally thrilling to watch the ups and downs of an athlete or a team competing, and comforting to know that the story will ultimately resolve in athletic triumph. Although the general predictability of the conflict-resolution narrative structure of sports stories may appear to bore audiences with the same tired story, the continued popularity of the “comeback” story in sports media and film proves otherwise. For instance, all of the well-known films of the sports film genre, whether based on a true story (e.g., Hoosiers , Remember the Titans , The Blindside) or completely fictitious (e.g., Rocky, Bend it Like Beckham , Million Dollar Baby), follow an athlete or a team that faces some type of adversity—physical, emotional, and/or mental—they must be “overcome” to achieve athletic success. Even more recently released sports films—such as Safety and the Creed trilogy—have received high praise while adhering to the same conflict-resolution structure, proving the prominence of the “overcoming” trope.
The “overcoming” trope may not appear problematic in its inspirational depictions on the big screen, however, framing pain as a precursor to athletic achievement perpetuates the toxic notion that athletes can only achieve athletic success if they are “mentally tough enough” to “push through” their pain. On the big
screen, the mind-over-matter mentality appears as inspiration that hard work will pay off because audiences are entertained by, but not personally invested in, sports films. Viewers do not see movies as instructions on how to live their lives or how to excel in their sports, aside from the general takeaway to work hard. Sports memoirs, on the other hand, are a different story.
Examples of elite female runners’ memoirs that adhere to the “overcoming” trope are The Longest Race by Kara Goucher, Choosing to Run by Des Linden, and Let Your Mind Run by Deena Kastor. While each of these memoirs touches on instances of trauma and injury, all of them share the trope of “overcoming” pain or obstacles in life. When asked about the main takeaway from her memoir in an interview, Kara Goucher captures the over-arching theme of all the memoirs when she responds, “We can get through hard things” (Linden & Goucher, 2023, 9:25). Goucher’s diction demonstrates the influence of the mind-over-matter mentality as “get through” which is a variation of “push through/overcome.” Even though Goucher’s message is well-intended, and applicable in a running context, it does not translate to dealing with the pain of life.
On the other hand, Bravey by Alexi Pappas is an excellent example of an Olympic female runner’s memoir that resists the black-and-white thinking of the “overcoming” trope. Pappas may not explicitly state a main takeaway from her memoir, yet she continuously reiterates the same message through her writing: “Pain needs to see itself in the mirror and be felt before it can go away” (84). Different from Goucher, Pappas’ diction advocates for feeling pain as opposed to getting through it. By emphasizing how pain must “ be felt,” Pappas is creating space for pain to coexist in her memoir. Pain is not the enemy nor an obstacle, but a feeling that must be addressed to move forward in life. Pappas continues, “all pain, whether it’s the physical kind you feel during a race or the quieter kind you feel in normal life, gets better with time. Just remember: All marshmallows, when squeezed, can reinflate eventually” (84). In resisting the traditional “overcoming” trope in both how she deals with pain in running and pain in life, Pappas eliminates the risk that her readers will confuse “pushing through” pain in running with “pushing through” pain in life.
While memoirs that create a space to recognize and discuss the physical, emotional, and/or mental pain of life are important for young readers, few, if any, other running memoirs, like Bravey, exist. The majority of female runners’ memoirs, intentionally or not, conform to the same “comeback” story structure popularized by iconic sports films. Pappas’ resistance to conform to the “overcoming” trope in her memoir is a step in the right direction for future women’s running memoirs, as it sets a new precedent for what dealing with pain can look like on and off the track. However, moving forward we must acknowledge that the “overcoming” trope’s prioritization of performance over the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the athlete is problematic, especially in the context of elite athlete’s memoirs. Athlete stories told through their personal memoirs carry more weight for young, impressionable readers who want to grow up to be exactly like their sports heroes; therefore, elite athletes need to consider both their responsibility as role models for
young athletes as well as the harmful repercussions of using the “overcoming” trope in their writing.
2. Life Writers’ Ethical Obligation to Readers
To clarify, there is no right or wrong way to express pain in a memoir. Everyone experiences pain differently and memoirists have the creative freedom of expression, as well as the right to some extent of privacy (as long as it does not compromise the honesty of their life writing). Even so, writing a memoir is not “a morally-neutral enterprise,” and the ethical dimensions of memoir invite “moral interpretation, reflection, expression, and dialogue” (Martin 11); therefore, while there may not be a correct way to express pain, there is a right or wrong way to frame pain in memoir. Elite athlete memoirists who frame their pain as something they had to “conquer” to be successful, diminish the physical, mental, and/or emotional weight of their pain by dismissing it as another obstacle they had to “overcome.” The continuous minimization of pain and emphasis on physical achievement in sports memoirs can be dangerous for impressionable young readers, who read the memoirs of their sports heroes, not as stories, but as blueprints for how to live their own lives.
