The Pfeiffer Review

2

The

Pfeiffer

Review

2006-2007

Pfeiffer

University

Misenheimer, North Carolina

3

Editorial

Staff

Editor

Jonathan

Mendle

Smith

Faculty

Advisor

Michelle

Jackson

2006-2007

Pfeiffer Review

Staff Members

4

The

Pfeiffer

Review

©2007

Reproduction of any material within this publication is prohibited

without consent of the artist or author of that particular work.

Statement of Intellectual Sovereignty

The Pfeiffer Review is a literary arts publication that relies on the

submitted talents and interests of others to exist. This given, our

purpose is simply to submit their work to The Pfeiffer Review. We, at

The Pfeiffer Review, may or may not agree with the opinions expressed

within our publication; nonetheless, we feel that it is our duty to give

everyone the chance to express themselves through their talent; as who

are we to govern aesthetics and decide what should be deemed art and

what should not. We are merely a medium of exchange between the one

who wishes to be heard and the one whom wishes to hear.

Cover Photo: Brian Hathcock

Cover Design: Jonathan Smith and Michelle Jackson

5

From

The

Editor

Seeking to further the success of the previous editions in portraying a well-rounded

Pfeiffer community, I began to explore the areas not often included in the review. This edition

includes the classic poetry, short stories, and photography, but it goes further now. Included is

an essay in postmodern philosophy, a thesis on Homeric literature, and an out of the ordinary

biblical interpretation. The Review is branching out and presenting new and grander work to its

readers. My hope is that in issues to come, The Pfeiffer Review includes work from all genres,

majors, and backgrounds. This is a lofty aspiration, but I believe that the future—and by that I

mean near future, holds a great deal potential for the Pfeiffer University literary and academic

community.

As is the case in any production of this magnitude, many people deserve many thanks.

First, I thank the wonderful Pfeiffer Review staff of fall 2006 and spring 2007. Your varied

perspectives and opinions have put this book together. Second, Professor Michelle Jackson is in

honor of many thanks. Her enthusiasm and input in crucial decisions regarding this issue have

helped to improve the quality of the issue. I am also indebted to the previous editor, Celsa

DeJesús. I became part of the review while she was editor. Celsa and Professor Jackson asked

me to become the editor-in-training and eventually take over the journal. Her guidance and ideas

gave me the focus and composure to direct the review after she moved on to other areas of

passion in her life. Furthermore, the production team for the spoken word CD is in need of

honor as well. There hard work and creative talents have aided in the creation of a wonderful

accompaniment to this journal. I hope the readers will enjoy the many speakers’ interpretations

of the work.

Finally, I would like to thank all those that submitted work for consideration in the

magazine. To those of you that are included in the issue, congratulations and well done. Thank

you for sharing you time and creative talent with the readers of the journal. If your work is not

included in this edition, I still thank you for having the courage and passion to share your

creativity with the Pfeiffer community. I encourage you, and all those in the Pfeiffer community

to submit the things that show their dreams, passions, fears, and pains, so that the Pfeiffer

community can share in you inspiration.

Jonathan

Mendle

Smith

Editor

2006-2007

6

Table

Of

Contents

Photograph Benjamin Wallace 9

Photograph Brian Hathcock 10

I Remember, Sometimes, I Remember Mitchell Mesimer 11

In the Darkness of This Day Brian Hathcock 12

Love Incorporated Matthew Acie 13


Encounters Daniel Eskridge 16

Photography Brian Hathcock 17

Droplets & Clouds Mitchell Mesimer 18


Dionysus Tyler Efird 20


Just Some Advice… Ashley Blair 22


Nightmare Roars (an inconsistent verse) Daniel Eskridge 26


Dance Tyler Efird 28


God’s Soldier Tim Galarde 30


NUMB Tasha Curlee 32




Assassination Mitchell Mesimer 36

Henry Pfeiffer Chapel Brittnay Crawford 37

Revolution Mitchell Mesimer 38

Photograph Jessica Cook 39


Heartbeat Mitchell Mesimer 41


Talking to Peter Daniel Eskridge 43

7



Buffalo River Mitchell Mesimer 46


Earth Music Tyler Efird 48


Severed Vine Penny Harper 50


One night among these trees Mitchell Mesimer 53


Butterfly Mitchell Mesimer 55



Street Light No. 14 Jonathan Smith 58


The World’s Greatest Teacher Daniel Wilson 60




Hope Brittnay Crawford 64


Paper Pig Ralph Brown 66


Siren Song John Grosvenor 69


The Secret of Harriman’s Pond John Grosvenor 74




The Epic Cycle Ashley Blair 82


The Posthuman Identity Tyler Efird 91




9

Benjamin

Wallace

10

Brian

Hathcock

11

I Remember, Sometimes, I remember

I remember,

looking deep into your dark brown,

eyes.

I remember,

your voice had such a mellow and soothing tone,

calm as the heavens appear.

I remember,

your happiness filled my soul,

and beat through my heart.

I remember,

the laughter we used to share,

the joyful expressions that gleamed your face.

Sometimes,

we never used words,

silence was the language of choice.

Sometimes,

I hated when you spoke at all,

the anger of a young child.

Sometimes,

you were all I had,

when gloom was known all too well.

Sometimes,

your arms held me from hell,

the fierce fires that surrounded.

I remember,

you lived for me,

each day ensuring I was safe.

I remember,

the day you thought everything was fine,

you left me here on my own.

I remember,

being thankful you were no longer in pain,

but knowing I could never move on.

I remember,

Those nights I cried alone in bed,

wondering if you knew at all.

Mitchell

Mesimer

12

In the Darkness of This Day

Brian

Hathcock

13

Love Incorporated

Manufactured merriness,

vacant smiles masking disdain,

canned “how are you’s”

Mass produced to deceive,

Mechanical rigidness mistaken for humanity and even worse interest,

Unexpected gifts to “appreciate you” on holidays,

Wow, that was so surprising,

I totally wasn’t expecting a present on my birthday,

Trained services, void of real emotion,

Pain shielded by deep blue contacts,

Red lipstick tricks the onlooker,

Bright eyes and clown smiles,

Reflecting a mirage,

Shaking hands,

Knives hidden in sleeves,

I swear I am a hard worker,

Until I finish my ninetieth day,

Weariness and crying babies,

A changed person immured in matrimony,

I don’t know who you are,

But this is who I am,

Why didn’t you say something,

Why did you wear the clothes I bought,

And trim your hair to my delight,

I even bought you braces,

And Blue eye contacts…

Assembly line love,

Delusions considered normal,

Daguerreotype ideas of love relationships,

Reality unromantic,

We were really only interested in each other,

Not in love.

How do I escape this existence,

Either I stay or pay support,

What does that teach children,

Responsibility has a price.?!

By the way of wayward ending,

I bid you “best” wishes,

“Thank you’s” made in petrie dishes,

I’ll see you later, perhaps, hopefully never,

Like trout jumping out of water and forced back in by

The gravity of neediness,

It sucks me under river currents,

Screaming and immersed in water,

14

My voice moves passive bubbles,

For all to see only partially,

Causing those to vaguely question my happiness.

Matthew

Acie

15

Brian

Hathcock

16

Encounters

Nicotine-stained transient awashed

In your dust,

My sweat

Our vomit

(He coughs up the remains of your compassion)

Stares vacantly into the orange sky

Not even mighty Polaris can guide the wanderer home.

(Human progress spits upon the firmament)

So here I see him, slouched against the Post Office

(A staple of modern efficiency)

His bleary-red eyes, glazed with drunken despair

(Or is it that calm mixed with despair, I can tell you tomorrow night)

Come to rest upon my own.

With trembling hands he expels his demons and says,

“Nourish me with the wine of compassion.

Lay upon me the currency of good will.

Feed me the manna of heaven.”

And I in turn snarl, “Get a job!”

And walk back towards the streetlights

Where the hue turned distinctly yellow.

(If at first you don’t succeed…)

Daniel

Eskridge

17

Brian

Hathcock

18

Droplets & Clouds

Droplets on the table linen,

shed from the heart.

The Entrée, so elegantly arranged, is wholesome,

like the love we once held.

The Fruit upon the platter is enticing,

like the passion once was.

Silver utensils arranged with perfection,

how we must seem.

Puffy Clouds in your glass of wine,

lost from your eyes.

Mitchell

Mesimer

19

Brian

Hathcock

20

Dionysus

I know I know I’m getting older.

I know Dionysus was a Greek.

Is it cold or hot in summer?

I cut the red red meat.

I think its hot sunshinning in summer.

Or was it Apollo or Dionysus and wine and wine?

I’m a Greek God and getting older.

Someone once stole something dear of mine.

Its raw eyes bleed and bleed and run.

What a cold-hearted hot-blooded joke!

I think I’ll sit myself down to a cracker and a Coke.

Lots of weather this year we’re having tons and tons.

Do the long black-haired girls kiss kiss the stained heart of a dying god?

I sometimes wonder…I sometimes wonder…

About dirt naps taken thirty years ago.

I sometimes wonder I just don’t know.

And I just don’t now on and on and on.

I know I don’t know for miles and so on.

Tyler

Efird

21

Brian

Hathcock

22

Just Some Advice…

Never offer your

Heart

to

someone who does not know how to

Love.

or to someone who thinks of love as a

Game

like ‘Hide and Go Seek’.

someone who takes all you have to offer

and does not give in return.

this person does not know what real love is.

Never offer your

Heart

to a ‘good times’ lover.

your unconditional

Love

will manifest itself into a

Thanksgiving dinner

for the

Selfish

And weak-at-heart.

They will squeeze your sponge-heart

Dry.

their love will only remain as

Ice

once the

Fire

goes out.

If you find yourself giving your

Heart

to someone who does not know how to

Love,

Here is what you

Must

do:

Close up the window to your

Soul

so they are not able to

See

in.

23

The next time they run to you,

Let them chase after you and your

Heart

of hearts.

It will then be their turn to

Cry

enough tears

for the River Jordan

and walk through a

blazing

Fire

Only to find

you are no longer

Waiting

On the other side.

Make certain that they

Resolve

themselves to be unworthy of your

Love,

and that they pray for

Forgiveness

for any

hurt

They may have caused.

Now,

Free

yourself.

discover your talents,

let God lead you in the path that will

Fulfill

your own

Dreams.

No longer will you

Live

in the

Shadows

Of those too yellow to

Live

Passionately

and

Honestly-

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And,

remember this:

Never

give up

on

Love.

just

Let go

of those who do not

Know

how to

Love.

Ashley

Blair

25

Benjamin

Wallace

26

Nightmare Roars

(an inconsistent verse)

I.

I am

Murdered aristocracy

I am

Butchered generosity

I am

Outlawed true democracy

I am

Simple beastly poverty

I am

Soft and tender sodomy

(Before that glimpse you caught of me)

I am…

Lavished promiscuity

Inconsistent continuity

Simple ingenuity

Misplaced opportunity

I am the voice that you can’t ignore

You break upon the marble floor

Your eyes are wet your head is shorn

You stroke the oozing mess of sores

You scream at God “Dear Christ, No more!”

It’s deafening how this nightmare roars.

The universe is torn apart

Eclectic in its despair

The men who scream with empty hearts

And minds that need repair

Will overturn the ragged tide

So they can sit in peace

And they will choose a spirit guide

And nightmare roars will cease

Daniel

Eskridge

27

Brian

Hathcock

28

Dance

Would that I could tear out the eyes of man

And give him the gift of song for sight.

Would that I could disguise his staggered walk

In light-hearted, high leaping steps.

Would that man…

Then might he learn to see rhythm.

Then might he take back up his sacred heart of dance.

And all people say,

“What is death to an immortal?”

And all sky-grazing, star-kissing, cloud-grinding immortals shout,

“Life is not an ending!”

So spoke a dancer once.

So spoke one of those who put the old gods to death,

Buried upside-down in a drop of sweat beneath a body’s voice−

A long moaning of soaked flesh with the rhythm of beauty.

