Digital Commons @ Butler University

Staff, North Meridian Review

English

Full Issue

Bishop, Wesley R.

The North Meridian Review 
Manuscript 1138 
Introduction 
Wesley R. Bishop 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/thenorthmeridianreview 
7 
 
Introduction: 
Fall 2023 
 
Dear residents of North Meridian, both far and near, welcome to the annual fall issue of the North 
Meridian Review. It is a pleasure to be writing to you from the editor’s desk. This year has seen a 
return to a more stable and normal schedule for our small journal, especially when compared to 
last year’s swerves and unexpected developments. 
We are happy to report that we are still an independent journal, a public humanities 
publication for the humane of the world. 
Changes to our world from the COVID-19 pandemic are still not fully understood. Daily 
we see updates about the ongoing climate crisis, political instability, and reactionary movements. 
But, as always, we place our hope in the continued struggles for economic and social justice, and 
the insistence that we retain our humanity even as billionaires and white supremacists try to set 
fire to the world. What we find is that our maintained humanity means we must fight back. 
As I write this introduction, my campus of Jacksonville State University of Alabama is 
amid a labor union organizing drive. Those of us wanting a better university that centers human 
development, ethics, and sustainability are proud to join the United Campus Workers–
Communication Workers of America as a new local. We cannot claim to be centers of higher 
thought, yet thoughtlessly allow our institutions to continue down a path of renovative destruction 
for the profit of a few.  
This year’s issue truly reflects both the spirit of NMR’s original mission, as well as the 
efforts to organize on campus. You will find a conglomerate of different pieces, perspectives, and 
topics. Several of the contributors are returning writers, and even more are making their debut with 
us in this issue.  
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BJ Bruther returns with a follow-up to her essay from last year. Continuing with the theme 
of using pop culture productions such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe to better understand the 
prevalence of reactionary politics in today’s political spectrum. 
Michael White provides a deeply researched essay on the labor organizing efforts of 
bookstore workers at Half Price Books. He is a former worker for the chain, and his scholarship is 
both timely and important for future labor historians. 
MariJean Wegert has authored a stunning and beautiful prose poem/essay titled “The 
Witness of Trees,” while Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo and Marc Valle provide NMR with its first 
fiction section. Their stories, respectively, about homophobia and manhood, and enclaves and 
death, are great additions to the journal. We look forward to expanding the fiction section in 
coming years. 
Our poetry section has once again a host of poets at different stages in their careers, while 
our art section has grown from last issue to feature not just the official artist in residence, this year 
Sarah Ellis with a beautiful series of prints titled “Little Worries,” but also three other artists, 
Adeyemi Doss, Audrey Grison, and Vivienne Rose who discuss race, disability, and fat liberation 
in their work. 
Finally, we have our review section of scholarly and creative titles. 
This year we at North Meridian are excited to also announce the launch of a new wing of 
publications called “North Meridian Books,” an outgrowth of the ideas, practices, and personalities 
at the North Meridian Review. Taken together, these two ventures will represent a larger endeavor 
called North Meridian Press. 
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We are a writer-led and artist-led press. We do not strive to become rich. Instead, we are 
interested in publishing works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and translation that would otherwise 
not find homes at traditional publishers.  
We are a press that is market adjacent and are proud to be so. 
As we say, Donald Trump has found success in traditional publishing. Virginia Woolf 
began a small press to self-publish her works. We prefer to lean to Woolf over Trump. 
As we grow and publish our first queue of titles, we will be discussing how to both 
compensate folks for their work while also maintaining an economically viable press. 
Two final notes regarding misprints. Last year’s issue had two major mistakes. First, 
Charlie Wiles and John Lepley’s names were switched for attribution to their book reviews. It 
should have read that Wiles reviewed “The Peacemaker’s Path,” while Lepley reviewed “The 
Good Hand.” Also, for our special issue on the translation of the Auschwitz trial documents, the 
year of the trials was 1945, not 1940. We caught these errors after going to print, and have since 
updated them for the printer, and for our archived issues. 
All in all, it is an exciting time at North Meridian, and we are glad you are here, dear reader. 
 
Wesley R. Bishop 
Founding and Managing Editor 
The North Meridian Review: A Journal of Culture and Scholarship 
Northeast Alabama 
Fall 2023 
  


Introduction

White, Michael

A Brief History of Union Organizing at Half Price Books

Wegert, MariJean

The North Meridian Review 
Manuscript 1143 
The Witness of Trees: Creative Essay 
MariJean Wegert 
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73 
 
The Witness of Trees: Creative Essay 
MariJean Wegert 
“Indigenous peoples understand that there is no difference between the telling and the 
material. They understand how we all, in fact, live inside and through the narratives we tell 
and that the importance in telling stories is inseparable from the identity, community and 
history they compose and the spiritual, economic, and political realities on which they 
depend and which they subvert or preserve.” 
 
-Joanne Barker and Teresia Teaiwa, “Native Information” cited in the introduction to 
Shapes of Native Nonfiction by Elissa Washuta and Therea Warburton  
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019). 
  
 Indigenous adjective 
 Indegenous /ɪnˈdɪdʒənəs/  
(formal) “Belonging to a particular place rather than coming to it from somewhere else.” 
 
~ 
If you want to find life, go to a graveyard.  
 
I think of it as the trees’ revenge. Or maybe, they’re simply making the most of what they 
have – for when humans decided that the best way to honor their dead was by filling their body 
with embalming fluid, cementing them into a hole in the ground away from the beautiful, 
regenerative process of decomposition and rebirth – there must have been anger from the 
animate world. Tree anger. Hedge anger. Worm anger and beetle anger. 
 
Who do you think you are? I hear them saying. Too good to feed us, as we fed you? But in 
this anthropomorphic insistence on absence, on amputatedness, on sterility, the trees claim their 
elder space.  
 
When I visit a graveyard – to honor the dead, or to make space for my grief – I go there 
for the trees. In a graveyard I find the trees that aren’t often found elsewhere: in addition to the 
oaks and maples, I find chestnuts. I find linden, alder, sweetgum, and tulip poplar. Beech and elm 
and ash. They tower over the statues of women draped in stone, the temple-like marble vaults 
that worship the wealth of the departed. Their roots curl around the edges of the graves, vast 
invisible networks lacing fingers underground. Over time, the trees will crack them open. They’ll 
sidle their wild tongues, along with the fungus, the insects, the soil. But until then, they reclaim 
the space around the dead, teeming it with life. They seem to laugh, saying, You tried. You tried 
to pretend we are lesser beings. But we are still here, and we are thriving while you are alone. 
~ 
I discovered the graveyard in 2019, a few miles south of Wabash, Indiana, the first 
electrically lighted city in the world. I followed a trail of signs to a newly opened coffee shop 
housed in a greenhouse on the White’s campus. Today called White’s Residential Center, the 
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institute is located a few miles south of Wabash, along a tributary of the Wabash River called 
Treaty Creek.  
 
