Challenging Conventions 2018-2019

Esch is reading Edith Hamilton’s  Mythology  for her summer reading, and she continually makes references to the story of Medea. After reading Hamilton’s telling of “The Golden Fleece” and poring through Ward’s novel, choose a moment in the novel when Ward draws a connection between Esch and Medea either implicitly or explicitly. Include the passage from the novel and explain why you think this mythological allusion is important at that point in the text. What does the allusion reveal about character, setting, central themes?          "I am slapping him, over and over, my hands a flurry, a black blur... I slap so hard my hands hurt 'I love you!' 'Esch!' The skin on his throat is red, his scar white. 'I loved you!' I hit his Adam's apple with the V where my thumb and pointer finger cross. He chokes. 'I loved you!' This is Medea wielding the knife. This is Medea cutting. I rake my fingernails across his face, leave pink scratches that turn red...

"This is Medea wielding the knife. This is Medea cutting. I rake my fingernails across his face, leave pink scratches that turn red, fill with blood." pg. 204 This mythological allusion is important because it demonstrates Esch overcoming her bottled up feelings towards Manny. It is her anger, love, and revenge to him which is similar to Medea's emotions for Jason from "The Golden Fleece" Esch was reading. By expressing her feelings in the way she did, it clearly showed how enraged Esch was to the point where all she was doing was thinking about Medea and relating to her while she was hitting Manny. An important lesson to learn is building a bridge and getting over it. In both Medea's and Esch's situations, they achieved some sort of revenge and were then able to get over their past love and completely move on. Medea rode off in a chariot pulled by dragons, forgetting about Jason, likewise, Esch had the support of her brothers and the inspiring book to...

"Is this what Medea saw, when she decided to follow Jason, to flee her father with her brother? Did she see through her father's rich robes to the small shouldered man beneath?" (61) This passage is important because it reveals how Esch feels about her father. In The Quest for the Golden Fleece , Medea sees the unnecessary and excessive cruelty her father shows to Jason and his Argonauts and stops pledging herself to him (she is also a play-thing of the Gods which influences her decision). Esch compares this to the way that her father treats Skeet, her other brothers and her. Generally, when we are children, we see our parents as perfect beings who make no mistakes and know everything. However, as time goes on, we start to see the faults and breaks in our parents personalities, they no longer seem so perfect. I believe this change is starting to manifest due to her describing Medea's father and her father as small shouldered men beneath rich robes. This allusion i...

In Salvage the Bones, Esch mentioned more than once about her strong and passionate affection towards Manny, even though knowing and seeing that Manny and Shaliyah are together. "I loved him before that girl. I imagine that this is the way Medea felt about Jason when she fell in love, when she knew him; that she looked at him and felt a fire eating up through her rib cage, turning her blood to boil, evaporating hotly out of every inch of her skin. I feel it so strongly that I cannot imagine how Manny does not feel it, too. " (pg.56, 57)  This is a hint for the development later of their relationship after Manny knows that she's pregnant. Similarly in the stories of the Golden Fleece, although it appears to Medea that Jason is in deep love with her, her heart was eventually broken by Jason's betrayal on her just like what Manny did to Esch as he refused to acknowledge the child. Jason and Medea This is one of the most famous artworks about the story...

"When Jason betrayed Medea to exile so he could marry another woman, she killed his bride, the bride's father, and last her own children, and then flew away into the wind on dragons. She shrieked; Jason heard." (pg. 205)      This mythological allusion appears right after Esch has her fight with Manny, where she realizes that there's no sense in waiting for him to fall for her and cuts off their relationship. It's comparing Jason to Manny and Esch to Medea because in Esch's mind Manny has betrayed her for Shaliyah. The fact that she makes this comparison tells us a lot about Esch and how she is progressing through the book. She looks up to strong women, especially Medea, and by the end of the book she's moved on from being a quiet younger sister to a more independent person overall. When Medea shrieks it is the same as Esch yelling at Manny, and when Medea flies away on dragons it is the same as Esch moving on from her almost abusive situation with Mann...

                  "In Mythology , I am still reading about Medea and the quest for the Golden Fleece. Here is someone that I recognize. When Medea falls in love with Jason, it grabs me by the throat. I can see her. Medea sneaks Jason things to help him: ointments to make him invincible, secrets in rocks. She has magic, could bend the natural to the unnatural. But even with all her power, Jason bends her like a young pine in a hard wind; he makes her double in two. I know her." (Es ch, 38)                   Esch shares this quote with us for many reasons.  Esch thinks she is in love with Manny but in my eyes, I believe it is more of a childish love.  She speaks as if she is Medea in this quote while visualizing it also.  Medea sneaks things to Jason but stereotypically it is usually Jason who should sneak things to Medea.  It seems as if Esch wants to be Medea only to win Mann...

           Crushes come in many different sizes. They range from a small peck on the cheek to a grand snug hug. In the book Salvage the Bones written by Jesmyn Ward, Esch is a young girl in love. Throughout the book, Esch describes her love life using the mythological story of The Golden Fleece. Esch compares herself to Medea and she compares her lover, Manny, to Jason. On page 7 Ward  writes: "I wondered if Medea felt this way before she walked out to meet Jason for the first time, like a hard wind come through her and set her to shaking. The insects singing as they ring the red dirt yard, the bouncing ball...". This passage was important to put at the beginning of the novel because it shows how much Esch has to lose since she is very emotionally invested in Manny. In The Golden Fleece , the first time Medea sees Jason, Cupid strikes her heart with an arrow of love. Esch is comparing how she feels when she sees Manny to being shot in the heart by Cupi...

