The Gashlycrumb Tinies

The Gashlycrumb by Edward Gorgey immediately make me think of a misfit child who was bullied from the first day he walked into his kindergarden classroom until his last day of college. His alphabet book shows many different emotions and is a very dark story. 

As I read, I couldn't help but think about his childhood and what drove him to write such a story. Was he trying to tell us that children need to be more careful because the world is dangerous? Were these names of former classmates that he had a built up hatred for? Does he hate children so much that he laughs when bad things come to them? Was Edward Gorgey an accident prone child? Maybe he could simply be telling us about his own personal childhood memories.  "F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leach," could be Edward explaining his first encounter with a blood sucking leach. At the time, the leach was attached to him, he might have felt like he was going to be sucked dry if he did not detach the leach from his body fast enough. 

Overall, Edward Gorgey's  message is unclear to me, as I'm sure it is to many of others. The gashlycrumb tinies is very disturbing story. I cant thinking of the writers mental state at the time he wrote this story. What was his purpose and what was the true message that he was trying to get across? Personally, Edward Gorgey is my least favorite writer compaired to the others we have become familiar with this semester.

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death by alphbetical order

I know that this blog will probably not meet the length criteria because even though I read through the whole alphabet I don’t know what I think about it.  It was quite strange and I understand about graphic novel and the idea for an alphabet book with stories about young children who perish is kind of extreme.  I think the graphic stark black, white and gray gives them a chillingly touch of reality. It makes me think that a child could have actually illustrated the book.  The drawings are rather simplistic and look like something someone would doodle in their notebooks while listening to a boring class.  The names used in the book reminded me of English names. For example, Yorick (Shakespeare character). Maud is another old fashioned name and Neville who died of ennui. I am sure that some people would have to brush up on their vocabulary to understand the nuances of the book.   I think this graphic piece of work was a page turner though because I couldn’t wait to read how everyone was dying in a new and novel way.  

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Death Happens

I love creepy things, I even just bought an amazing copy of Alice in Wonderland illustrated by a tattoo artist and it gives me the creeps. Well not as much as my Ralph Steadman illustrated copy but I love it. And I loved Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies". The story made me laugh and thoroughly made me uncomfortable which it's intended to do. I would read something like this to my child because honestly I'm not afraid to expose them to a book. If they didn't like it I wouldn't read it again but who's to say they aren't like me. I was in love with creepy things since I was a baby, Edward Scissor hands was a childhood favorite movie along with "the Nightmare Before Christmas" and my parents didn't ever try and change my preference away from dark humor. I think that's all this story really is to kids, as adults we can read into anything and see beyond the surface or something. This book is riddled with Death, literally images of death and dying and Death himself. I think that's something relevant to all historical period. People die, it's going to happen, as the Tropic of Cancer references in the beginning of the story Entropy with weather all way happening and can't be stopped, that's the same explanation of death. He's coming, it grows nearer and Gorey doesn't shy away from the subject instead he exposes it to children. He breaks a barrier that shelters a child from reality and shows them death is apart of life, it's as simple as the ABC's and is shouldn't be something we are afraid of, it's just something to accept and move on from.  

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Gorey, Dahl, and Creepy Kids

Why is it so hard to understand that some kids love creepy stories too?  One of the reasons Roald Dahl is so popular with adults and children is because of his colorful characters.  I stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we see that children can too be the villains in a story.  In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, the stories start with the three nice Baudelaire children's parents dying in a fire and they are sent to live with their horrible distant relative, Count Olaf.  Throughout the 13 book series, they are relentlessly pursued by Olaf and are surround by sorrow, death, and humor.   These books are as funny and witty as they are dark and mournful.  Children are no strangers to darkness and violence, many of there playtime is spent acting our scenes far more deadly than they even realize, slaying dragons and fighting wars with action figures.  When they can see something potentially frightening, like the death in a Gorey drawing or Augustus Gloop almost drowning in chocolate - seeing the humor allows them to realize it's not real and overcome their fears.  It helps them in future unsettling situations to look past what scares them and decide what is really happening.  They are not being desensitized, for they know (thanks to how sensational the stories are) that these are stories, fantasy, fiction.  In my opinion, as long as you are not forcing something you know for a fact scares your child, you are doing them a service by exposing them to the comedic creeps like Dahl, Gorey, Snicket, Tim Burton, and R.L. Stine.  Their imaginations expand and they learn ways of dealing with their own fears.
Do you agree?  If not, why?

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Death: "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"

Gorey reflects upon a childish delusion entwined with morbidity and despair in his rhyming didactic couplets found amongst the pages of the “Gashleycrumb Tinies.” The children within the story can be found encompassed by the likelihood of Death, himself. The tribulations and demise of the children entrance the reader creating movement amidst the ever-flowing ode. Gorey begins in saying “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs”(Gorey). With each letter of the Alphabet a depiction of death is made. Never is death directly stated though. The cessation of life is eminent in the circumstances, but only ever alluded. Gorey does so to bring forth a sense of light heartedness. It is less horrific if verification is not made of the child’s death. The alphabetic nature also brings forth a sense of childlike creativity. How else to depict death, than to bring it to the simplest state of being, deriving from the basic function of language. The rhyming didactic couplets also create an easy dialect to comprehend. The work, itself, reads very smoothly. “Gashleycrumb Tinies” is a necessity for the elemental depiction of intrinsic morbidity.

In the year of 1963 many great men succumbed to the inevitability of the darkness surrounding death. Gorey released his work in a relevant manner, as death was a commonality of the year. Robert Frost as well as the President, Jonh F. Kennedy sparked a fear of the eventuality of death. It was a topic of much discussion. The social and historical content of the year 1963 defines Gorey’s work

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Gorey

In the beginning of the article Maria Popova claims that Gorey's alphabet book "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" inspired kids to learn and took a genre to a new level.  I only wish this kind of thing made it to my school because I'm sure I'm not the only one who could have used the laugh or a little change of pace.  While it is a little grim, I bet the kids found humor in other things in the works and that helped make it acceptable.  there should probably be more strategies like this used considering it actually made kids enjoy learning.

He uses dark humor the whole way through the work, by showing kids fall down steps or get thrown out of a sleigh.  Kids reading this can relate to that because surely most of them have had both happen to them,  All of the ideas he uses for each letter are closely related to common accidents that happen to kids, and kids will laugh at anything, especially accidents.  It is part of their innocence. The visual technique he used put me off at first, but later I enjoyed it because the shading and coloring he used kept it in a dark mood, so that it was a little spooky, but there is still humor to be found in the situations for each letter. I really liked this piece because it said the kids enjoyed it and it is not a traditional way of teaching. I don't have kids so I don't have an answer, but for people who do have kids, would this be something your kids would enjoy? 

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