Tucked in a gentle ridge in the crease of a gully and Treaty Creek, the graveyard is full of 
the bodies of indigenous children, many of them Sioux, buried in soil far from their families and 
native lands. 
 
The graveyard is run down and unmarked. The wooden arms of the fence around the edge 
of the space are leaning groundward at the corners, and about half the stones are undecipherable 
and many of them are leaning or flat on their faces in the dirt or cracked in two. The names on 
the headstones, if there are any, are wind worn and barely legible. It seems like a graveyard of 
the forgotten.  
 
But the place remembers what happened even if people don’t.  
 
In early 2020, in the middle of a pandemic-ravaged country, I followed a series of calls to 
live in Wabash and work at the center for a season as a groundskeeper. I’d always felt the land 
around Wabash was mystical and mythical; poised like a strange hill country in between the flat, 
dusty corn and soybean fields that disgrace much of the Indiana terrain, the city itself was 
anomalous to most of the Midwest, offering graceful architecture, built in the sweep of a hillside, 
along the Wabash River. Right over the bridge jutted the strange edges of limestone and shale 
bluffs, blown out of the hillside by dynamite a few hundred years before to make way for a 
railroad. 
 
Wabash is the site of the official signing of documentation forcing the removal of Miami 
and Potawatomi tribes who were settled in the area in 1826. The United States promised a half 
million dollars for as many acres of their settled land. The site of the “treaty” is commemorated 
along the river, where small cabins built like the traders’ cabins form a semicircle a ways off 
from the riverbank, carrying an odd celebratory vibe, as if the event had a mutually agreeable 
outcome for all parties.  
 
The overlapping histories—of the city, and the ground it is built over, were both full of 
intrigue. But below the veneers of brick and long windows gleaming in the sunset, the place felt 
haunted. I couldn’t note what, but I had a feeling it had something to do with the dissonance in 
the proud announcement of the land trade, with the reality that our history books don’t discuss.  
 
Today, the center offers recovery services, residential care, and a high school for children 
at risk of incarceration. Most of the campus leadership are practicing Christians and boast 
evangelical Christian values. The newly opened coffee-shop greenhouse, which drew me to the 
campus, boasted that it hired from the pool of these at-risk children, giving them opportunities to 
learn responsibility, resilience, and, of course, experience the therapeutic benefits of hanging out 
with plants.  
 
Around every corner of the grounds seemed to be something anciently tended sycamores 
and chestnuts, lindens and alders and oaks. But the place itself, deeper than the history of the 
white people who built on it, thrums with a sort of connection—the very first time I laid eyes on 
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the campus, cupped in a hollow of trees on the way down to the greenhouse, my very body 
talked back: I want to be here, it said. The land itself talked—not with words, but with 
sensations. I felt called. 
 
I enjoyed my seasonal job there as a groundskeeper. I loved being outside, the manual 
labor and the investment of my coworkers in my learning new skills. Over the course of the 
summer, I learned how to operate and maintain a zero-turn mower; received training with 
chainsaws, tractors, and backhoes; and even got some basic training on how to take care of cars 
from the resident mechanic. I learned a few of the basics of how to take care of cattle and 
listened to a lot of stories about how to run a small farm from the two elder employees, who were 
small-town curmudgeons in every sense of the word.  
 
Most of my coworkers had worked on the grounds for decades. They were full of stories 
about how the school was run “in the old days.” They waxed eloquent about the formal boxing 
matches that used to be held in the back forty to dispel quarrels—a practice squarely done away 
with in modern times—and showed me the acres where the students used to be responsible for 
subsistence farming—corn, squash, beans, wheat. They also told me about one of the campus 
buildings; an eerie, squat building, made of concrete and with bars over the windows. Until a few 
years ago, according to the stories, it was where the school sent “problem kids,” students who 
committed acts such as trying to run away into the two miles of cornfields surrounding the 
hollow, or smuggling drugs or other “contrabands” into the campus. Part of their remediation 
was often to spend time in the building, designed to feel as much like a prison as possible.  
 
Another coworker, a young dad who works with the “sexual divergent” group for a few 
seasons, talks to me of the sanctioned form of physical takedowns over a bag of Doritos, 
laughing as he says that, “These kids need to get a taste of what could happen if they don’t learn 
to behave." 
 
The solitary confinement and takedown practices were done away with for liability 
reasons, but the building is still there, a cold, cave-like shadow on the campus. And the coworker 
is still laughing remembering his glory days. 
~ 
When I go to a graveyard, I can tell what people value. A body in death is treated like a 
body in life: individuated, preserved in shriveled objectivity instead of a vibrant, interrelational 
subjectivity of dirt. Words carved in stone in eternal purity. Boxes within boxes. These collective 
death rituals portray a civilization obsessed with sterility, with individuality, and with the 
trappings of the cold, hard metal of currency.  
 
The air inside a tomb must be so old—no decay. But no life either. And no beauty. 
Some graves tell me smaller stories: this person is still remembered and loved, say the 
fresh flowers and the tiny pebble cairns. Some graves are so old no one tends them anymore; 
maybe some were never tended at all. But the trees—they tell me what the people forget.  
 
And they also grieve. 
~ 
 
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As I spent time with the gently rolling terrain of this haunted little place, following the 
loop of the barn swallows in the mornings, and watching the tulip poplars flower on the hillside, 
I found myself drawn back to the graveyard.  
 
I asked my coworkers about it one morning during our morning coffee break in the 
maintenance warehouse. The head gardener, who has been at White’s for decades, and who has 
the tender heart of an empath and storyteller, gives me a few hushed sentences. He tells me there 
was an epidemic, that the Sioux and children from several other tribes who were forced from 
their homes caught a plague and were all buried there.  
 
 I seek out a public record of deaths at White’s and only find a few deaths per year, but 
the thought doesn’t leave me. In the campus center, there are cheerful pictures of the many eras 
of White’s school hanging from the ceiling, a testament to their services, spanning the first era of 
orphan care, the years of subsistence farming, to today’s residential care. Sandwiched in between 
is a black-and-white photo of the years of “Indian reform school”—nightmarish pictures of 
indigenous children with cut hair, the uncanny combination of the cut shoulders of a white man’s 
suit. To the unresearched eye it could be just another picture in the legacy of White’s. There is no 
notation of the reality behind the picture, and there is no marker on the dilapidated cemetery sign 
depicting the oppression of bodies and spirits that was the Indian reform school.  
 
The director of the place lives across the gully, in a special house not unlike the rectory of 
a religious institution, living on the campus. King of his hill. He invites the groundskeepers to a 
lunch on his swept deck one day, grilling burgers and serving watermelon in chunks from a 
plastic bowl. Over our plates of food, I ask him about the graveyard—maybe there is a plan, I 
think. Maybe this pain can be witnessed instead of glossed over. 
 