"In Mythology, I am still reading about Medea and the quest for the Golden Fleece. Here is someone I recognize. When Medea falls in love with Jason, it grabs me by the throat. I can see her. Medea sneaks Jason things to help him: ointments to make in invincible, secrets in rocks. She has magic, could bend the natural to the unnatural. But even with all her power, Jason bends her like a young pine in a hard wind; he makes her double in two. I know her," (pg 38). This is the first time (as far as I know) that Esch explicitly refers to Medea and also compares herself to Medea. In this quote, Esch shows why she sees herself in Medea. They both are powerful in their own ways, but even though they are powerful, their hearts are still broken by their men. At this point in the text, we haven't seen Manny break Esch's heart yet and so this allusion is also a form of foreshadowing in the fact that Manny will not be by Esch's side through her pregnancy. This allusi...

“I wondered if Medea felt this way before she walked out to meet Jason for the first time, like a hard wind come through her and set her to shaking.” This is the very first time Mythology is mentioned in the book, where it states clearly Esch’s blinding and passionate love for Manny. She thought of her emotion just as strong and epic as one who was shot by Cupid’s arrow in the very heart. At this part of the book where the settings were still laying out, this seems to be a very strong statement as it reveals a main component of the story: Esch love for Manny. As this important feature continues affecting the story afterward greatly, it is first presented to the us very dramatically  and kept being impactful throughout the whole story.  This artwork is painted by Jean-Francois Detroy and uploaded in December 6th, 2014. It showed the image of Jason pledging his eternal affection to Medea after they met and fell in love with each other. This is one of the ima...

- "In Mythology, I am still reading about Medea and the quest for the Golden Fleece. Here is someone that I recognize. When Medea falls in love with Jason, it grabs me by my throat. I can see her. Medea sneaks Jason things to help him: ointments to make him invincible, secrets in rocks. She has magic, could bend the natural to the unnatural. But even with all her power, Jason bends her like a young pine in a hard wind; he makes her double in two. I know her." (Pg. 38)  - This moment takes place soon after Esch lay in the bathroom, throwing up incessantly, as she was experiencing one of the many symptoms of pregnancy. At this point, she has no one to turn to, since she feels that she can not confide in any of the people around her. However, when reading this quote it is apparent that she recognizes herself in Medea. The fact that Jason can convince her to carry out anything he requests, makes Esch contemplate her relationship with Manny. This passage not only he...

Ward compares Esch to Medea in chapter ten not only to emphasize her blinding love to a clearly unfaithful man and to show the pain and anger that the "betrayal" causes, but also to emphasize her transformation from a rather meek girl into a proud, strong, and defiant woman.  In the chapter, Esch confronts Manny about her pregnancy.  Despite Esch's obvious and deep love for Manny, he wants nothing to do with her or his own child and leaves her heartbroken and in pain.  She screams, "'I loved you!' This is Medea wielding the knife.  This is Medea cutting.  I rake my fingernails across his face, leave pink scratches that turn red, fill with blood."  Esch, in her rage and anguish, exacts a sort of revenge on Manny, and makes him pay for his betrayal.  Medea does the same thing when she finds out that Jason became engaged to another woman.  She exacted revenge by killing his bride-to-be and, later, her own sons.  Both women were immensely infatua...

Passage: "I loved him before that girl. I imagine that this is the way Medea felt about Jason when she fell in love, when she knew him; that she looked at him and felt a fire eating up through her rib cage, turning her blood to boil, evaporating hotly out of every inch of her skin. I feel it so strongly that I cannot imagine how Manny does not feel it, too." (pg. 56-57) At this point in time we know that Esch has strong feelings towards Manny that aren't reciprocated, and we know that Esch is aware of this. She holds on to this sense of hope that he'll realize that he should love her and care for her, blissfully unaware that this will never happen and that he won't change. Throughout the story Esch continues to cling tightly to the idea of Manny shaping up and becoming who she wants him to be. This was important for the author to include because it shows us more about Esch and how she always seems to want to see the good in people, even if there isn't any a...

 I couldn't help posting this as well. It's a little taste of the soundtrack Eddie Vedder did for the film version of Into the Wild . The soundtrack is pretty folksy/rootsy and features the mandolin (which I love!). If you're an Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam fan and don't know if it, take a listen. :) This is a clip from the film if you couldn't tell.

The fascinating documentary PBS released a few years ago about the McCandless family dysfunction...

DO NOT comment on this post. Instead, create your own NEW POST! Esch is reading Edith Hamilton’s  Mythology  for her summer reading, and she continually makes references to the story of Medea. After reading Hamilton’s telling of “The Golden Fleece” and poring through Ward’s novel, choose a moment in the novel when Ward draws a connection between Esch and Medea either implicitly or explicitly. Include the passage from the novel and explain why you think this mythological allusion is important at that point in the text. What does the allusion reveal about character, setting, central themes?  Find an artistic depiction of Jason and/or Medea and include it in your post, providing a description of what the piece is and who created it. Give as much information as you can.  Post another image in the post that you think best symbolizes Esch by the end of the novel and provide a description of why.