Now, this paper does not argue that memoirists must adhere to a certain writing structure, but it does serve as a call to action for elite athletes to acknowledge their authorial influence and the effect that their stylistic and organizational choices have on their readers. In taking the time to write out their life stories, memoirists are implicitly acknowledging that their story is important enough, in some regard, to record in writing. As John Eakin explains in his book, The Ethics of Life Writing :
When we tell or write about our own lives, our stories establish our identities both as content—I am the person who did these things—and as act—I am someone with a story to tell. And we do something even more fundamental—we establish ourselves as persons: I am someone, someone who has lived a valuable life, a value affirmed precisely by any life story’s implicit claim that it is worth telling and hearing. (Eakin 5)
Life writing is not as simple as recording all of the events that occur in one’s life; like fiction, it is intentional, meaningful, and usually centered around a particular life event or theme. So, when elite athletes take the time to reflect upon their lives and compose a memoir, they implicitly affirm that their story is not only worth telling but worth reading. Subsequently, whenever elite athletes decide to publish their life writing, whether they choose to recognize their authorial influence or not, they assume the position and responsibility of a role model for young readers.
To clarify, being a role model for young athletes does not mean that elite athletes have to present themselves as “perfect”; in fact, imitating the idealized notion of what an athlete should be is just as harmful as perpetuating the “overcoming” trope. Assuming the responsibility of a role model simply means that memoirists need to be intentional and cognizant of the messages that their rhetorical and
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structural decisions communicate to readers. Responsibility is, oftentimes, viewed as synonymous with burden ; yet, in the right context, responsibility can also be seen as synonymous with opportunity. Elite athletes have the opportunity to use their notoriety to shape the minds of the future generation of athletes through their memoirs.
3. Comparative Analysis of Female Runners’ Memoirs
It is necessary to note that the purpose of the following section is to take a closer look at how the organizational and stylistic choices of two aforementioned elite female distance runners’ memoirs—The Longest Race and Bravey— adhere to and resist the “overcoming” trope popularized by western sports media as well as how they acknowledge their ethical obligation to readers. The purpose of this section is not to compare the physical, emotional, and/or mental pain that the authors experience, nor argue that one author presents their pain in a way that is “better” than the other. Everyone experiences pain differently and as mentioned previously, there is no “right” way to express pain in a memoir; however, there is a right or wrong way in which to frame pain in a memoir, and this is why the “overcoming” trope is problematic.
Prior to analyzing how each memoir adheres to/resists the “overcoming” trope, it is necessary to first establish the athletic credentials of each author as well as the general premise of both memoirs. Kara Goucher, author of The Longest Race , is an American long-distance runner, silver medalist at the World Championships in the 10,000 meters, two-time Olympian, and podium finisher at the Boston and New York City Marathons—the two biggest marathons in the United States (283). Goucher’s memoir follows the evolution of her athletic career as she navigates the pain of losing her father. She also exposes the corruption of the Nike Corporation, by revealing the abuse, doping, and deception she witnessed and experienced while a part of the Oregon Project, a Nike-sponsored professional running club. Alexi Pappas, author of Bravey, is a Greek American long-distance runner, an Olympian, filmmaker, actor, and writer (Pappas). Pappas’s memoir also follows the evolution of her athletic career as she navigates the pain of losing her mother, as well as demonstrates how she learned to befriend pain on and off the track as she opens up about her struggles with mental health.
Now, despite the surface-level similarities between The Longest Race and Bravey —that they are both sports memoirs in which an athlete grapples with the trauma of losing a parent at a young age—the two memoirs could not be more different in terms of how each author chooses to approach their pain. For instance, while The Longest Race does not adhere to the classical notion of the “overcoming” trope, in which there is one tragic event that precedes one instance of athletic success, it does repeatedly reinforce the trope with smaller instances of pain that precede the highlights of Goucher’s athletic career—such as World Championship Races, Personal Records (PRs), and the Olympics. And, even though, Goucher cannot control the coincidental timing of the peak of her athletic career and her time at the Oregon Project, she can control how she frames the pain she felt during that time.
