I. Note how ST is favorably compared to THE TWILIGHT ZONE. (Recall the History Of Science Fiction film.)

II. The plot of Who Mourns is summarized on pages 34 and 35

III. APOLLO AND ADONIS IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY

A. Pages 35 to 37 outlines the role of Apollo in Greek mythology. For additional information, consult Project Perseus (Tufts University) --use Student Curriculum Links--Classical page.

B. The following primary sources should be consulted for references to Apollo:

1. The Iliad (Homer)
2. Oedipus Rex (Sophocles)
3. The Metamorphosis (Ovid)
4. Locate and read Shelley's “Adonias: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats”
5. Poetics (Aristotle)
6. Asa believes that Apollo fulfills the criteria for a Greek tragedy as defined by Aristotle. Check the Poetics for:

a. definition of tragedy
b. catharsis
c. pity and fear
d. doctrine of the golden mean
e. reversal and recognition
f. After viewing the episode, checking the primary sources and reading the current chapter, what do you conclude?

• These excerpts from THE POETICS are significant to understand the chapter's reference to Greek tragedy:

THE POETICS are important insofar as they represent the first work of literary criticism (post-Platonic) in the West. Apply the selections below to Shelley and the Current ST episode:?

1) "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and possessing magnitude.. .in the mode of action; not narrated; and effecting pity and fear [what we call) catharsis of such emotions."

2) The imitation of the action is the plot. Tragedy is not an imitation of men but of actions and life. It is in action that happiness and unhappiness are found, and the end which we aim at is a kind of activity... It is for the sake of their actions that [agents] take on the characters they have. Thus, what happens--that is, the plot--is the end for which a tragedy exists, and the end or purpose is the most important thing of all.. it is whole, [having] a beginning, middle and end.

3) Dramatic poetry's function is.. not to report things that have happened, but rather to tell of such things that might happen.. .to express the universal."

4) Aristotle speaks of the need for mature tragedy to have a complex action by which he meant that reversal and recognition result logically from a change in fortune:

reversal: is a change from one state of affairs to its exact opposite." recognition: a change from ignorance to knowledge.. on the part of those who are marked for good fortune or bad."

5) .. Good men ought not to be shown passing from prosperity to misfortune, for this does not inspire either inspire pity or fear, but only revulsion; nor evil men rising from ill fortune to prosperity.. neither should a wicked man be seen falling from prosperity into misfortune.. We are left with the man whose place is between these extremes. Such is the man who on the one hand is not preeminent in virtue and justice, and yet on the other hand does not fall into misfortune through vice or depravity. He falls because of some mistake:'[often mistranslated as a tragic (moral) flaw].

IV. THE DAY GOD DIED

A. The Existentialism of Sartre--what is secularism; can spiritual values exist without a God concept?

B. Asa (page 40) speaks of the historical process--check the Philosophy home page / Sophie’s World for the view of Hegel. Nietzsche is also referenced:

1--Click here for background material on Nietzsche. The page is linked to my GOTHIC HORROR WEB SITE

2--read the following from Nietzsche's TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS:

...What alone can be our doctrine? That no one gives man his qualities - neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself. (The nonsense of the last idea was taught as "intelligible freedom" by Kant - perhaps by Plato already.) No one is responsible for man's being there at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his essence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be. Man is not the effect of some special purpose of a will, and end; nor is he the object of an attempt to attain an "ideal of humanity" or an "ideal of happiness" or an "ideal of morality." It is absurd to wish to devolve one's essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of "end": in reality there is no end. One is necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole; there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, or sentence our being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a causa prima, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as "spirit" - that alone is the great liberation; with this alone is the innocence of becoming restored. The concept of "God" was until now the greatest objection to existence. We deny God, we deny the responsibility in God: only thereby do we redeem the world.

C. Asa mentions the effect of the Holocaust on “the death of God “ idea. How it may be argued could God exist or care about the world if he allowed his “chosen” people, the people with whom he made a covenant, to be slaughtered by the millions during World War II. The chairperson of the committee that oversaw the building of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, Elie Wiesel, said that there were no answers, and that Auschwitz (24,000 people a day were murdered) represented the failure of two thousand years of Christianity.

See his book NIGHT.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes, I sped;
And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followed,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their changed bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to dawn: Be sudden--to eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover!
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:-
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat -
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that, after which I strayed,
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
THEY at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's--share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
BanquetingWith her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dais,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.
'So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one -
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumed of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with--made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine -
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heartI laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak -
THEIR sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed majestic instancy
And past those noised Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet -
"Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly,
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years -
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must -Designer infinite! -
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere
Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity,
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again;
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With grooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
"Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught"
(He said),
"And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited -
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come."

Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

VI. What other episodes / movies are cited in this chapter? Note the author’s commentary on:

A. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

B. Bread and Circuses (TOS)--note the references to “sun” / “son”

VII. THE WAY TO EDEN?

A. What are the philosophical concepts Asa discusses in this section of the article? Note especially p. 49’s reference to RELIGION OR SCIENCE. What does “OR” mean in this context?

B. There are important references to theological and scientific events of the Sixteenth Century --see THE BRITISH LITERATURE HOME PAGE (Renaissance Section) and the PHILOSOPHY HOME PAGE (Supplementary Readings) for primary source material.

VIII. BY ANY OTHER NAME:

A. Note the irony mentioned by Asa. What has ST done with / to religion?

B. Recall the theme of Thompson’s poem.

IX. THIS SIDE OF SCIENTISM:

A. In what sense are the episodes mentioned in this chapter mimetic of the 1960’s?

B. Must man have a belief system --what is ROSWELL about?

Be sure to examine carefully the primary sources cited in the outline.

Homer. The Iliad

Sophocles. Oedipus Rex

Aristotle. Poetics

Wiesel, E. Night

The British Literature and Philosophy Home Pages (SJC)