Research Paper

You are welcome to write that kind of literary analytical research paper for this class. However, you may prefer to analyze illustrations in some way. I advise all of you to go back and review the original information for the analysis paper to remind yourselves of how to write one of these papers. I am open to other approaches, but be sure to run your ideas by me before you embark on them so I can make sure there is a strong analytical component and connection to this course.

This research paper replaces the final exam that is required for all college classes at ATU. It is due before midnight on Monday, April 27.

Tone

Your tone should be formal.

· Do not use any second person pronouns (you).

· Avoid first person singular pronouns (I, me), especially phrases like “I think” or “I feel.”

· Avoid using contractions (can’t, won’t), abbreviations (etc.) and casual words like guy, kid, mom.

Format

· typed;

· double spacing throughout;

· one-inch margins;

· readable, normal-sized type font (Times New Roman 12 point);

· name, professor, course, date in upper left corner of first page on four separate lines (do not use computer’s header function for this);

· writer's last name and page number in upper right corner, including the first page (you can do this in header by using Insert Page Number and typing your last name and a space in front of the page number);

· title, centered, with no quotation marks, underlining, or italics (unless a published title or a quotation is part of the title);

· Write an 8-10 page formal essay. I want at least eight full pages of essay, but you are welcome to go longer if you have enough to say.

· Attach a Works Cited page at the end of the essay (should not begin before page 9 at the earliest). The Works Cited page should list all the sources you actually mention in the essay. Follow MLA format, using the 8th edition of the MLA Handbook. If you do not know how to write an entry for a source, consult the MLA Style Center at https://style.mla.org/.

·

Special note on formatting if you are using Microsoft Word

The default setting for Word is wrong for our format. You have to change two areas:

1. font choice and size

2. paragraph spacing: set line spacing to double, then remove extra line at end of every paragraph by going to Paragraph drop menu, Spacing, After—set to 0 pt.

Please change these settings before you start typing the paper or you will end up having to fix them later.

Sample of paper：

Spilling the Secrets of Scott Westerfeld’s Spill Zone

Scott Westerfeld has been writing for young adults for a long time but did not start receiving critical attention until 2005 after the publication of the first few volumes of his Uglies series. He writes young adult science fiction, mostly dystopian and steampunk. He has also written a vampire novel, but even that is really science fiction since the vampirism is caused by a virus. He is best known for the Uglies series, about a future in which cosmetic surgery (along with secret mind control) is compulsory at age sixteen. With his steampunk trilogy, starting with Leviathan in 2009, Westerfeld discovered the joy of working with an illustrator, claiming that “collaborating with an artist has invigorated his writing” (Corbett 31). In 2012, Westerfeld took the next step in artistic collaboration by venturing into graphic novels with two volumes based on his Uglies series. More recently, he has written a science fiction graphic novel in two volumes, Spill Zone (cited as SZ) and Spill Zone: The Broken Vow (cited as BV), both illustrated by Alex Puvilland, a French artist who works with Dreamworks Animation.

The books tell the story of Addison Merritt, a young photographer, and her little sister, Lexa, who lost their parents when a sudden, inexplicable event turned Poughkeepsie, New York, into the spill zone, a nightmare place of strange creatures and odd phenomena. Checkpoints manned by military personnel keep everyone out of the zone except for Addison, who sneaks in on her motorcycle to take illegal photographs that she sells to collectors. As the story develops, we learn that the spill was created by an interdimensional being who escaped from her own dimension, dragging a portion of it with her. Other beings from her dimension are now trying to track her down and force her to return. At the same time, agents from North Korea, which experienced a similar but much smaller spill at the exact same time, are intent on salvaging a box of radioactive dust from the zone, and they hire Addison to find it for them.

The Spill Zone books have both a surface structure and a deep structure, to borrow two terms from linguistics. According to structural linguistics, the surface structure of a sentence is the one we perceive when writing or speaking; the deep structure is an underlying sentence or set of sentences to which a number of transformations have been applied in order to derive the surface structure. For example, to derive a yes/no question from a declarative statement, one must apply a transformational rule that inverts the subject and first auxiliary of the declarative. The concept of deep versus surface structure is readily applicable to literary analysis by means of analogy. When reading a text like The Spill Zone, the reader first perceives the surface structure. The surface story is science fiction featuring an interdimensional invasion and nuclear weapons. However, the deep structure underneath those science fiction trappings tells a different tale: one of the Unseelie Court, dark fairies from folklore. Westerfeld uses numerous references to folklore beliefs, familiar elements from folk tales, and a sprinkling of horror tropes to create a modern version of a fairy tale that would be at home among the darkest of the Grimms’ tales.

Both volumes of Spill Zone have won a slew of graphic novel awards as science fiction. Most reviewers accept them as science fiction. Westerfeld refers to them as science fiction, which is, after all, what he writes. Although none of the characters knows what actually caused the spill, theories tend toward science fiction: an accident with nano-technology and/or the nuclear plant, an alien invasion, or an ecological disaster. Investigation is limited because people who enter the zone do not come back out. Now nothing is allowed in except government robots and drones. The surface science fiction plot includes radioactive dust, nuclear weapons, and North Korean spies. At the end of the story, the spill zone is deactivated when Addison changes the trajectory of some nuclear missiles so that they hit the Poughkeepsie nuclear plant. All these plot elements are science fictional.