To illustrate, when Goucher mentions the first time she was sexually assaulted by her coach, she remembers, “My mind raced, but my body couldn’t move. Part of me expected a joke or comment of some sort about where his hands had gone. Maybe an apology. But he just continued his massage as normal” (88). She goes on to explain how she tried to rationalize how she must have misinterpreted the situation and how it must have been a mistake. Goucher’s response is understandable, since she was put in a situation where someone she trusted took advantage of her, yet she never explicitly tells her readers that her coach’s behavior was wrong and that she should have reported him right away; while it is implied, it is never outright acknowledged. Her lack of commentary on why her coach’s behavior was problematic sends a conflicting message to readers, especially when, on the very next page, she describes, “The next day, I went to the track. I ran my 1,500 meters race in 4:05.14, a PR and a World Championship qualifying time” (89). By mentioning her sexual assault and then immediately following it with her success on the track she—intentionally or not—minimizes the pain of the incident by not allowing herself the space to feel and process her pain, and this is not an isolated incident.
Arguably, Goucher’s memoir is more dangerous for young readers than traditional “comeback” stories due to the subtle nature in which the “overcoming” trope is woven throughout the story. Rather than having one defining moment of tragedy to triumph, Goucher’s memoir follows a consistent pattern of “pushing through” smaller moments of pain to achieve her athletic success. By not allowing space to fully process the physical, emotional, and mental pain that she was going through at the time and, instead, choosing to repeatedly highlight her athletic accomplishments, Goucher creates a repetitive “performance storyline” which “leads to an emphasis on ‘overcoming’ and the final positioning of [herself] as ‘better off’ or ‘stronger’ for what [she has] gone through” (Fenton 85). The notion that an athlete is “stronger” for “pushing through” the pain of a challenging race or workout is not uncommon in the running world, which is part of what makes the “overcoming” trope so powerful: it builds off of the seemingly positive pre-existing values of the sport.
The notion of “overcoming” pain does not appear problematic in an athletic context, however, when applied to life, runners cannot simply “push through” the pain of a physical injury or a mental illness (at least not in the same way that their sports heroes appear to in their memoirs when they win the big race a few pages later); in this way, their readers are being set up for disappointment. Though elite runners, like Goucher, may intend to inspire young athletes by proving how they were able to achieve athletic success despite their pain, the continuous perpetuation of the “overcoming” trope subtly implies that if a reader is unable to “push through” their pain, then they must not be “mentally tough enough.” The all-or-nothing mentality associated with the “overcoming” trope can be especially harmful in cases where a reader may be permanently injured or deeply depressed, as it can amplify the reader’s pain by drawing attention to their inability to simply “overcome” their situation.
In contrast, Pappas’s memoir Bravey not only resists the “overcoming” trope by opening up about her struggle with depression following the 2016 Olympics,
but also challenges using the “push through” pain mentality to cope with athletic as well as personal forms of pain. When describing her struggle with post-Olympic depression, Pappas writes, “I had internalized the idea that being an Olympian would ‘fix’ my deep childhood need to prove to myself that I mattered. But here’s the thing about trying to solve an internal problem with an external solution: Even if you achieve the goal you set for yourself, it will never be enough” (114). Pappas’s clear assertion that no amount of athletic achievement, not even competing at the Olympics, can numb the pain of life directly defies the “overcoming” trope’s illusion that one good race will make everything okay. Bravey demonstrates an unparalleled sense of honesty and self-awareness that every other female runner’s memoir should strive to match.
More than recognizing that external achievement cannot heal pain, Pappas also understands that allowing space to feel and discuss pain in a memoir can help athletes see pain in a new light. Unlike other memoirists who adhere to the “overcoming” trope, Pappas does not frame pain as an adversary to “overcome,” but she greets pain like a “guest at a dinner party” with which she has resolved to be civil (81). In Hurt and Pain: Literature and the Suffering Body, Susannah Mintz delineates how giving “meaning to the self-in-pain is not so much to quantify its discomfort as to pay attention to the ways in which pain is made meaningful—imagined, understood, experienced—in the first place” (Mintz 61). Pappas does not try to inflate or shrink her pain; she sits with it and tries to understand where it comes from and its purpose in her life. For example, Pappas notes how she often gets bouts of emotional pain, “Sometimes it’s related to a memory of my mom, and sometimes it doesn’t have any reason for being at all, but I am equipped to greet the sadness when it arrives” (83). Allowing space to recognize pain does not always mean knowing where it is coming from or why it is there. Pain can be physical, mental, or emotional, and sometimes you can feel multiple types of pain at once. Regardless of the form pain takes, all pain deserves space to be acknowledged and felt.
