Shayna Cohen Literature Blog

Witches are fascinating for the way they seem to have evolved greatly over the centuries and yet one thing has always remained the same in my observations. Witches are women who don't fit neatly into society's small definition of womanhood. That's part of the reason we've seen witches grow extremely popular as positive figures, especially in counter culture or marginalized groups like the LGBT community. Joan of Arc was a women leading the French army to victory, claiming to hear the voice of g-d. Despite her heroic actions, she ultimately fell victim to the fear of witchcraft and was burned at the stake. She was a woman who stepped out of place and was punished for it. The Salem witch trials unfairly targeted woman and in the frenzy of panic, women who had stuck out from the norm were punished. Women who step outside of societal roles are seen as a threat to the system. A women who would dare be so bold must have fallen for the evil trickery of the devil. If independen...

The new weird seems to be more so the revival and reinvention of the old weird than it is an entirely new genre of weird.  The book  Annihilation  draws upon the old weird by following the age old idea that what can't be seen is far scarier then what can.   The members of the expedition all fall to a mysterious force that we don't even really get to understand until the end. This leads to a distrust of the environment and all of the characters, keeping you on the edge of your seat in suspense.  Annihilation also follows the modern trend of blending genres, bringing sci-fi and horror together in a way that seems to mimic the fears of real life better than any specific genre. The way that the border of Area X seems to be expanding without there seeming to be a way to stop it mimics the modern fear of the havoc climate change will bring upon our individual lives. It slowly creeps, threatening harm while individuals are pretty much powerless to stop it by themselves...

After reading several stories in Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, I struggled to figure out what lessons if any were present. Who is the villain here? The spirits are often just as sympathetic as the humans. Then I realized, maybe that is the exact point of these stories. So often in Western media we are creating a clear dividing line between good and evil, the hero and the villain, and ultimately heaven and hell. The west is dominated by the influence of christianity, and the themes and viewpoints of that religion find their way into media. Christianity takes a black and white viewpoint on morality, there is the ultimate goodness of g-d, and the ultimate wickedness of satan. A man on earth either picks one or the other to follow, designating him in either the heroic or villainous role. Despite secular culture growing in recent years, these literary roots still take hold of our media and ultimately our horror. In Japanese stories, which take...

What I found fascinating about Interview With the Vampire was the way Anne Rice examines the nature of death and what effect immortality has on her character's actions and personalities. After reading the book, I looked into the background of it's creation and learned that Anne Rice wrote it in the wake of her young daughter's death. After learning this, the desperate discussions and debates the characters have concerning the nature of life and dying make a lot of sense. While reading, you keep bumping against the kind of deep confusion and despair that accompanies a tragic loss, especially one as painful as a young death. By telling a story about characters who are essentially immoral, we see the Rice try to reconcile with the idea that death has a purpose. Our main character, Louis is tortured by never-ending life, searching desperately for another vampire who has an answer for his purpose and reason for existence. When he find the Parisian vampires he is disappointed t...