Sponging The Stone

I DON'T REMEMBER reading the book until my adult years, yet Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol seems always to have been with me. The Carol entered my life when I lay on the living room floor with a belly full of Christmas turkey avoiding adult conversation at my grandmother's dinner. My first recollection of the story is in the form of the 1951 American film version Scrooge. Alastair Sim, the most robust interpreter of Scrooge, fascinated me by his depiction of a man who starts off as "solitary as an oyster" and winds up a "second father" to

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Monsters at the Margin

VIRTUE IS FOUND at the margins of society more often than at its centre. If this is so, Mary Shelley's Monster is a real find! Her creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. Contrary to James Whale's 1931 film of the Creature as a lumbering dolt, Mary Shelley's Monster was modeled on Rousseau's notion of humanity as the "noble savage." The nobility of the Creature is evident as he unveils his chronicle to Victor Frankenstein upon the icy crags of Mount Blanc. Meet Frankenstein's Creature

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The Light Side of Darkness

Many people label Edgar Allan Poe a horror writer, plain and simple. For them, "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a tale about a victim of the Spanish Inquisition, its terror and atrocities. The readers of the 1843 edition of The Gift periodical, published in Philadelphia, were intrigued by the frightening drama and tension found in the literal telling of this tale. A more rewarding approach, one that is truer to its author's intention, is to perceive The Pit as a poem of consciousness. After pondering The Pit's meaning, I believe that the story's strength and uniqueness lies in the

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