Another key difference between The Longest Race and Bravey is the stylistic choices that each author makes. The Longest Mile follows a pattern, in which Goucher indirectly alludes to certain issues within women’s running yet does not address nor elaborate upon the issue. To illustrate, in The Longest Mile , Goucher touches on the pervasive issue of eating disorders within women’s running. Goucher remembers having a teammate who was hospitalized due to an eating disorder. She explains how she and her other teammates, “rebelled against the temptation to believe that we needed to restrict our calories to be competitive. We wanted something different for ourselves and the other girls on the team. Hell, we wanted something different for our sport’s culture” (31). While mentioning that eating disorders were enough of an issue within the sport that there was a need to resist having one, Goucher fails to elaborate upon the issue itself. Even though Goucher states that she “wanted something different” for running culture, she misses an opportunity to thoughtfully comment on the issue and warn young female runners against developing disordered eating habits. By mentioning but not elaborating upon the challenges female
runners face in their sport, Goucher inadvertently perpetuates the lack of discussion surrounding these issues.
Just as Pappas is direct with her readers about her resistance to the “push through” pain mentality, she is direct and open when addressing the challenges female runners face in their sport—such as eating disorders. Similar to Goucher, Pappas recalls having a teammate who was hospitalized due to an eating disorder— which proves the prevalence of the issue within the sport. She comments on the issue, explaining how her teammate’s eating disorder was the “result of the systemic prioritization of fitness over health for young female athletes,” which causes “many girls [to] become frail and injury-prone by the time they’re in college” (69). More than simply addressing the issue, Pappas concludes the section with a call for change: “When the same bad things happen to a group of people time and time again, it is important to look closer at the failed system that is responsible. We are failing ourselves if we don’t” (70). It is important to note a key difference between the way Pappas and Goucher use we when discussing eating disorders in women’s running. Goucher’s we refers to her and her high school teammates, which excludes the reader; whereas Pappas’s we refers to Western culture as a whole, including the reader. By employing the inclusive use of we when discussing issues within women’s running, Pappas invites her audience to join in on the conversation as well as fight for change. Following along the stylistic analysis of Goucher’s passive tone in contrast to Pappas’s active tone, Goucher also employs a passive approach when she acknowledges her responsibility as a mentor for young female runners. She recalls, “I watched Jennings win out, setting a new American record in the [10,000-meter] distance. I loved how she looked doing it… it was then, at age fourteen, that I decided: I, too, would go to the Olympics” (Goucher 27). Goucher’s recollection of her own sports hero inspiring her Olympic dreams demonstrates an awareness of the power an elite runner has over their fans. Even though Goucher’s implicit recognition of her influence as an elite athlete is a step in the right direction, implying that she has a responsibility is not the same as actively accepting the responsibility. Her passivity in acknowledging her responsibility is what sets the aforementioned passive tone in her memoir, as she alludes to issues within women’s running yet does not address nor elaborate upon the issue.
Additionally, Pappas’s recognition of her role as a mentor for young athletes sets the tone for her memoir as well. When discussing her social media presence, Pappas explains:
I knew there would be kids, much like the little girl I had once been, who would pore over every word I posted and try their best to imitate it. I didn’t want them trying to replicate my hundred-plus-miles-a-week training regimen; I wanted to give them something they could healthily adopt as their own. So instead of posting workout splits, I posted poems. (6)
Pappas’s direct identification of her responsibility is powerful. Similar to Goucher’s approach, later on in her memoir Pappas implicitly recognizes her responsibility as
a role model for young runners by elaborating upon all the female role models— runners and non-runners—that she has had in her life. Even so, it is evident that Pappas’s explicit acknowledgment of her influence early on in Bravey sets a strong tone of active acknowledgment that can be seen throughout the rest of her memoir.
All in all, while The Longest Race appears to be a step in the right direction in terms of advocating for the issues in women’s sports, its numerous flaws prove that there is still room for improvement in terms of how elite female runners frame pain in their memoirs. The Longest Race is a beautifully written peek inside the twisted politics of professional running, however, Goucher’s passive acknowledgment of her responsibility as a role model for young readers prevents her from fulfilling that role, as she fails to consider how her perpetuation of the “overcoming” trope and lack of elaboration on issues within the sport sends a harmful message to her readers. Meanwhile, Bravey sets a new precedent for what elite female runners’ memoirs can look like outside the cookie-cutter mold of the “comeback” story structure. Pappas’s memoir not only openly defies convention but demonstrates how elite athletes can fulfill their ethical obligation to their readers while still staying true to themselves and their stories.
4. A Call for Change
This paper specifically addresses the negative implications of the “overcoming” trope in elite female runners’ memoirs as well as the ethical responsibility of elite athletes to consider the message that their organizational and stylistic choices communicate to their readers; however, the issues with female runners’ memoirs are a symptom of a greater issue regarding how society frames pain in sports. Western society has too long romanticized the notion of pain in sports. Sports films ignited the popularity of the “overcoming” trope with the continuous positive reception of the “comeback” story structure. As a result, this essay is a call to “overcome” the “overcoming” trope altogether by reframing pain in sports memoirs.
