The Night the Snow Fell

Awarded to Isabella Cobb for work submitted in Spring 2022 to Dr. Elyce Helford in ENGL 2020: Themes in Literature and Culture

Author’s note: Because this multi-modal project is not self-explanatory, I want to inform the awards committee of the nature of the assignment. Students were asked to read Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night, then to read a group of Holocaust poems. Based on these readings and a focus on different genres of literature, we were asked to select a specific scene or focus from Wiesel’s narrative to turn into a poem. After the poem, we were asked to compose an Author’s Statement that explained what choices we made to create our poem, emphasizing method and purpose.

The ground was covered in bright, thick snow that night

As we ran, the snow only fell faster and harder

The cold wind felt unbearable against my skin and my foot ached

Men fell to their deaths overcome by exhaustion and the cold

The crowd trampled them without second thought

I envied them

I dreamed of escaping the cold, the pain, the suffering

I no longer wanted to exist

Father; I forgot my father was running beside me

He was hardly holding on

Without me, he would give into death

I fought the urge to only think of myself

I did not stop running

Soon, my body moved on its own without any thought

As the sun started to peak out from the horizon, we began to slow

We stopped running after what felt like days

All the prisoners fell onto the snow in agony

The exhaustion and hunger was overwhelming

The suffering and pain was far from over

The snow felt warm and soft like a blanket against my skin

The need for sleep was overpowering

The snow was beautiful and comfortable, yet deadly

Those that fell asleep never awoke

Fighting sleep meant fighting death

A cemetery grew around me

No one was buried; they were forgotten

I, too, would succumb to the snow’s embrace

We started running again.

Author’s Statement

I chose to format my poem this way because I felt that this was a story with no breaks. The prisoners were not allowed to stop running for hours. When they stopped, they died in the snow. To take a break meant to die. Therefore, I felt like the poem should not have pauses, so I decided not to organize it in stanzas. I chose only to include punctuation in the last line of the poem. I made this decision for the same reason that I decided not to organize the lines in stanzas. Ending the lines with commas, periods, question marks, or exclamation points would signal a pause in the poem. This story had no pauses, so I felt that I should not use punctuation. I did decide to use punctuation in the last line, “We started running again.” This line signified that the journey was starting again. I felt that a period signaled the poem’s end, despite the line expressing that their story was not over yet.

As for the length, I wrote until I felt like I expressed my purpose and told the story to my best ability. I wanted the reader to feel Eliezer’s pain through the poem. Therefore, I tried to be very specific when describing what he felt physically and emotionally and what he saw as he looked around. This poem is meant to show the reader what happens to a person after months of starvation, exhaustion, and dehumanization. It was vital for me to describe the image of the cemetery forming around Eliezer after they stopped running. Using the word “cemetery” emphasized how many men died that night and how their bodies laid there dead. No one moved the bodies or buried them. The mood of the poem was tragic and depressing. Similarly, the mood throughout Night slowly progresses from mild gloominess to total tragedy and despair. The night of the snow falling in the book is the point I feel was the darkest and most tragic. The imagery I used in the poem helped establish this mood.

Political Extremism and Reconciliation in Sophocles’ Antigone

Awarded to Carlos Aldana for work submitted in Fall 2022 to Dr. Alfred Lutz in ENGL 2030: The Experience of Literature

A single act drives Sophocles’ Antigone: Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, buries her fallen brother, Polynices, despite a decree forbidding his burial promulgated by Creon, king of Thebes. The former justifies her act with an appeal to the sanctity of the family and the laws of the gods, and the latter bases his decree on an appeal to the authority of the state. This single act pits two irreconcilable yet justifiable moral worlds against one another, and the conflict is rendered more ferocious by the extremism with which Antigone and Creon advance their positions. While it is understandable that readers want to champion either Antigone or Creon as ”just”, philosopher Simon Critchley argues that, in ancient Greek theatre, the tragic hero “is a riddle, not the solution to a riddle” (Class handout). If Antigone and Creon are riddles, then they present the issue of irreconcilable political conflict and demand its settlement. Through Antigone’s and Creon’s extremist positions, the tragedies that result from their clash, and Ismene’s, Haemon’s, and Tiresias’ protests, Antigone advocates a politics that recognizes the mutual dependency between the state and the individual and, therefore, imposes limits on both in order to decrease the likelihood of tragedy.

