Varieties of the Fantastic in Fiction

When I began to see and read the posts about Covid-19, I believed, just as most of us reasoned, that this virus was not something to become panicked about, as an overwhelming amount of sickness and mass death couldn’t be the cause of a virus that was being compared to having a cold.

The beginning of spring break was when I started to consider that this virus could turn into something more serious, but I still wasn’t willing to face the truth. I gave some nonchalant dispute over lunch when I was warned that this virus could become dangerous, even becoming upset when I was told to hold off on some plans I made for the following weekend.

It might seem that I was in denial (which I was), but I think the feeling of confusion and frustration is a sign of inexperienced circumstances, as I am well aware I am not the sole person feeling disappointed from the outcome of this pandemic. Within the span of hours, we continue to receive news about the spread of Covid-19, urging us to limit groups and social distance as the number of deaths continue to rise.

Except people aren’t listening, and neither is our president, going so far to spread fake news, when even officials are not positive themselves about this virus. While we are continuing to take steps in the right direction, I am still seeing news articles of thousands continuing with their spring break plans, ignoring the pleas to social distance and quarantine.

When I first read “Inventory” by Carmen Maria Machado, I didn’t give a significant amount of thought, but last night I decided to give it another read. What I failed to realize before is that the young narrator is selfish, ignorant and naive, focusing on her wants rather than on what is happening around her. This characterization is how I would like to describe those who are disregarding the advice of the officials. This isn’t going to become better if some of us listen, and some of us don’t.

Then, there are people who are listening…a little too much. Hoarding hand sanitizer, toilet paper, wipes, not even taking into consideration others who need these supplies as well.

The day I woke up and the air had changed, I realized it had been a long time coming. She was sitting on the couch. She got up in the night and made some tea. But the cup was tipped and the puddle was cold, and I recognized the symptoms from the television and newspapers, and then the leaflets, and then the radio broadcasts, and then the hushed voices around the bonfire. Her skin was the dark purple of compounded bruises, the whites of her eyes shot through with red, and blood leaking from the misty beds of her fingernails. There was no time to mourn. I checked my own face in the mirror, and my eyes were still clear. I consulted my emergency list and its supplies. I took my bag and tent and I got into the dinghy and I rowed to the island, to this island, where I have been stashing food since I got to the cottage.

While the limitations and constraints of different countries and states might seem like something out of the fantastic, I more see it as a precaution to protect the virus from spreading. I want to focus more on what our media has to offer towards this pandemic, thus being the fantastic element in this “fiction.” With multiple sources manipulating what we understand about this virus, we pursue these fallacies, which has been the ultimate cause of ignorance, thus being the origin of this pandemic.

I saw a post today warning people against reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 classic “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This confused me, as I believe the only people ever to be in danger of reading that story are high school juniors, and I’m pretty sure all of them are busy finding new and better ways to avoid their online schoolwork, like the kids in Wuhan who flooded their homework app with so many 1 star reviews it was deleted, which feels like a particularly funny detail from a Steven Millhauser speculative history. Still, I’ve been thinking a lot about “The Yellow Wallpaper.” It wasn’t a story I enjoyed reading while it was going on, but the ending’s always stuck with me, the image of our protagonist crawling on the floor attempting to free herself from behind the wall. At the time, I thought it was gendered. After conferring with other women and girls, I’ve learned it’s just me.

In trying to think of similar works about the theme of isolation, nothing particularly fantastic came to mind. I know Blindness is flying off the shelves (digitally, of course, to prevent contamination), but what came to my mind were more books such as Catcher in the Rye, Hamlet (yes I know it’s a play), and The Bell Jar (my personal favorite). I thought of Carmen Maria Machado’s “Inventory,” of course, but also the more grounded “The Resident” and “Difficult at Parties.” If we keep in mind that all fiction is fantastic, since none of it is real (except maybe The Bell Jar, but that isn’t the point) then I’ve come up with a fun fantasy list, but unfortunately all of my selections are rooted firmly in reality, but then again, how is reality any less fantastic? Is it not fantastic that I was able to have a video phone call today, like on The Jetsons? I keep imagining time traveling to 1892 and explaining that my sister lives over 350 miles away from me but that I still have the opportunity to talk to her every day. I bet they’d think it’s even more fantastic that I don’t take that opportunity every chance I get.

I think what is or isn’t fantastic can change for every person every day. When I first started at Sweet Briar, I was totally uncomfortable with anything having to do with what the Bible would consider magic, but then just today (I think– time doesn’t have a solid grip on me right now) I was explaining to someone how my tarot cards tried to tell me weeks ago that we would be moving to online classes, and I’m sure other people have similar stories. The idea of what is or isn’t fantasy varies too much from culture to culture and person to person for it to be a solid concept, and I’m excited to see what stops being fantasy for me in the future.