The repetitious diminishment of pain as merely something that precedes success creates the harmful impression that achievement will heal pain. While achievement can result in temporary happiness or satisfaction, it is a short-lived solution to an infinitely complex problem. As influential figures within the world of sports, elite athletes have an ethical responsibility to young athletes to resist conforming to the “comeback” story structure in their memoirs. Instead, they should seize the opportunity to rewrite history by shifting the way Western sports media views and discusses pain through their memoirs. Pain is not an adversary nor a precursor to success; pain is a natural human emotion that deserves and demands to be felt.
Works Cited
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Arail, Catherine Murray. The Women’s Distance Running Industry and the Paradox of Women’s Sports: Class, Consumption, Identity, and the Subordination of Women in American Sports Culture. 2013. University of Georgia, Master’s thesis. The University of Georgia Database.
Bend It Like Beckham. Directed by Gurinder Chadha, performances by Parminder Nagra, Kiera Knightley, and Johnathan Rhys Meyers, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2003.
Creed . Directed by Ryan Coogler, performances by Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, and Anthony Bellew, Warner Brothers Pictures, 2015.
“Des Interviews Kara on The Longest Race.” Nobody Asked US with Des & Kara from Apple Podcasts. 14 March 2023. https://podcasts.apple.com/ us/podcast/des-interviews-kara-on-the-longest-race/id1664629953?i= 1000604167478.
Eakin, Paul John. “Introduction: Mapping the Ethics of Life Writing.” The Ethics of Life Writing, Cornell University Press, 2004.
Fenton, Caela G. Postfeminism & the Extra Mile: Media Representation of Gender and Athletic Identity in Women’s Distance Running. 2022. University of Oregon, PhD dissertation.
Goucher, Kara. The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team , edited by Mary Pilon, Gallery Books, 2023.
Heinecken, Dawn. “Empowering Girls Through Sport? Sports Advice Books for Young Female Readers.” Children’s Literature in Education , vol. 47, 2016, pp. 325-342. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-016-9281-7. Accessed 6 April 2023.
Heinecken, Dawn. “Gender and Jockography: Post-Feminism and Resistance in Female Sports Autobiographies.” Feminist Media Studies , vol. 16, no. 2, 2016, pp. 325-343. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1052 006. Accessed 6 April 2023. Hoosiers. Directed by David Anspaugh, performances by Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, and Dennis Hopper, Orion Pictures, 1986.
Jutel, Annemarie. “Running Like a Girl: Women’s Running Books and the Paradox of Tradition.” The Journal of Popular Culture , vol. 42, no. 6, 2009, pp. 10041022. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2009.00719.x. Accessed 6 April 2023.
Martin, Mike W. “Morality in Memoir.” Memoir ethics: Good lives and the virtues , Lexington Books, 2016, pp. 1-12.
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Million Dollar Baby. Directed by Clint Eastwood, performances by Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman, Warner Brothers Pictures, 2004.
Mintz, Susannah B. “Our Stories, Our Pain; Autobiographical Utterances.” Hurt and Pain: + Literature and the Suffering Body, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013. Pappas, Alexi. Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas , Random House Publishing Group, 2022.
Remember the Titans. Directed by Boaz Yakin, performances by Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Donald Faison, and Nicole Ari Parker, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, 2000.
Rocky. Directed by John G. Avildsen, performances by Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, and Burgess Meredith, United Artists, 1976. Safety. Directed by Reginald Hudlin, performances by Jay Reeves, Thaddeus J. Mixson, and Corinne Fox, Disney+, 2020.
The Blindside. Directed by John Lee Hancock, performances by Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Lily Collins, and Jae Head, Warner Brothers Pictures, 2009.
USI Endorses Poverty Wages
DENISE MCKENZIE
While attending the University of Southern Indiana (USI) for my undergraduate degree, I have been living below the poverty line despite being employed by USI as a student worker. Along with my full-time student status, I work the maximum number of hours allotted to students and to make ends meet I work another off-campus job. I work two jobs and I’m still living below the poverty line. My experience isn’t a unique one, either. Ask any student worker and they will share a similar story. As it stands, it is impossible for any student worker to earn a living wage at USI due to current wages and limitations on working hours.