Antigone is an extremist: she elevates obligations owed to the family and the gods above those owed to the state and even the safety of the individual. Antigone makes her familial convictions clear in her attempt to persuade her sister, Ismene, to join her in burying Polynices. Creon, Antigone argues, has “no right” (59, emphasis mine) to keep her and Ismene from burying Polynices for he “is my brother and-deny it as you will-/ your brother too” (55-6). As Antigone implies Ismene’s refusal is equivalent to a denial of their blood relation, she makes clear that burying Polynices is not only a right but an obligation. That this obligation supersedes state law and even one’s safety is made clear by Antigone’s determination to fulfill it despite Creon’s decree and the associated punishment, stoning. Further underpinning Antigone’s rebellion is her appeal to “the great unwritten, unshakable traditions” of the gods (505). Holding the gods in reverence, Antigone explains to Creon that his decree does not have “such force / that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods” (503-4), nor can she let herself “face the retribution of the gods” (511). By subjugating the state’s authority to that of the gods, Antigone absolves her of any crime and responsibility to the state; in her view, she is bound by forces beyond the state and thus has no choice but to violate its laws. Antigone’s position, justified by obligations owed to the family and the gods, affords her the moral righteousness necessary to reject the state’s authority, absolve herself of any political responsibility or crime, and reduces the state and its laws to their utility in serving her convictions.

Antigone’s tragic end is a consequence of her extreme moral convictions and the righteousness and arrogance they afford her. Ismene is first to recognize the recklessness with which Antigone advances her position as she asks Antigone, “Why rush to extremes?” (80). Antigone is a daughter of Thebes’ previous king, Oedipus, Creon’s niece, and the soon-to-be wife of Creon’s son, Haemon. Antigone is closely related to three people—Creon himself, his wife, Eurydice, and Haemon—she could talk to or ask to intercede for her without violating the public laws and social norms of Theban society. Yet, utterly convinced that Creon “has no right” to determine familial and religious matters (59), Antigone does not consider these options but, not believing that the obligations owed to the family and the gods may be postponed for even a short time, instead avails herself of the most extreme response and rushes to bury Polynices’ body. It is by the same token that Antigone ignores Ismene’s political and social appeal—that they “are not born to contend with men” and must submit in being “ruled by much stronger hands” (75, 76). Indeed, Antigone sets herself against the ruling social and political currents of her society and suffers for it. Antigone’s wanton appeals to the sanctity of family and the will of the gods fail to convince Creon and the Chorus, and she is left abandoned by all, including, to her despair, even the gods. She implores the Chorus, “What law of the mighty gods have I transgressed?” (1013), as if she were undeserving of her fate. The gods abandon Antigone not for her argument against Creon, for they later rain bits of Polynices’ corpse across Thebes in disapproval of Creon, but for her decision to realize her argument as if she were a god—without consideration for existing social and political ethics. The Chorus is correct to charge her with having turned herself into a “law to [her]self” (912), something that goes beyond the right of any individual. This is also the reason Tiresias is critical of Creon: she precludes herself of all responsibilities or sensible courses of action through the morality she chooses to appeal to and the extremism with which she advances it.

Creon is also an extremist: he venerates human wisdom, which in the course of the play he comes to identify with his own position, and the safety and order it affords to society through the state such that he subjugates all other values and obligations under it. “Anarchy”, Creon argues, is the “great[est] crime in all the earth!” (751-2); it is the greatest threat to the city’s well-being. To Creon, the state is purposed to establish and enforce that “discipline” necessary to avert anarchy (756); the state is akin to a ship that must be guided through the “soundest policies” and thereby set properly “on course” (200, 212). Wisdom, backed by state power, imposes the order necessary to avert anarchy. Further illuminating Creon’s position is the choral ode following his first speech to his subjects: it is humanity’s “speech and thought” and “mood and mind for law” that enables its conquest of the natural world and even “the oldest of the gods” through technological and political innovation (395, 396, 382). It is only by wisdom that society tames the chaos and anarchy apparently inherent in the world and its people. All human achievements, of which one is the establishment of political society, are the product of human wisdom and its order. It is no leap for Creon, then, to state “that man/ the city places in authority, his order/ must be obeyed, large and small,/ right and wrong” (748-51) and that whoever “places a friend/ above the good of his country, he is nothing” (203-4). The citizen who denies the state its authority and rejects the wisdom that underpins its purpose and policies is an existential danger to the order it strives to maintain; all citizens are reduced to either an obedient subject or an anarchical threat. Even the family ties that Antigone venerates dissolve before Creon and his devotion to the state: “Sister’s child or closer in blood/ than all my family clustered at my altar” (543-4), he declares, whoever violates the state’s laws deserves “the most barbaric death” (546). Thus, Creon utterly opposes Antigone: the state is decisively placed above the family as the sole barricade against anarchy, and human rationality is elevated above the divine and natural world as their conqueror.

