I am writing to comment on your article ‘Kerryn’s anguish over family split.’ I was surprised but impressed with Kerryn’s story, as it helped me to understand many different things.

This article really grabbed my attention! I normally steer clear from articles of this sort, but as I read on, I realised how much it related to me. I myself am an eighteen year old female, the same age as Kerryn’s daughter, so naturally I felt that I understood the trials and anguish she must have been through.

I could completely identify with the fighting with your parents. Sometimes they just don’t understand. I have been at that same point, right on the edge of leaving for good. This article made me realise how easy it is to just give up. It held fast for me the fact that I had done the right thing in working through my problems and staying with my family. In this way, it was both interesting and useful to learn about this kind of family breakup.

This article was so full of issues that teenagers of today will more than likely have to face later on in life if they haven’t already had to. These include IVF, gay marriages, family breakups with divorces and so on.

Upon reading this article I recognised the possibility that either having a gay parent or being gay yourself wouldn’t actually be that bad. Kerryn’s son, Carl showed this. In my eyes, he is a strong and admirable guy, who seems to stand for what he believes, and stay loyal to his family.

I was sad to learn that there was no reconciliation between Kerryn and her daughter, but then I reminded myself that we are not, in fact, living in a fairytale world and many things don’t pan out the way we want.

I would again like to thank you for the article, it has shown me both the error of my ways and has laid a faint path for me to follow in my passage to adulthood.

Bellatrix Lestrange

This letter is in response to the article you published on Kerryn Phelps and her family anguish.

Kerryn, I would just like to congratulate you! You have stood behind your beliefs even under the scrutiny of the public eye – being judged and criticised beyond belief. However I feel you should know that there are groups of people who support you in the decisions you have made regarding your lifestyle, and hope you’re content with the changes that have occurred.

As a gay woman myself, Kerryns’ story is an inspiration to me and my partner. It has influenced the way we live our lives – you have made us feel more comfortable with our sexuality in a world that is often unaccepting. We used to feel the need to hide our relationship, so as not to make others feel uncomfortable. Now we feel that if being who we truly are makes people uneasy it is their issue, not ours.

The society we live in often looks at things in a black and white sense – there is not enough tolerance for differences people may create. Frankly, if you love someone then you should be legally allowed to declare them as your partner – regardless of their gender. The way our legal system operates only certain states recognise the union of a gay couple, elsewhere it is disregarded. It seems to me that in a world made up of many colours, races, religions, cultures, beliefs and opinions a great effort is made to create a way of living in harmony, but it doesn’t always work as the differences are too great (the terrorist attacks in recent years being a prime example). If we can accept to not accept every other person’s ideologies, then why should this not apply to the issue of homosexuality?    

Kerryn Phelps’ story touched me and my partner, and we consider ourselves lucky that those people close to us have been very open-minded towards our lifestyle, and we did not have to undergo the pain and anguish that she evidently did in her situation. I only hope that our society will continue to grow and become more accepting of the differences in lifestyle people choose to lead. Here’s to Kerryn Phelps: a woman who fought for her right to be herself.

Sincerely,

Anita Femme

I wish for you to pass this on to Kerryn Phelps, whom you recently featured in an article in your newspaper:

Look, let me just say, YOU GO GIRL! I’m sick of all this garbage about same sex marriages being illegal and unholy. It’s about time someone distinguished showed how important union to the one you love is, regardless of their gender.

I myself am a gay female, and I am very much in love with my partner Phillace. We have been united, but we can’t be officially married because of the ridiculous rules handed down forbidding it. When I pass away, I want Phillace to be able to keep our house and all our contents, but even if I put it in my will it may not result in the way I wish because it can be legally contested! It’s nonsensical. Furthermore, my father and I have been distanced for quite some time. This is because he does not agree with my choice of lifestyle. He promised to disown me if I went down the path I have been born into, but I stuck true to who I am and now we never see each other. I want to congratulate you on being strong despite family difficulties. I know it’s hard to let a loved one out of your life but if you don’t, and you pretend to be something you’re not, you’ll forever regret it. Just be strong, and your family will realise the mistake of their ways. Ultimately, they will accept you for who you are.

I wish you and your partner the best of luck for the future. And to your son, thankyou for being so supportive and loving towards the person who brought you into this world. I pray that more people in similar positions will follow your lead.

If this could be passed on to Mrs. Phelps, it would be much obliged, as I feel compelled to let her know what she means to me, my partner and I’m sure many others.

Regards,

Gae F. E. Male.

To be honest, it really was not what I expected. I originally assumed that the monster was called Frankenstein. Silly me! But I think this is a widely held misconception. In this sense, I find a lot of similar aspects of the story that I had not known before our class started studying it. As I read on, I found more and events that grew further and further from my initial presumption of the plot as well as the characters. This is one of the main reasons I am thankful for reading analysing this text rather thananother lame Shakespeare play.

