A New Perspective

The reading of Geek Love was unlike many of the novels I had ever read before in many different ways. For one, the novel had a very unique title that leads many in our class to assume a different story line. From what I have heard in class discussions, many people, including myself, thought that the novel would be about a couple geeky teenagers falling in love. If you read the story, you would very well know that this is not the case. Once you get past the cover on the novel, you open the book and read through the first couple chapters to soon notice that the novel also proposes a unique narration standpoint. Olympia, one of the main characters in the story, is the narrator that constantly switches from past to more concurrent events. She tells her own story and, as the reader, you can’t help but wonder if she’s telling the story with her own spin. Along with a misleading title and a unique narration scheme, the novel also proposes what I think to be a crooked set of morals and events. Some of the events that take place during the plot of the novel are very questionable, and I have actually spent some time discussing specifics in my second blog post “Sinful Actions?” In being unlike most of the novels I have ever read, it’s also a novel that reconstructed the meaning of “monstrosity” for me. Beforehand I had considered the meaning of monstrosity to be someone or something with foul physical attributes. After reading Geek Love, I have formed a new meaning for the word. Instead of a monster being someone or something with a foul physical appearance, it/they have to also have the personality to back the term. For example, Olympia has a foul physical appearance, and before my reading of this novel would have been considered a monster. After reading Geek Love, Olympia took on a new persona. Instead of being a monster, I learned that Olympia has gentle and good intentions for the ones around her. Her personality was representative of caring for the ones around her. Because of the addition of a personality trait into my definition of monstrosity, I have a new view on what a monster character really is. A character in the novel that I considered a monster before and after the reading of this novel was Arty. Arty has foul physical appearance, and on top of that, has a foul personality. He always did things for the good of himself. He used and manipulated his family and followers for the good of Arty, and couldn’t have cared less about the people surrounding him. This newly created definition has changed the way I see “monsters” in the novels we have read throughout this entire semester. It’s interesting how one novel can change ones perspective and bring new concepts to light, even after you’ve been reading for years and years on end. It’s shows that no matter what your age, you can still pick up on new information and new insights to things we haven’t thought about in our lifetime. 

Dexter & Olympia

          Geek Love is truly an interesting novel in which you run into several very unique personalities, ethics, and morals with in each of the characters. As we approach the end of Geek Love, a novel written by Katherine Dunn, we can reflect and compare the novel to other media sources such as other novels, movies, TV shows, short stories, and possibly newspaper articles. As common as it may be to make contrasts with this novel and as odd as comparisons are to make to this novel, there is one I am able to make. The comparison takes place in comparing the television series Dexter. Being aired on CBS and Showtime, Dexter works as a blood spatter pattern expert for the Miami police department. But by night he takes on the entirely different role as a serial killer. But as you might think, Dexter isn't your average serial killer. He will only kill people the fit a very specific "moral code" taught to him by his father Harry. This “moral code” is one in which he kills only people he believes to have escaped justice. In comparing Dexter’s story to Geek Love, you can wonder how Dexter has anything in common with a bunch of circus freaks. In fact, with my specific character, Olympia, the most harmless and caring of them all, how do she and Dexter tie together? In fact, I think that Olympia and Dexter are the closest of all of the other characters in Geek Love on terms of their thoughts. Dexter decides to kill people that he believes “have it coming for them”. In a weird way, you could say that Dexter “cares” too much, and decides to take things into his own hands in order to “make things right”. Dexter does not go out and kill people cold bloodedly for no reason. He goes out with a motive, that motive getting back at the people in which caused pain for others, and got away because the judicial system failed to make the right verdict.  You could argue in a sense that Dexter is a “hero” figure; he just takes a very aggressive and illegal approach in order to make sure that justice is served. Oly can also be viewed as a heroic figure in the novel Geek Love. She cares very much for her family, and doesn’t want anything wrong to go about in her presence. She a peacekeeper and she tries to single handedly holds down the fort as her family around her does some pretty questionable stuff. Oly has a more caring and legal approach than Dexter, but you can see that both of them, even though they also do some questionably legal, moral, and ethical, things, are heroic figures in their stories. I believe that Dexter and Oly share very similar traits, more so than do any of the other characters in Geek Love. As we continue to reach the end of the novel, we see Oly become more and more of this type of figure. I think she’ll continue to show traits of being a hero, and I also think that we’ll see her doing more for the good of others, and not for her own good.