Creon’s position, like Antigone’s, is fueled by an arrogance and apparent righteousness that invites him into tragedy, and it endangers Thebes and the order it venerates. Three times Creon is appealed to by representatives of the people and the divine—Antigone, Haemon, and Tiresias—and he rejects each in rigid adherence to his position. Creon dismisses Antigone’s appeal to divine law by reducing her to a “slave” before him, the “lord and master” of the state (534,535). Even beneath Creon’s many gendered attacks on Antigone lies the belief that she be ignored for her violation of the law alone. Creon’s rejection of Haemon’s argument that the king should pay attention to change in public opinion, that the city “mourns for this young girl” and cries that she “deserves a glowing crown of gold!” (776, 782), is similar; such sentiment, he tells his son, is merely that of a rebel “fighting on her side, the woman’s side” (828), the side of anarchy. Tiresias’ appeal to the gods, despite coming from the mouth of a renowned prophet, is rejected for being corrupted by the “gold of India, silver-gold of Sardis” and thus lacking that “discipline” essential to ordered society (1150). Creon’s stubbornness soon brings him tragedy as Haemon and Eurydice commit suicide, but it also endangers Thebes. The gods, angered by Creon’s refusal to give the dead proper rites, go “deaf to [Thebes’] prayers”, “spurn/ the offerings”, and spread Polynices’ viscera across Thebes’ altars (1127, 1128, 1122-6). Indeed, the Sentry is correct in assessing that it is “terrible when the one who does the judging / judges things all wrong” (366-7), for where Antigone merely jeopardizes herself and, perhaps, Ismene, Creon, as king of Thebes, single-handedly steers Thebes against not only its people but the gods.

Indeed, Antigone and Creon, despite representing distinct roles in the relationship between the individual and the state, are victims of their extreme positions and the tragedies that result from them. However, implicit in the positions advocated by those who stand against Antigone and Creon—Ismene, Haemon, Tiresias, and even the Chorus—is a politics that attempts to avoid tragedy by recognizing both the interdependence of the individual and the state and the importance of curtailing individualism. Ismene shares Antigone’s grief for Polynices’ exposure and reverence for the gods yet criticizes Antigone for being “wrong from the start” and labels her rebellion a “hopeless quest” (107). In contrast to Antigone, Ismene does not assume the will of the gods and instead contends, “I have no choice—I must obey / the ones who stand in power” (79-80), and she is therefore doing Polynices and the gods “no dishonor” (93). Ismene asserts that Antigone, in light of the state’s claim to authority, is not culpable for leaving Polynices’ body exposed and forgoing the ancient traditions of the gods. Far from condoning Creon’s decree, Ismene is asserting a practical attitude wherein one’s limits as an individual and the state’s rights are recognized. Haemon advises Creon similarly. As Creon’s son and therefore the future king, Haemon is sure to share Creon’s respect for the state’s authority. Despite this, cognizant of the change of public opinion and the gods’ traditions, Haemon warns Creon, “haul your sheets too taut, never give an inch,/ you’ll capsize, and go the rest of the voyage I keel up and the rowing-benches under” (800-3). Haemon simultaneously warns Creon that he will break under the force of public opinion and the gods and, as he draws from Creon’s likening of the state to a ship, criticizes Creon for jeopardizing Thebes through his extremism. Throughout this, Haemon is appealing to that political order Creon desires and asserting that Creon, as a king in service to that order, is uniquely obligated to yield. Tiresias argues similarly, reminding Creon that he “is only human” (1132) and stating, “”Stubbornness brands you for stupidity-pride is a crime” (1136-7). Though, Tiresias’ argument applies to Antigone and Creon alike: fueled by their convictions and pride therein, the two appear to forget their status as individuals in a broader institution and neglect their obligations to it. Implicit in these professed attitudes is that moderating one’s political action in light of the limitations of the individual, whether they be imposed by the state or one’s dependencies on the people and the gods, will avoid tragedy.