Dance hot-throated, hot-eyed lover− dance.

Dance lustful dreamer and seduce your maiden earth.

Man−

Would that could take the pleasure of her body.

Dance−

More beautiful than a peacock making love to an elephant aboard a sinking ship!

Tyler

Efird

29

Benjamin

Wallace

30

God’s Soldier

Today I lost a friend

But God gained a soldier,

To help fight evil

To help fight his war.


But Heaven gained an angel,

To protect those of us left behind

To watch over us and keep us well.


But in my memory he will remain,

He will live with me forever

I’ll cherish the pleasure and release the pain.


With dignity and honor he did die,

Although we’ll miss him here

His star will forever shine in our sky.


But never forget what is seldom stated,

That God needs soldiers like him

To clean the mess that we have created.

Tim

Galarde

31

Brian

Hathcock

32

Numb

Numb is paradise

Numb is the best feeling

No shame

No self doubt

Self Ingested confidence

It…

Numbs me

From the pain I feel

From the boredom of the everyday

Induced happiness

Imaginary strength

Not Bliss

But complacency…

Kinda…

Empty

The me I see in the mirror

Is not me

Tasha

Curlee

33

Brian

Hathcock

34

Brian

Hathcock

35

Brian

Hathcock

36

Assassination

Dice my soul, make me grasp

Sheer my lungs, a screaming wail

Slice my heart, let it bleed

Gouge my ribs, agonizing tear

Decapitate my being, grotesque revolt

Crucify my love, all that I hold

Drag my remains mercy I plead

Kill my spirit, hateful pain

Mitchell

Mesimer

37

Henry Pfeiffer Chapel

Brittnay

Crawford

38

Revolution

My job is this:

king of what is.

My country falls,

I care, not at all.

The poor are poor,

let them stay.

The rich are rich,

they shall remain.

Hard is this job?

Ha, not in the least.

I sit here and watch,

as they call me a beast.

What else do they ask?

A revolution they seek!

I am their king,

they shall listen when I speak.

This problem I shall fix,

this problem as I see.

They’ll all be killed,

their death will set me free.

Mitchell

Mesimer

39

Jessica

Cook

40

Brian

Hathcock

41

Heartbeat

one moment,

one second,

one life can change,

forever.

every minute,

every hour, in each passing day;

heartbeat.

an everyday miracle,

somehow unknown,

forcing life,

into the mind,

body,

and soul;

heartbeat.

each beat,

each stroke,

the beating: stop and go,

galvanizing shock,

pushing,

extreme;

heartbeat.

life can change,

love strikes,

hard,

an inevitable power,

grasping and clinging;

heartbeat.

unleash every desire,

once, twice,

four million,

but not another;

heartbeat.

like the one before,

age counts twice,

energy slows,

one final pulse,

just one;

heartbeat.

in a systematic flow.

Mitchell

Mesimer

42

Brian

Hathcock

43

Talking to Peter

Beyond the great chasm of lies and deception

She bears a great truth of immaculate conception

Despite our disdain and pretension and unbridled anger

We’ve come to agree that there is no relief

From the ravenous bulldog, the commanders and chiefs

And the wide cockeyes grin of a maniac set for the kill.

Push me down these winding stairs,

Gouge out my eyes, pull out my hair

And let this soft horizon level me

The smell of life was on your breath

(A fragrance of both love and death)

A fine way to end the summer…

The end was between both the plans and the schemes

In the voice of the people and the simple mans dreams

And the light autumn breeze which now dances between all the trees.

In the murky abyss I have sunk like a stone

In reflections of fears and the doubts yet unknown

And it makes us all feel like we’re blind, deaf and dumb…for the moment.

I shake my fist, I scrape my bone,

I break my wrist, I’m all alone

And muffled silence tells us what we’re worth

Get your feelings off your chest

Choose the root that seems the best…

Daniel

Eskridge

44

Brian

Hathcock

45

Jessica

Cook

46

Buffalo River

Buffalo River, wash my tears

Rolling waters, calm my fears

Current deep, never calm

Spirit of Desire, burning fire

Wash me cool, I am tired

Buffalo River, take me home

Ancestry great, it fills my soul

Exist forever, in my mind

Childhood is gone, but still, you I find

Living eternal, give me will

Love runs through, like water in a mill

Buffalo River, hold my hand

Pull me deep, I’ll be a man

You are my home, you are my heart

You comfort me, we’ll never part

Buffalo River, burry my soul

Mitchell

Mesimer

47

Benjamin

Wallace

48

Earth Music

I remember−

What it was to sweat

Out under the sun−

Burning, blistering, blazing

Stars in our eyes.

We sat out in the fields

Back in those days.

We sat right out in the fields

Staring straight through the sun.

We stared so much

Back then−

Back then when we used to sweat−

Out under the sun−

Our devil eyes digging scorched earth−

Enraptured by the fire−

Of the sun’s hot flashing drum.

And that was all the rhythm

Back then.

Back then that was all the music−

What we devils like to call earth music−

To sweat out under the sun.

Tyler

Efird

49

Jessica

Cook

50

Severed Vine

I. A Blessing Unbundled

God’s will pollinated, in

union with Abram and Sarai.

One blessing in three parts.

Not equal.

A life no longer mine.

As the game begins,

motherhood forfeits the prize.

A path thrust upon me---

Shall a great nation spring

From Egyptian womb?

II. Envy Laid Bare

Sarai---barren and bitter

sweet scents gloved from the mistress’s hand;

betrayed by a green fire.

Eyes that no longer anticipate

The child---a hated seed.

Tears of blood

now stain the bonds of friendship.

A slave ripened and powerful.

No longer a second?

The river flows through me,

not her.

Worn hands resist

and knock---

Destiny is not home.

III. Wondering or Wandering?

A needleless compass guides as

Footsteps turn; the wind blown and

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directed by an unkind hand.

A voice beckons---

Hollow steps that echo not

Today…

The fruit transmogrified

and hungry.

Will tomorrow ever come?

Running no more,

An earthly life spring

washes over me---

quenching…cleansing.

The ebbing pain of wounds forgotten?

A fresh blood surges forth,

calling from within---

Staining the map.

Darkness delivers the winged light.

Embrace the future,

or so I hear.

Promises made from above---

An about-face journey; for

Tomorrow the bell tolls.

IV. Epilogue

Offspring born

of green-eyed monsters

Ishmael.

Penny

Harper

52

Brian

Hathcock

53

One night among these trees

Dew drops

Thick and heavy

Mist rises from the crisp ground

Light and airy

Evergreens tower above the foggy horizon

Calm and surreal

Cricket chirps wake fresh beams of sun

Distant and far

Water rushes over an enormous cliff

Fresh and everlasting

Rocks grab and slow the rushing tides

Steady and stable

A small life rises toward the eternal sky

Movement and shudder

Our bodies begin to wake

Inhale and exhale

Fresh morning life wakens all the senses

Close and together

We have merged into one

Comfort and peace

A night here with you in my arms

Mitchell

Mesimer

54

Brian

Hathcock

55

Butterfly

Delicate,

Beautiful,

And Free;

Dancing

In Air:

From Flower

To Flower;

Sharing

With Them

Agile Grace;

While Secretly

Stealing Nectar

From The Depths

Of Their Souls.

Mitchell

Mesimer

56

Brian

Hathcock

57

Benjamin

Wallace

58

Street Light No. 14

My cup no longer warms my hand,

It falls to the ground.

The constant hum of the street lamps keep me awake.

Crooked tree limbs with two dead leaves,

Glow yellow-orange, the light hides their brown.

Tonight, I walk past no one as my breath glows peach.

The street light ahead is out,

No tree limbs or peach breath.

Just the cold night air, no cup to warm my hand.

Jonathan

Smith

59

Brian

Hathcock

60

The World’s Greatest Teacher

There once was a man

Some would call a preacher,

Others would call him

The world’s greatest teacher.

A blessing sent

From God above,

A living sacrifice to show

God’s love

He walked on water and

Calmed the sea,

This world has known

No greater than He.

Walking perfection

He told no lie,

He lived his life

To one day die.

He died on the cross for

All of us,

To pay for our sins,

Our every lust.

By death on a cross

He freed us all,

How do we repay?

Answer the call.

Called to ministry in

Many ways,

What is our reward?

Eternal days

I know I will never be

As great as he,

But forever his disciple

I will be.

Daniel

Wilson

*This poem was published in the previous issue of The Pfeiffer Review, under the wrong author. Our

apologies to the author and all parties involved. It is republished here, under the correct author.

61

Jessica

Cook

62

Brian

Hathcock

63

Brian

Hathcock

64

Hope

Brittnay

Crawford

65

Brian

Hathcock

66

Paper Pig

Wolves. The horses were the first to know. They could not see them, but they could smell

the wolves. Soon the prince and his daughter and his servant and the driver of the sled and the

real pig that sat in its cage would see among the shadows skulking phantoms with ghostly

gleaming eyes. Soon the skulking phantoms with ghostly gleaming eyes would materialize into

hungry, predatory wolves and give chase to the horses and the sled that carried the prince and his

daughter and his servant and the driver of the sled and the real pig that sat in its cage.

During the winter when food is scant, the wolves investigate anything that moves or makes

noise, even very slight movement or very quiet murmur. During the winter when the river is

frozen it is easier for the horses to pull the sled across the ice on the river than through the deep

heavy snow on the road. But during the winter easy movement on the frozen river is easily seen,

as there is no cover; no place to hide from the ever searching, ever curious ghostly gleaming eyes

of ravenous wolves. And, during the winter on a bitter cold and hushed night, even muffled feet

and hoofs make echoing calling sounds to the ever listening, ever aware ears of rapacious

wolves.

As the horses and the sled that carried the prince and his daughter and his servant and the

driver of the sled and the real pig that sat in its cage passed, a few wolves sauntered out of the

dark gray night onto the ice and set to bounding and loping behind the sled. More, and then more

joined. They grew in numbers to a pack, a pursuing pack. The nervous horses, with their eyes

wide and searching frightfully, with their nostrils wide and snorting fearfully, did not hesitate to

respond to the driver of the sled as he commanded a trot.

Wolves, and more wolves dashed from the banks and entered the deliberate chase. Keeping

a menacing distance, but not too close behind the sled, the shadowy pack trailed. Within the

following mass the prince and his daughter and his servant and the driver of the sled and the real

pig that sat in its cage caught glimpses of chilling yellow fangs flashing and sinister hoary lips

curling and damp black noses sniffing. As the growing pack closed on the sled there came

howling and growling a chorus of ravenous glee.

The prince motioned to his servant to open the smallest chest and remove one of the paper

bags. The prince told his daughter to fashion the paper bag into the image of the real pig that sat

in its cage. When the paper pig was formed, the prince ordered his servant to torment the real pig

that sat in its cage. As the real pig that sat in its cage squealed and cried and sobbed the prince

caught the squeals and cries and sobs and put them into the bag that looked like the pig that sat in

its cage.

The lead wolf jumped onto the back of the sled and with ominous sneer studied the prince

holding the paper pig. Before the lead wolf could crouch and lunge at the prince, the prince with

a great grand gesture threw the paper pig from the sled. The lead wolf hastily jumped and then

tumbled after the fleeing paper pig.

Making ferocious noises the pack members gathered around the paper pig eyeing it, and

each other. Some wolves snapped at the paper pig. Some wolves fought among themselves to get

closer to the paper pig. In the excitement the paper pig was slashed and the squeals and cries and

sobs that were held inside spilled out onto the ice and swirled and whirled about the paws and

jaws of the snarling wolves. Some of the squeals and cries and sobs tried to escape by skidding

across the frozen river ice to the banks where they darted and diminished away across the snow-

covered meadows. The other squeals and cries and sobs tried to escape by riding the wind into

the deep forest where they echoed and faded among the branches. While a few wolves continued

67

their greedy fight over the remains of the paper pig, all the other wolves pursued the scattering

squeals and cries and sobs.

