On "A Puddle of Dead" by Grayson Bray Morris (1974 words) ***

Much of science fiction resides in the ideas it offers to readers. In that sense, sci-fi isn't unlike Einstein's old mind experiments. And Morris here certainly has an idea. If we could extract energy from the dying body, concentrate it, and make that body come to life again, would the effort be worth it? In one sense, Morris is simply updating the old question of whether it's better to burn quickly and brightly or to simmer coolly for a long, long time. Read the story here at Daily Science Fiction.

On "The Fragmentation of a Sect" by David V. Barrett ****

This is the first truly scholarly study of the Worldwide Church of God and its various offshoots I've ever come across. As such, it was rather fascinating to read about the church of my birth and my continuing fellowship. Barrett isn't an evangelical with an ax to grind (though I did get the sense that he might be Episcopal or of some vaguely mainstream Christian sect); rather, he's a sociologist, one interested in why people make the decisions that they make. The study essentially applies rational choice theory to the religious choices that people make, based on who went where and why after the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) radically changed its doctrines in the mid-1990s.

WCG was a Sabbath-keeping church whose major tenets also included the celebration of the biblical (Hebrew) holy days, adherence to biblical food laws, a binitarian concept of God, tithing, and an adherence to a British-Israelite worldview of history and prophecy. In 1986, its pastor general Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) died, passing on power in the church to Joseph W. Tkach, who over the course of the next decade would oversee the church's transformation to mainstream evangelicalism. In the process, the church would fragment into various offshoots--four hundred and counting at present--the three major ones being Philadelphia Church of God, Global Church of God (the bulk of which later would become Living Church of God), and United Church of God. Each group would hold similar doctrines. So how did people make their decision about where to attend?

After a brief introduction laying out the theory behind the study, the book provides a brief summary of the church's doctrines and then of its history. The author seems largely objective with regard to laying out the doctrines, rather than skewing them as most evangelically based studies have done in the past.

His account of the history is a bit more biting, but understandably so. As he notes throughout, it is almost impossible to find history on the church and its various pastor generals that is not either ridiculously hagiographic or ridiculously slanderous. He chooses to present elements of both views, since the differing viewpoints themselves have much to say about the nature of the choices that people have made.

Still an adherent to much of what HWA taught, I tend to think some of the more scandalous claims about him are probably rumors created by people with hateful agendas. Yet, having grown up in the church and knowing how the church tended (in the spirit of trying to avoid ruining people's reputations) to hide bad things from view, I also know that "truth" when it comes to much of what has gone on in WCG or its offshoots is sometimes hard to come by. Sometimes, a minister might be on a pedestal one day, and the next day, he might be gone and all mention of him swept aside as if he never existed. The reasons might remain a mystery or they might be revealed by someone with a particular agenda, and that someone might not be telling the truth either.

And then there are the contradictions that Barrett raises, even in the writings by the church about its history. Some people perceive as HWA as a humble and kind man; some perceive him as arrogant; almost all agree that he had a temper and could be hard to work with (certainly, his job wasn't an easy one, as people around him vied for power, lending reason for paranoia). A lot has to do with how those people knew HWA. Since I was just a teen when he died, my own perceptions are based a lot on recordings, and I tend to perceive him like the apostle Paul: determined and diligent but not someone I would particularly enjoy being around. And so it comes to the history, wherein HWA had a tendency to talk about how God had uniquely revealed things to him, things that often came from other sources. Of course, one could say that HWA was unique insofar as putting all those things together or that he was not a scholar and so not aware of the need for scholarly documentation or . . . But whatever conclusions one might reach about how he came to his understanding, he clearly was effective as a preacher.

After a discussion of the church's history, its struggles in the 1970s, and then its transformation in the early 1990s, Barrett turns to his analysis. The first part of his analysis focuses on church government, which turns out to be of great importance to his eventual conclusion. WCG was, in its later days, run hierarchically. As such, people were expected to fall in line with the ministers above them, and the ministers to fall in line with the ministers above them. So what happens when the doctrines that those above no longer match with the doctrines that were formerly espoused, save in the matter of the doctrine of government? Does one hang on to the government, or does one let go of said doctrine to hold to the other doctrines? Barrett nicely even explores, though briefly, those who have stayed in WCG despite not believing in most of the doctrinal changes, precisely because of this belief.