His eyes, in fact, gloss over when I ask him—he waves his hand vaguely toward the 
bodies in the hillside within sight of his pristinely mown back yard. “Oh yes,” he says vaguely. “I 
think there is some organization interested in updating it eventually. They have plans for— 
sometime, in the future, I think.” 
 
The White’s school founder and namesake, Josiah White, was a businessman, a 
philanthropist, and Quaker who dreamed of starting a school for underprivileged children. His 
dream was realized in 1860, when the school opened to students of all races—one of the few in 
the area that admitted Black and indigenous children. A progressive for his time, White wanted a 
school where any orphan could attend, and which was accessible to low-income students. 
White’s noble cause was quickly subverted when, twenty years later, the Indian Aid Society and 
Indian Bureau negotiated funding for White’s in exchange for the admission of indigenous 
children during their removal from their families to the infamous “assimilation schools”—a 
nightmare in which children would be taken from their parents, sometimes without their 
knowledge or consent, and stripped of their language, traditions, agency, and pride.  
 
The history book I found about White’s did cast an apologetic tone for the atrocities, but 
it’s not apparent in how the institution runs currently. This graveyard is their secret: White’s, 
along with the many other schools, hosted indigenous children removed from their families, their 
native practices and language, cutting their hair (a sacred), dressing them in “civilized” clothing, 
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and forcing them to live and breathe as different than who they are. White’s admitted indigenous 
children for a decade before reformatting.  
 
White’s was a subsistence center for many decades; children were worked hard and fed 
poorly. At the time the executives of the school took a harsh Victorian stance. Those children 
were likely buried in shrouds, or plain wooden coffins if their families could afford them. There 
was no concrete barrier between them and the earth and no embalming fluid to keep them from 
returning to dirt.  
 
Their stories are now stored in the roots of the trees. 
~ 
In 1883, the Wabash Weekly Courier published an announcement in its morning 
publication: 
 
“THIRTY LITTLE INDIANS” 
 
It read, “Last Tuesday morning thirty Indian children from the Indian Territory, for whom 
provision has been made at White’s Institute, south of the city, arrived here and were 
immediately taken to their new home, where they will complete their education. They were an 
intelligent looking set of redskins and wore the garb of civilization; in appearance they did not 
differ from the Indians on the reservation in this county. …All in all they are a respectable lot of 
kids who will some day possibly make useful citizens.” 
 
Another article made a firm claim that “No pupil having been brought here against his 
will” “An Indian school—White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute 11 May 1888.” History tells a 
different story.  
 
The cited newspaper article betrays the attitude of the day: that these sites of oppression 
were, in fact, the saving grace for these “redskins” who, with the right structure and 
programming, could “possibly” become productive citizens.  
 
But this is one storyline; there are many more. 
 
A more accurate version of the story of the land might be told by Zitkala-Sa (also known 
as Gertrude Bonnin), a Dakota Sioux who moved to White’s during the late 1880s. In her books, 
she tells of the slow, agonizing spirit thievery of the customary assimilation practices, the 
oppression of body, and consequent numbing:  
 
“In the process of my education I had lost all consciousness of the nature world 
about me,” she writes in American Indian Stories. “Thus, when a hidden rage took 
me to the small white-walled prison I then called my room, I unknowingly turned 
away from my one salvation.”79  
 
Whatever practices she lost, the young Gertrude understood something about trees. In her 
retellings of her childhood memories, she recounts listening to telegraph poles: “Often I had 
 
79 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories (Washington: Hayworth Publishing, 1921), xvii.  
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stopped on my way down the road, to hold my ear against the [telegraph] pole, and, hearing its 
low moaning, I used to wonder what the paleface had done to hurt it.”80  
 
That “paleface” apparently leaves dead and dying trees in their wake.  
~ 
I hop off my mower in the clearing later that week, where some of the names carved in 
stone are too time-worn to read. The head gardener hops off his mower too, and approaches me, 
with a posture of deference. “Are you acquainting yourself with the children?” he asks. I just 
nod. 
 
The trees around this graveyard are sick. Some kind of leaf gall blisters on the stand of 
young maples planted directly around the graveyard. The old sycamore in the lowland downhill 
from the graves, where floodwater from the nearby ditch collects to run into Treaty Creek, 
shoulders a bulbous growth the size of a person. The tree itself is thick and towering, one of the 
widest-trunked sycamores I have ever seen. Its roots crawl into the side of the hill, and on the 
other side, I’m sure, reach almost to the creek, drinking up water. The growth is the size of – the 
size of several children, in fact. When I go near it, a shadow passes over my heart, like 
something cold and full of grief is held there. 
 
 Even going near the swelling growth makes me shudder. I do some research on tree 
cancers, finding that trees can close their own brittle skin over pathogens to keep it from 
infecting itself or other trees. Whatever this tree carries, it is massive, and dark. The roots plunge 
into the soggy soil beneath it, a floodplain of the creek, holding on for its life against the 
desperate weight its upper branches bear.  
 
I kept thinking about how trauma stores in the body. How it goes deep into our cells to 
hide, how bodies form and twist to accommodate unwitnessed suffering. If trauma stores in our 
bodies, then why not in earth’s body? What if the trees know? What if the sickness in the trees 
around the graveyard is the cellular memory of the place, holding on to unwitnessed sorrow? If 
humans are partially responsible for the stories they tell, then why not the trees? The rivers? 
What can we read from their stories? 
 
I’ve come to see that such meaning-making faculty is part of the magic and power 
humans were meant to have. Stories are one of the fundamental ways we were meant to interact 
with the world. But it’s a transhuman faculty. The trees tell the stories, too. I wonder if I was 
called to that crevice in time and space to witness, with the trees, what had been forgotten by 
humans. Part of me thinks that’s why the place wanted me there. Someone to witness. Someone 
to see and acknowledge what the leadership of the place must hide behind platitudes: that, 
despite the intentions of the original founder, the place and the people there were complicit in the 
erasure of a people group, in the oppression of indigenous bodies, in the death of body and 
spirit.  
 
The trees remember. And now, I do too.  
 