All the while the horses steadily trotted away taking with them the sled with the prince and

his daughter and his servant and the driver of the sled and the real pig that sat in its cage.

After telling the paper pig story, my grandfather sat back in his chair and asked what the

story was teaching us. There followed a few moments of wide-eyed stares and frowns from the

young children and then my grandfather turned to the other listeners and asked, “How would you

use a paper pig?”

The cousin who held an elected office said, “There are ways to evade the trouble makers of

the other party and their newspaper cronies.”

The father who owned a business said, “When your competitors try to steal your ideas, let

them take something pretty that has no value.”

The old uncle who had been a soldier said, “Keep the enemy occupied with a decoy while

you plan their defeat. “

Grandmother said, “When the neighborhood busybodies ask too many questions, give them

a story that will make them look foolish as they prattle.”

A pretty woman said, “When the boys are bothering you, give them something to do.”

Watch for those who would harm you, or delay you, or distract you, or take something of

value from you. When they get too close, toss them a paper pig.

Ralph

Brown

68

Benjamin

Wallace

69

Siren Song

Prologue:

The best mystery anthology ever broadcast was arguably the radio drama Escape. Aired from

July 7, 1947 to September 25, 1954, Escape ran the gamut from westerns to dramatizations of

classical literature to tales of horror. Radio actor William Conrad (later star of TV’s “Cannon”

and “Jake and the Fat Man”) would introduce the show: “Tired of the everyday routine? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all?”

…at which point Paul Frees (later the voice of the cartoon villain “Boris Badenov”) would

respond: “We offer you – Escape! Escape – designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high

adventure!”

After a musical interlude, the listener would be commanded to escape to a specific locale that

lends itself to mysterious adventure. Let’s imagine we’re listening to a revival of Escape, and

let’s create an actor we’ll call “J.R. Johnny” (as well as supporting actors mentioned at the end).

The following adventure could have been just as real in 1954 as it would be today.

“This week escape to a lonely stretch of highway in the New Mexico desert and to the voice

that leads from one danger to another, as told in “Siren Song,” starring J.R. Johnny.”

The story:

I don’t understand how I could have gotten lost. I’ve made this two hundred mile business trip

from my home in El Paso, Texas to Douglas, Arizona at least twenty times – five of them at

night – and all by myself. I would cross the Rio Grande on Route 273, pass through Sunland

Park, New Mexico, and take Route 9 through Columbus, Hachita, Playas, and Animas. Then I’d

turn left on Route 80, pass through Rodeo, and go the remaining fifty miles to Douglas. I enjoyed

the trip because I never tired of the breathtaking view of the mountains of southern New Mexico.

Despite the leisurely pace, it took me only approximately five hours to make the trip.

It’s been almost three hours, and I should have passed through Columbus by now. It was

close to 9 PM, my gas gauge was almost on empty, and I had been in such a hurry to leave home

that I didn’t eat supper. If nothing else, I could surely use a cup of coffee.

Then I saw it ahead: Milnor’s Café – Fine Food, Entertainment Nightly. I stopped and entered

the roadside diner that was bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. I sat at the only

empty table and ordered the daily special – three pieces of southern-fried chicken, green beans,

mashed potatoes, and coffee. A surly waiter tossed the plate down without saying a word. At the

next table, a heavy-set guy in a Stetson turned to me and spoke.

“Don’t worry partner, he’s rude to everybody.”

The food was terrible. The chicken consisted of two wings and a leg. The wings were so crisp

that I couldn’t separate the skin and meat from the bone, and the leg was so tough that someone

had to have chased that chicken a mile before it was caught and slaughtered. The green beans

were tasteless, and the mashed potatoes were filled with half-cooked lumps. The coffee was

bitter and oily, probably the bottom of the urn from the morning brew. I could only eat around

the lumps and drink a few sips of that day-old java.

The entertainment that followed was something else, though: an excellent eight-piece western

band. After doing three instrumentals with two of the best fiddlers I have ever heard, the leader

introduced one of the most gorgeous ladies I have ever seen – Vicki Vernon, the band’s female

vocalist. Her brunette tresses complemented the Stetson she was wearing and made a figure eight

over her shoulders as she moved her head in rhythm. I was mesmerized as her eyes were

transfixed on mine while she sang “I Want to Ride into the Sunset with You”. I was more

relaxed than I had been in months.

70

“Hey, Mac! Pay your bill and get out of here! This isn’t any motel!”

It was that grumpy waiter, shaking me. I must have dozed off.

I looked up at an empty stage. “Where’s Vicki?” I asked.

“The show’s been over for an hour. We quit serving thirty minutes ago!” snapped the waiter. I

looked at my watch. It was 11:30 PM. I had been asleep for an hour and a half.

I paid my bill, wondering how much chicken, beans, potatoes, and coffee must have gone into

today’s garbage. As I walked out the door, something struck me hard against the back of my

head.

I don’t know how long I lay on that ledge halfway down the ravine, or even how I got there.

When I regained consciousness, I looked up and saw the Milnor’s Café sign made visible by a

full moon. My head hurt something awful, like I had been hit with a hammer. I brushed my hand

down the back of my head and felt glass splinters and coagulated blood. I didn’t know whether to

find a hospital or try to get to my appointment in Douglas. Either way, I’d have to get out of

there. I climbed to the top of the ravine and to the front of Milnor’s, but I could find my car

nowhere. Thinking I’d been robbed, I reached into my pocket and was surprised to find my

wallet still there – and it still contained my money. Why would they steal my car but not my

wallet? The illuminated clock inside Milnor’s gave the time as 3:30 AM. Out of the corner of my

eye, I could see something familiar at the bottom of the ravine. Groping my way to the bottom, I

gasped! It was my car, and the keys were in the door’s keyhole.

Yes, I know I should have realized that I’d been set up, but I really didn’t have a choice. The

engine turned over immediately, and even as I noticed the gas gauge pointing suspiciously to

“full”, I was not phased. I followed the dirt road down the ravine until I came to a paved road. I

instinctively turned left, wanting to kick myself for not asking someone at Milnor’s where the

nearest town was, or even if I were still in New Mexico – I just kept driving. As it was stuffy

inside the car, I opened the window and was surprised to hear the melodious strains of gorgeous

Vicki Vernon’s equally gorgeous voice chanting “I Want to Ride into the Sunset with You” over

and over and over.

That’s funny, I thought. I don’t remember turning on the radio.

I reached over, grasped the knob, and came to my senses as I realized that the radio had never,

in fact, been turned on. I continued to drive, and as my mind became relaxed, I started to hear

Vicki’s voice again.

I came to the end of the road, and Vicki’s voice seemed to shift to the right, as though she

wanted me to drive in that direction. I felt as though I were in another trance, following what

seemed to be a siren song. Night turned into dawn, and I could see what seemed to be the

outskirts of a town ahead – and a police roadblock. I rolled down my window an inch. I could at

last report that I had been assaulted.

“Officer, I need help,” I almost cried as my car reached the roadblock.

“Get out!” the officer ordered. “Get out or I’ll break that window and yank you out!”

Flabbergasted and thinking I was mistaken for someone else, I gave the officer my driver’s

license. He demanded I give him my keys, which he tossed to another officer, who opened the

trunk of my car and shouted “It’s here, just as that phone call said it would be.”

The first officer grabbed my arms and handcuffed me. “You’re under arrest for the murder of

Vicki Vernon!”

What? It can’t be! I kept repeating to myself. I got loose from the officer and, although

handcuffed, ran to the trunk of my car. It was Vicki, all right. It looked like she had been shot

through the head and back. I moaned uncontrollably for about three minutes while the officer

71

kept yelling at me to shut up. He finally swung his night stick at me, and I felt another sharp

blow to the back of my head. I was only half-conscious when I was booked. I passed out in the

police station.

I awoke in a jail cell with another inmate staring at me. “So you’re the creep who killed that

girl! You don’t have to worry about a trial, ‘cause I’m going to kill you right here.” I shouted for

the jailer, but nobody seemed to hear me. The inmate pulled me off the bed, grabbed my head,

and bashed it against the cinderblock wall.

By now my head must have had almost as many lumps as those potatoes at Milnor’s Café. I

was still conscious but knew I was going to pass out any minute. I leaned against the wall, but

that loony cretin decided to run towards me. At that point I lost my balance and fell. He missed

me and his head smacked into the wall, knocking him unconscious.

At that point, the jailer just happened to pass by. He walked into the cell. “It’s bad enough

you kill young women. Now you’re trying to kill the other inmates,” he shouted at me.

Who cares what he thinks or does. I’m going to hemorrhage to death here anyway.

I read somewhere that just before you die, the body releases a chemical that makes you feel at

ease. My pain quickly subsided, and I lay in a peaceful position for awhile. Then I suddenly

found myself spiraling upward toward a distant light. My eyes were transfixed on the light

source, as it slowly increased in size while I seemed to be riding a merry-go-round in another

dimension. When I reached the light, I opened my eyes – and there she was.

“I must have died and gone to heaven.”

“Well, not quite,” she responded. “You’re in an Albuquerque hospital.”

Albuquerque? I thought. Shades of Bugs Bunny. I really made a wrong turn.

“You’re not Vicki?”

“No, I’m her sister Vera. We were afraid you weren’t going to make it.”

She told me that two detectives at the precinct where I was booked thought the whole story

sounded too fantastic. They investigated and found that Vicki was married to a man named Lou

Winton, but she walked out on him a month before that fateful night I saw her perform.

According to the band’s drummer, Winton would frequent Milnor’s Café when she performed

and beg her to come back. The night I was there, the drummer saw them get into a heated

argument over the way she would look at men in the audience while she sang. Milnor, when

confronted with the drummer’s testimony and threatened with prison, admitted that as Vicki

turned around and started to leave the room, Winton pulled out a 22 handgun and shot her twice.

They figured that with me asleep and unaware of what had happened, I could be framed. Winton

hid outside the front door and waited for me to pay my bill and leave. He then hit me with a beer

bottle and staged the scene. Then he called the New Mexico State Police and gave them my

license number and description of my vehicle. The handgun was found and traced to a Socorro

pawn shop, whose records showed that it was sold to Winton. Ballistics would prove that it was

the gun that killed Vicki.

The detectives assumed I had been sent to the jail after I was booked. After they found me

unconscious on the floor of the jail, they had me brought to the hospital. The officers who

arrested me, along with the jailer, were suspended without pay. All charges against me were

dropped.

Did Vicki really lead me to Albuquerque where her sister was? A physician at the hospital

told me that what I heard was my own mind playing tricks on me. I was so tired and weak that

with the addition of the air blown from my window being down, Vicki’s voice was being played

72

to me from my own brain. Yet somehow I believe that even in death Vicki found a way to bring

her killer to justice – even if it meant I would be sacrificed in the process.

Epilogue:

“You have just heard “Siren Song”, starring J.R. Johnny. “Siren Song” was written by R.C.

Cokesberry and directed by M.S. Doss. Others in the cast were Hal Emerson, Twyla Finch,

McNeill Mundie, and John Cannadent.

“Next week: You were trespassing on vacant property where your parents told you not to go.

You witnessed murder victims being buried. Now, twenty-five later, you are in a position to

reveal the secret from which there is no escape.

“Tune in again next week when Escape presents “The Secret of Harriman’s Pond,” starring

Reed Hicks.

“This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.”

John

Grosvenor

73

Brian

Hathcock

74

The Secret of Harriman’s Pond

I

It’s been twenty-five years since I witnessed that tragic incident. I never knew who did it, or

why. I never had a clue who the victims were. I couldn’t admit that I saw it happen.

We called it the Harriman place, and I had to pass it every day on my way to and from school.

About 200 feet from the house was a pond. Actually, the house went back further than the

Harrimans. Originally built in 1761, the house was burned to the ground twice – once during the

American Revolution and again during the Civil War – then rebuilt each time on the original

foundation. The history of the pond was less clear. Unlike most ponds, the land surrounding it

rose as one approached it, forming a parapet except on the narrow end. Weeping willow trees

neatly framed it, and there was a forest surrounding more than half of the perimeter. One of my

teachers speculated that it was a water-filled meteor crater, but whatever the origin, there were

fish in it.