The past few weeks have been unforgettable as a sickness that frightens many has rapidly spread across the United States. It is unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime. So much so, as a matter of fact, that it almost doesn’t seem real. The fantastic aspect of this begins with the public panic part of it. Panic buying has been ever-present in the past few weeks and has clearly been a source of hardship for some, as store shelves of necessities are empty. This in itself seems like something straight out of a book. Several stories come to mind for me when I consider a plague of sorts. Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague year strikes a resemblance, though it isn’t necessarily a fictional account.

Another book I think of when I see the widespread panic, is The Stand, by Stephen King. While COVID-19 is in it’s earlier stages and probably won’t cause such unrealistic destruction as demonstrated in King’s book, it still reminds me of the panic. The fantastic component of this includes a sort of apocalyptic or dystopian thriller feeling, as we don’t know what may be included in the rest of the virus’ days. Death rates will continue to climb, though in a hopefully realistic manner.

The common clause overall is the ground-breaking misery and fear that could consume the people and cause destruction.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, there are many different aspects of religion and cultures being introduced throughout the story.  It is starting with the older generation, in which they hope that the younger generations will continue the religion and culture in their own lives.  The religion and culture was seen in all aspects of what happens in everyone’s everyday life.    

 The new house, white, like a dove, was inaugurated with a dance. (59)

The religion and culture of someone you marry, may be hard to adjust to if it is not something you are culturally used too.  Which in this case, it will take the people involved to adjust to their new lives, which may take them some time and they may not like everything at first.  This process of joining forces will have to allow both parties to have to keep an open mind and take the time to adjust and not just rashly end things because they don’t like things right away. 

The Marriage was on the point of breaking up after two months because Aureliano Segundo, in an attempt to placate Petra Cotes, had a picture taken of her dressed as the Queen of Madagascar. (203)

The younger generation is usually started at a young age so that is how they live their life.  Their parents want them to live a life knowing that they will always have God, who is on their side and they can rely upon to put them in the right place.  Marquez is writing in One Hundred Years of Solitude that most of that generation is baptized and put in a certain school when they are of age so that they are able to learn everything that they must know and so that they can become closer with the religion and become more wise in what they do in life.  

Meme, his sister, dividing her time between Fernanda’s rigidity and Amaranta’s bitterness, at almost the same moment reached the age set for her to be sent to the nuns’ school. (245)

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a very exaggerated story.  There are things that Marquez wrote that wouldn’t actually happen in real life. For example, they wouldn’t take kitchen knives because they symbolize that they are going to do something, it is seen as a common kitchen utensil.  Also the length of the continuous days that it rained.  In the real world that is not something that would happen, it would only rain for a few days and then stop.

“Salt Slow” is a heart wrenching account from the woman narrator who recounts the love she has for her partner, which she depicts as an intense love that fades between them as time goes on.

Fall in love with someone who makes you ache, her mother had always told her.

Which as the reader can infer, the woman did love this man with a passion that made her ache, afraid that he might leave her. It wasn’t until much later in their relationship that her magnitude of intense love changed to become a more stable feeling.

This is a common theme found within most of the short stories I’ve read in Salt Slow; the woman’s self worth is dependent upon a man. Whether this self worth is found within the intimate relationship of a romantic partnership, as read about in “Granite,” the self destruction of being, as read about in “Smack,” or the healing and redemption of personhood, as read about in “Cassandra After.”

In the wake of this changing love felt between these two characters in “Salt Slow,” both are in the midst of surviving a global flood, while the woman is pregnant for the second time. The reader learns about the hardship experienced between both the woman and her partner, as she reflects on the loss of her first child. She shares the conflicting feelings of guilt and of brief excitement, and then utter despair when her partner exhibits disappointment in the news of her pregnancy. In fact, the reader receives little emotion of how the woman feels during this time of her life, but rather changes the narrative to how he feels about the situation, thus changing her attitude to match his, which in the end, ends up in the loss of her child.

In telling him, she had grasped at his arms and apologised and he had said very little, only releasing himself from her grip with an absent wriggle and asking, it seemed a long time later, what it was she wanted to do. That night, she had slept in strange hot fits on his futon and woken in the red-eye of the morning to find herself alone, realising after several bleary moments that he had left the room and closed the door behind him. She had lain where she was a long time that morning, tracing idle lines across her stomach and ribs and listening to him moving about in separate parts of the flat – boiling the kettle twice and leaving it, testing the smoke alarm, talking dully on the phone.

Ultimately, of course, she had only been pregnant a grand total of three months and seven days, that first time around. Even so, the memory of that morning had persisted well beyond the bleeding. A very slender sort of betrayal, the deliberate absence from a room.

The ache felt in this love could be considered the loss of the child, but I argue that it is the emotional trauma caused from the disappointment of her partner, and the occuring response of dissatisfaction in her current pregnancy.

The reader doesn’t get an explanation as to why he is against her pregnancies, which contributes to the ultimate loss of love, but it is the failure to meet expectations within the relationship that drives a divide between the two. Thus, it is the toxic socital gender norms and the expectations of those norms (pleasing the man, providing for family, etc.) that make these two strangers in the end.