{"id":1697,"date":"2021-03-29T17:00:32","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T21:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1697"},"modified":"2021-03-29T17:00:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T21:00:32","slug":"lucifer-and-his-spiders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2021\/03\/29\/lucifer-and-his-spiders\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucifer and His Spiders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/45047384-the-house-in-the-cerulean-sea<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/The_House_in_the_Cerulean_Sea\/O0iSDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover<\/a><\/p>\n

The House in the Cerulean Sea<\/em>\u00a0by T.J. Klune tells the story of a caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY) and his experience on his latest assignment. He travels to a unique orphanage with six children: Talia, a gnome; Phee, a forest sprite; Theodore, a wyvern; Chauncey, of an unknown species; Sal, a shifter; and finally, Lucifer (Lucy), the Antichrist. These children are all incredibly powerful, in a world where magic is considered dangerous. This allegory allows us to examine the traumas experienced by minority groups. Using Cvetkovich\u2019s analysis of trauma in \u201cAn Archive of Feelings\u201d we can examine Klune\u2019s characters\u2019 experiences with trauma.<\/p>\n

Lucy is six years old, yet he needs routine reminders that he is more than his origins: \u201cI learned once again that I\u2019m not just the sum of my parts\u201d (Klune, 105.) While Lucy is told this daily in a place where he is safe and cared for, the traumas from his past, even at his young age, obviously still affect him. We can examine the moments \u201cof extreme trauma alongside moments of everyday emotional distress that are often the only sign that trauma\u2019s effects are still being felt\u201d (Cvetkovich, 3) in Lucy\u2019s life. Lucy struggles to see his identity beyond the apocalyptic monster assigned to him by society and his heritage. He imagines this as his brain being filled \u201cwith spiders burrowing their eggs in the gray matter. Soon they\u2019ll hatch and consume me.\u201d (Klune, 155.) While this seems like Lucy\u2019s everyday bluster hellfire and damnation, this runs deeper. His nightmares, filled with these spiders and their webs trapping (Klune, 244) demonstrate his continued trauma. Lucy believes that the spider eggs will hatch, and he will inevitably become what society fears: The Antichrist. These fears are exacerbated by the bigotry he encounters outside of the island. Lucy describes the island as \u201cthe only place in the world where I don\u2019t have to worry about priests trying to stick a cross on my face to cast my soul back into the pits of hell\u201d (Klune 109-110.) While this seems humorous first, it becomes a horrifying reality when a man traps Lucy, a six-year-old child, into a locked room and attempts to exorcise him (Klune, 245.) This type of aggression feeds into his personal trauma.<\/p>\n

Using children such as Lucy demonstrates the horrific combination of social traumas, motivated by bigotry, and personal traumas. We as an audience cannot blame Lucy for being who he is because he\u2019s six, and we are much less willing to blame children for simply existing than we are for adults. It is much more difficult to justify this bigotry for most people. Additionally, the personal traumas endured by Lucy and the others are made that much more tragic due to their youth. Their age also allows for a different look at how these traumas affect them, as they are more willing to express themselves and their feelings if they feel that they are safe to do so. This allegory leads to questions about why people face these forms of bigotry for existing and how societal discrimination and hate worsens personal trauma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/45047384-the-house-in-the-cerulean-sea https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/The_House_in_the_Cerulean_Sea\/O0iSDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover The House in the Cerulean Sea\u00a0by T.J. Klune tells the story of a caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY) and his experience on his latest assignment. He travels to a unique orphanage with six children: Talia, a gnome; Phee, a forest sprite; Theodore, a wyvern; Chauncey, of an unknown … Continue reading Lucifer and His Spiders<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4457,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}