The Harrimans bought the place in 1910. His name was Curt, or Burt, or Bart, or Bard, or

something like that. He died of a stroke in 1957, so I don’t remember him. The house wasn’t

even wired for electricity until 1961, and I don’t think a telephone was installed until years later.

I never knew much about his wife, either. Walking to school with my friend Norm Shane, we

used to talk about her and the stories the kids in school told about “Old Lady Harriman,” as we

called her. By the time I reached the third grade, Old Lady Harriman started sitting on her porch

all day even during wintertime, always wearing a black nightgown and holding a broom. Norm

and I referred to her as “Witch Hazel.” With her long, crooked nose and pointy jaw, she indeed

looked like the character from the “Little Lulu” comic books.

Every time we’d pass her house after school, she would be there shaking her fists at us. One

day Norm suddenly turned to her and shouted “I’ll ram that broom down your throat, you old

bat!” We saw her walk toward us with the broom raised, and we ran home. I was breathing hard

as I entered my house and slammed the door.

“What’s your hurry, Johnny?” my mother queried. “You’ve never been this anxious to get

home.”

“Witch Hazel was chasing Norm and myself”, I answered, still trying to catch my breath.

“Who was chasing you?”

“Old Lady Harriman”.

“Her name’s Myrtle; ‘Mrs. Harriman’ to you. I don’t ever want you to call her or anyone else

‘Old Lady’!”

“But she’s been shaking her fist at us.”

“Probably because that friend of yours has been teasing her. What did he say to her this

time?”

She paused as if she were expecting an answer, but I got tongue tied. She then said

something that sounded like “Thalheimer’s disease,” but I was still focused on Myrtle Harriman

raising her broom as though she were going to hurl it at us like a javelin.

During the summer of 1971 and at the age of 87, Old Lady Harriman died. I got the word just

after Labor Day on a very hot September morning during the third day of school. “Hey Johnny,

you hear that Old Lady Harriman croaked,” Norm shouted that morning. “She’s been dead for

several months, and a dog even got into the house and ate part of her legs. Billy Franks has a

photo of her. She’s got big holes in her thighs, and you can even see the bones.”

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Later that week the county newspaper ran a story about Myrtle Harriman that was in some

respects not as sensational as Norm Shane’s vocal obituary. It seems that the mailman stopped to

have her sign for a certified letter. Detecting a foul odor, he notified the police. Her body was

discovered in the bedroom. She had apparently died in her sleep, and she was so bloated that

dental records were needed to recognize her. Someone else had apparently collected her mail

during this time, although there was no evidence of foul play. She had been dead about a month,

not several months, and there was no mention about a dog or any other animal getting into the

house. I don’t know what kind of a picture Billy Franks had, but I’ll bet it was not a picture of

Myrtle Harriman. The article also gave her late husband’s name as “K.C. Harriman,” so I still

didn’t know exactly what his first name was.

Like any urban legend, Norm’s story never died. To this day people are still talking about the

animal who chewed on Myrtle Harriman’s cadaver.

The Harriman place would be vacant for three years. These would be three of the most

monumental years of my life.

II

The next summer was one of the driest on record. It hadn’t rained since mid-March, and by

late August the water table had dropped so low that the county was forced to order restrictions on

water use. All the local creeks had dried up, and I was not surprised when Norm came by the

house with his news.

“Hey Johnny, Harriman’s Pond has completely dried up and the kids are finding all kinds of

valuable things. Billy Franks found a huge jar full of old coins, and the other kids have dug up

old bottles and even belt buckles.”

My parents had stepped out for the afternoon, so Norm and I wandered over there. Word

certainly traveled fast. There were about thirty kids at the pond when I got there, and Billy had

just dragged his wagon out of the pond at its shallowest end. On it was an enormous old glass jar

with pieces of rusted metal still clinging to the mouth. It was filled with hundreds of old coins.

There were several seated Liberty quarters and silver dollars, shield nickels, large and half cents,

and many Indian head cents. In the wagon were also ten small aqua-glass Pepsi and Coca Cola

bottles with embossed lettering at the bottom or the sides. After gawking at Billy’s treasures, I

figured I’d better stake out my own section of the pond. Nobody seemed to be over at the deep

end where the floor was the muddiest. What first looked like a perfectly round hole in the mud

was the top of a beautiful amethyst-purple bottle, most of which was stuck in the mud. After

breaking the suction and wiping off the worst of the mud, I could tell that the rest of the bottle

was hexagonal in shape, and it had some lettering on the base. There were also some natural

bubbles, typical of early glass. I figured it would make a spectacular coin bank after I cleaned it.

I stared at the deep hole as it slowly filled with water. My concentration was broken by a familiar

voice.

“Johnny!” I looked up and saw my mother screaming at me. “Get out of there and come

home.” I waddled through the mud past the kids still digging, out of the pond through the

shallow end, and I removed my muddy shoes and got in the car. My mother screamed at me all

the way home and then some. She and Dad had gotten home about ten minutes after I left and

she saw Billy Franks pulling his wagon along the road. Billy told her where I was and all about

the wonderful stuff kids were finding. “You were trespassing. I don’t care if the house is vacant.

The Harriman children could have you arrested!”

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“Gee, Mom, all the other kids were there, and the stuff they were finding was thrown away.

Just look at the beautiful bottle I found in the pond!”

“It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t belong to you, and besides, you could have been killed or

injured in that mud.”

“But Norm’s mother let him go.”

“Norm’s mother doesn’t care! She wants him out of the house. I care!”

With that, she grabbed my purple bottle and told me that I was not entitled to it.

III

I was determined to go back to that dried-up pond and see what else I could find. I had my

chance that Saturday. My parents were invited to a dinner party at my father’s boss’ country

club, and they could not find a babysitter. “You are forbidden from leaving the yard”, my mother

firmly ordered. “You are especially forbidden from being on or near the Harriman property. If

you go there, with or without your delinquent buddy Norm Shane, you won’t sit down for a

week! Understand?”

Of course I said “yes,” but I also knew how long those parties lasted. As soon as they left at 4

PM, I high-tailed it for Harriman’s Pond – and without Norm.

I was in luck – nobody else was there.

I went to the place where I found the purple bottle. I figured most of the rest of the pond had

been picked over. There were plenty of old rusty cans down there. I spotted an old small aqua-

glass Pepsi bottle with the neck broken off. I figured I could cut the jagged part off with Dad’s

bottle cutter. Then I heard the voice that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

“Don’t hurt Mommy!” a young boy screamed. Eight or nine shots rang in succession. I tried

to run to the side of the pond opposite the house, my movement slowed by my feet caught in the

mire. I managed to scramble up the bank and over the parapet, afraid to move any further. After

five minutes of silence, I witnessed four men in business suits and fedoras leaving the Harriman

house, carrying a man and a woman. Two other men in dungarees dragged a boy, about nine or

ten and a teenaged girl up to the pond. I surmised that all had been shot to death. Then the men in

dungarees walked to the middle of the pond and dug a hole in the soft bed. After about an hour

of digging they climbed out and dragged the man first, then the woman, then the children, and

dropped each in turn into the hole and covered it up. I watched as the six men walked away and

drove off. I couldn’t tell anything about the vehicle except that it was black. It was parked on the

other side of the house.

I ran home, knowing I had to call the police as soon as I got there. I wouldn’t leave my name;

I couldn’t leave my name because my mother would beat me when she found out. I kept

wondering who those victims were and what they were doing at the Harriman place.

When I got home, it took ten minutes for me to catch my breath and get enough nerve to call

the police. Then my parents walked in. It was only 6 PM, and it was still light out.

“Johnny, dear, we’re home,” my mother chanted.

“I thought you wouldn’t be home until about nine,” I responded.

“Your father and I got to talking about what happened Wednesday evening. We were sure

you’d try to go back to that pond. We ate in a hurry and came home.”

Anyway, I’d have another chance to call at church the next day. I’d ask to go to the bathroom

during Sunday School but instead call the law.

77

That night, nature played a cruel trick on me – or maybe it was God punishing me. It rained

harder than it had since I could remember, but the forecast didn’t call for rain at all. It rained so

hard that it flooded the church basement and we couldn’t go to church the next day. It continued

to rain for nearly a week, and on Thursday we got sent home from school because the entire

school grounds started to flood. When I woke Saturday morning I heard my parents clapping.

The rain had stopped, and the sun was out.

Norm interrupted my Saturday morning cartoon watch with a phone call. He had been by the

old Harriman place. The pond had completely filled. It would never be empty again. How could I

convince the police now that someone was buried six feet under a pond? To make matters worse,

I dropped the Pepsi bottle with the broken neck back in the pond when I ran home.

At least I still had the purple bottle somewhere – or so I thought. A month later our church

had a rummage sale, and I saw a 30-ish man at the cashier with a bottle exactly like the one I

found. By the time I got up there, he had left. The cashier had sold the bottle to him for a quarter.

My mother had donated the bottle to the church. I suppose she was right, but it pained me to

think of Billy with his coins and bottles, and Norm and the others with the things their parents let

them keep.

For two years I faithfully read the newspaper and listened to every news program I could on

TV and radio. This should have alerted my parents – my preferring news programs to cartoons –

but I guess they were happy I was interested in things besides cartoons. Anyway, during all this

time there were no reports of missing people that fit the four I saw buried.

Finally at age 12, Norm told me the Harriman place had sold to a middle-aged couple named

“Cortle” – we called them “Ma and Pa Kettle.” I gave up on the secret of Harriman’s Pond. I was

beginning to believe that what I saw in Harriman’s Pond never happened. There were never any

clues as to who was killed, who did it, or why.

At that point, my life went into fast-forward. I grew up, went to college, graduated with a

degree in accounting, got married, had three children, then got divorced after seven years of

marriage. I married a second time, but after three years and one child, it too ended. It was time

for another twist of fate.

IV

Three tragedies were to occur within a month. My first wife died of breast cancer. Less than a

month later, my second wife was killed in an auto accident. Even though our marriages didn’t

work out, I still cried when I found out both had died. Two weeks later, my mother died of a

heart attack. I actually took time off from my job as a cost accountant to go to my first wife’s

funeral. In a way, it was a vacation since the job was such a drudgery. I was told that her parents

didn’t want me there, but I went anyway to the funeral home to view the body and to the church

for the memorial service.

I didn’t go to my second wife’s funeral, but I couldn’t avoid my own mother’s. When the

memorial service was over, I was startled by another familiar voice.

“Johnny!” Nobody had called me that in years. It was Norm Shane. “I knew your mother

didn’t care for me,” said Norm, “but I knew you’d be here, and I just had to see you again.”

“What are you doing now?” I asked.

“I teach high school biology. Billy Franks became a coin and antiques dealer.”

I probably could, too, I thought, if I had beaten Billy to that jar of coins.

78

“Oh, by the way, the old Harriman place is for sale again”, reported Norm, as though he were

reading my thoughts. “The Cortles – the ones we called ‘Ma and Pa Kettle’ – died in their sleep

at about the same time.”

I wonder how much they want for it.

“I understand it’s pretty cheap. There are stories going around that it’s haunted. Visions of

Old Lady Harriman’s bloated corpse appear from time to time, and sounds of a young boy

pleading for someone not to hurt his mother are heard by the pond.”

Then it did happen, my thoughts continued. Maybe if I could buy the property and have the

pond drained….

My aging father told me that he was selling our family home and moving into one of those

old folks’ homes known euphemistically as an “assisted living center.” I would get half the

money.

Within the next month, I owned the old Harriman place. I spent two nights sleeping on the

bed in the guest room before I returned temporarily to my accounting job. I spent much of those

days walking around the old pond. Its unusually clear waters revealed perch swimming merrily,

but no evidence of coins or soda bottles was ever apparent. Viewed from the end of the

driveway, the house and pond formed a serene scene from a June calendar page.