80 Zitkala-Sa, “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” Atlantic Monthly, February 1900, 186. 


The Witness of Trees: Creative Essay

Doss, Adeyemi

The North Meridian Review 
Manuscript 1148 
“When We Wear a Mask”: Public Blackness as Art 
Adeyemi Doss 
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152 
 
 “When We Wear a Mask”:  
Public Blackness as Art,  
Digital Photography, 2022,  
Exhibit Overview.  
__________________________________________________________ 
Dr. Adeyemi Doss 
 
  
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The opening of Public Blackness achieved record attendance. The exhibition that expanded three galleries 
(Turman Gallery, Yang Family University Gallery, and Bare-Montgomery Gallery) located on the campus 
of Indiana State University, included a large number of paintings, photographs, and media installations from 
invited artist such as Abe Abraham, Dread Scott, Idris Habib, and Ayanna Ross. The art exhibition was also 
my first one, and it was inspired by a piece I wrote for The North Meridian Review, which was published 
in 2021. “Public Blackness and the Burden of Black Privacy” explored themes of identity and belonging 
through a time of protest around the killings of Ahmaude Arbrey, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, 
interwoven with my personal experiences and observations as a Black male. It was the idea of being Black 
in public that I wanted to explore through the lens of a visual artist. In my examination of how blackness 
and the bodies of Black people are perceived in public, I started to wonder how I could bring other people 
from all walks of life into my web of thoughts on what and how it feels to be Black in public. I wanted to 
challenge the notion that the Black experience is singular and static, and instead showcase its diversity and 
complexity in a time of heightened anti-black racism. By incorporating various artistic mediums such as 
painting and photography, my I aim was to create a more inclusive and immersive experience for viewers. 
Through this exhibition, my intent was to foster dialogue and understanding among individuals from 
different backgrounds, encouraging them to reflect on their own perceptions of race and identity in public 
spaces.  
Upon arrival into the first gallery, which sits north of the campus, attendees were greeted with a 
display of racial artifacts from the Jim Crow era dating back to the late nineteenth century. These artifacts 
came from my private collection. On the side of the artifacts displayed a mature content sign advising the 
attendees that the exhibition contained mature and potentially provocative content that may cause a range 
of responses based on personal ideologies. Along with a “mature content” sign, there was also a description 
explaining the history behind the artifacts on display.  
  
154 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
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The reason behind the artifacts was to educate the public on how Black people’s bodies are 
imagined and scripted through many forms of media as objects that are often seen as everything but how it 
ought to be seen—as human. Thus, the artifacts served as an entry point that demonstrated how the Black 
body becomes entangled in web of anti-black thoughts and how detrimental those thoughts can be to the 
existence of Black people. As the attendees walked through the entrance, they were faced with a description 
of the exhibition:  
This exhibition demonstrates how the Black body in a racially divided society gradually 
disappears from our understanding of what it means to be a human. What transpires when 
the Black body is captured in our gaze—a gaze that has been trained to only view it as a 
problem everywhere it exists? What happens when the myths from our past—which were 
frequently used to justify its destruction—become ingrained in our imagination of its 
existence today? When these myths become the foundation for how we perceive and 
interact with bodies of Black people, we often overlook their value and humanity. In other 
words, by only seeing the Black body through a racialized lens and not allowing for its true 
humanity to be seen, we are upholding the structures of white supremacy, which have been 
so pervasive throughout history. We must actively challenge the idea that the bodies of 
Black people are inferior and shift our gaze to a lens of equality, appreciation, and value. 
By examining the past and how it has been reconstructed in our present, we can begin to 
actively seek out ways to undo the power of racism and dismantle its embeddedness in our 
culture. 
 
One should leave the exhibition knowing a bit more about what makes the Black body 
vulnerable to the violence it still endures today. With that knowledge, one should be 
empowered to view and treat the Black body not as an object of fear or mistrust, but with 
respect and appreciation. This exhibition forces us to ask hard questions and confront 
painful realities about the ways in which we have historically, and continue to, marginalize 
Black people and their bodies within our society. By examining the unique history of the 
bodies of Black people and their collective experiences, this exhibition reveals a complex 
interplay between past and present understandings of how the myths from our past have 
become intertwined with the realities of what it means to be Black today. As an observer, 
this exhibition pushes us to think deeply about the themes of power and oppression that 
have long been tied to representations of the Black body and encourages us to consider our 
own roles in the continued marginalization of the Black people within our society. This 
exhibition not only reveals the painful realities of our past, but also challenges us to make 
a conscious effort to learn from our history in order to create a more just and equitable 
future for everyone.  
Going forward, it is essential to take these difficult conversations and use them to help 
foster a more equitable society that works towards dismantling structural racism, prejudice, 
and discrimination in order to ensure a brighter future for everyone. As such, the exhibition 
presented in this way serves as a call to action for all viewers, inspiring us to use the 
difficult conversations that these powerful works of art bring up as a tool to educate and 
advocate for change. Moving forward, it is our duty to use these powerful works of art as 
157 
 
a platform for learning and a call to action in order to make a lasting impact for generations 
to come. 
As those present made their journey into the core of the gallery, they were greeted with an 18x16-foot mural 
painted in acrylic, which took me two weeks to complete with the assistance of a graduate student. Right 
in the center of the mural is my face, encompassed by the faces of Emmett Till, Michael Brown, Breonna 
Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Sandra Bland. The mural functioned as a powerful representation of the 
ongoing fight against racial injustice and police brutality. Each face depicted on the mural symbolized the 
lives lost and the need for systemic change, urging viewers to reflect on the urgent need for justice and 
equality in our society. The mural was also an interactive mural that offered attendees the opportunity to 
write and reflect on not only the work itself, but also the atrocities that they have seen or witnessed regarding 
racial violence, which has taken the lives of many people of color. The interactive aspect of the mural 
provided a space for healing and collective grieving, allowing individuals to share their personal 
experiences and emotions. It served as a powerful reminder that the fight against racial injustice requires 
active participation and solidarity from all members of society.  
Next to the mural were three 48x32-inch black-and-white digital photos mounted on foam core. 
These photos aimed to capture the complexity of the black experience, highlighting the internal battles and 
challenges faced by individuals in their everyday lives. By presenting these images in an abstract manner, 
I wanted to encourage viewers to reflect on and empathize with these struggles, fostering a deeper 
understanding of the systemic issues at play.  
By using photo manipulation to illustrate how some black people and their bodies respond to public 
blackness, my goal was to capture the everyday struggle and resistance against the embodiment of societies 
collective views of blackness which is often seen as the consequence of humanism in which those who 
appear to exist in blackness can be alienated and exiled at any time. 
In conclusion, my ambition for this exhibition was to generate greater knowledge of the persisting 
and-often neglected local and national racial issues. Through the effectiveness of visual storytelling, both 
my work and the works of the other artist attempted to stimulate conversations and inspire a sense of 
158 
 
urgency for change. The exhibition aimed to dismantle stereotypes and challenge societal norms, urging 
spectators and attendees to examine their own prejudices and diligently work toward a more inclusive and 
equitable society.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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“When We Wear a Mask”: Public Blackness as Art

Harvey, Gordon E.

The North Meridian Review 
Manuscript 1162 
Practicing Oral History with Military and War Veterans 
Gordon E. Harvey 
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Sharon D. Raynor. 2023. Practicing Oral History with Military and War Veterans. New York:  
Routledge, 180pp. ISBN 9781629583501. 
 