The pay scale for student workers usually ranges from $7.25 per hour up to $8.00 per hour. To put things into perspective, being paid minimum wage for 20 hours equals $145 gross per week, $580 per month, or $4,640 per academic year. If students live near campus during the summer, they’re allowed to work up to 40 hours per week, bringing up their total earnings to $9,280. The federal poverty line is $14,580 for one individual (“Federal Poverty Level”). This is more than a $5,000 difference—and that’s for the lucky ones who get to work summer shifts. To rise above the poverty line, students would need to earn a minimum of $11.40 hourly while working the maximum hours during the academic year and summer months. However, no university-hired student position pays this amount. Therefore, all student workers are earning below the poverty line.
Not only are students living below the poverty line, but they also have a disadvantage with their buying power. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the minimum wage of 2009 has the same buying power as $10.57 in 2023 (“CPI Inflation Calculator”). This means students earning minimum wage are at a $3 deficit compared to what they were when the law was originally passed. Now, students are hindered by their low wages and they’re only allowed to work 20 hours per week, further limiting how much they can earn. The hourly restrictions aim to help students focus on their studies, though it also prevents them from receiving any employee benefits.
Knowing what student workers earn per month, we can imagine a typical budget. The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Evansville is $753 per month. Students opting to share a two-bedroom apartment would spend $471 after
splitting the rent (“Rental Market Trends”). At best this only leaves $109 a month for food, gas, utilities, and a cell phone. Students living on campus don’t fare any better. The cheapest option for campus housing (excluding freshman-only residence halls) equates to $665 per month (“Housing Rates”). Then there’s tuition, fees, food, books, supplies, and transportation. According to the university’s website, the total budget needed to attend USI as an undergraduate Indiana-resident living on campus is $24,069 per academic year (“Cost of Attendance”). That is nearly a $15,000 difference from what students are capable of earning annually from USI employment.
USI offers a few programs in an attempt to alleviate this gap: Archie’s Food Closet, Munch Money, and financial advice. USI’s financial advice includes Basic Budgeting Skills, How to Stretch That Dollar, and Food & Eating on a Budget (“Financial Stress”). While these may seem like crafty ideas, they ignore the underlying problem: people can’t budget money that they don’t have. How are students expected to “stretch that dollar” when all of it is already spoken for? The 7% sales tax savings from the Munch Money program isn’t going to help students enough to afford their other bills. Archie’s Food Closet is based on donations, and it limits usage to only two bags of food per month per household.
To survive, students must get another job to pay their bills. Students then must raise their hours worked to over 20 per week, leaving less time for schoolwork. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) states this was the reality for 35% of full-time students in 2022 (“College Student Employment”). Housing, food, and safety are primary needs that students can’t ignore. They can’t afford not to work due to the risk of homelessness and food insecurity. The additional hours worked then impede students’ ability to focus on classes. Students’ coursework quality and grades will be lower than those with the privilege of financial security. The students who work at USI do so, especially those who meet the requirements for a federal work-study, because they need money to support themselves. In reality, the current wage restrictions prevent them from doing so.
The other possibility for students is to embrace the off-campus jobs as their primary source of income. The benefit of USI student jobs is their accommodation to students’ varying class schedules. Off-campus positions do not offer this luxury, leading to students missing classes due to conflicting schedules. Students going offcampus will have to either contend with public transportation or pay for their own car and gas. There’s no guarantee that students will earn a higher compensation outside of USI, either. This becomes the riskier option than working at USI if the student wants to focus on earning their degree.
Some other well-meaning suggestions for financial help are familial support and scholarships. The fact of the matter is not everyone has these privileges, whether it be a lack of family support or funds or the inability to meet specific requirements for scholarships. Seeking outside help ignores the root of the problem, which is a lack of funds. These suggestions deflect USI’s accountability. Why must USI have to pay their students more if they can simply encourage them to look elsewhere? This disconnect fosters the mindset that only the financially secure deserve a college education.
A lack of financial security negatively affects students and USI is thoroughly aware. The USI Financial Wellness Page lists harmful symptoms of financial burdens including “increased absences, sleep problems, sickness from avoiding doctor bills, reduction in productivity, [and] reduction in your ability to concentrate” (“Financial Stress”). USI has an acute awareness of how financial stress impacts students and yet they continue to facilitate this stress through their poverty wages. Financial insecurity can also lead to students dropping out of college because they have no other option. Not only does this hinder the student by accruing debt with no degree to show for it, but their departure also hurts USI’s enrollment, retention, and graduation rates.
For comparison, let’s examine the opposite end of the pay scale. The highest earner of USI is the president, Dr. Ronald Rochon. In 2022, his base pay was $309,666, making him the highest-paid public employee in Vanderburgh County for the fifth year in a row. Additionally, his compensation includes stipends equating to another $41,000 for a total of $350,000. This “extra pay … [was] only $4,000 less than the median household income in Vanderburgh County” (Webb). There are several USI employees who made the top 10 highest-paid public employee list for Vanderburgh County in 2022, including Dr. Mohammed Khayum (USI Provost, now retired), Steven Bridges (USI Vice President for Finance and Administration), and Dr. Thomas Noland (USI Chair of Accounting and Finance Department) with the lowest salary between them being $180,847 (Webb). USI values some of its employees by granting them gracious paychecks and raises. However, there’s no ignoring the discrepancy in USI’s integrity when they allow other employees to live in poverty.