I’ve lived in the Harriman place for three years now with my new wife. The local kids love to

fish and boat on the pond. I haven’t seen any visions of Myrtle Harriman, either alive or bloated.

No visions of a murdered family have been seen, nor have sounds been heard.

The pond would never be drained; the police would never be called.

Somehow, it doesn’t matter any more.

John

Grosvenor

79

Brian

Hathcock

80

Brian

Hathcock

81

Brian

Hathcock

82

The Epic Cycle:

The Surrounding Questions and Their Possible Answers

AN INTRODUCTION

Before we were able to commit pen to paper, and even before cuneiform, there existed an

oral tradition. Instead of texts, oral soothsayers went about telling of great legends and myths

that involved such heroes as Achilles and Hektor, and, of course, of Zeus and the masses of gods

and goddesses that still surface in cultures and traditions today. Traditionally, the Homeric Epics,

that is the Iliad and Odyssey, are thought of as the original and only authentic epic myths of their

time. On the contrary, however, the Homeric epics were, more than likely, a very small but

influential part of the oral and epic traditions (Burgess).

Just as the word tradition denotes, before literacy, oral and epic bards carried on a legacy

of passing stories down from generation to generation. Therefore, as one may imagine, myths

were often recounted by many different people, and, in result, so began a metamorphosis, as it

were, into what we know of these myths today. A significant part of that oral tradition is what

scholars tend to call the Epic Cycle. In evaluating the Epic Cycle and the Trojan War as they

relate to Homeric and Non-Homeric Texts, I will present and discuss a summary of the Epic

Cycle and its individual works, its history and origin, and the role that Homeric tradition plays in

the scheme of such oral and written institutions. As Jonathan S. Burgess states in reference to

Proclus’ summary, the Epic Cycle is valued more for its “sequence” than for “poetic worth” (16).

Therefore, in examining the Epic Cycle, that will be referred to throughout the remainder of this

paper as the Cycle, in turn, we are examining the significance of an entire oral tradition, as we

know of it today.

THE CYCLE: A SUMMARY

Although the Cycle and oral tradition, as it were, no longer subsists, the remains present us

with fragmented evidence of their original existence. In the Cycle, there remain these

identifiable, but somewhat disputed, parts: the Cypria, Homer’s Iliad, the Aithiopis, the Little

Iliad, the Ilioupersis, the Nostoi, the Odyssey, and the Telegony (Burgess 143). Some scholars

believe that other sections may have existed long ago because what vestiges is very fragmented

and aphetic.

As previously alluded to, the residual Cycle is of great importance to the study of Homeric

and non-Homeric texts. However, the significance of the Cycle will be discussed in a later

section of this paper. For now, we shall turn our attention to summarizing each part of the Cycle

so that a correlation between the Homeric and non-Homeric epics and the Cycle is more visible.

First, we will examine the Cypria. In short, the Cypria, as the largely believed beginning of

the Cycle, is where Zeus, along with Themis, plans the Trojan War (Nagy 1-2). This work is

believed by Richard Lattimore to have lasted for eleven elaborative books (26). Of course, as is

the case with all parts of the Cycle, with the exception of the Iliad, Proclus’ summary does not

elaborate enough to show evidence of all books. It is, in fact, a summary.

Thus, the summary of the Cypria bears witness to the infamous judgment of the

goddesses, Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, by Paris. The judgment takes place on Mount Ida, and,

therefore, sets everything on its destined course with Paris taking Helen as his promised prize for

83

judging in favor of Aphrodite. As a result, Menelaos gathers his men and they set sail for Troy to

fight the war that would not subside until ten years later. During the action of this part of the

Cycle, Achilles receives his armor and begins to fight through various battles. As a ransom, he

receives Briseis as his war prize. As end of the Cypria approaches, Zeus makes plans to remove

Achilles from the Achaean alliance, along with various others who were pitted against the

Trojans. Thus, “the Iliad follows the Cypria” and the audience plays witness to Achilles

continuously disengaging and re-engaging in battle (Nagy 2).

The Iliad, as we know of it today, is most widely attributed to Homer. Who or what

Homer will be a matter under discussion in the segment that follows the summary of the Cycle.

In continuing our summary of the Cycle, the Iliad, in following the Cypria, covers the remainder

of the rising action in Trojan War. More importantly, it provides the climax of the War with

many heated and gruesome battles. The War spans over a timeframe of ten years and the Iliad for

24 books (Lattimore). As a result, one may reason that the Iliad is of the most consequence to the

Cycle. However, if not for the “lesser” books of the Cycle, the Iliad would appear as if it were

out of context from any other existing work of literature, aside from the Odyssey, which comes

into being approximately sixteen books after the Iliad, depending on the scholar and the

translation.

Continuing in our summary, during the course of action in the Iliad Hektor is murdered by

Achilles, because of Hektor killing Patro’klos. Countless other lives, that often go unmentioned,

are taken as well. After Achilles agrees to return Hektor’s body to his father Priam, Book 24

ends, and, as a result, the Iliad concludes with the ceremony and burial of Hektor, by his people

(Lattimore 496). This may seem a suitable ending to such a long and exhausting war. However,

on the contrary, there are ‘loose ends’ that continue to hang about in this great epic tradition of

Achilles, Paris, Agamemnon, Menelaos, Odysseus, and the list could reach an immeasurable

length. Therefore, it is significant to note that the infamous Greek epic does not end with the

Iliad. In contrast, it continues for an infinite length of performance and time.

It is generally accepted, and is indicated in the summary by Proclus, as translated by

Gregory Nagy, that the Aithiopis trails the Iliad in the sequence of the Cycle (2). This work of the

Cycle is believed by Nagy, and Lattimore, to have been five books in length (Nagy 2) (Lattimore

26). Proclus’ summary of the Aithiopis begins with the coming of the Amazons and concludes

with Odysseus and Aias’ feuding over the armor that belongs to Achilles, after his death at the

hand of Paris and his body being taken away by Thetis (3). Richmond Lattimore, in contrast to

Proclus and, in affect, Nagy, notes the suicide of Aias, presumably over the loss of Achilles’

armor (26).

As the summary of the Cycle continues on, it is important to draw attention to such

discrepancies, as in the example of the conclusion of the Aithiopis. As will be noted later in the

discussion, variations of the Cycle persist and grow more frequent as the tradition continues.

Nevertheless, the Little Iliad is consistently agreed upon as the work that follows the Aithiopis.

In these four very condensed books, Proclus has the judgment for the armor of Achilles. (This is

case in point to the continuous debate of the action in each part of the Cycle). “…Odysseus wins

by the machinations of Athena, but Aias goes mad and defiles the herds of the Achaeans and

kills himself” (3). “After winning the armor, “Odysseus goes on an ambush and captures Helenos

and, because of Helenos’ prophecy about the city’s conquest, Diomedes fetches Philoktetes from

Lemnos” (3). The Little Iliad closes with the wooden horse, secretly inhibited by Achaeans,

being accepted into the walls of Troy and the Trojans feast, assuming they had defeated the

Achaeans(4).

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In the Ilioupersis, which originally consisted of two books, the Trojans grow suspicious of

the horse and, therefore, begin to debate on a course of action to rid themselves of the horse. One

group’s opinion wins out and the Trojans dedicate the horse to Athena, considering it a gift or

hieros (4). In result of their decision, and in honoring Athena, the Trojans feast “as if they had

been released

from the war” (4). Then, as is well known and accepted, begins the invasion of the city of Troy

by the Achaeans and, shortly thereafter, the fall of Troy with King Priam being slain by

Neoptolemos, son of Achilles (4). According, again, to Nagy’s translation, the Ilioupersis ends

with the Achaeans sailing off “while Athena plots destruction for them on the seas” (4).

The final five books before the beginning of the Odyssey, often called the Nostoi, or The

Returns by Lattimore, sees the homecoming, and death, of a few Achaeans (5) (Lattimore 26).

Phoenix dies along the way home and Agamemnon is murdered by Clytemnestra and Aigisthos

(5). Among those that return safely are Menelaos and Neoptolemos, who is with Peleus as the

Nostoi concludes (5).

At this point in the Cycle, Odysseus is still on his journey home, a journey that will take

him another ten years. This ten-year expedition is the obvious premise for the Odyssey, which,

like the Iliad, is commonly attributed to the Homeric tradition. Proclus’ summary, in the

translation of Nagy, ends with the Nostoi. However, Lattimore and others continue the Cycle

with the Odyssey and the Telegony, which lasts until Odysseus’ death (26).

Although the Odyssey is a widely accepted Homeric work, it is interesting to note that

Proclus’ summary mentions the Iliad but not the Odyssey. So, why is there no mention of the

Odyssey and the Telegony in Proclus’ summary? Odysseus is a major character and a ‘loose end’

that warrants attention and a conclusion. Perhaps Proclus’ assumed that the Odyssey and the

Telegony were popular enough go without mentioning in the Cycle.

Nevertheless, this point brings to surface questions that have continued for centuries

surrounding Homeric and Non-Homeric texts, particularly the Cycle (Nagy). “Independent

testimonies often indicate that the poems of the Cycle once covered more textual territory than

Proclus provides” (Burgess 133). Therefore, it is possible that the editors of the Cycle have

synthetically imposed the divisions that exist between the works (Burgess 135). Yet, verse

beginnings and endings that arose from the exigencies of rhapsodic performance may have led

directly to later textual divisions, just as it is sometimes supposed that performance led to the

Homeric book divisions (Knight 27). For example, the division between the Aethiopis and the

Little Iliad indicated by Proclus is odd; one poem ends with dispute arising over Achilles' arms

and the next begins with the judgment on them. “The early, independent manifestations of these

poems would have not have had such abrupt starts and stops, but rhapsodes performing these

portions of each poem together may well have effected such a transition” (Burgess 137).

“Reduplication of material exists at some divisions in the Proclus summary” (Burgess

138). The Little Iliad ends with the Trojans holding a victory feast after having hauled the

wooden horse into the city, whereas the Ilioupersis begins with this same victory feast. Then, the

Ilioupersis ends with the Greeks sailing off from Troy, whereas the Nosti begins with the Greeks

still there (Nagy 4-5). Moreover, the Telegony seems to overlap with the Odyssey: the Cyclic

poem opens with the

burial of the suitors, though a burial of the suitors occurs in book 24 of the Homeric epic

(Lattimore 26).

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HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF THE CYCLE

The questions’ surrounding inconsistencies or discrepancies in the Cycle leads our

discussion into the history and origin of the Cycle. When and how did it come to be? Were the

Iliad or the Odyssey, which are largely considered Homeric texts, forerunners to the epic and oral

traditions? Alternatively, were the other works of the Cycle, known and unknown, the cause for

the creation of the Homeric texts? (Nagy, Burgess, Kirk, Knight).

As Gregory Nagy frequently presents possible educated solutions to the questions that

have been presented in this section, he, among others, seems to be a logical choice for

consultation in almost areas under question. However, we will first discuss the very basis and

origin of the Cycle by using the research of W.F. Jackson Knight and his contemporary Jonathan

S. Burgess.

Knight maintained in his 1968 publishing Many-Minded Homer that: “the Cyclic epic of

about 800 to about 550 B.C. is lost but for short fragments” (27). He, like many others of his

time was certain that the Homeric texts preceded the other remnants of the Cycle, and was most

certain that there was a superior man and poet named Homer. Conversely, we recognize today

that only some of Knight’s views have remained accurate. Much has changed in the study of the

Cycle and Homer since 1968.

While Burgess, along with most oral and epic tradition scholars, affirms that the poems of

the Cycle are lost, he says, “what we know about them from ancient evidence is extremely

important for our understanding of myth about the Trojan War” (1). Therefore, while it may be

argued that the Iliad and the Odyssey came before the Cycle, the argument of Homeric texts as

more important pieces than Non-Homeric texts no longer appears to be as common a school of

thought as it was in the mid- Twentieth century. In fact, Burgess goes on to argue, that “if the

tradition of the Trojan War were a tree, initially the Iliad and Odyssey would have been a couple

of small branches, whereas the Cycle poems would be somewhere in the trunk” (1).

