Varieties of the Fantastic in Fiction

The theme of feminism in “Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax” is prevalent from the start of the story. This is the inverse idea of girls fawning over boy bands in the same way they fangirl over this all-girl band. The main part of the story, however, is focused more on the violence the fans […]

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In “Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax,” Julia Armfield wants to tell one what it’s like to be working as a member of the crew touring with a female band. Many people don’t think about what it is like to work with a band.  She wants to show that behind the scenes people are always […]

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“The Great Awake” by Julia Armfield uses satire to talk about the problem of insomnia, which in this story, has become widespread in cities. The Sleeps, which just separate themselves from their human bodies, are always “tall and slender, but beyond that there were few common traits.” (pg.19) Life has changed for those that have […]

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In “Mothers” by Carmen Maria Machado, the fantastic element comes from the obvious biological inability for two women to have a child together. The result of this element results in a story about the psychological weight of giving up an imagined future with someone. The narrator is so attached to this idea of a life with […]

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“One arm” written by Yasunari Kawabata is about a man who borrows an arm from a young woman and slowly grows more attached to it. The man in the story begins to talk to the arm, and it responds back. Eventually not being able to resist the urge to take his right arm off and […]

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Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” uses the vagueness of a female character to emanate the themes of male dominance and submission men crave and expect in women.  In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. […]

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In Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” she has the typical girl mind and doesn’t think that this guy likes her back.  She has this thought until this boy she likes has started talking to her. In the boy’s actions he was showing that he did like her and has been nervous to talk to […]

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In reading “Dangerous Laughter,” I felt that I had sort of been cheated. Instead of two distinct stories, I had been given the same story with different circumstance between “Dangerous Laughter” and “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman.” The basic plot of the two stories is this: Our narrator is an unnamed adult reflecting on their […]

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Early on in “The room in the attic” Millhauser gives us the parameters by which to measure David Dave’s slow descent into madness. Before he meets Isabelle, Wolf tells him about his view on life. Wolf tells us that what separates humans and animals is that animals only dream when they’re sleeping. I think this was […]

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Steven Millhauser incorporates horror into the fantastic in his stories. The point of view in this story is in the first person, which makes the readers feel like they are in this situation as well with the narrator and the town. “Dangerous Laughter,” the adolescents in the town becomes obsessed with laughter. The story begins […]

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The story “Dangerous Laughter” starts by following the point of view of one teenager in a town describing the activities that the rest of the youth in the town partake in. In a sense, the story was about the teenagers as a whole and the extent at which they would go to amuse themselves or […]

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                          “Dangerous Laughter” reminded me of how something good can become too much when madness is thrown into the mix. The story begins when a group of teens starts a laughing activity for fun. They soon, however, took a darker turn. While the creepy vibe hangs over the story from the beginning, it […]

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Throughout “Dangerous Laughter,” there was an overwhelming and notable dread looming around the laugh parties. Something about them and the treatment of laughter as an intoxicant, a way to lose oneself for a moment, is eerie. The narrator and those around them are drawn to the laughter. Restlessness overcomes the narrator when they aren’t laughing. […]

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The rollercoaster of a story “Dangerous Laughter” is, in essence, a story about obsession in the way that the narrator is obsessed with Elaine Coleman, as David is with Isabel, and the way the cat is with chasing the mouse, and the mouse is with running from the cat. It is a horror story about […]

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In Samantha Hunt’s “Beast,” we are introduced to a narrator with some serious problems: her brother died, she doesn’t talk to her sister, and she’s recently slept with a man other than her husband. She also turns into a deer at night, but that really isn’t as important to the story as you’d think. The […]

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In “Mantis,” the traditional sense of transformation is taken to the utmost level of odd, yet, it seems to fit in the criteria of “fantastic in fiction.” Usually, a transformation story begins with an “ugly-duckling” that turns into a swan or an ordinary caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly. Whereas her differences, or imperfections, are expressed, […]

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After discussing “The Metamorphosis” in Tuesday’s class, I have begun to think more about metamorphosis and how it relates to Thursday’s stories. Usually, metamorphosis is a positive thing; it is a transformation into something greater, something more evolved. When considering Gregor Samsa’s transformation, however, it doesn’t seem to be anything but negative for all involved, […]

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Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. — Vladimir Nabokov, “Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis” in Lectures on Literature

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