Sophocles’ Antigone reveals the tragedies that arise from an unmediated clash between two irreconcilable moral worlds. Through Antigone and Creon, the play illustrates the necessity for a politics that permits the co-existence of the two in the same society—that is, a politics able to resolve differences without violence. In immediately jumping to extremes and then reinforcing each other in their extremism, Antigone and Creon create a conflict resolvable only through violence. It is the product of their common indifference to the intricacies and dependencies of political society. Ismene and Haemon, instead of supporting a politics that requires violence when challenged, offer an attitude that recognizes the importance of both the rights of the individual and those of the state. Both the state and the individual, however different in interest, must judge their political action in light of their dependency on the other and therefore develop a mutually agreeable politics. In sum, it is an attitude that attempts to resolve political conflict without violence. Sophocles wrote a play for our time.

Works Cited

Class handout. ENGL 2030-HOl, Fall 2022, Middle Tennessee State University. September 8, 2022.

Sophocles. Antigone in The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles, Penguin, 1984, 55-129.

Nancy Drew: White Supremacy in Heels

Awarded to Tatiyana Cobb for work submitted in Fall 2022 to Dr. Shelby Ragan in ENGL 2020: Themes in Literature and Culture

More than 80 million copies of Nancy Drew’s adventures have been sold since the first books were released in 1930. The young sleuth was a pioneer in children’s literature when she was first introduced to readers, and her legacy in popular culture continues to endure. She uses her detective skills to challenge stereotypes and advocate for women’s autonomy in a way that transcends traditional gender roles. Nonetheless, her identity seems to be lacking in the face of today’s feminism because of her limited representation. Despite Nancy’s lauded status as a progressive heroine, the texts she inhabits fail to acknowledge the marginalization faced by women of color and other underprivileged groups.

Efforts have been made to put an end to the insulting depictions of minorities in updated volumes. Several other reasons were behind the 1959 revisions to the original Nancy Drew books, such as modernizing the series and reducing publishing costs. This essay examines specific original volumes published between 1930 and 1931 and the erasure of people of color [hereafter referred to as POC] in the recent amendments.

The Secret of the Old Clock, the first of Carolyn Keene’s fifty-six mystery novels, marked Nancy Drew’s literary debut. Within the first few pages, the reader is introduced to Nancy’s signature characteristics:

Nancy Drew, an attractive girl of sixteen, was driving home along a country road in her new, dark-blue convertible. She had just delivered some legal papers for her father. ‘It was sweet of Dad to give me this car for my birthday,’ she thought. ‘And it’s fun to help him in his work.’ Her father, Carson Drew, a well-known lawyer in their hometown of River Heights, frequently discussed puzzling aspects of cases with his blond, blue-eyed daughter (Keene 1).

It is quickly revealed that Nancy is “a girl,” attractive, involved in her father’s work, and sixteen years old. In addition to describing Nancy as blonde and blue-eyed, Keene also indicates her social class: her father works as a lawyer in what sounds like a suburb called River Heights. Nancy’s brand-new convertible supports the assumption that he is financially well-off. Her race does not need to be stated outright; her hair, eye color, economic status, and given name indicate that she is Caucasian.

Nancy Drew’s most significant limitation is her white, “All-American” appearance. A growing body of feminist theorists advocate for a community that productively includes and represents all women. In her analysis of how race, sexuality, class, and age impact American women’s experiences, Audre Lorde, a prominent Afro-American intersectionality philosopher, writes, “Any feminist discussion of the personal and the political is weakened by the absence of these considerations…It is an academic arrogance to assume a feminist discussion of theory without examining our differences” (1). In ignoring Nancy Drew’s race and how it contributes to her feminist identity, we would dismiss those who have devoted themselves to advocating for inclusivity.

Interestingly, while Nancy Drew has been cited as an inspiration by the likes of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton, and Barbara Walters, very few accomplished women of color have offered similar praises. Perhaps this is because when Nancy Drew first debuted, feminism and independence were exclusively associated with white women. As Kate Harper points out in her essay “The Physicality of Deviance in the Nancy Drew Mystery Series,” Nancy’s white identity may make her inspiration less accessible to readers of color since they likely face a host of barriers she does not.