Barrett's discussion at this point widens a bit. He talks about what can happen with a religion's founder dies. Essentially, it can move from a charismatic leadership style to a rational one, and it can remain stable. Or in the process, it can lose steam and although stable eventually dissolve. It can also change or reform, but in that process, it might also divide. He shows examples from various religions.

Finally, Barrett gets to a chapter based on an albeit sadly too small survey of members that explores among other things how and why people made the choices they did: what finally compelled them to leave, where they went, how, and why. The two basic factors, Barrett says, that previous researchers would point to would be family/friends and doctrine, but Barrett points out a third factor that would influence where people went: leadership (which he terms a "moral" choice as opposed to a "religious" or "social" choice). Interestingly, people's choices were much less likely to be based on friends and family. However, just as interestingly, their choices were almost as likely to be based on the leader/minister as on the doctrine. That's right: people follow their ministers. I was reminded of my attendance with the church in Fort Worth after the 1995 split. One congregation had left with UCG, as that minister had left; one congregation had stayed with WCG, as that minister had stayed. (Both ministers adhered to the same doctrines, as the minister who stayed did not abide by the new WCG teachings, so leaving was not a matter of "religion.") Very few members transferred from one congregation to the other when this happened. Similarly, in a recent split in my local congregation, probably 80 percent of the congregation followed the minister into a new group. We really do just follow the leader, it seems.

And some of us get tired, as is evident in the survey as well. While many initially left WCG with one of the various offshoots, quite a few people have since become stay-at-home believers, sick of the political power games that so-called ministers play in an attempt to garner followings for themselves.

On "The Gun Tastes Awful" by Tony DuShane (1056 words) ***

The premise is a bit familiar and some of the thoughts too, not because I've had them necessarily but because I've read them, seen them in film, and so on. But DuShane does manage to do something a bit different with the premise through the portrayal of the main character himself (I assume it's him). I'm reminded of the film The End, only this time there isn't a redemption, a feeling that, yes, life is worth living. Read the story here at Cherry Bleeds.

On "The Atom Station" by Halldor Laxness **

Set in a time shortly after World War II when Iceland was debating allowing NATO to place nuclear defense materials on its soil, Laxness's novel is mostly about a seemingly naive country girl from the north part of the country coming of age in the South. Politics, though, is a loud backdrop. The people don't want the bombs. The politicians, however, are working on a way to make the deal happen.

Meanwhile, the girl comes south to work as a nanny and to take harmonium lessons. The mistress in charge of her wants to make sure that the girl does not get involved with the communists, whose influence the woman sees as being pervasive among the young in the city. Such warnings prove to have the opposite effect, as the girl takes an immediate interest in going to a cell meeting. That said, she remains mostly politically uninvolved throughout the first portion of the novel.

Her real interest is the club that forges around her harmonium teacher, which features several men and ladies who like to discuss art, culture, and occasionally politics. One of these men accompanies the girl home one evening, and having lost her key, she ends up spending the night at his place--and losing her virginity in the process.

Meanwhile, the children she cares for are growing up as well. The mom runs off to America. The dad, a politician himself, takes an interest in the nanny. The children drink to excess, party, sleep around.

Somewhere in the book's center both the girl and one her charges end up pregnant. The charge gets an abortion at the urging of her father. The girl, however, returns north to have her child, Gudrun. There, the dad, a policeman, comes calling, now in the money.

The girl grows restless and returns to the south to the father who she was a nanny for (and who has fallen in love with her, to the point that he works on legislation to her liking), to her organ instructor, to her club, and finally to the father of her child, who she finally decides is worthy of her and her daughter (once his riches prove less than real and he is carted off to prison). She wants to make something of herself, to be a woman who is not simply a slave or a harlot. But what is there to be made into, when all the world is likely to blow up and start over again?