The flavour of the Mary Shelley’s 1816 novel was, although distinct, not what I was lead to believe. I was all set to get stuck into a thoroughly exciting and horrific tale. Instead I lazily trudged through the mud of a highly intellectual and slow-moving process. Ultimately, I didn’t like it. It was not exciting (the closest it came to this was when Victor had that nightmare first night after he breathed life into his unnamed monster), and I found it hard to get stuck into. In the end I set myself a 5 page per day quota to get through it. Also, someone please tell me why the monster, after listening for a couple of months to a family of three who really didn’t spend that much time talking to each toher, suddenly spoke like a Harvard graduate with 200 IQ! He spoke with emotion, feeling, intellectual diction and purpose, none of which I learned after a couple of months. I’m still not at the monster’s level and I’ve been studying the English language by ear for 17 years! And I’m suppose to be in the Extension English class! This really puzzled me. All those film versions of the monster I saw beforehand (like in James Whale’s 1931 adaptation) were slow and dumb, making me feel superior to it, like any other human being. This was a strange discovery for me.

Despite my disapproval of much of the story, I reamin pleased that we sudied it. Indeed it suits the Gothic criteria and will always be an important text in the study of English and literature. In the exams in particular, the questions I had to answer made me realise what an iconic novel Mary Shelley has written and how extensively it has been used and reused and morphed and altered in so many aspects of even the most modern cultures. It was truly a worthwhile study.

This idea of gothic ties into Christianity no matter how far back you look in history. It was strongly present during the Salem witch-hunt era where Christianity views were so strong that anything seen as un-Christian had to be an act of gothic. Then, and even now, there were onto two ways of looking at the world:
1) The  Christian way - there is always a bright side, everyone has good in them, your sins will be forgiven, and in the end good will always win over evil
2) The “Gothic” way -  the outlook on the world is  from the “dark side” point of view; as in there is evil in everyone, sins are everywhere we look - you can’t escape them as gluttony and greed are forever present, and the struggle between good and evil will be ultimately won by evil.

There will always be a cross-over between the “good” and “evil sides; to people who live their life with the gothic view of life there is a clear distinction between the two types of people - there is no in between. To Christian believers they will always be trying to convince others that there can be a middle ground and that good can win over evil.
Therefore, throughout history and definately continuing throughout the future, there will always be a battle of minds between Christian and Gothic outlooks on life.

Out of any film I have ever seen in my life, Pan’s Labyrinth has got to be simply the freakiest piece of work ever. Yet, at the same time, I simply couldn’t resist watching it from go to woe. It tells a tale of a young Spanish girl by the name of Ofelia whose mother is married to a powerful Spanish general  by the name of Vidal. The young girl and her mother visit the general at a Spanish fort from where they are opposing a pack of guerilla fighters. It is here where the fairy tale-obsessive Ofelia follows an obscure looking praying mantice to a very old labyrinth. Inside she finds a faun who claims she is the long lost daughter of the King of the Underworld. She feels very special now as a result of her love of fiction literature and agrees to endevour on the three tasks she is assigned by said faun to prove that she has not become too ‘mortalised’ by her time above. All three tasks involve magic, mystery, danger and horror, and are all laced with a Gothic edge in the sense of its enticing surrealistic charm.

 Throughout the plot, there is an abundance of supernature. There are fairies, fauns, a giant toad and, perhaps the most unbelievable of all, a monster who kills and eats children when it is awoken and puts its eyes in the palms of its hands. The monstrosity doesn’t end merely with the monsters themselves though. The violence and desperation of the humans is a monstrosity in itself, resulting in death, gore and truly horrific scenes.

The idea of good being overcome by evil is well portrayed by Ofelia’s death when she is murdered by Vidal (the Spanish general). This event is within the labyrinth, in which there is an everlasting mystery; we never see a clear shot or aerial shot of the labyrinth (and therefore can never really understand its complexity or extent), it shifts and changes its walls and never maintains a consistent form and, of course, it’s withholding of the worlds last gateway to the Underworld.

The macabre of the film is on and off really. It is enforced though by the domination of the plot by night scenes and scenes of poor weather and storms. Also, there is no apparent presence of a god or faith (other than that of the Underworld). Although it is all quite scary, the viewer is forced to keep watching by the fantasticality of it all, especially in the scene of the saggy skinned, eyes in palms, mongulated strided monster’s lair and the scene beneath the roots of an old tree in which a seedy old toad dwells and feeds on naught but cockroaches and other atrocious things. So, personally, I would definately encourage you to go see it for yourself and feel its grip on your attention and emotions.

 Just a bit extra; personally, unlike Jacob, I am glad we spent less time in that pale skinned monster’s domain, because it freaked the vomit out of me out of me (appoligies to the people sitting in front of me). Also, the Spanish title was “El Labyrinto del Fauno” which means “Labyrinth of the Faun”. Now, the English title refers to the Greek God Pan, but del Toro has informed that the faun in the film is not Pan. Why?….