1.6 Reading the Characters
What does it mean to read Moby-Dick, not as a media scholar nor as a literary critic but as a creative artist—someone who wants to adapt the book for the stage, someone who reads it with an interest in its unfulfilled dramatic potential? This is not simply a task that Ricardo Pitts-Wiley took on himself; it was also a task that he gave to a group of incarcerated youth participating at the Rhode Island Training School. Each student was asked to focus on a single character in the book and try to anticipate what kind of person this character would be if the novel had a contemporary rather than historical setting.
The Elseworld's books read the superheroes as archetypes who assert themselves in different historical and generic contexts; they invite the reader to search for the core or the essence of the character and encourage taking pleasure in their many permutations. If we can tinker with his costume, his origins, his cultural context, even his core values, what is it that makes Superman “Superman”?
One fan, EditNinja, was inspired by Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son graphic novel to create his own remix video, combining footage from Adventures of Superman, an 1950’s American television series, with images and sounds drawn from Stalinist-era Soviet propaganda.
What changes and what remains the same about Superman as a character when he is inserted into this new and unfamiliar context?
For Ricardo, getting his students to rewrite the characters of Moby-Dick can be seen as an attempt to build a bridge between their world and those depicted in the novel. To create convincing re-workings of characters requires close analysis, a deep understanding of the essence of who these characters are and what made them into the people depicted in the narrative. It also requires the reader to take a step beyond the text and anticipate other possibilities for the characters. In Ricardo’s case, it was to imagine the Pequod crew as Alba, Que, Daj, Tasha, and Stu, young drug dealers struggling on urban streets, trying to hold together their crew as they go after "Big White Thing."
Here's how Pitts-Wiley describes the results:
Then take the activity one step further. Don't simply write a profile of the character as he or she exists in the story; use the character as a vehicle to construct your own story. What kind of person would the character be if he or she was living today? Can you envision the character operating in any other context (as a frontiersman in the wild west, as a crew member aboard a starship, as a character in an anime series)?
This is what fan fiction writers call an Alternative Universe Story. In the world of comics, it is called an Elsewhere Story in the DC universe or a What If? story in the Marvel universe. DC Comics describes its Elseworlds series: "In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places—some that have existed, or might have existed and others that can't, couldn't, and shouldn't exist. The result is stories that make characters who are as familiar as yesterday seem as fresh as tomorrow." DC's Elseworlds series imagines, for example, what Superman would have been like if his spaceship had crash landed into Cold War-era Russia rather than Kansas, or if he lived inside the world depicted in Fritz Lang's German expressionist film, Metropolis.
These young men...liberated my thinking. Through their eyes I was able to see Ahab and his crew as ultra-human beings who were aware of every moment of their lives. I was able to connect with the world that many of my students came from. Theirs was a world that was full of life, color, and excitement. That world was also violent, remorseless, and devoid of discipline.Rather than trying to understand Melville's novel all at once, focus on a small segment of the text, such as one chapter in the book. This activity does not have to concern Melville’s world but can be applied to another book you may be reading. Encourage collaboration among readers by having each student read the chapter through the eyes of a single character. Focus on the issues a character faces throughout the course of the story. Consider what makes this character tick, what motivates the character to act in certain ways, what makes the character feel and think certain emotions and ideas.
These young men saw a modern Moby-Dick in which Ahab was a loving husband and father-to-be. A man who would see his wife and unborn child murdered by the drug lord (whaling interest) that he worked for. They saw Elijah as a man who saw the events of 9/11 before they happened and had tried to tell what he saw to an unbelieving world. They saw Stubb as a ferocious football player, Pip as a soul singer with a message in his music, and Queequeg, the peddler in human flesh, as a pimp. All of these characters were connected by a lust for a better life...The characters they envisioned, like Ahab's crew, had learned to accept the danger of hunting whales or living in poor urban neighborhoods.
Then take the activity one step further. Don't simply write a profile of the character as he or she exists in the story; use the character as a vehicle to construct your own story. What kind of person would the character be if he or she was living today? Can you envision the character operating in any other context (as a frontiersman in the wild west, as a crew member aboard a starship, as a character in an anime series)?
This is what fan fiction writers call an Alternative Universe Story. In the world of comics, it is called an Elsewhere Story in the DC universe or a What If? story in the Marvel universe. DC Comics describes its Elseworlds series: "In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places—some that have existed, or might have existed and others that can't, couldn't, and shouldn't exist. The result is stories that make characters who are as familiar as yesterday seem as fresh as tomorrow." DC's Elseworlds series imagines, for example, what Superman would have been like if his spaceship had crash landed into Cold War-era Russia rather than Kansas, or if he lived inside the world depicted in Fritz Lang's German expressionist film, Metropolis.
The Elseworld's books read the superheroes as archetypes who assert themselves in different historical and generic contexts; they invite the reader to search for the core or the essence of the character and encourage taking pleasure in their many permutations. If we can tinker with his costume, his origins, his cultural context, even his core values, what is it that makes Superman “Superman”?
One fan, EditNinja, was inspired by Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son graphic novel to create his own remix video, combining footage from Adventures of Superman, an 1950’s American television series, with images and sounds drawn from Stalinist-era Soviet propaganda.
What changes and what remains the same about Superman as a character when he is inserted into this new and unfamiliar context?
For Ricardo, getting his students to rewrite the characters of Moby-Dick can be seen as an attempt to build a bridge between their world and those depicted in the novel. To create convincing re-workings of characters requires close analysis, a deep understanding of the essence of who these characters are and what made them into the people depicted in the narrative. It also requires the reader to take a step beyond the text and anticipate other possibilities for the characters. In Ricardo’s case, it was to imagine the Pequod crew as Alba, Que, Daj, Tasha, and Stu, young drug dealers struggling on urban streets, trying to hold together their crew as they go after "Big White Thing."
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