On "The Kind of People That Drive These Roads" by Keith Rosson (6054 words) ***

There's a lot to like about this story by Keith Rosson--he's taken down the rules for good storytelling and made a chunk of writing fit right within it. The piece starts with a bit of violence--or rather the aftermath of it. I'm reminded a bit of an early scene in the Coen Brothers adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. There, two police officers wander a field of dead men after a drug shootout. Here, officers discuss the troubles that exist out in these country places, a dead boy lying under a bit of barbed wire. One of the officers has shot him, and that officer now will have to deal with the guilt for the following year--and with some kind of ghostly retribution. The surprise here, however, is how the other officer deals with the shooting (and in fact it is this character who proved the most intriguing to me)--and in that dealing is the sorrow of the piece, a growing understanding on the part of the main character that justice isn't about that at all but naked retribution. The piece makes for a good story, but there's enough here that were Rosson to slow things down, he might well get a novel out of the material. Read the piece here at Burnt Bridge.

On "The Sagas of the Icelanders" ***

This anthology provides a taste of what Icelandic peoples were writing in the Middle Ages. Most of the sagas here were written down between 1200 and 1400, with the actual tales taking place around 900 to 1100, as Iceland moved from being heathen to Christian. This puts an interesting spin on many of the stories, as the authors sometimes find a need to put a good word in for Christianity, yet they do so largely without saying too much negative about the former ways: those before Christianity were heroes living large. Interestingly, their often murderous actions don't seem all that different after their conversion. Still, I can see why the Icelandics were viewed as perhaps the greatest poets of the era among the Scandinavian peoples. For such a small population, they put together a remarkably interesting body of work.

An interesting trait of all of the sagas is how they weave in history and genealogy. This weaving makes them seem like actual histories, while in fact, so the introduction notes, most of them were to a large extent fiction.

The longest of the sagas in the book is Egil's Saga. It recounts the heroic life of Egil Skallagrimson, but really, the tale starts several generations earlier, with a family in Norway and a man who remarries in old age. By this young wife, he has two children who, upon his death, are disinherited by the family of the first wife. This sets up much of the violence that follows--and the family's move to Iceland. On the death of the holder of the father's land, a man named Thorolf takes over, but the disinherited portion of the family is not given a portion of the land. Two members of this family take positions in the king's court thereafter and spread vicious rumors about Thorolf. Though loyal to the king to the nth degree (paying great amounts of tribute on various raids that he goes on), Thorolf falls into disfavor. It is believed that Thorolf is keeping back riches for himself and is plotting to become king of the northlands of Norway. Eventually, the king invades Thorolf's land and kills the man. His relatives take vengeance, including Skallagrim, and after this, they banish themselves to Iceland for safety. Finally, Egil enters the story, as a child. His father marries back into the Norwegian line, but his descendents are denied inheritance of the land, and Egil reaps revenge. Various viking raids are recounted. And finally, Egil grows old and settles down to full-time life in Iceland, where in one of his last acts he banishes another family who tries to steal his son's land. The Norwegian family disputes that largely escaped Iceland now come to rest in the new country.

The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal focuses more on a community (i.e., a family or group thereof) than any one person. As such, I found it a bit difficult to follow insofar as there was no center around which to focus my interest. Some individual chapters were engaging. Of the most pleasing were the tales of Ingimund and his sons Thorstein and Jokul (causing much confusion here, many relatives bear the same name). Ingimund lives in Norway and has no interest in moving to Iceland, but a seer prophesies that he will, and eventually, he lets destiny persuade him act accordingly. Once there, he builds a notable homestead and later in the narrative, in kindness, takes in a man no neighbors want living with them. This man one day kills Ingimund when he casts a spear at him, others having previously bothered the man about fishing in a certain river. Ingimund returns home, half a spear still in him, and dies. His sons Thorstein and Jokul decide to exact revenge. Thorstein throughout is the reasoned one, Jokul the hothead. Luckily, the brothers get to the man before his mother, a witch, can cast a spell on them--the brothers kill both. Despite such violence, by and large, Thorstein's more reasoned way of living generally wins out, and the family has peace. (In one interesting episode, a haughty man nearly bumps Thorstein into a fire at a festival Thorstein himself hosts. Jokul knocks the man down. For the insult, the men decide to duel. Thorstein, in an effort to put off the duel, in a manner characteristic of his general generosity, actually places himself under the man's onerous conditions for peace, but when the man insults the family in the process, Thorstein's proffered peace is rescinded. Weather keeps the duel from occurring, and later, when the man and his cohorts attempt to exact more ruin, Thorstein and Jokul gather more men and, with mere threats, send the ruffians packing.) Overall, this saga seemed more concerned with families finding peaceful means to live together than with heroic accounts of battles and adventures.