If students were paid $12 an hour, that would raise their monthly earnings to $960 gross. This would greatly alleviate the financial burden students face. Students could then truly focus on their studies and stay on campus throughout the day, allowing them to spend more time with various clubs, activities, and events that USI hosts without fear of burnout or stretching their obligations too thin. This student engagement increase would bolster the university’s sense of community and increase student morale. People care about where they spend most of their time, and if we get students to stay longer on campus they will care even more about USI rather than thinking of college as a means to an end.
We can calculate the amount needed to raise all student worker wages to $12 by multiplying the difference between the proposed wage and the minimum wage ($4.75) by the total number of student workers. Unfortunately, at the time I’m writing this, USI’s Human Resources department was unable to provide me with the number of student workers employed. In lieu of this information, the NCES offers that 40% of full-time students and 74% of part-time students worked during their undergraduate degree in 2022 (“College Student Employment”). Applied to USI enrollment, this equates to 3,046 full-time students and 1,237 part-time students for a total of 4,283 students (“About USI”). Following the above equation, the estimated cost would be $3.255 million per academic year. This may seem like a large sum, but USI clearly
has the budget to increase pay as their current projects run a higher cost. As of May 2023, the following projects are under construction at USI: Health Professions Renovation/Addition ($25.5 million), the Wellness Center ($16.5 million), Student Housing Apartments Fire Alarm System Replacement ($4.4 million), HVAC Bldg. Controls and Programs Upgrades ($2.9 million), UC West Electrical Transformers and Supply Panels Replacement ($1.5 million), and Exterior Signage Replacement ($500,000). That’s a combined total of $51.3 million for six projects, demonstrating that a $3.255 million investment into students’ well-being is a manageable amount (“Construction Projects”).
If paying the students enough to earn above the poverty line is too much for the university to handle financially on a continual basis, then there needs to be a forum between students and administration about what students’ tuition is currently funding instead. Students at large can communicate their concerns to the Student Government Association (SGA). Then the SGA could attend the discussion with the administration to voice the concerns of the student populace on where USI’s money is being focused. There needs to be greater transparency and reasoning behind why USI keeps paying their students poverty wages. What programs and projects are more important than students’ livelihood? If USI wants future proud and supportive alumni, then they need to treat us with enough dignity and respect to deserve it—or give us a good reason why they don’t. Otherwise, students will have no incentive to donate to USI as alumni.
As it stands, USI believes their students deserve poverty wages because that’s what they’re paying them. Through their actions, USI shows where their priorities lie and it is not with their students. Students are forced to live in poverty because of USI employment or risk their degree by seeking employment elsewhere. USI has the opportunity to prove they do care by taking action to truly rectify the struggles of financial insecurity they’re placing upon students. If they do not wish to increase student pay, USI needs to clarify why they are unable to take such actions. Until then, I’ll be working my second job with bags under my eyes, but congratulations to Dr. Rochon on his raise.
Works Cited
“2023-2024 Housing Rates.” University of Southern Indiana , www.usi.edu/housing/ housing-options/housing-rates. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“About University of Southern Indiana.” University of Southern Indiana , www.usi.edu/ about. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“College Student Employment.” National Center for Education Statistics , May 2022, nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/ssa/college-student-employment. Accessed 15 Oct. 2023.
“Construction Projects.” University of Southern Indiana , 5 May 2023, www.usi.edu/ trustee/pdf/0523%20Presentation%20Construction%20Projects.pdf.
“CPI Inflation Calculator.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/ cpicalc.pl?cost1=7.25&year1=200901&year2=202309. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“Estimated Cost of Attendance.” University of Southern Indiana , www.usi.edu/ financial-aid/cost-of-attendance/2023-2024-cost-of-attendance. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“Federal poverty level (FPL).” Healthcare.gov, www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federalpoverty-level-fpl/. Accessed 14 October 2023.
“Financial Stress Can Cause Problems.” University of Southern Indiana , www.usi.edu/ financial-success/financial-wellness.