In her book American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture, Ilana Nash notes that Nancy’s inner circle never includes minorities or the working class, nor do they usually rank among the innocent victims. In most cases, they serve as villains or minor characters, usually the help. In an article for the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Elizabeth Marshall highlights two disturbing examples of racial stereotypes in the Nancy Drew series. First, in The Hidden Staircase (1930), when Nancy’s friend, Rosemary Turnball, describes a Black female housekeeper as “a colored woman who looks as though she was an ogre” (123). Marshall’s other example is found in The Secret of the Red Gate Farm (1931), where the Chinese female villain is referred to as “squint-eyed” and insolent with a “swaggering walk” (52). Through their portrayal of the characters discussed, Keene maintains Nancy’s superior status and reinforces negative stereotypes about POC and lower socioeconomic classes.

Nancy’s interaction with a Black caretaker in the first novel is yet another example of the problematic way the series views race: She interrupts a lakeside bungalow robbery and gets tossed into a closet by one of the burglars. Jeff Tucker, the bungalow’s caretaker, frees the girl detective. Tucker is demeaned and portrayed as an inebriated degenerate – having been tricked into getting drunk by the robbers and forced to hose himself down to sober up. Rather than thanking him, Nancy chastises him. Her privilege as a wealthy white woman is never more apparent than in the scene that follows. Later, Tucker is ignored by the police officers when he and Nancy report the robbery. While Nancy and the police leave in search of the bandits, Tucker is “gently” pushed aside and left behind. This interaction between Tucker and Nancy, as Andrea Ruggirello explains in her essay “The Not-So-Hidden Racism of Nancy Drew,” and the subsequent whitewashing of the updated novels (in which Tucker is rewritten as white and sober), eliminates readers of color from the narrative, which does not adequately compensate for the damage caused by the original scenes.

A sense of exceptionalism underpins Nancy Drew’s status as the “ideal” or “standard” based on her stark contrast to all other characters in the series. In analyzing Nancy’s attractiveness, Ilana Nash uncovers the purpose of these juxtapositions and how her character embodies performative progressivism. In her words, the messages about gender in the early series are mixed; however, “those regarding class and race are more consistently negative”. Thus,

the series’ fundamentally retrograde social politics camouflage its more progressive elements, allowing Nancy’s image of powerful personhood to pass unchecked. At the same time, however, the radical notion of girls’ personhood also becomes less radical when we realize how heavily it depends upon her [Nancy’s] negative interactions with the oppressed. These reviled characters in fact help to constitute Nancy’s freedoms: she achieves her status as a full person partly through scenes that juxtapose her with characters who are less than persons. The ego strength Nancy models for readers, then, necessarily carries a toxic link to bigotry (53).

As Nash argues, Nancy’s romanticized characterization is strongly related to her dominance (and moral or physical superiority over) POC and socially disadvantaged individuals.

In brief, Nancy Drew is seen as a pioneer whose contributions to society have inspired many. However, as the feminist movement and social consciousness have advanced, the mystery series’ shortcomings have been exposed. The next generation would be more effectively motivated by young adult fiction that is considerate of issues of race and class, in addition to gender. Nancy Drew should only be viewed as a historical snapshot to observe how progressive thinking has evolved. Her identity as a sufficiently wealthy white girl seems out of place in contemporary feminist discourse. Rather than inspiring with the same impact as she once did, she reinforces bigotry and antifeminist principles.

Works Cited

Lorde, Audre. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. Penguin Classics, 2018.

Keene, Carolyn. The Secret of the Old Clock. Grosset & Dunlap, an Imprint of Penguin Random House, 1930.

Harper, Kate. “The Physicality of Deviance in the Nancy Drew Mystery Series.” Escholarship, UCLA Thinking Gender Papers, April 1. 2010, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2gz539tr.

Nash, Ilana, and Ilana Nash. “Radical Notions.” American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2006, pp. 29–70.

Marshall, Elizabeth. “Red, White, and Drew: The All-American Girl and the Case of Gendered Childhood.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 27 no. 4, 2002, p. 203-211. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/chq.0.1326.

Keene, Carolyn. The Hidden Staircase. Penguin Group US, 1930.

Keene, Carolyn. The Secret of the Red Gate Farm. Grosset & Dunlap, 1931.

Ruggirello, Andrea. “The Not-so-Hidden Racism of Nancy Drew.” Electric Literature, Electric Literature, 6 Sept. 2018, https://electricliterature.com/the-not-so-hidden-racism-of-nancy-drew/.

Waffle House

Awarded to Spencer Eaves for work submitted in Spring 2022 to Dr. Kathleen Therrien in ENGL 2020: Themes in Literature and Culture