Like the other long sagas, The Saga of the People of Laxardal involves several generations of a family, but unlike those others, it seems to have a more-unifying feature to keep all the parts working together. That feature involves, fairly early on, a prophecy that is made to a young woman in the tale: Gudrun. And unlike the other tales, the women, especially Gudrun, have a a prominent role here. Gudrun is told that she will marry four men and what the features of each man will be and how they will die. The saga then brings each of those to pass, as she marries a not-so-good man, a rich man, and man of great fame, and so on. But she also has much to do with bringing about the events that happen in her life and in the life of the community. Also of note in the story is Olaf. the son of a woman of noble birth--an Irish queen who was sold into slavery. His children, notably two sons, along with a foster child would divide an inheritance. The foster child would prove to be of some trouble, as he would be the object of jealousy among the various heirs. As long as Olaf is alive, he keeps the peace in the community, but his death brings about a constant striving that happens thereafter. And this is where Gudrun and other women come in. For the fights between the men are often not simply male one-upsmanship. They are inspired by--even pushed upon the men--by the women, who will not stand by to allow their husbands, their children, their heirs to be dishonored. Revenge is often sought at the bequest of the women in the story, rather than initially that of the men. This is my favorite of the longer sagas in the book.

The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey's Godi is a shorter saga centered around one event and as such memorable reading. Essentially, it tells the tale of a man who vows to kill anyone who rides a certain horse of his that he has dedicated to a god. (It reminds me a bit of a similar incident in the book of Judges, wherein a man promises to sacrifice the first thing that exits his house upon his return from battle if he wins: that thing turns out to be his daughter.) The man ends up regretting his vow, but nonetheless he kills the man who rides the horse in an effort to salvage the owner's sheep. Here, the story becomes the familiar one of revenge by feuding families, as the family of the man killed refuses a very generous offer to pay for the death, instead taking the killer to court, and then, instead of that, eventually killing many of the killer's servants and forcing the killer from his land. Time passes, the killer becomes richer in a new land and returns to take his own revenge and retrieve his land.

The Saga of the Confederates is largely a legal drama, with various peoples taking each other to court rather than fighting things out. The hook here, however, is that the court is hardly a place of justice. Odd is a self-made man who ventures off to travel, leaving his farm and his job as the overseer of his community under the management of his friend Ospak. On Odd's return, Ospak does not relinquish his management role until Odd nearly forces him into it, which leads to some bitterness. Ospak handles things by attempting to kill Odd, but instead kills Odd's brother. They go to court to resolve the situation. However, a couple of people at court are jealous of Odd's success, so they dismiss Odd's suit against Ospak on technical grounds (not unlike, it seems, the way our own American system often works). Odd's father steps in and bribes a couple of judges and Ospak ends up getting his just punishment anyway, to the disgust of the two men who tried to dismiss Odd's suit. These two men learn of the bribe and take Odd to court themselves for bribery. Once again, Odd's father bribes a couple of judges, and Odd comes out ahead. Father and son, who early on do not get along well, are reconciled. This piece reads more like a short story than most of the sagas, focused around a distinct set of events and characters as it is. The author obviously didn't think much of Iceland's legal system in the early Middle Ages.