Webb, Jon. “These were the 10 highest-paid public employees in Vanderburgh County in 2022.” Evansville Courier & Press , 12 Apr. 2023, www. courierpress.com/story/news/local/2023/04/12/who-are-the-highestpaid-public-officials-in-vanderburgh-county-evansville-indiana-ronaldrochon/70080765007/
CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES
Maci Crowell is a sophomore pursuing a major in English and a minor in journalism. She is a staff writer at The Shield , the secretary of the USI climbing club, and president of the USI wilderness exploration club. She enjoys writing creative nonfiction and hopes to go into the field of literary journalism. She finds excitement in trying new things and can’t wait to share her work with the world! Starting with the readers of FishHook
Nikita Fischer is a global studies major and anthropology minor with interests in environmental conservation and global education. She is a dancer, farmer, and one day hopes to publish her own book of poetry. She is thrilled to share a part of that journey with the readers of FishHook .
Hunter Greenwell is a senior majoring in illustration. He primarily focuses on art, but he has a deep love for the horror genre in the world of fiction. H.P. Lovecraft is a favorite of his and inspired his horror story featured in this edition of FishHook .
Drake Hubert is a philosophy major and political activist. He believes in writing both fiction and non-fiction philosophical pieces that are entertaining and accessible to everyone, not just other philosophers. He hopes his piece will inspire others to share their unique, passionate perspectives.
Abigail Kercher is a junior pursuing a degree in social work. She enjoys volunteering, traveling, taking photographs, and sketching her travels. She is excited to share a photo from her last international trip with the supporters of FishHook .
Gage Lynn is a senior pursuing his BS in communication studies. He’s expressed his passion for storytelling in various forms—from writing novels and poems to filmmaking—and is thrilled to have been selected for this edition of Fishhook alongside fellow contributors.
Peyton Peters is an English major graduating in Spring 2025 with an emphasis in literature. She is also pursuing a minor in literary editing & publishing. Peyton is the chief copy editor for the independent student publication at USI, The Shield Apart from copy editing published stories, she has written articles and published photo galleries for The Shield’s website. In addition, she is a member of the Sigma Tau Delta’s Mu Phi chapter. After graduation, she plans on working for a publishing house in the editorial department.
Tegan Ruhl is a senior double major in journalism and English with an emphasis in creative writing. She aspires to become a screenwriter after college, creating innovative stories that inspire others to follow their creative passions. She also hopes to hear your story one day, too.
Aubrey Swart is a graduate student pursuing a MA degree in English. She competes for the University on the cross country and track teams. She enjoys writing, reading, and baking in her free time, and she is honored to share her work with the readers of FishHook.
Shelby Trotter is a senior pursuing a degree in studio art. She enjoys writing poetry as an outlet for expressing emotions and telling stories from her personal experiences. She is honored to share some of these experiences and emotions with the readers of FishHook
Paris Wallace is a senior graduating with a degree in social work. She enjoys writing poetry, painting, and reading. She is excited to share her art and writing with the USI community.
Cooper Thompson is a student studying philosophy; he enjoys writing poetry to express his often spontaneous musings.
EDITORS’ NOTES
Emalee Jones* is a junior English major with an emphasis in professional writing & rhetoric. Emalee works for USI Photography & Media as a student photographer, 14 News as a news intern, Aviator Esports as marketing director, FishHook as poetry editor, and Student Writer’s Union as social-media manager.
McKenna Love* is a junior history major, member of Sigma Tau Delta, editor for FishHook , and writing tutor. Though primarily a nonfiction writer, McKenna is excited to step out of her comfort zone and share her fiction piece with the readers of FishHook .
Denise McKenzie* is a junior pursuing a BS in English with a creative writing emphasis and a minor in literary editing & publishing. She’s also a member of Sigma Tau Delta, president of the Student Writers Union, and editor-in-chief of FishHook . After graduation, she plans to pursue an MFA in creative writing and enter the publishing industry. When she’s not scribbling in a notebook or studying, she can be found either playing Stardew Valley or cross-stitching.
MonteLee Norton* is a sophomore pursuing a degree in creative writing. She is also double minoring in professional writing & rhetoric and literary editing & publishing. While on campus, she serves as FishHook ’s fiction editor, vice president/treasurer of the Student Writers Union, treasurer of Sigma Tau Delta’s Mu Phi chapter, and she works as a peer mentor through USI’s Student Support Services (also known as TRIO). Though her main genre is fiction, she is excited to share a poem in this latest edition of FishHook .
Kaitlen Elaine Wood* is a double-degree student with a B.A. in global studies and a B.S. in English with a professional writing & rhetoric emphasis. Kaitlen is also the President of Sigma Tau Delta and a member of both Sigma Iota Rho and Alpha Mu Gamma at USI. She enjoys reading historical fiction, traveling to different countries around the world, and blogging about her experiences abroad.