However, there are hints of something else going on in the background from early in the story. In the first chapter, as Addison is preparing for a trip into the spill zone, she thinks, “a hundred years ago, Victorians thought that cameras captured glimpses of the spirit world” (SZ 4), suggesting that her photos of the zone are doing the same thing. If there are spirits in the zone, Addison identifies them with Hell. Some cultures still believe cameras steal souls. This folk belief stems from the fact that a photograph is like a mirror image, and there is a long-standing folk belief that mirrors can steal the soul. Later in the story, after Addison changes as a result of exposure to radioactive dust, her camera becomes a weapon against the zone creatures, which suddenly begin to flee from the camera. As Don Jae, her North Korean companion, tells her, “The fire is in your gaze now. The zone creatures fear being captured in your photographs” (BV 110). By taking photos with her new vision, Addison is able to release the reanimated corpses she calls meat puppets, which hang in midair, and kill the zone creatures that have come from another dimension. Her camera really does steal the souls of the invaders.

We associate such folk beliefs and folklore in general with childhood, particularly that branch of folklore known as the fairy tale. However, this association only goes back two hundred years. Before that time, folktales were entertainment for all ages. Back in 1693, John Locke was warning parents to keep their children away from folktales. Of course, he was talking about upper class children, who should not be hanging around the servants’ hall listening to tales about spirits and goblins but rather upstairs reading Aesop’s Fables to improve their minds and morals. Folklore was the sphere of the uneducated, and such tales were too scary for well-born children. Locke might have liked graphic novels, though, because he approved of illustrations.

Even the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm were not intended for children. The original collection was an academic volume full of scholarly footnotes. However, the 1823 English translation of selected Grimms’ tales was an illustrated book for children and was so popular that the Grimms immediately produced their own children’s version for German kinder. Then the illustrious Charles Dickens published an article in defense of fairy tales, in which he confessed that as a boy he had been deeply in love with Little Red Riding Hood. We did not have to wait until Disney for fairy tales to become inextricably linked to childhood. To contemporary Americans like Westerfeld, fairy tales are a natural part of childhood.

The link between folklore and childhood plays a large part in Spill Zone. From the earliest pages, we learn that Addison is fascinated with the playground in the zone and takes many photos of the swings moving on their own. When she learns the truth about the zone in the second book, she finds out that Vespertine, the zone creature that now resides in her sister’s doll, is a princess from a place called the Cradle. Lexa, who was nine at the time of the spill, provided the means for Vespertine to enter our world. The other children who, along with Lexa, escaped from the spill on a school bus seem to have been responsible for allowing members of Vespertine’s court to come with her. Vespertine communicates only with Lexa by means of a psychic link, and it is suggested that the members of her court, too, communicate only with the individual children whose toys they inhabit.

Fairy tales are particularly linked to children. There is a lot of evidence that Vespertine, her betrothed, and the other monstrous beings in the zone are actually fairies. In the first chapter of the story, Addison ponders her photographs: “People think there’s something hidden in the Spill, fairies in those wisps of light” (SZ 6). There are indeed fairies in those wisps of light. Vespertine and her court love to dance, as the fairies are known to do. Like the fairies, Vespertine has no empathy or human emotion. Her Betrothed arrives in the form of an antlered creature much like Herne the Hunter from folklore, and the captain of his guard is in the form of a large, black, wolf-like creature. Black dogs are well-known in folklore and usually herald a death. In this case, the black creature is joined by a host of similar creatures to hunt down Vespertine in our world. They are, in effect, the Wild Hunt of folklore, which is often associated with Herne the Hunter. They do not intend to kill Vespertine, just to force her to return to their own dimension to marry her Betrothed and end the civil war she caused by running away. Fairies are also associated with granting wishes. When Vespertine refuses to go with her Betrothed because she wants to be with Lexa “for always and ever,” her fiancé replies, “I grant you that wish” (BV 183). She can remain with Lexa if they both come to the other realm.

If these creatures are fairies, they are members of the Unseelie Court, the dark fairies. Vespertine is a princess, we are told. Her Betrothed is called the Sovereign, so he has become king. Vespertine talks about her royal court, whose members escaped with her and now inhabit the dolls and toys of other children. If this were the Seelie Court, the court of light, the fairies would be well-mannered and less inclined to do harm to humans. However, Vespertine, far from being well-mannered, is a rude, foul-mouthed, dismissive person who does not hesitate to take advantage of a child and continue to use her throughout the story. Although Vespertine claims to be protecting Lexa, she is really controlling her. Vespertine’s Betrothed is equally callous: he is focused on reclaiming his bride no matter what collateral damage he may inflict on the human world. Vespertine says he is a bad man who killed her parents, unaware that her parents first killed his. The Unseelie Court is associated with darkness, and night is the time Vespertine cons Lexa into inviting her into our world as well as the time her Betrothed invades our world to find her.