______________________________________________________________________________ 
Reviewed by Gordon E. Harvey 
Oral history is at once among the oldest and newest methods of practicing history. The oral 
tradition dates to prehistoric times, long before systems of writing were developed. Sharon D. 
Raynor explains that Thucydides spoke with veterans of the Peloponnesian War before writing his 
history of that conflict. More recently, in the 1930s, tape recorders were used to chronicle the lives 
of those affected by the Great Depression as part of the Federal Writers Project. Since then, oral 
history has developed into a full-fledged and fully accepted historical approach.  
Yet oral history is not uniform. Interviewers, subjects, topics of discussion, time, and 
memory all affect the craft. This is especially true when interviewing veterans. Raynor’s 
Practicing Oral History with Military and War Veterans seeks to illustrate the peculiarities of 
interviewing veterans. Raynor’s work not only discusses the nuts and bolts of veteran oral history 
but also explains why this particular area of oral history requires more careful consideration and 
preparation and a softer approach.  
Veterans, especially those who have seen combat, carry with them the wounds of trauma, 
which Raynor explains can develop a sort of “code of silence” that helps them prevent reliving 
these events or sharing their stories with family members to protect them from hearing not only 
the horrors of war, but also what that veteran may have done in such life-and-death situations. 
Further, the role of memory immediately after an event and decades later often leads to vastly 
different interview outcomes. Research has shown that a veteran’s memory of an event changes 
over time from the highly specific to the more general. 
197 
 
Practicing Oral History with Military and War Veterans is divided into four sections that 
take readers from Raynor’s origins in veteran oral history through the process of preparing for and 
interviewing veterans. As a young historian, Raynor interviewed a Vietnam veteran whose 
recollections were so disjointed and incomplete that it led her to realize that veterans will hide 
traumatic memories away to prevent reliving. Raynor has dedicated herself to the craft of veteran 
oral history, and has provided an invaluable guide for junior and senior historians alike.  
In section 1, Raynor tells her origin story. Here she chronicles how she realized that 
veteran’s oral history was vastly different enterprise than other interview subjects. Because of the 
intrinsic value of recording veterans’ experience, Raynor decided to devote her career not only to 
conducting such interviews, but also explaining the intricacies of the craft to those who would take 
on veteran interviews.  
Section 2 discusses the human side of interviewing veterans. Interviewers cannot jump 
head first into the trauma of warfare. There must be a period when trust is built, when the 
interviewer must learn patience and allow silence, and where trauma must be understood before 
any interview process begins. Empathy is necessary when interviewing veterans, argues Raynor. 
The interviewer must learn to bear the burden of the trauma themselves to understand not only 
what the veteran may be feeling and why, but also what direction to take the interview. 
Sections 3 and 4 are a handy guide to the nuts and bolts of preparing for a veteran interview. 
But Raynor goes beyond a mere how-to guide. She explains that an important part of veteran 
interview preparation is to build a “structural methodology” that takes the interview beyond a 
simple collection of stories and facts and creates a therapeutic opportunity for veteran and 
interviewer. The interview must allow for a more organic interview process that ebbs and flows 
and does not follow the more traditional oral history chronological approach. An interview may 
198 
 
look like it is disjointed and out of order, but that, wrote Raynor, is part of the process or 
remembering and coping with past trauma. This is where empathy and understanding play a major 
role in the interview. The interviewer must do their best to understand and even “feel” what the 
veteran feels as they recollect past events. 
Those who do not regularly practice oral history often see it as a simple process of questions 
and answers. This reductive approach fails to appreciate the intricacies of the craft. Raynor 
explains that veterans oral history takes this complexity a step further. The goal of any oral history 
is not to obtain answers to a prescribed list of questions, but to take the subject to places they have 
not been to in a while; to give them opportunities for reflection and retrospection. With veterans, 
this is the key to a successful interview. 
It would be a mistake to dismiss this book as useful only for veteran oral histories. Any 
scholar can benefit from this work. Oral history requires a certain level of empathy and 
understanding for any interview subject. To be sure, this is the essence of history itself—the effort 
to understand the motivations behind actions and events and how it may illustrate for us the 
complexity of the human condition. 
 
  


Practicing Oral History with Military and War Veterans

Staff, The Ovid

Ovid 
Volume 1 Writing from Butler University's First 
Year Seminar 2023-2024 Article 36 
2024 
Letter from the Editors 
The Ovid Staff 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid 
Recommended Citation 
Staff, The Ovid (2024) "Letter from the Editors," Ovid: Vol. 1 , Article 36. 
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid/vol1/iss1/36 
This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Scholarship at Digital Commons @ 
Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ovid by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Butler 
University. For more information, please contact digitalscholarship@butler.edu. 
 2 
Letter from the Editors  
 
 
Dear readers,  
 
Phew. Another year earned. It feels stolen. 
 
We are here to announce another proud edition of first-year student writings. This 11th edition arrives 
with a name change. From The Mall to Ovid, we took steps to reflect on our society and people. After 
the COVID pandemic, interest in health and remote connection has grown and been recognized; 
since the release of ChatGPT, the new technology, artificial intelligence stamped down the irreversible 
ink. No doubt, we are explorers, observers, and journalists of the historical events recorded in media 
and languages of the world today. Today, we are prompted to question our relationship with the world 
and our work. It would seem we exist in a wholly new time. Of course, there are those who have 
forged their own new paths before us, paths we follow and take further.  
 
We hope Ovid serves as a remembrance of Ovid Butler, the founder of Butler University. We also 
echo the Roman poet Ovid. The inspiration also comes from the Latin, “ab ovo,” meaning “the 
beginning,” or, “from the egg.” We aim to capture this beautiful period of growth and self-discovery 
(“naive silliness” would be how I word it). We crack the eggshell where our feet will touch wet ground 
and our lungs will breathe fresh air.  
 
For many contributors, we have welcomed the year of transition into the university full of curiosity 
and uncertainty. We applaud and celebrate these moments with all those who took the courage to 
submit their work and share their voice. Gratitude to the editorial board for all their hard work and 
companionship along the way. We appreciate all our mentors and supporters, all the FYS professors 
who guided us, sincerely and patiently and with open ears, through our first-year experience. 
Specifically, to Professor Nick Reading, our faculty advisor, for pulling together and filling the holes 
of this novice team. Most importantly, we want to thank our readers. You allow the works here to be 
seen.  
 
In this edition of Ovid, you will find our stories and personal essays. You will find reflections on 
philosophers and pop culture analysis of Westworld, Hunger Games, and Stranger Things. You will find 
calls for change and invested voices. You will find our cultures, identities, passions, and questions. 
We hope this sampling of exemplary work produced in FYS inspires us to write more, reflect more, 
and share our understanding of the world and our work with each other. We are here to tell you your 
journey is a shared one. 
 