I will digress for a moment and visit the questions of when and how the Cycle came to be.

While there are no definite answers to the time in which the Cycle came into existence, many

scholars, such as the ones mentioned above, have made educated assumptions of the time and the

manner in which each work of the Cycle came into existence. The Cypria is believed by some to

have been written in the time of Homer, or in a time unknown, most likely by Homer (Knight

22), or by Stasinos of Cyprus or Hegesias (Lattimore 26). The Iliad, of course as a largely

accepted Homeric text, is believed to have been written or set down by a collaboration of poets,

although some still believe Homer to be a man, ‘blind poet’, and the mastermind of Greek epic.

The time of the Iliad’s origin is, for the most part, in question (Nagy). Surprisingly, the Aithiopis

has a highly agreed upon origin date and “author”. Richmond Lattimore names the author as

Arkintinos of Miletos during the time of 744-776 B.C. The Illioupersis is believed to have the

same original author and date as the Aithiopis. The Little Iliad, on the other hand, conflicts in it’s

origin in reference to time, but is believed to have been the work of Lesches of Lesbos

(Lattimore). In Proclus’ summary, Nagy attributes the Nostoi to Agias of Trozen but does not

give a time of origin (5). In addition, while the Odyssey is believed to have had the same source

of time and authorship as the Iliad, the Telegony is believed by Lattimore to have come into

existence in 568 B.C. from a Eugammon of Kyrene (26).

It is significant to note that, while most of the works of the Cycle are believed to have had

varying “writers”, though fragmented, they all work together to tell a similar story of the events

leading up to the Trojan War, the War, and the homecoming of its survivors. Knight believed the

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non-Homeric parts of the Cycle were “composed in order to give a complete if artificial story,

rather than created in service to a single poetic vision of the condition of man” (28). However,

Knight came from a different time and school of thought than Nagy and Burgess. Moreover, I

have already established that Burgess believes the Cycle is to be valued more for its “sequence”

than its “poetic worth” (Burgess 16) (Blair 2). Yet, one should not that, even in its entirety, the

Epic Cycle gives a discontinuous account of the mythological past. “There are gaps between its

main Theogonic, Theban, and Trojan sections, and many sub-cycles that could have potentially

been included, (say, the deeds of Heracles) have been omitted. In this respect, the Epic Cycle

may reflect another strategy of presentation: discontinuous performance” (Kirk, 161).

However, even though most now tend to disagree with Knight’s school of thought that the

Cycle was created simply to complete the Homeric epics, Bryan Hainsworth places the

somewhat more vexing question of which work preceded the other, in perspective. He maintains

that, “nothing of this is beyond dispute, but the last point, that the cyclic poems existing in

classical times were composed in the shadow of the Homeric epics, has too many, from ancient

times onward, to be among the least disputable” (1). Therefore, while it is almost impossible to

argue that the Cycle preceded the Homeric epics in time of origin, based on the concrete

evidence already provided; it is feasible to argue that the non-Homeric works of the Cycle are

just as significant to the scheme of the oral epic and written epic traditions as the Homeric epics

(Burgess, Nagy, Beye). Nevertheless, as Nagy addresses in his book, Homeric Questions, “if the

poetry of the Cycle were fully attested, it is quite possible that we would conclude that the Iliad

and the Odyssey are indeed artistically superior” (22). However, as it continues to be now, with

the Cycle remaining quite fragmented, Nagy maintains that, “the attribution of their preeminence

[to the Cycle], however to artistic superiority over other epics is merely an assumption” (22).

HOMERIC TRADITION IN THE SCHEME OF EPIC INSTITUTIONS

The debate over the supremacy of the Homeric tradition over the Non-Homeric, once

again, brings to surface the matters surrounding the creation of these ancient epics. Were the

Homeric and non-Homeric epics entirely of an oral tradition? Alternatively, are the epics a

product of many written texts? Furthermore, was Homer a man or a collaboration of many oral

bards or writers? Lastly, what is the span of the Homeric tradition’s influence?

While the questions posed in this segment of my paper may seem well established to

Homeric and non-Homeric scholars alike, such queries continue to be members of the great

speculation surrounding such studies, as they are unresolved (Lang). Thus, the exploration of

such wonderments goes on and we find ourselves walking through the pages of identifiable

Homeric texts and highly assumingly non-Homeric texts in search of answers to our quandaries.

In reference to the Cycle, such inquiries mean a great deal, as their works are significant to

the Homeric tradition. Nevertheless, because of the difference in their style and voice, a firm

decision as to whether or not the Cycle belongs in the Homeric tradition has yet to be established.

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the Cycle is of a non-Homeric tradition, it would

still be in epic relation to the Homeric works because of the oral and ancient written traditions

(Burgess 136-139).

During the Archaic Age, little was known of Homer and “his” setting down of the oral

tradition into the Homeric epics, as we know of them today. In addition, many soothsayers were

reciting similar tales of the Trojan War. Hence, acknowledging that bards of the same oral

tradition went about singing similar tales gives less credit to the idea of Homer as single poet. No

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one person could be given credit for such a tradition since a plethora of bards went about reciting

similar tales (Burgess 136-139). In fact, Hainsworth concludes that the very “language and

diction of Homer” alludes to the belief that the Trojan War epics were composed over a long

period of time and are the patchwork, if you will, of many bards singing the tales in “episodes”

(1).

However, Burgess maintains that these epics of tradition could not be an entire product of

oral tradition and recitation (4). If so, who would be in charge of accurately passing down such a

tradition? Such a quandary would be impossible to answer without consulting the extensive

research and works of Milman Parry and Albert Lord [Homer’s Typical Scenes: Homeric Theme

and Cognitive Script]. Parry and Lord were instrumental in establishing the idea of “typical

scenes” in Homer and the epic tradition. Their research concludes that the tradition of Homer

was a combination of singers and written texts.

“Typical scenes” tend to indicate that there existed a rhapsodic formula for the recitation of

these epics. According to Parry, a typical scene is a recurrent sequence, which is narrated “with

many of the same details and many of the same words” (404). These typical scenes tend to

involve action sequences such as funeral rites, contests, journeys, harnessing horses, dressing,

visits, and meals. In addition, various speech acts, including rebukes, challenges, prayers,

exhortations, and boasts, although they were not taken into consideration by Parry and Lord, are

typical Homeric scenes (404).

It is largely because of recurrent ideas or events in Homeric works that the suggestion of

stereotypical, regimented scenes has been made. “Themes are the building blocks of narrative:

when strung together, they become the story (Lord 95-96). However, Parry and Lord appeared to

believe that these performances were holistically oral.

While this may not be the case, their theories tend to sway the speculation of their ideas

toward the oral tradition. Conversely, Nagy, while he highly pays tribute to the work of Parry

and Lord and acknowledges the previous existence of rhapsodic singers, often disagrees with the

idea of a formula and holistically oral composition (22). As Nagy upholds:

“Such a requirement of oral poetry is often assumed,

without justification, by both proponents and opponents

of the idea that Homeric poetry is based on oral poetry.

I disagree. To assume that whatever is being meant in

Homeric poetry is determined by such formal considerations

as formula or meter (as when experts say that the formula

or meter made the poet say this or that) is to misunderstand

the relationship of form and content in oral poetics.”

(22).

Furthermore, in accepting the Homeric, and non-Homeric, tradition as a compilation of

written texts, we accept Homer as a collective voice over time, not a single poet. This matter is

still, however, up for some debate, as Charles Rowan Beye once observed, “In modern times the

elements of pre-historic Greece have begun to come to light, but Homer grows no more familiar.

‘He’ remains “Homer”, “the poet or poets of the Iliad and Odyssey, “the bard,” almost totally

anonymous because he so rarely reveals himself in his epics” (75-76).

Nevertheless, while most scholars have all but ruled out Homer as an actual author, the

belief in a collective setting down of the Tradition still exists; which would mean that the entire

epic tradition was not holistically oral nor was it entirely a written text in a time when most could

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not write (Burgess 12-13). In fact, I would like to present the idea that the Tradition may have

been partly pictorial in origination. This would serve to explain why there exists so much pottery

and art surrounding the epics with definite ages crossed from one set of works to another.

In adding to the mysteries surrounding the Cycle and the Tradition of the Trojan War,

there is a definite contrast of views from the Bronze Age to the Archaic Age, and even into the

present (Kirk 106). With this in mind, one may ask, what is to come in the study of such an

intrinsic and mystifying tradition? Nagy and Burgess seem to have a monopoly on the

contemporary schools of thought in the areas of the Homeric traditions and the Epic Cycle. Still,

what is the intrinsic value of such extensive studies of the ancient traditions? I would like to

suggest that the answer(s) to this particular question is all around us.

Even as we live and breathe in the age of postmodern thought and endless technology, the

influence of the Greeks and their Tradition surrounds us all. It exists in our culture through

architecture, various medias, including music and movies, and this could go on. The basis of our

cultural philosophies and psychology resides within this great Tradition. The influence of the

Greeks and their institutions surround us all.

A CONCLUSION

In closing, it is significant to note that the influence of the Greeks does not solely reside in

the accepted Homeric works. Although, as previously stated, the Homeric epics are widely

thought of as being superior, both the Homeric works and the Epic Cycle are believed by experts

to be invaluable in the continuing study of the ancient Tradition. In fact, as Burgess notes in the

final chapter of his book, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer & the Epic Cycle, “the

Homeric epics and the poems of the Epic Cycle stem from a common heritage of story and

myth’. Yet, they are not viewed as dependent upon the Homeric works as they do not have “any

direct relationship to one another” (154-155).

Instead, the Epic Cycle and the Homeric works are valued, in part, because of the tradition

that they provide to us. The Iliad and the Odyssey will most likely continue to be viewed in the

eyes of scholars and teachers as the “superior” texts. Yet, the Epic Cycle owes little to the

Homeric tradition because they co-exist. Even with the Homeric works in place, the Epic Cycle

remains “fragmented” (Burgess 174). Therefore, even though the Homeric epics may have

existed before the Epic Cycle, the Cycle itself was not set down for completing the Iliad and

Odyssey. There are too many differences between these works to make this assumption.

However, what is known is that “the poems of the Cycle cannot be appreciated because they are

lost” (Burgess 175). In contrast, what is not lost is the insight that the poems of the Epic Cycle

bring to the ancient myth of the Trojan War.…”Through fragments, testmonia, and summaries

they can be valued as a window into ancient myth about the Trojan War” (Burgess 175).

Ashley

Blair

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Bibliography of Cited and Consulted Works

Beye, Charles Rowan. The ILIAD, the ODYSSEY, and the Epic Tradition. Macmillan &

Co. LTD, London. 1966 & 1968.

Burgess, Jonathan S. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer & the Epic Cycle. The

John Hopkins University Press, Canada. 2001.

Hainsworth, Bryan. The Tradition of the Trojan War (Book). Academic Search Premier,

Winter 2002/2003. Vol. 72, Issue 1. 1-2.

Kirk, G.S. Homer and the Oral Tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London.

1976.

Knight, W.F. Jackson. Many-Minded Homer. Barnes & Noble, Inc. New York, N. Y. 1968.

Lang, Andrew. Homer and the Epic. AMS Press, INC., New York, N.Y. 1893, 1970.

Lattimore, Richmond. Homer. The Iliad of Homer. The University of Chicago Press,

Chicago, IL. London. 1951, 1961.

Parry, Milman & Albert Lord. “Homer’s Typical Scenes: Homeric Theme and Cognitive

Script”, 1971. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1-69.

Nagy, Gregory. Homeric Questions. The University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas. 1996,

2005.

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Brian

Hathcock

91

The Posthuman Identity:

Theorizing the Body and Consciousness in the Late Postmodern Age

In the beginning, there was the word of God alone that lived; there was logos – the Word

of life – that patiently held its silence over the slumbering abyss until this void could no longer

stand the vast, empty silence of its own darkness. And then the silence broke, the Word called

out across the great emptiness; like thunder it spoke, like lightning it heated the void with the

warmth of its breath, then exhaled into all forms the rhythm, the movement, the spirit of life.

