Creative Response 2
The Lady of the House of Love
By Angela Carter
ir. uiowa. edu/ cgi/ viewcontent. cgi? article= 1928&context= iowareview (delete the extra spaces)
For this assignment, you will write a creative response to any short story we have studied so far. Think of it as a creative re-imagining of the story in which you engage with some aspect of the work, be it formal, moral, social, psychological, or historical, in order to reflect on the meaning of the original even as you make new art spring from it. (1-2 pages, 250-500 words).
Remember, this creative re-telling of a story is a way to further analyze the formalistic or other critical theories we've discussed to gain new insight into how those literary theories create meaning in a story. Also, make sure to come up with a title for your essay, too.
Entrenched
It was in the battle ridden trenches of France where the hero crouched on his belly wishing to return to the uncomfortable night, an eternity ago, he had spent in a mansion on a dirt floor; his stomach full and his thirst quenched. It had been dry there and a roof had covered his head. The shackled ruins' now seemed to him the Chateau of old. He had been the company of a beautiful, albeit mysterious woman, whom he had encountered there. It is not the beauty of her flesh he recalled, for he could hardly remember the lines of her face, but the child-like incarnation of her spirit and a wisdom of the ancients that cascade the depths of her eyes.
How long had it been since he had lost his innocent outlook on life? Was it when the first round of combat that seared his skin, or when he witnessed death for the first time? The last time he had felt joy or excitement was the early morning hours after discovering the woman-child dressed in her mother's wedding dress, whom had succumbed to her frail nature. Her soul had touched the morning light and flew through the window on the wings of her yellow canary. Maybe it was the innocent gesture of caring for her wounded finger and the realization that maybe the intimacy of the moment was more than he had wanted. What was it she had mumbled in her sleep? "Can a bird learn a new song?" What must have she been dreaming? He doubted he would ever know; an excruciating distraction. If not a new song, would any song do?
Unlike the discovery of her peaceful slumber, death had become a cruel angel to him, always waiting, but never taking a step closer. Death would be a great comfort in view of what he witnessed in the light of day and darkness of night. The nightmare of war would forever be engraved upon his memory; the last nightmare he would see when he opened his eyes, and the first wraith he would recall when his eyelids dammed the rest of the world.
If only it were food that would fill the emptiness and drive away the loneliness that pulled at the foundation of his sanity fastened in the mud and mire of a war, not of his own making, he would starve. Be it not food or drink that would sustain him but an element of amore yet to call upon him, a phenomenon he would never know if death stepped intimately his way.
His hand of cards, dealt, pervade evening across an eternity. The past, all but gone; the future, imperceptible. The stones cast for today, survival; tomorrow, only imagined.
How he longed for the pungent fragrance of roses. Even their heavy aroma was preferable against that of the life-sustaining blood that drained from his comrades dying corpses. And their thorns, but a pleasurable pain weighed against the suffering of those waiting and begging for death.