Adventure! 
The Editorial Board of 2023-2024 
  


Letter from the Editors

Like, Ava

Ovid 
Volume 1 Writing from Butler University's First 
Year Seminar 2023-2024 Article 44 
2024 
Like Tradition 
Ava Like 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid 
Recommended Citation 
Like, Ava (2024) "Like Tradition," Ovid: Vol. 1 , Article 44. 
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid/vol1/iss1/44 
This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Scholarship at Digital Commons @ 
Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ovid by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Butler 
University. For more information, please contact digitalscholarship@butler.edu. 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
Like Tradition 
Ava Like 
 
 
The early morning winter darkness was everywhere overwhelmingly. I fumbled around my sister and 
I’s shared room in the pure blackness, hoping to find some of the at least five layers of warm clothing 
I had meticulously laid out the night before. After getting my many layers on, I felt my way downstairs, 
but not without stubbing my toe three times. The bright yellow kitchen lights illuminated my father 
in full Carhartt camo, sitting at the bar drinking watered-down black coffee. He didn’t say good 
morning.  
He would sip his coffee and then eventually he would look at the clock on the microwave and 
say, “Better get a move on or them coons will beat the traps.” We walked out into the abyss of crisp, 
sub-zero air and headed towards the barn to put on even more layers. I donned my thick, Carhartt 
coveralls and coat as well as a neon orange beanie and gloves that reduced my finger mobility to zero. 
My father lowered me down into the hip- higher rubber waders that would keep me dry from muddy 
creek water but force me to walk like the little brother in his snowsuit from “A Christmas Story.” We 
both hopped into the old UTV and my dad started up its engine and loaded our supplies in the back. 
A variety of traps, bait, the “dead basket,” and a revolver were the important things I always noticed 
we would take. Then we would start our trip across the dozens of dead, grey cornfields.  
The cold air felt even colder while racing across the fields in the open vehicle. Eventually, we 
would reach a tree line and we would begin heading into the woods to check a route of traps previously 
set. The traps would often lay on the edges of frozen creek beds, or below trees where my dad assumed 
the raccoons nested during the day. He would always know exactly where each trap was, without 
hesitation. I lagged behind him. If a trap was empty, he would take out some of the bait and “refresh” 
it and then douse the area surrounding the trap with fish oil. He would always say, “They won’t be 
able to stay away from that one next time.” If a trap was sprung, he would always say, “Well damnit, 
these traps can’t do a damn thing, getting outsmarted by a coon for Christ’s sake.” He’d add some 
more bait and fish oil and then we’d move on.  
Sometimes we would find that animals that weren’t our intended target found their way to the 
traps. One time we found our own dog Millie stuck in one. Her ankle was all bloody and cut up, but 
she survived.  
Pretty often, we would find opossums in the traps. I’d walk up to them a poke them with a 
stick to see if they were actually dead, or just trying desperately to survive by playing dead. My dad 
called them “the scum of the fur trade.” We ran the traps for as a source of income, and opossum 
furs were only worth a measly three to four dollars, compared to the thirty to forty dollars you could 
get from a raccoon fur. My dad always said, “Only reason the opossums are here is to steal food from 
the good stuff.” So, if we came upon an opossum stuck in a trap my dad would pistol whip it with 
the revolver to stun it and throw it in the “dead basket” on his back. He would use it as bait in the 
coyote traps that we set in the afternoons. Stunning it kept the opossum alive for longer so it would 
be “more fresh” for the coyotes.  
I dreaded when we would find a trap with a raccoon in it. When we found a successful trap, 
he would always say, “Well I’ll be damned, that’s a coon and we got ‘em.” Sometimes, luckily, the 
 31 
raccoon will have frozen to death, the pain of the trap snapping his leg killed him, or he drowned in 
a nearby water source, so my dad wouldn’t have to use the revolver. That didn’t happen too often. 
Usually, the raccoon would hiss and snarl at us as we approached, stuck helplessly. My dad would pull 
out the revolver. Sometimes he would warn me, sometimes he wouldn’t, but every time he would 
shoot the raccoon square between the eyes.  
When I got a little older, he would even ask me if I wanted to do it, but I never did. I never 
could. It’s not that I was against hunting or fishing or killing animals, but it just doesn’t seem fair to 
kill an animal that sits helplessly stuck in a trap. You don’t eat it and it isn’t fun like it is to shoot an 
18-pointer whitetail deer, or reel in a 5-pound large- mouth bass.  
I would do my best to close my eyes and avoid the lethal gunshot. However, it was unavoidable 
to watch the raccoon squirm and shake after the shot, because they always did. My dad would put the 
revolver back into his holster, and disable the trap, freeing the suffering raccoon. He would toss the 
raccoon, dead or alive, into the “dead basket.” Once we had checked all the traps on the route, the 
sun would slowly begin appearing over horizon, and we would make or way back to the UTV at the 
edge of the woods with a basket full of dead or dying raccoons.  
I followed this same routine every winter for my first five years trapping. It scared me at first, 
but it eventually just became normal, even though I continually loathed it. I knew my family did it to 
supplement our income, so it must have been necessary. Still, I hated waking up at 4 a.m. on my 
Christmas break, and on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for that matter. I despised how I would 
wear layers and layers of clothing, yet my knuckles and toes would still turn numb, and I would 
somehow sweat profusely at my core. I really hated how all those layers made me walk like a penguin, 
but there was nothing I could do about it. After all, this is just what my family does. I was the fifth 
generation of trappers; my family has been trapping for well over one hundred years. My great great 
grandfather started trapping out of necessity after immigrating to America to supplement the low-
income life of farming. He passed trapping down to his sons, and they passed it down to theirs. I was 
the first woman born directly into my dad’s family since we began trapping years ago, and that changed 
nothing. I learned the same things as my long-gone male predecessors. I learned to build all types of 
traps for different scenarios and settings. I learned to tolerate the cold Midwestern air. I learned to 