Gisli Sursson's Saga is a tale of revenge that I could see being easily adapted into a movie (albeit a violent one). It starts off rather predictably, with an account of the various families and with a killing. In other words, it's not unlike the other sagas. However, not too far into it, the story settles on Gisli as the main protagonist, a man who avenges the killing at the start of the tale and who then suffers the consequences. The rest of the saga, which is the majority, recounts Gisli's life in hiding, as the relatives of the dead man continually seek him out. In the end, Gisli has to make one final heroic stand, which cannot be said for most of the relatives, who remain more prone to hire bounty killers--most of whom meet death--to do their deeds than to risk their life to avenge the dead man with their own hands.

The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue is the tale of a love triangle that ends in tragedy (and starts, as many sagas do, with a prophecy that comes true). The Saga of Ref the Sly made for lively reading, but by the time that I got to it, it hardly seemed that unique (Ref kills a man in revenge, sails from Iceland off to Greenland for safety, is slandered as gay, kills some men in revenge, is sought out, but ducks away from his pursuers, killing a few in the process, repeat revenge plot in Norway, live to old age and die).

The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red's Saga are mostly nonfiction and are interesting as primary documents regarding the Viking exploration of the New World. They don't have quite the rich uniform quality of narrative that some of the better sagas have, however.

The book closes with several tales. I found these interesting, but as long as the sagas sometimes could be, I actually enjoyed those more. The tales seemed like short stories without a lot of character development; the sagas seemed somehow richer.

Introductions and appendixes frame the sagas and tales and provide some very useful background information.

On "Turnpike" by Heather Austin (2497 words) ****

In "Turnpike," the narrator considers whether to marry the boyfriend who seems to be losing interest in her but who also has just proposed. Meanwhile, she meets a girl who was once struck by lightning, strikes up a friendship, and shares stories of her love life with her. This isn't a piece where a lot goes on, and yet the writing is elegant and unusual enough that it pulls a reader along. What exactly does go into making a lifetime commitment, and when does one know the right one? Read the story here at Saltimbanque Review.

On "What Happens to a Girl Who Lives Alone" by W. J. Barris (364 words) ***

Here's a short with a sinister feel. There is a horror behind this story, a horror before, a horror coming. But in its brief spate of fewer of five hundred words, all we get is the feel of that horror, the dread, the sadness, the warning: don't do it. Don't stay single. Read the story here at the Vestal Review.

On "I Will Love You Forever" by Michaele Jordan (3969 words) ****

The movie Talk to Her poses an interesting quandary about love. What is the difference between a man who falls in love with someone who cannot love back and a man who falls in love with someone and subsequently stays in love with someone after she loses her ability to love back? Jordan's tale takes this idea to a different level. What is the difference between love as an emotion and love as a set of actions? If the only way that we can discern emotion is through action, does it matter? Why? Interesting questions, indeed--posed in the guise of a tale about a man who falls in love with a nonhuman on another planet. Read the story here at Redstone Science Fiction.

On "The Mission" by Emily Gray Tedrowe (8084 words) ****

Tedrowe's story mines the world of current events. It reminds me a bit of some of the stories I've read while working on anthologies that focus on a special event. Nonfiction has the allure of being true, and in today's media-conscious world, where new journalism is nothing out of the ordinary, fictional pieces describing world events don't seem to me quite as necessary. And yet, they still have their power, that ability to get below the surface and explore how such events affect a person on an individual level. Perhaps one day, there will be story anthologies about the war in Iraq--now already fading in the news--and this well might be one of them. It's a tale of a sister opposed to the war whose brother goes off to fight it, of families torn apart the way the very country was, of contradicting impulses--to support our relatives, our troops, or to hate the work that they are doing. Read the story here at Fifty-two Stories.

On "Alaska" by Tom Franklin (1103 words) ***

Here's is a flight of fancy. It's a tale about about two guys imagining what they'll do one day when they finally work up the guts to abandon all that they have and know. Alaska is a place far away, a place one constantly heads toward--but the aim isn't to arrive at Alaska. The aim is to take off for Alaska and to ponder the wonderful and long experience along the way. The aim is to dream and keep dreaming. Read the story here at Fifty-two Stories.