And God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness….1” From the dust of the earth

“God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he

created them.2” And “Amen,” said the man as he admired the stunning form and enchanting

beauty of his Heaven-crafted flesh. And so it is that for nearly two millennia, the Western world

has devoted itself to the Judeo-Christian belief that God created human beings in his own image,

not only physically, but also perhaps even mentally or spiritually as well. In the Word, the West

found the eternal monument, the heavenly testament to the integrity of the human being that

justified humankind’s mortal image as an earth-bound reflection of God – a body respected and

revered as an image of the divine, a consciousness treasured as the breath of the divine soul; and

thus, “man” was honored as an earth-bound reflection hoping to be united in the end with its

celestial caster. But, what happens to this reflection of God when the mirror begins to become

sullied, tainted, obscured? Upon the weary, withering back of Genesis we have placed the

onerous weight of “man,” and it appears in the early 21st century, that this is a burden that neither

Genesis nor God can bear any longer.

The late postmodern age3 has witnessed the rise of technological discourses

4 that have

fronted an all-out assault upon the human body and consciousness as people have traditionally

come to understand these two very important aspects of their individual, as well as collective,

forms of identity. The increasing prevalence of the posthuman discourses of biotechnology,

bionic science, and electronic communications – which as I would argue are only in their

incipient stages – have invaded both the body itself and human structural perception (both self

and external conscious awareness), systematically erasing thousands of years of knowledge

human beings have formed about themselves and also instituting a new era in understanding the

human body and mind. No longer do the humanist apologies for the integrity of the body,

consciousness, and human nature hold weight, which has caused several poststructuralists to

declare boldly the “death of man.5” In order to keep such disquieting thought at bay, Neil

1 Genesis 1:26

2 Genesis 1:27

3 I do not mean to suggest here that the postmodern era of technology and thought is necessarily coming to an end

(although some scholars and theorists have suggested such). Rather, I simply use the adjective “late” to denote not

only the last decade or so, along with the present, but also to denote the coming decade as well. 4 My use of the term “discourse” means more than a “science” or a “practice.” I mean to suggest also that

“discourse” is both a system of power (in this case, a technologically defined and driven one) that controls or

reshapes humanity’s own perception and knowledge of itself, as well as the truth statements, claims, or beliefs about

ourselves that are negotiated and structured through these technologies also. As such, these discourses define how

humans identify themselves collectively. The definition I give here is influenced by the work of Michel Foucault. 5 This is an antihumanist or constructivist (I use this term in place of anti-essentialism) slogan, most notably

championed by Foucault in his Order of Things, which holds that the concept of “man” as universal and endowed

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Badmington has argued for the need of humanism in the 21st century to adapt to contemporary

trends in technology, appropriating a form of thought that can situate new discourse within a

traditional understanding and affirmation of the human subject. He argues against posthuman

apocalyptic accounts of the death of man stating, “If technology has truly sped ‘us’ outside and

beyond the space of humanism, why is ‘Man’ still at ‘our’ side? If ‘Man’ is present at ‘his’ own

funeral, how can ‘he’ possibly be dead? What looks on lives on” (13). However, in the age of

posthuman discourses, when “Man” assumes the role of God in creating an identical image of

himself in the form of a clone, when “Man” substitutes a flawed organ for a perfected machine

within his own body, when “Man” can no longer distance himself from the machine or even

distinguish himself from it, and when “Man” assumes various disembodied forms of identity

through the vast regions of cyberspace, I think that, in response to Badmington, it is more

appropriate to ask, “Who or what is living and looking on at the ‘death of man’?” In this paper, I

will examine various positions on the human body, as well as human consciousness, in the wake

of the prevalence of late postmodern technological discourses, and I will explore how material

and mental interaction may possibly take shape in the posthuman world. I will also attempt to

theorize what implications the interaction of posthuman discourses with the human body and

mind possesses in determining possible modes of human identity in the future, an interaction that

may erase stable conceptions of the “human” altogether.

Posthumanism,6 or what Eugene Thacker deems as “extropianism” in his study of this

ideology, has already attempted to address the need for humanism to readapt its traditional

conceptualization of human identification to current technological innovations and trends.

Extropianism is a new, progressive form of humanism that still champions many of the same

values as Enlightenment humanism, such as self-awareness and reflection, the belief in

technological progress and optimism, as well as the value of rational thought and reason

(Thacker 75). Extropianism seeks to harmoniously integrate the “human” with the “posthuman”

in order to redefine (or continually discover) what exactly it means to be a human being, while at

the same time still protecting the integrity of the human body. The problem then persists,

however, of how exactly we are to reconcile a potentially dehumanizing posthuman world with

the belief in the integrity of the “human.” To prevent the horrific potential of future

dehumanization posed by the threat of “technological determinism” upon the body, Thacker

believes that posthuman discourses can be neutralized into forms that seek to progressively

enhance the human body while maintaining respect for its natural biology. “Extropianism

necessitates an ontological separation,” he states, “between human and machine. It needs this

segregation in order to guarantee the agency of human subjects in determining their own

future…” (77). Contrary to professing an apocalyptic encounter with the posthuman,

extropianist thought is highly optimistic of humankind’s ability to retain its own self-

determination. Extropianism sees the future as a promising posthumanist utopia, where novel

advances in research and technologies from genetic and cellular engineering to organ and tissue

regeneration, as well as stem cell research, free the body from its previous mortal constraints –

with natural rights is a modern invention, formed by the social and human sciences (psychology, anthropology,

sociology, medicine, etc.). It denies that there is a universal, permanent human nature that can be used by humanists

or essentialists to defend a human integrity or natural “essence.” 6 Posthumanism does not represent the belief that humans are no longer “human.” Rather, it is a collection of

contemporary thought that views human beings as adaptable to new forms of technology that, consequently, seem to

have redefined what it means to be “human.” Posthumanism is not to be confused with other trends in posthuman

thought that do indeed see humans as losing their human essence as the bionic, biotech, and ecomm discourses

rapidly advance.

93

such as disease, deformity, and dilapidation – enabling a higher standard of human life than

heretofore feasibly imaginable.

Extropianism’s encounter with the human body, however, is one that completely realigns

traditional perceptions of corporeality and material presence. Thacker’s fundamental argument

about posthumanism is that it doesn’t necessarily discard materiality or the human body, but that

it equates the body with information, interpreting materiality in terms of a pattern or code of

useful information available for technological processing (86). Thacker’s extropianist thought

posits the human body and somatic form of identity as genetic code, as “information” for the

biotech discourse, which is to act solely in the service of the body’s own technology-driven

evolution. As such, the body then becomes liberated from previous material constrictions with

discourse at its service to address all of its various needs. “The logic of informatic essentialism

is…,” writes Thacker unreservedly, “the emancipation of the biological body through the

technical potential of informatics” (87). By being able to harness the medical potential of the

human genome, extropianism claims that humans can begin to take control of their own modes

of materiality. The extropianist faith is that posthuman discourses, such as biotech, now serve

the natural human body in reconstituting its natural, biological state whenever it comes under

attack from the “real” agents of dehumanization in disease, deformation, warfare, and aging. In

his enthusiastic optimism of posthumanism’s progressive restructuring of biological corporeality,

Thacker regards posthuman materiality as “A body that, as information, can be technically

manipulated, controlled, and monitored through information technologies” (89). Although the

body may lose its traditional mode of materiality, no need to worry claims Thacker when he

states, “By harnessing biological…processes and directing them toward novel therapeutic

ends…nature remains natural, the biological remains biological” (93). This rationale seems

hardly feasible, however, and the human body and identity as “informatic essentialism,” as

reduced genetic code for technological manipulation, seems highly subversive to a theory of

natural human advancement and evolution still encompassed within the parameters of human

essentialism – a fundamental strain of humanist thought. The body genetic as an experimental

station for the biotech discourse seems potentially dehumanizing and alienating, and

extropianism’s problematic relationship with somatic identity seems to be an ambivalent one at

best, a relationship that seeks, ironically, to affirm materiality by denying the traditional human

body and claiming its liberation from traditional constraints. Consequently, this is a complex

and perplexing view of the body that has not held well with the traditional conventions of

contemporary humanist thought.

The traditional humanist position is one that respects the integrity of the natural state of

the human body – unaffected and unadorned by the “aid” of discourse – and one that professes

“human nature” as the universal basis of a consummated view of the human being. Bart Simon

adeptly summarizes humanist fears regarding the perceived threat of the posthuman world:

If unchecked…progress threatens to alter the conditions of our common humanity

with the prospect of terrible social costs…genetic technologies will alter the

material and biological basis of the natural human equality that serves as the basis

of political equality and human rights” (1).

If posthuman discourses are not kept in check, the prevailing fear is that human nature itself

could possibly face annihilation from the formidable opponent of a renegade science working

against traditional human corporeality. One of the thinkers on the front lines of this battle is the

humanist theorist, Francis Fukuyama. Like extropianists, Fukuyama also claims that true human

identity is genetic, and not socially determined as the antihumanists and social constructivists

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hold.7 However, unlike his extropian counterparts, Fukuyama believes that the biological body

must be protected from any attempts by discourse at “self-modification,” and that highly

advanced human nature must also be spared from any possible assaults upon its genetic

composition that biotech posits (Fukuyama 172). Fukuyama makes it explicitly clear in his book

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution that he, as well as other

thinkers on the traditional humanist side of the posthuman equation, wants to protect the integrity

of the natural, biologically determined body, along with human nature itself as humans have

traditionally understood this concept. While Fukuyama’s conventional stance on materiality is

threatened, and possibly, on the verge of vanishing further into the posthuman age, the

dehumanizing potential of a posthuman form of corporeality seems alienating to the natural,

biologically conceptualized image of humans. Perhaps, as Bart Simon – a contemporary

posthuman theorist – argues in his essay, an approach needs to be systemized that will not only

realize the potential for posthuman technologies in benefiting humanity, but also, will

synchronously respect both the integrity of the human body and what it means to be “human.”

Although extropianism claims to have met this need, perhaps another form of negotiation can be

reached between the body and machine, between human and biotech; an approach that doesn’t

necessarily view materiality as the playground of science (always on the threat of going awry in

the postmodern era), and yet harmonizes traditional views of the human body with contemporary

modes of thought and technology as well.

If it is difficult and befuddling to adequately account for an authentic form of biological

materiality in the posthuman world as either a stable or a progressive somatic human identity,

then theorizing an authentic human consciousness and its interaction with the material body in

this same world is no less problematic. In his study of consciousness and mental perception in

the posthuman world, William Haney asks “Does the brain’s neural activity give rise to

consciousness, and is consciousness an epiphenomenon of the brain or an autonomous entity?”

(88). This question was not even adequately answered before the arrival of posthuman

discourses, making the mind/body dual(ity) in the late postmodern era a more exciting and

raucous brawl then ever before. If consciousness is, indeed, autonomous, then it would seem

that technology would be incapable of ever truly reproducing an exact replica of human

essentialism in a machine or computer; however, if consciousness is purely a function of the

body, then perhaps discourse would be capable of reproducing a seemingly authentic form of

human consciousness. To account for this dilemma, Haney promotes what he calls “non-

intentional pure consciousness” as the subtlest form of human nature itself. In defining this

concept, Haney cites Robert Forman as stating: “It is a reflexive or self-referential form of

knowing. I know my consciousness and I know that I am and have been conscious simply

because I am it” (169). In substantiating his views about human nature, Haney cites Forman

even further: “This cognitive stasis, as a unity of knower, known and process of knowing, helps

to define what it means to be human” (169). Haney thus believes in the dignity and integrity of

human consciousness as embedded within its self-reflexive form of perception, that is, in the

distinctly unique human ability to be aware of and to identify with its own consciousness and

thinking.