not become upset watching the animals my dad shot suffer in their last moments, or at least not to 
show I was upset. I learned to memorize where each and every trap was, and how to methodically 
place traps in the best spots. I learned that this is just what we do in this family. As I aged, I began to 
accept trapping and stop fighting it. I started of thinking of it as a way to help provide for my family, 
which is more than what most kids were doing at my age. By age thirteen, I still despised everything 
about trapping, but I realized that it was slightly more enjoyable if I stopped telling myself how awful 
it was.  
My work then was done in the early morning hours, collecting the animals and resetting the 
traps. However, the other part of the trapping process was done in the pig barn on dark evenings. 
Skinning the animals we caught was important and took skill, but the evening meetings in the pig barn 
were also as close to a social gathering that my family gets to. The place is old, rats noisily run through 
the walls and the walls are decorated with mementos of the past. It smells really, really bad, but you 
get used to it and eventually you only smell the fresh wood burning in the stove. Every evening in the 
winter months, my uncle, grandfather, father, brother, and I met here. My father, uncle, and 
grandfather skin, and my brother Zeb and I watched and drank Orange Fanta. We would all talk about 
trapping and anything really. For the first five years I watched and talked, until one evening in 
December when I was thirteen.  
“Ava... bout time you learned to start help fleshin’ the coons. You can’t even shoot one...you’d 
be a lot more useful here in the pig barn,” my grandfather said as he cut away on a coyote. My fear of 
 32 
shooting the animals had haunted me, and everyone knew about it. Even Zeb, my little brother, could 
do it. He could run the trap routes by himself in the morning at just nine years old. I was always 
accompanied by my dad, and occasionally my brother. I thought it was pitiful that I would have to 
hand a nine-year-old a revolver to shoot a raccoon for me.  
“He’s right. We want to send you out to run the traps by your own but can’t do that if you’re 
afraid to shoot ‘em. You’re gonna have to change something. You’re only real useful if you’re with 
someone and you’re a teenager now,” my uncle piped in while fleshing some fat off a raccoon fur. 
My cheeks flashed red with embarrassment and shame. My dad cut away at a muskrat quietly but 
nodded in agreement.  
“This coyote is really nice, will probably sell for hundred, hundred-thirty bucks,” my 
grandfather said as he worked away at a coyote. I was thankful he shifted the conversation. He knew 
everything and anything about hunting, trapping, fishing, you name it; he was a professional 
taxidermist. “Tell you what, come up here and cut at this coyote. It’ll be good for ya,” my grandfather 
said, motioning me to go put on one of the leather aprons. I froze for a second, I thought this 
conversation couldn’t have worsened, but it did. I then got up to put on one of the black leather 
aprons that hung in the corner. The aprons were all covered in fur, fat, and flesh, and mine grazed 
the tops of my feet. I shook nervously as my grandfather handed me a dirty, wooden-handled knife. 
He gave me a thirty second explanation on how to skin, but I mostly tuned it out because I was 
panicking. My knife gently grazed the thin layer of tissue between the soft organs of the belly and the 
skin of the muddy matted fur. I pulled the hide down tight with my right arm, and I cut with my left. 
After cutting down a few inches, I set my knife down and got a grip on the already freed fur and 
pulled down using all my might. I listened to the sound of tearing fat and tissue above me as I squatted 
to use as much of my body weight as possible. I stood up to see my progress. The hide had been 
pulled down to the neck. The rest of my work would involve nerve-wracking precise cuts around the 
thin fur and fragile facial features. My knife glided millimeter by millimeter along the jawline, gradually 
freeing more of the fur from its carcass. I eventually made my way to the tip of nose and inspected if 
my cuts were as meticulous as I had hoped they were. There wasn’t a single hole in the hide: it was 
perfect. I finally made the last cut, and the muddy fur hide fell to the dirty concrete floor.  
“Not a single hole in your first skin. You’ve found your calling. Don’t know why we had you 
out there running those damn traps for so long, you could’ve been being real useful in here,” my uncle 
said as he picked the fur off the floor and inspected it. I felt good walking out of the pig barn that 
night. I knew I would never have to run traps again: I had found my place in the business.  
Since that night, I was in the pig barn most evenings in December and January, and I’ve never 
run a trap route. I learned the entirety of the skinning process and I began to tolerate it doing it. But 
in being in the pig barn as often as I was, I heard a lot more about our trade.  
“Gonna lose the most we’ve ever lost this year, Toby. I swear nobody wants nothing to do 
with a pretty raccoon or coyote fur anymore,” my grandfather said to my uncle on evening as they 
both worked on skinning raccoons. I listened in while cleaning some furs in the sink.  
“You’re right, God knows what next year’ll be like. Damn, we were selling a fur for twice the 
price in ’85,” my uncle replied shaking his head.  
“We don’t make money off trapping?”I said, completely abandoning the furs in the sink.  
“Hell, we haven’t made a penny since the twentieth century darlin’. I would be happy if I could 
get away with losing less than a thousand each season,” my grandfather chuckled. They both went 
back to work, but I was astonished. I thought we did this to make money, why else were we doing it?  
“Man, those were the days. I remember when we used to get paid to do this. Honestly now I 
wish I didn’t have to do it- was only fun when I was getting a check,” my uncle said.  
“Oh I agree. It’s more a chore these days,” my grandfather said.  
 33 
I was in disbelief. We don’t make a profit off of trapping, and nobody here enjoys it? Why are 
we even here? I went back to washing the muddy furs in the sink, but with a blank feeling lump in the 
back of my throat.  
Everything I had thought to be the truth about trapping was a lie. We do this every year, spend 
hundreds of hours each season, make no money, and everyone secretly doesn’t want to do it. I didn’t 
want to skin for the next few days. I was thinking about the days my father forced me to go out and 
check the trap route with him. He would say, “It’s part of the family business, you ain’t got no choice.” 
But I did have a choice and knowing that infuriated me. I was forced to watch my dad kill animals at 
point-blank range at eight years old, and I believed that it was normal, and something I had to do as 
a Like, even at eight years old. 
 
