Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Paper Topic
I know that we're not discussing paper topics for two more weeks, but I have 3 other papers due before the end of the semester (which my lab TA has not given us the due dates for) and I wanted to get a head start so that I can actually sleep at some point during finals week. I was thinking about writing something about "Lionflower Hedge" and discussing how it relates to childhood and adulthood, something along those lines. Does anyone have any suggestions for that topic? Or know of any other stories that I could relate to that or add in? I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what I want to do with it, so any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
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Well here's some pop-culture assistance for you. Mayhap you might take a look at such movies that involve an adult returning to childhood. I can't think of the name right now, but I know for a fact that Bruce Willis is one. You could look at how adulthood and childhood are each typically defined in the fantasy genre. For instance, when advertising, blurbs often say things like "makes you believe you're a kid again!" and some such nonsense. Magic and imagination are two things that seem to be closely connected to childhood. I'm just throwing some ideas out there; hopefully there's some hidden help in my ramblings.
There's a TV commercial for Disney World in which all the parents become kids for the duration of their visit to the Magic Kingdom, only to revert when they leave.
The well-remembered Twilight Zone episode "Kick the Can" (1962), written by George Clayton Johnson and remade years later in Twilight Zone: The Movie, finds the residents of a retirement home escaping into their childhoods.
The end of Paul Di Filippo's story "Femaville 29" is essentially the same move -- adults escaping the adult world by entering the children's fantasy world and, in effect, becoming children again.
There's lots to write about here, and since "Lionflower Hedge" is such a short story, you'd have the ability to re-read it a dozen times, generating lots and lots of notes, looking up every non-trivial word in the OED (starting with "lionflower"), etc., just to see how much meaning you can unpack. You could analyze it as you would a poem, essentially.
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