On "A Million Pieces" by Amye Archer (540 words) ***

This story's a tough one. The piece essentially takes prolife literature and puts it into fiction. But it's really not just a rendition of the disgusting details of an abortion; it's a tale about a woman who lives in abortion day in and day out--not quite a point of view I'd thought much about, nor one I'd want to live. Read the story, formerly published at Emprise Review, here at Fictionaut.

On "The Bridal Wreath" by Sigrid Undset *****

The first volume in the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, The Bridal Wreath essentially tells of Kristin's three would-be loves. But the novel is much more than that. It is a study of medieval Norway, at a time when Christianity has only recently taken hold, when pagans still roam some areas of the country, when the Norwegians still think of themselves as Danes. And it is a story of love versus duty and faith.

Kristin grows up the daughter to two very religious parents, the first surviving offspring, after four brothers have died early on in their lives. She grows up next to a young boy named Arne, a child from a not-so-well-to-do family. Her own family is of vaguely noble birth, and her father is the kind of hard worker that good fortune comes to the family. Kristin is not a match for her friend Arne.

Instead, she is matched by her father with a kind and dutiful man named Simon. At first, she is enthused by this betrothal. But some displeasure arises when Arne expresses an interest in her. It is impossible, of course, since he is of low birth. He decides, heartbroken, to set off to foreign lands, but before he leaves, he asks that Kristin meet him one final time. This she does, to her own downfall, for on her return from the meeting place, a man decides to take advantage of her. Though she escapes her would-be rapist, her honor is compromised, the man claiming that she's done inappropriate things with Arne, and her own absence, caused by the troubles created in her escape, lend a kind of credence to his words. Simon and her father decide it is best to send her to a nunnery for a year, till the scandal dies down.

But the medieval world is full of unsavory men, and while there, Kristin has yet another run-in with another set of bad fellows, and this time she is saved by the so-called knight in shining armor, a man of noble birth who soon begins to pine for her. But his armor isn't so shiny as we soon learn. He has lived much of his youth with a married woman and fathered two children by her, and in the process he has been banished from his family and squandered most of his wealth. No matter, Kristin likes a dangerous dude and quickly falls in love.

And herein yet more complications ensue. She's already betrothed to Simon, and getting out a wedding proves not to be so easy, for it will bring dishonor to herself and to Simon and will be much to her parents economic disadvantage as well. Nevertheless, Simon agrees to let her go, much to his own hurt, hiding many of things that would ruin his betrothed's reputation. In all, Simon seems a man of great honor whose attention to duty is unfortunately rewarded by a less-savory partner in life, an older, sickly woman who struggles to give him children.

Meanwhile, Kristin works hard to convince her father to let her marry the disreputable Erland, a man who can't seems to lack all self-control and can't even manage to return the family cart in good repair. He cheats with another man's wife (he was young, his excuse) and deserts her (she's married, his excuse--only when she is freed, he fails to live up to his promise to her to marry her) in favor of Kristin. He may be a swaggering hero, but he is untrustworthy and irresponsible and likely a lot of trouble. And somehow, eventually, her father is persuaded to give Kristin to this bad man, to allow this love match to go forward, even though he suspects it will lead to much sorrow for them all.

The story ends with the reflections of her parents, in which secrets from their own parental match are exposed, calling into question not only what constitutes love but what constitutes duty.

The translation of Undset's original language reads awkwardly, in what I assume is a deliberate attempt to mimic an ancient language, and after a short bit of getting used to the tongue, it works quite well. Appendixes explain some of the traditions of the medieval Norwegian world. In all this proved a fine start to a trilogy that I'll be sore tempted to return to in order to know the future sections of the story.

On "Kill Me with Chocolate" by Frank Scozzari (3719 words) ****

This easy-to-read story is a quest. A man is sent out to buy fine chocolate in the middle of the night in a city where the stores are not open twenty-four hours. Along the way, we are given lessons on love and on the nature of romancing a lady. Sometimes (actually, usually), women are really confusing to guys. Read the story here at Referential.