  


Like Tradition

Yang, Meiwen

Ovid 
Volume 1 Writing from Butler University's First 
Year Seminar 2023-2024 Article 49 
2024 
Looking into the Marbles: An Analysis of the Hidden Marbles-Soul 
Correlations in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline 
Meiwen Yang 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid 
Recommended Citation 
Yang, Meiwen (2024) "Looking into the Marbles: An Analysis of the Hidden Marbles-Soul Correlations in 
Neil Gaiman’s Coraline," Ovid: Vol. 1 , Article 49. 
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid/vol1/iss1/49 
This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Scholarship at Digital Commons @ 
Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ovid by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Butler 
University. For more information, please contact digitalscholarship@butler.edu. 
 46 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Looking into the Marbles: An Analysis of the Hidden Marbles-Soul Correlations in Neil 
Gaiman’s Coraline 
Meiwen Yang 
 
 
In Neil Gaiman’s book Coraline, our protagonist Coraline Jones finds a mysterious door in her new 
home which leads her to a replica world – in it she finds her own family members, yet they are 
somehow “other”. At first the other family seems ideal, but Coraline quickly realizes this is not the 
case and the other mother intends to steal her soul and keep her in this other world forever. Coraline 
realizes her parents are also trapped in this other world and goes on a quest to free them. Near the 
end of the tale, Coraline plays a game with the other mother in the other dimension (where every 
adult is titled with other in front of their name). This game is described as “an exploring game,” “a 
findings-things game,” and a “hide-and-go-seek game” (90). A bet is made with the stipulation that 
Coraline could be set free if she finds her trapped parents and all the souls of the children formerly 
captured in this other world (90). Soon, we realize the form of the three souls is structured into three 
glass marbles (95, 99, 118). The soul-containing marbles symbolizes an unfulfilled desire of the 
children. This paper's purpose is to analyze the correlated locations of where the marbles were hidden 
-- by the other mother and by our author Gaiman – which reflect the desires of children and reveal 
the deeper themes of parenting, presented in the three flats, throughout the novel. As we enter this 
other world, it is this trail of Coraline finding the three marbles that guides our voyage into this eerie 
and dark atmospheric realm. 
Marbles, made of glass, undergo high temperatures to transform them from sand to glass. 
Their glass structure emphasizes their characteristic of preciousness and fragility; their spherical shape 
demonstrates strength, although it also makes them easily rolled away – “the kind of things you find 
in the bottom of toy boxes in the real world: forgotten objects, abandoned and unloved” (94). The 
three marbles are located on different floors and in different flats in the house: Miss Spink and Miss 
Forcible live in the ground flat, Coraline’s family lives in the middle flat, and the crazy old man Mr. 
Bobo lives in the top flat. 
The first marble was found in the middle flat, where Coraline’s other family lived, in the toy 
box. It was stuffed around with other toys, and “[n]one of the toys [including the marble] looked 
particularly soul-like” (94). It was colored gray when looked at with the human eye, but appeared 
“burned and flickered with a red fire” if looked at through a special stone (95). The marble here can 
be seen as the forgotten, abandoned, and unloved soul, like the toys the other Mr. Bobo mentioned, 
“Remember the toy box? How much better would a world be built just like that, and all for you?” 
(117) Although Coraline refused the offer to live in a toy box and talked about her wishes to not have 
the trouble of “[I] don’t know what to do and there’s nothing to read or to watch and nowhere to go 
 47 
and the day drags on forever,” we may question if this living in the toy box world was a wish from 
another child. Thus, the first soul lived in the toy box forgotten and with no playmates to come. 
         The second marble was found in the ground flat, where the other Miss Spink and the other 
Miss Forcible lived: at the “abandoned theater,” “one of the hands of the thing on the wall” held the 
marble with “a brown glow, as rich and bright as polished cherrywood, coming from inside the sac” 
(99). While the challenge here was not just noticing the marble as previously, but also being quiet and 
then taking the marble from the creature on the wall. Coraline is “[a]fraid that, if she disturbed the 
thing in the sac, it would open its eyes, and see her, and then…” (99) Relating Coraline’s description 
of her fear here with her interaction between the real world Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, she was 
informed about her fortune of being in danger – “you are in terrible danger” – with the advice of  
“Don’t wear green in your dressing room” and don’t “mention the Scottish play” (18). The first piece 
of advice urged Coraline not to wear the clothes in the other world (even though they were not green) 
and not to be attractive by way of the “Day-Glo green gloves” that she wished to own (67, 96, 117). 
The second piece of advice was known as the theatrical superstition of mentioning Macbeth in a 
theater, which relates to how Coraline chose to be silent as she headed toward the play, “I must be extra 
quiet” while facing the monster that the other father transformed into, the wall creature, as well as not 
speaking her real intention to the other mother when she tries to grab the snow globe on the 
mantelpiece and escape from the other world (99, 129). The second soul lived in the theater with 
words that could not be mentioned and movements that could not be completed. 
         The third marble was found at the top flat, where the other Mr. Bobo lived. The raincoat 
pocket on the other Mr. Bobo, at about chest height, the region near the heart, contained the marble. 
It was hidden between the fabric, and always moving among the other Mr. Bobo. By looking “through 
the hole in the stone the glow twinkled and shone blue-white as any star” (118). The challenge given 
by the other Mr. Bobo was to face the lure of being given anything and everything one might want, 
an ideal world built just for oneself, with neither obstacles nor ever any unsatisfied wants. Coraline 
successfully faced the lure as mentioned in the paragraphs above, with “I don’t want whatever I want. 
Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted? Just like 
that, and it didn’t mean anything. What then?” (118) She questioned the other Mr. Bobo to doubt his 
purpose and identity: “You’re just a bad copy” (118). Because the other Mr. Bobo mirrors the 
experiences of Mr. Bobo in the real world, Mr. Bobo had his dream of training mice to perform in 
the circus, even though he had not made any accomplishment nor had anyone believe him yet of his 
plans (2). He didn’t care about the opinion of the outside world, just as Coraline did not. When Mr. 
Bobo translated the advice from the mouse, “Don’t go through the door,” she answered with a “no.” That 
line did not mean anything to her, although this could be because Coraline did not understand what 
it meant, still, later we see she ended up entering the mysterious door in her home, as a great explorer 
(14). The third soul lived in a world of dreams formed by the voices of the outside world. 
What Coraline is seeking, what the stone allowed her to see, is the children left behind and 
the lack of care and attention from their parents. The marbles store souls, much like the eyes of 
humans and animals. When Coraline tries asking the other mother for clues about what the souls look 
like, “How big are souls anyway?, ” the other mother does not answer but “[taps] the finger, gently, 
tap-tap-tap against the polished black surface of her black button eyes.” (92) The silence of the 
surroundings emphasizes the movement to the created sound of tapping as pointing toward the 
answer. While this tapping sound transitions into the tapping sound of “water droplets from the faucet 
into the sink,” a leakage of the pipe exposures the information, the connection between the soul and 
the button eyes had been already established even earlier by its significant differentiation between the 
real world and the other world: “[the other mother’s] eyes [are] big black buttons” (92, 26). In addition, 
we can determine the connection between the human eyes and marble, which are both human soul-
 48 
containing, in contrast to those human soul-lacking button eyes. The locations where the marbles 
were hidden reveal the ideal area for the children once imagined and belonged to. If the Coraline 
marble must find a place to live, it might be outside or in a place that best fits her exploring spirits. 
The soul-containing marbles represent the eyes of children, their perspective of the world, as well as 
a misinterpretation of their desires: the fun from playing with toys, the escape from punishment by 
words and actions not allowed and getting everything they think they want. It is a game of bets made 
by the children; even though they might be wrong initially, it would always be an adventure for them. 
  
 
Works Cited 
 
Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. Illustrated by Dave McKean, First edition, HarperCollins, 2002. 
 
 
  


Looking into the Marbles: An Analysis of the Hidden Marbles-Soul Correlations in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline

Skiba, Julia

Ovid 
Volume 1 Writing from Butler University's First 
Year Seminar 2023-2024 Article 64 
2024 
One Good Thing 
Julia Skiba 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid 
Recommended Citation 
Skiba, Julia (2024) "One Good Thing," Ovid: Vol. 1 , Article 64. 
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ovid/vol1/iss1/64 
This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Scholarship at Digital Commons @ 
Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ovid by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Butler 
University. For more information, please contact digitalscholarship@butler.edu. 
 107 
 
 
 
 
 
One Good Thing 
Julia Skiba  
 
 
To the day we’ve completed, 
All the challenges faced and moments we greeted.  
Let’s get together, let the worries fade away, 
As we embrace the pleasure of this tranquil display.  
 
The sun sets low, painting the sky with us,  
Splashes of crimson, pink, and purples, so true,  
We take a breath, feeling the peace within,  
Grateful for the day that just has been.  
 
In these twilight hours, let’s cherish the night,  
Find solace and joy in the ambient light.  
Reflect on the victories, big and small. 
As we give thanks for the wonders of it all.  
 
So for yourself, let’s savor this movement so sweet,  
For tomorrow is a new day we’ll soon greet. 
But for now, let’s revel in this small reprieve,  
Celebrating the end of another day, with pure relief.  
 
  


Butler University

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