Discussion notes from Wednesday

I learn so much from your discussions. Thanks for leading today, David!

Carwin is a biloquist: problem solved (or is it?)

Returning to the fall from grace concept and the parallels with Genesis:
- some of you resisted thinking of Clara's development as a fall; rather, you suggested it was a progression or a maturation
- others suggested that she was learning about sin (murder)
- still others thought Clara was simply reacting, not discovering

Important passages:
- pg. 205, grief carries its own antidote; death as an escape from knowledge
- pg. 205, demons controlled by men
- pg. 187, dissatisfaction with faith
- pg. 198, "inhuman" (suggests inhumane as well)
- pg. 14, father's relationship to voice (along these lines: Wieland the elder is described as "swallowing" the religious book he finds)
- pg. 168, vision of the head: who/what is it? it looks like Carwin, except that it also looks like the opposite of Carwin; is this the power of suggestion---Clara associates Carwin with evil and the head seems evil, so by the transitive property she associates the head with Carwin?

What is the role of coincidence in the novel? Do we need to have an explanation for everything?

Jasmine gave us a great description of the Gothic "natural supernatural" or "explained supernatural" idea with her Scooby Doo analogy. Here's a definition from an online glossary of Gothic literary terms, created by a literature class at Georgia Southern University:

"The Explained Supernatural
Bearing close similarities to what Todorov will later term the "uncanny," the explained supernatural is a genre of the Gothic in which the laws of everyday reality remain intact and permit an explanation or even dismissal of allegedly supernatural phenomena.
Example: In Ann Radcliffe's novels, the author allows both the character and reader to question throughout the entire novel whether the weird phenomena described are happening in a setting of known laws of nature or in a setting where miracles or supernatural intervention must be in place to account for the strange events. At the end of the novel Radcliffe always reveals her rationalist allegiances by identifying normal explanations for what seemed supernatural events.
--Michelle Bryson"