On "Hedda Gabler" by Henrik Ibsen ****

What a strange play this one is. As with Ibsen's trilogy centering around social issues, this one also deals, to some extent, with societal propriety and morals. But it's not so didactic as those others, and while the main character, Hedda, wants so badly not to conform to societal expectations, her desires hardly fall in a moral line. For her, freedom is everything--and everything she feels she can't get. She longs for an ideal world, in fact pushes others toward it (to their own peril), which she fears doing anything that would shock others.

As the play opens, Hedda has just gotten married to a scholar whom she finds a bore and with whom she's just gone on an extensive six-month honeymoon (made up in part by her husband's continuing research). She is consumed with taste and money, and as such, she has gotten her husband to purchase a house way beyond his means (and this, mostly just for a joke to her). Men, by turn, are consumed by her, dropping by to be the third wheel, wanting her to commit unbecoming acts with them and shocked that she would marry whom she has.

One of these is another scholar who has lived the life of a libertine and has repented and now has written a couple of fantastic books. He also once dated Hedda, before he got on the straight and narrow. As such, she has been disappointed by him, and she aims to get him back into the ideal world of total freedom, where societal opinions matter not at all. In the end, she manages to corrupt him again, but perhaps not in the manner that she had hoped, and the last act of "courage" becomes her own.

The introduction noted that Hedda is a character without a play, struggling to find the role in which she is to act. It seems a good observation, for indeed, like many of Ibsen's women, she is a showy figure meant to amuse but lacking substantial place in a male-dominated world, and the results are not pleasant. You can read the play here.

On "A Thing I Did" by Colin Winnette (234 words) ***

I think of this piece more like a prose poem than a story, but nevertheless here it is, because it's pretty cool. Winnette builds a prose boat and sets sail. See where it goes. Not too far, this one, for reasons to be discovered. Scroll down and read the story here at Blue Fifth Review.

On "An Enemy of the People" by Henrik Ibsen ****

The last in Ibsen's trilogy that includes A Doll's House, this one also attacks hypocritical Norwegian (yea, all) society, but unlike the first two plays, it does not focus on the role of women. Here, the centerpiece is a doctor who discovers that a town's main tourist attraction--its baths--is polluted by sewer water that is causing various diseases. Confronted with this truth, he lets others in town know. He starts with the leadership, who reject his charges on the basis that the town depends too much on the baths, and any bad publicity would turn tourists away and it would cost too much money and time to fix them.

The press, however, is very ready to jump on the doctor's side. However, those involved with the paper have their own agendas, whether power, money, or love. When these motivations prove not to look to bear any fruit when taking the doctor's side, the press quickly turns on the doctor to uphold the interests of the townspeople. After all, who wants to pay higher taxes to fix a problem or see less revenue from tourism?

With leadership and the press squarely backing a do nothing philosophy, the doctor is shunted by all. He loses his job, because he refuses to retract his report regarding the baths. His family loses its home; his children are kicked out of school and lose their jobs; his wife loses her inheritance. The situation is hopeless. What's more, rumors are rife that the doctor is in on a deal for himself (his father-in-law has bought shares in the baths at cheap prices and now insists his son-in-law retract his report so that he can make a killing in the market, and some dubious members of the press insist they want a cut of the profits--or the doctor's name will be mud). So what does the doctor do? He chooses to help the poor.

The latter is the doctor's heroic end, but is it realistic? The family may now have a "job" to do, but where exactly is it going to get the money to pay for the food and clothes?

I like to see a person of great virtue stand up to society, but as the play brings out, it's a rare person that does so. Even the so-called moderates prove unwilling to really sacrifice for the common good. However, I guess the play is a bit more optimistic than I am about people and about the human race. Were this something I'd have written, the doctor would have eventually buckled, justifying his compromised actions with lame excuses and feeling guilty the whole way. And if the doctor had remained true? He'd have ended up like Corey at the end of Arthur Miller's The Crucible--defiant but crushed dead beneath a set of stones.

This play hits hard at situations that, as adults, we face all too often. Remaining true to convictions inevitably comes up against everyday living, and often pits one conviction or concern against another (supply for family or refuse to be silent regarding an evil). Money makes the world go round. You can read the play for yourself here.

