(sub)Text: Losing Your Head in Alice Munro’s “Carried Away”

Jack, a Canadian soldier recuperating in a European hospital during World War I, begins a correspondence with Louisa, the librarian in his hometown whom he has only seen and loved from afar. Their letters turn romantic. But when the war ends and he returns home, Jack never shows his face to Louisa and marries another woman, leaving Louisa to wonder if she’s been the victim of some diabolical trick. Then Jack becomes the victim of an accident at the local factory. Wes & Erin discuss Alice Munro’s short story “Carried Away” and asking how the unforgiving machinery of a factory might mimic the so-called machinery of courtship, and how being carried away, whether by love or by ideas, might prove dangerous.

The post (sub)Text: Losing Your Head in Alice Munro’s “Carried Away” first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

(sub)Text: Time and Taboo in “Back to the Future” (1985)

In the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall, Doc Brown plans to use his Delorean time machine to head 25 years into the future and see, as he puts it, “the progress of mankind.” But like the license plate on the Delorean, Doc is out of time. Through his absent-mindedness—and angering some terrorists—Doc has failed to provide a future into which he or his friend Marty McFly can progress. Meanwhile, Marty’s own options and possibilities have been foreclosed by the mistakes of his parents, whose inaction and passivity have failed to secure happy lives for themselves or their children. Out of time and without a viable future, Marty’s only way forward is back. Wes & Erin discuss the 1985 film, “Back to the Future,” and how securing the provisions for one’s own future depends on two modes of confrontation: one in the present and one with the past.

The post (sub)Text: Time and Taboo in “Back to the Future” (1985) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

(sub)Text: The Violence of Redemption in John Donne’s “Batter My Heart” (Holy Sonnet 14)

In “Holy Sonnet 14,” John Donne would like his “three person’d God” to break instead of knock, blow instead of breathe, and burn instead of shine. This vision of redemption is about remaking rather than reform. And it seems to be motivated by a sense that reason and the typical rhetoric of faith are not enough to bridge the mortal and the divine—what’s needed is God’s violent intervention. Wes & Erin discuss Donne’s surprising and paradoxical use of war and rape as metaphors for salvation.

The post (sub)Text: The Violence of Redemption in John Donne’s “Batter My Heart” (Holy Sonnet 14) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

(sub)Text: Mortal Pretensions in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (Holy Sonnet 10)

A recusant Catholic turned Protestant, a rake turned priest, a scholar, lawyer, politician, soldier, secretary, sermonizer, and of course, a poet— John Donne’s biography contains so many scuttled identities and discrete lives, perhaps its no wonder that his great subjects were mortality and death. His Holy Sonnets, likely composed between 1609 and 1610, and published posthumously in 1633, are a collection of 19 poems written after the sea change in Donne’s subject matter from the secular to the sacred. They reflect his anxiety over his conversion to Anglicanism and his eventual decision to enter the priesthood, and meditate on salvation, death, and the wages of sin. Erin & Wes discuss Sonnet 10 in this series, “Death Be Not Proud,” an address of Death personified, whose power gradually diminishes beneath the force of Donne’s dazzling poetic rhetoric.

The post (sub)Text: Mortal Pretensions in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (Holy Sonnet 10) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

(sub)Text: Trauma and Repetition in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974)

Roman Polanksi’s 1974 film “Chinatown” seems to have little to do with its titular neighborhood, which is the setting for only one horrible and final scene. Chinatown functions instead to represent the traumatic moment that drives this story just because it is hidden from view—a place indecipherable even to the hard-boiled private investigator who has seen it all … the place he doesn’t go … the place that bothers him to talk about … the place where inaction and evasion are the only ways to avoid causing harm. Wes & Erin discuss what Chinatown has to do with “Chinatown,” and how the theme connects the seemingly disparate themes of police work, political corruption, water rights, and incest.

The post (sub)Text: Trauma and Repetition in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.