Haney claims that non-intentional pure consciousness is a form of knowing and

awareness well beyond the need of any such factors as language and external communication, as

well as cognitive interpretation of these, which so often negotiate the intentional thinking and

7 For a brief, yet detailed and concise, analysis of the antagonistic schools of thought of humanism/essentialism vs.

antihumanism/contructionism, consult Ward’s Postmodernism, pgs. 135-37.

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perceiving form of consciousness. In other words, non-intentional pure consciousness is a unity

of the process of knowing with “knowing” or self-awareness itself as directly manifested by the

thinking human subject without the need for external mediation, unlike intentional

consciousness, which is the process of knowing as dictated both through factors outside of

consciousness itself, such as language and materiality, as well as the cognitive perception of

materiality also. As such, Haney firmly believes, along with such thinkers as Hubert Dreyfus,8

that neither computers nor machines (artificial intelligence) will ever be capable of duplicating

an exact replica of human conscious identity, simply because this self-reflexive form of non-

intentional consciousness would be unavailable to them, technology incapable of ever producing

such a form of conscious self-reflection through a systematic collection of codified mathematical

thought. He uses the classic Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein to demonstrate his point:

As an archetypal cyborg, the monster is an outsider to pure consciousness, the one

feature indispensable for connectedness…As a composite body, Victor’s monster

identifies with the content of its awareness [intentional consciousness]9 and shows

little tendency to transcend the material body and the thought of its condition. (87-

172)

Haney seems to argue here for a strict form of authentic conscious identity – that being involved

within a Cartesian form of pure intellect or a disembodied thinking mind. Although he views

posthuman technologies as essentially impotent in ever reproducing an authentic conscious

experience and identity within a computer or machine, Haney expresses understandable fears

about the threat of discourse to the conscious experience itself of human beings. “If the

neurophysiological basis of human nature is radically modified through bionic technology,” he

warns, “we may lose the ability to sustain an experience of self-awareness beyond our socially

constructed identity” (177). In other words, the human/machine symbiosis of the posthuman era

could signify a potential for the alteration of non-intentional pure consciousness (possibly even

preventing it), leaving only the intentional, unstable, and corporeally constructed conscious

identity.

With the arrival of posthuman discourses that have sought to substitute natural processes

of biology with the machine in an attempt to strengthen the human body, and with the attempts

by AI to reproduce subjective human experience through replicated consciousness, technology

itself can now be viewed as trying to mediate biological determinism for both the body and the

mind. In cyberspace, the posthuman relationship of body, consciousness, and identity, as

negotiated through technology, is taken to the outer limits – it’s taken to a veritable twilight

zone. “Cybernetic technologies,” states Glenn Ward, “suggest novel ways of getting out of

social (and perhaps even biological) limitations on identity by creating new, boundary-blurring

images of self” (128). Cyberspace, more than an entity where worldwide communication rapidly

takes place beyond any previous measures known to humans, reaches the zenith of the ecomm

discourse in its role as the new age identity marketplace. With the rise of Multi-User Domains,

bulletin boards, newsgroups, and chat rooms, virtual communities that enable users to

“purchase” various personae and “shop” various aspects of the so-called “self10

” have replaced

8 Dreyfus is a professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley. His scholarship has been key in leading a skeptical, united

front against the field of artificial intelligence (AI). 9 Mine.

10 Several postmodern theorists have argued against the concept of the “self.” Such thinkers as Foucault, Lacan,

Deleuze, and Guattari have viewed the self as a destabilized center, signifying no unified form of reality as the basis

for subjective experience.

96

conventional means of individual identification. In cyberspace, textual description takes the

place of human materiality as people gain a chance at expressing unexplored modes of personal

identification through the anonymity of screen life (Turkle 643). Annette Burfoot cites the work

of Katherine Hayles in theorizing changes in human identity brought about by material and

technological interchange. Burfoot explains Hayles’s notion of identity in cyberspace by

describing the latter’s conception of “two bodies,” one being the “enacted body” that is made of

flesh, and the other being the “represented body” that is conceptualized through verbal, textual,

and semiotic markers (59). The “enacted body,” as I understand it and adopt the phrase,

represents identity as determined through both the perception of finite space and material

presence. I would argue also that the “represented body,” the cyberbody, on the other hand,

suggests a disembodied human identity as determined by the perception of infinite space upon

the Web. Within the “represented body” is the defiance of materiality and millennia of human

experience – here is the end of corporeality through a global network of thinking Cartesian

minds.

Cyberspace subjects a new form of human identity that denies material presence and

affirms the assimilation of the human being into various flitting and unstable modes of conscious

identity– a cyberconsciousness. As Ward states about human interaction with computer

technology, “It often involves an escape from the limitations, vulnerabilities and clumsiness of

the physical body…and into a purer, cybernetic kind of consciousness” (127). This

cyberconsciousness tells us that the availability of identities within the identity marketplace of

cyberspace is infinite and no longer confined by materiality. While seeming to liberate people

from the social constraints of their personal and material forms of identity by allowing them to

assume whatever roles or identities they may desire to take, the virtual reality of cyberspace has

come under fire. Some scholars have been skeptical of its ability to recreate a truly authentic

form of the material human experience while paradoxically seeking to undermine material

presence at the same time. Hayles, in her essay entitled “Interrogating the Posthuman Body,”

explores various strains of thought concerning the relationship of corporeality and technology.

She cites the credo of one skeptical school of thought that “Virtual reality…only creates the

‘illusion of control over reality…’” (757). Thus, consciousness as dictated through cyberspace,

much like that as dictated through the previous aspects of computer technology and science as

mentioned above in regards to Haney, can be viewed, from this perspective at least, as incapable

of achieving through the vicarious screen life of cybertext and virtual reality an authentic

representation of human consciousness – a consciousness that is entrenched, as it seems, in

material presence for now; but it is impossible to determine what new technologies and advances

posthuman discourses will make in the coming decades that may aid in turning this perspective

flat on its head.

The bionic, biotech, and ecomm discourses have now drastically begun to alter

humanity’s interaction with its own identity, and it certainly seems that these technologies will

only continue to increasingly determine what humans know, or are even capable of knowing,

about themselves in the future, as well as how they perceive themselves in relation to the world

around them. These discourses will determine the future of the human body and human

consciousness whether we like it or not; our only mission will perhaps be to ensure a place for

the “human” to retain a say in the determination of its own identity. Taking a constructivist

approach to the human being, one that has been vehemently attacked at times by the works of

some of those cited in this paper, I would argue that, in the posthuman era, humanity has entered

a new phase of identification, where not only social factors and environment, as well as humans

97

themselves, determine their identity, but where technological constructionism becomes a

powerful mediator of human subjective experience and identification. In the posthuman, identity

becomes a technological construct as determined through such technologies as genetic

engineering and computer science, while at the same time, identity is still personally negotiable

as humans can assume various roles and play identity-interchange through cyberspace. While

the humanist position has held the technological constructionism of the posthuman at bay thus

far, it seems increasingly likely that, along with Genesis, carrying the weight of “man” upon

humanism’s back will only sever its vertebrae in the end. Notions of the body, consciousness,

and the self are understood only in relative time and place, only in the historical epoch that both

natural and social evolution simultaneously encapsulate human experience and knowledge

within.11

In attempting to substantiate the claim of a fragmented and destabilized notion of the

self and human subject, Turkle relates her encounter with identity as communicated through both

language and cyberspace:

I used language to create several characters. My textual actions are my actions–

my words make things happen. I created selves that were made and transformed

by language. And different personae were exploring different aspects of the self.

The notion of a decentered identity was concretized by experiences on a computer

screen. (646)

If textual language can “make things happen” so easily within cyberspace, if disembodied human

identity can create the conscious perception of role play and the assimilation of humans into

various, fragmented forms of subjective selves through simulated “bodies,” then the “human” as

universal is perhaps only a construct of the mind, a mere illusion of language, a fluid and

ephemeral substance after all, a fleeting and evanescent shadow drifting hastily back into the

smote brethren of fallen stars, forever lost somewhere in the vast, isolating silence and emptiness

of the cosmic universe.

As we progress deeper and deeper into the posthuman age, defending the integrity of

“man,” as well as the human body and consciousness, against posthuman discourses becomes a

daunting task. It seems as though we are progressively alienating ourselves from the natural,

biological human body. In the posthuman perfection of the (post)human body, I believe that we

are in danger of losing the natural body altogether, and as such, traditional notions of human

consciousness are also imperiled because of consciousness’ intrinsically interdependent

relationship with the physiological processes of the human body. Consequently, this is the same

body and consciousness (psyche or soul) that Christians, Muslims, and Jews have viewed as

carved by the hand of God in the image of God, giving us some of our most treasured concepts

of our own “divinity.” Furthermore, what happens to the traditional body and mind, to the

traditional “human,” when the voice of God, the voice of the Word that “created” it, ceases to

resonate as loudly as it did once before? Do humans perceive the “human” as their own illusion?

The arrival of modernity in the 19th

century brought with it not only more efficient and advanced

forms of science and technology, but also the increasing alienation of humans from their bodies,

as well as the restructuring of their own self-awareness; and consequently, humans were isolated

from God even further as though humanity’s status as “earth-bound reflection” did not set the

stage for its own isolation enough. In his Order of Things, Foucault states, concerning the “death

11

This is the constructivist view that human nature and identity are comprehended only through the available

knowledge of our current stage in evolutionary history – both the natural evolution of the human being as well as the

evolution of human societies – meaning that we have no knowledge of a universal, unchanging human nature and

identity relevant to all ages and all cultures.

98

of god,” “Nietzsche rediscovered the point at which man and God belong to one another, at

which the death of the second is synonymous with the disappearance of the first…12

” (342). If

“man” is no longer the material reflection of God upon the universe, if his consciousness is no

longer authenticated by the soul of the divine, then where does “he” stand in the posthuman? If

humans can be said to possess anything universal and eternal, then perhaps it is only their

characteristic of being eternally redefined; and therefore, we might be forced to agree eventually

with Foucault that the human subject, as we have understood it in our time, stands on the

precipice of a great abyss, that, as he states, “Man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at

the edge of the sea” (387).

Tyler

Efird

12

Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th

century German philosopher, proclaimed that modernity was responsible for causing the

prevailing trend of a Western disillusion with the concept of “god,” resulting in what he deems in his philosophy as

the “death of God.”

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Works Cited

Badmington, Neil. “Theorizing Posthumanism.” Cultural Critique 53 (2003): 10-27.

Burfoot, Annette. “Human Remains: Identity Politics in the Face of Biotechnology.”

Cultural Critique 53 (2003): 47-71.

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. A

translation of Les Mots et les choses. New York: Vintage, 1994.

Fukuyama, Francis. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution.

New York: Farrar, 2002.

Haney, William S., II. Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the

Posthuman. New York: Rodopi, 2006.

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Interrogating the Posthuman Body.” Contemporary Literature

38.4 (1997): 755-62.

Simon, Bart. “Introduction: Toward a Critique of Posthuman Futures.” Cultural

Critique 53 (2003): 1-9.

Thacker, Eugene. “Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology and the Discourse of the

Posthuman.” Cultural Critique 53 (2003): 72-97.

Turkle, Sherry. “Cyberspace and Identity.” Contemporary Sociology 28.6 (1999): 643-48.

Ward, Glenn. Postmodernism. Teach Yourself. London: Hodder, 2003.

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Further Reading

Cook-Degan, Robert. The Gene Wars: Science, Politics, and the Human Genome. New York:

Norton, 1994.

Dennett, Daniel C. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.

---. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1995.

Ehrlich, Paul. Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect. Washington:

Island Press, 2000.

Fukuyama, Francis. The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social

Order. New York: Free Press, 1999.

Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist

Feminism in the 1980s.” Socialist Review 80 (1985). Rpt. in From Modernism to

Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Cahoone. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003.

464-81.

Moravec, Hans P. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. New York: Oxford UP,

1999.

Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard UP, 1989.

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Benjamin

Wallace

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Brian

Hathcock

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Brian

Hathcock

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