Folk motifs and themes appear throughout the story. The main plot of Vespertine fleeing from an intended marriage is a well-known motif. In Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature it is listed as “Flight of maiden . . . to escape marriage,” with examples occurring in Irish, Icelandic, Italian, Greek, and Indian folklore (2280). Another motif involves dark forests. In fact, forests are so closely associated with fairy tales that the Broadway production based on the Grimm tales is titled Into the Woods. Addison has to go into the woods to get to the zone, and Alex Puvilland’s dark illustrations emphasize the fear associated with them. Levitation is also a folk theme. Fairies, far from using wings, were known to levitate, as Vespertine does when she enters Lexa after the doll is destroyed. The meat puppets in the zone also levitate, as do random objects. In some fairy tales, a young woman is forbidden to speak while she completes a task to break a curse. Similarly, Lexa has not spoken in three years, nor have the other children who escaped the zone with her. Vespertine forbids her to speak. When Lexa finally does speak, it is only after Vespertine gives her permission to do so. Even then, the permission is partial in that Lexa is not allowed to talk about certain subjects related to Vespertine. When Addison searches for the radioactive box in the hospital, where the rooms have rearranged themselves, she leaves a trail of pieces of paper so she can find her way back; we all recognize this motif as coming from “Hansel and Gretel.” Vows and oaths are also important motifs in folklore. The second volume of Spill Zone is subtitled The Broken Vow. Vespertine’s Betrothed reminds her several times that she made a vow—a promise to marry him—and that she is honor bound to uphold that vow. When she broke it by running away, she started a civil war in their realm. The only way to stop the war is for her to follow through on her vow. Although she never indicates willingness to do so, the voice of her Betrothed seems to refer to her as “the queen” at the end of the story, so apparently she does marry him (BV 211).

One important aspect of fairy tales is the presence of magic numbers. The magic numbers in Western fairy tales are three and seven and multiples of those two numbers. The use of these numbers in Spill Zone is what first clued me in to the deep structure of the story. In the first chapter, Addison recounts her seven rules for surviving trips into the zone. These seven rules operate as geasa, the Irish word for a magical prohibition. If Addison were to break one of these rules, disaster will follow. When Addison breaks rule 6 (never get off the motorcycle while in the zone), she gets exposed to radioactive dust that changes her forever. We are told multiple times that the spill occurred three years ago and that Lexa has not spoken for three years. The epilogue takes place three years later. When Lexa invited Vespertine into our world, she had to say the words three times: “Come in, come in, come in” (BV 157). The same invitation is spoken by the Sovereign at the end of volume 2 when he invites Ms. Vandersloot into his realm.

Folk beliefs abound as well. Supernatural beings cannot cross a threshold without an invitation. Vespertine manipulates a nine-year-old into inviting her into our world, and there is a suggestion that members of her court have done the same thing with other children. When Addison asks Vespertine, “Why did you all show up and ruin our lives?” Vespertine simply replies, “We were invited” (BV 51).

There are also numerous horror tropes in the two volumes of Spill Zone. Horror does not necessarily evoke folklore, but there is a lot of horror associated with the Unseelie Court. The most obvious horror trope in Spill Zone is the evil, possessed doll. Vespertine lives in a Raggedy Anne doll until Addison tries to get rid of her by burning the doll. Burning was the traditional way to get rid of a fairy changeling. Vespertine’s court escapes with her by inhabiting the stuffed toys and dolls of the other children. We are supposed to associate these creatures with possessed dolls. Even Vespertine’s speech balloons look evil: they are black and formed of jagged lines.

The monstrous creatures in the zone also come from horror. The zombie-like meat puppets, the possessed rats and cats, the playground equipment that operates on its own—all are reminiscent of horror stories and films. Several reviewers have pointed out Vespertine’s resemblance to Chucky, and they use the adjectives “scary” and “creepy” to describe the books. One insightful online reviewer calls “Spill Night,” an extra story published for Free Comic Book Day, “a Promising New Horror Comic” (Figa). The same reviewer notices something else: “The world Westerfeld has created seems to follow fairy tale logic.” Thus I am not the only one to see the connections between horror and fairy tale.

At the end of Spill Zone: The Broken Vow, Addison manages to send all the interdimensional invaders back to their own realm by redirecting missiles that have been aimed at the zone creatures; she uses her zone-given powers to send the missiles towards the Poughkeepsie nuclear plant instead. She figures out that blowing up the nuclear plant might work because of the accidental nuclear explosion that deactivated the North Korean spill zone. This is a science fictional solution to a fairy tale problem. The overarching message of Spill Zone may therefore be that the surest way to banish fairies is to nuke them.

Works Cited

Corbett, Sue. “Scott Westerfeld.” Publishers Weekly, 20 July 2009, p. 31. ProQuest, libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?url=https://libcatalog.atu.edu:2409/docview/197105914?accountid=8364.