Thursday, December 2, 2010

Hypertext Blog!


          I had never encountered hypertext before learning about it in class. Like interactive fiction, hypertext is a way for a reader to interact with the story, but rather than typing dialect, the reader must go through the nonlinear story by choosing what paths to go through. In our secondary reading, “Gathering the Limbs of the Text in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl”, it explains how George P. Landow’s definition of hypertext is, “Text compose of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path” (Carolina Sanchez-Palencia & Manuel Almagro, p. 116). It links to multiple pages and paths so that there is a web of possibilities. Hypertext is a type of literature that takes some getting used to. It is not something that comes easily. I have been working on Patchwork Girl, by Shelley Jackson, for weeks, and still it is not clear to me. Hypertext literature, I believe, is targeted especially to patient readers.
            The primary text we focused on in class while learning about hypertext literature is Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson. Patchwork Girl is Shelley Jackson’s version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the character Mary Shelley creates a girl, combining different body parts of different people. These different people have created Patchwork Girl, along with Shelley Jackson who created the story that put her together. Patchwork girl has many other creators, such as Mary Shelley whose creation of the story Frankenstein influenced Jackson, as well as being the character in the story to create her, Victor Frankenstein because he created Frankenstein, the reader because they choose what to click on and interpret the text to make a whole, and finally Patchwork girl herself because she is trying to create her own identity.

            Patchwork Girl is made up of different lexias, or blocks of texts. After viewing the black and white image of a stitched human figure, the first thing the reader does when working with Patchwork Girl is to decide which lexia he or she wants to begin with. The reader can either click on “body of text”, "a graveyard," "a journal," "a quilt," or "a story”. Each of these are different lexias in the hypertext. Going through the different lexias allow the reader to see a thematic connection. Though, each reader will view different aspects of the story and therefore have a different perspective.


            A primary hypertext that we spent time on in class is My Body- a Wunderkammer, a hyper-cabinet. My body- a Wunderkammer is based on a cabinet of curiosities. These curiosities consist of the female body parts. The narrator is intrigued by her body, and expresses the attitudes she feels about her findings. I was a little surprised after reading this. It made me understand how odd of an author Shelley Jackson is. The way she described her body in such broad detail and the way she described her experience surprised me.
            There were similarities I saw in both My Body- a Wunderkammer and Patchwork Girl. In both texts, when talking about their body, the narrator had a love/hate feeling towards it. Patchwork Girl develops somewhat of an identity through experience, not through her body. While in My Body- a Wunderkammer, she is identifying and experiencing her body together for the first time.

            I felt that I was less confused when reading My Body- A Wunderkammer because there was only one narrator. The narrators did not continue to switch as they did in Patchwork Girl. In Patchwork Girl, Shelley Jackson and Patchwork Girl both narrate, so at first it was confusing for me to determine who was speaking. The first time I had ever read through parts of Patchwork Girl, I was under the impression that the only narrator was indeed Patchwork Girl. When I did continuously not understand what was going on, I asked what I was missing. When I was told that there were two narrators, and not just the one that I had presumed, it made things much clearer for me. The little things like that are what make hypertext so complex.

            A theme in Patchwork girl is Patchwork Girl finding herself because throughout the story the reader realized that Patchwork girl is neither male nor female. She is in an identity crisis, trying to determine what sex she is. She is a mix of both genders. Because she is a combination of all different body parts of different people, she is a plethora of genders. She does not feel as if she is either, like many transgender people in our society today. Throughout the story she is confused and lost when thinking about what she is, a monster? A male? A female? Opposites continuously boggle her. Is she good? But she looks like a monster.

            Something we discussed about repeatedly in class concerning Patchwork Girl is the idea of the quilt. We often made connections to a quilt because she is patched together with so many different pieces, creating one unified structure. We discussed how she is so much like a quilt also with the idea that all of these pieces are unrelated. Patchwork Girl is like a quilt because she is made up of many different people’s body parts to make one body. However, the quilt idea also connects to hypertext in general. The many patches make up a quilt, the many body parts make up Patchwork Girl, and the many lexias make up the hypertext. Every lexia the reader clicks on has a story, just like every body part that makes up Patchwork girl has a deeper meaning. Behind every body part is a whole other life and memories of its former owner.

            To conclude my blog, I would like to address my feelings towards hypertext. I found it to be very confusing and hard to understand. I tried several times to go through Patchwork Girl without understanding it. Until discussing it in class, I had no idea what was going on! It took discussing in class and having my questions answered to even have the slightest idea what hypertext was. I believe that the biggest reason I was so confused while reading Patchwork Girl was because I did not understand that there were two narrators. I had thought that Patchwork Girl was the only narrator, not Shelley Jackson as well. Once I was told that there was indeed two narrators throughout the hypertext it made it much clearer to me. I read through it again and was able to determine who was speaking. Another reason I was confused with Patchwork Girl was because of the different lexias. I did not understand the connections between each lexia, and because of its continuous jumping around and combining different pieces, I was lost. It took me many trials of reading through Patchwork Girl to begin to understand what was going on. Hypertext reminded me of working with Interactive Fiction because it was like reading a story, but much more complex. Rather than simply turning the page and knowing it will be the same for every reader, hypertext and interactive fiction will change depending on the reader’s decision. In Interactive Fiction, it depended on what the reader typed to the non-player. Though, in hypertext, it depends on what path the reader chooses to take and how the path give them a different perspective on the story. Hypertext is a very complex type of literature that indeed took me a while to learn, but now I do have a lot of knowledge on!

Citations
Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. Watertown, Ma: Eastgate Systems, 1995. CD-Rom. 

Sánchez-Palencia Carazo, Carolina, and Manuel Almagro Jiménez . "Gathering the Limbs of the Text in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl." ATLANTIS 28.1 (2006): 115-29.