On "The River" by Christine Sneed (6372 words) ***

Unfortunately the long-term unemployed are all too familiar these days. Sneed's tale is about one of them, a man who decides to take up his time preparing for a lawsuit to crack down on pollution. Meanwhile, his marriage is falling apart. And his daughter, whose point of view this story comes from, just wants things to stay as they are, but her efforts seem only to create more trouble. An interesting sidelight is the daughter's boyfriend, who has gone off to college, and like the parents in this story, the girl and her boyfriend no longer talk. In a sense, then, the story is about breakdowns of communication--for the daughter, the communication breakdown is in a passive, nonconfrontational manner that we see echo throughout all her interactions. Read the story here at TriQuarterly.

On "Ghosts" by Henrik Ibsen ***

I now see why A Doll House is anthologized so much more often than Ghosts, the second in a trilogy of plays about Victorian-era Norway. The themes are similar, but where A Doll House carries a certain realness to it, Ghosts to me seemed overwrought and even a bit silly (especially its instantaneously disastrous end). Like A Doll House, Ghosts indicts Norwegian society for thoughtless slavery to a societal morality that is all about appearance rather than heart.

Mrs. Alving is an older woman who gives generously to her church and who does her duty to family. Married for a long-time philanderer, she kept quiet about his affairs so as to keep the man's reputation intact. The personal cost of this adherence to duty is about to take a deeper toll than she could have ever imagined, even now after her husband has died.

The pastor comes off as the least respectable of the characters, as well as the most hypocritical. In one passage, he becomes incensed that a layperson in his congregation married a fallen woman for money. And yet, Mrs. Alving points out, she married a fallen man--out of duty to her family, and at the urging of the pastor himself. The pastor claims that circumstances are different. (Later, when the pastor learns that the layperson didn't marry for money, the pastor accepts the man back into fellowship, only later to praise the man when he volunteers to take the fall for the pastor with regard to something the pastor has done in exchange for a favor involving monetary compensation.)

The "ghosts" of the title references the idea that one's ancestors' sins come back to haunt you (to the third and fourth generation, as the Bible would say). Here, Mr. Alving Sr.'s ghost haunts the characters in numerous ways. Their son, as it turns out, learns that he has contracted syphilis from birth. A woman the son falls in love with turns out to be Mr. Alving's own daughter by another woman. Mrs. Alving, who finally deigns to recognize, reveal, live by the truth, is redeemed too late and loses all, bound, again, by her duty to family. The play is in the public domain and can be read here.

On "The Railroad and the Churchyard" by Bjornsterne Bjornson (about 10,125 words) ****

Bjornson's story of two local friends and then enemies vying for control of the local government board explores issues of economy, friendship, government, and community, all the while providing a look at how mid-nineteenth-century Norwegian society worked, at least insofar as I have understood it from some of the nonfiction that I've read on Scandinavian culture. Democratic ways of running a community seem to go back pretty far in the far north. Here, the community decides on things together, but as in all such communities, some men have more sway than others.

The person with sway here in Knud Aakre, whose upbringing encouraged self-education and wide reading. Aakre serves as the chair of the governing body for the community, and he is assisted by his less-educated friend Lars Hogstad--at least until the story really gets going. Lars, at some point, comes to see Knud's ways as too conservative; the community pays higher and higher taxes but gets less and less for its money. A railroad wants to come through town. There will be easy money, investment. And it is with some good arguments that Lars wrests control of the board for himself, destroying a friendship in turn. Knud licks his wounds, bides his time, largely withdraws from public life. Lars becomes a bigger and bigger man, even serving on councils that pull away to the capital. The community flourishes--for a time. Speculation, as generally happens, proves dangerous, and all the community's loss of wealth eventually brings Knud's more somber ways back to the public notice, especially once it becomes known that the proposed railroad will run through the graveyard, disinterring the ancestors. Is Knud's concern for the community or only himself? Are they not, on some level, the same thing? A few choice events bring the story full circle. You can read it here.