Extraordinary Men

KittynMeow SG · 2004-03-17T09:22:53+00:00

yup... I saw the trailer and I want to *swoon* too... hehehe

KittynMeow SG

The Invisible Man (Part II)

The narrator leaves Mary's house the next day. In his room that morning, he finds a piggy bank in his room shaped offensively like a black man with overly exaggerated features. After breaking it by accident, he attempts to get rid of it but cannot. He is then sent to Brother Hambro for training, given a new apartment, and a new name. After completing training, the Brothers call him down to Harlem and he is shown the office where he will work, along with Brother Tarp and Brother Clifton, the handsome youth leader. He quickly becomes accustomed to his new work, relishing the ability to inspire the community around him. He and Clifton meet up with Ras the Exhorter, who competes with them for the community's support and chastises them for being traitors to their African race. The two groups fight until the narrator leads them away. Still the narrator feels secure and powerful in his position until he receives an ominous note warning him to move slowly and carefully. Alarmed, he questions Brother Tarp to see if he has any enemies. Tarp reassures him and opens up to him, relating painful parts of his past and giving to him a broken link he has saved from breaking away from a chain gang after nineteen years. Brother Wrestrum also visits on the day of the mystery note, and incites suspicion with the narrator because he seems meddlesome. His idea for a Brotherhood emblem is overshadowed by his attack on the inherently symbolic message of Tarp's chain link. The narrator agrees to be interviewed by a Harlem publication after trying to get them to speak to Clifton.

Weeks later, the narrator is called by the Brotherhood committee to an urgent meeting where he is charged by Wrestrum for attempting to overshadow and dominate the Brotherhood, naming some unknown plot against the Brotherhood and using the article the narrator was interviewed for as evidence. Until the accusations are cleared, the narrator moves downtown to speak on the Woman Question. Frustrated by the move but willing to try it, he meets a married woman who seduces him. The affair stays with him though he does not see her again, as he is frightened that the Brotherhood will find out and use it against him. Soon he is summoned to another emergency meeting which alerts him to Clifton's disappearance and reinstates him in Harlem. Returning to his old post, he finds that much is changed in the short time he has been gone. Tarp and Brother Maceo are gone as well and the spirit in the district is much subdued, as many of the people feel that the Brotherhood has let them down. Realizing he is now out of the Brotherhood loop, he plans to revive the neighborhood sentiment on his own. By chance, he finds Clifton further uptown where Clifton has become a street seller of a dancing, paper Sambo doll. Disgusted and intrigued, the narrator watches the performance and the police chase which follows, ending in the unnecessary killing of Clifton.

He decides to hold a funeral which can serve to unite the community of Harlem around a fallen hero of sorts. Though successful, the Brotherhood is outraged and meets him back in his office, at which point Jack angrily reveals that he has not been hired to think. They order that he continue in the district and send him to Hambro in order to understand the new, less aggressive program.

Thoroughly changed by Clifton's fate and the recent events, the narrator feels very angry toward the Brotherhood and walks around the neighborhood to think. He notices that the district is much more stirred by Clifton's shooting than he had presumed and he is drawn in by Ras to explain the Brotherhood's limited action following the murder. He defends their position and then moves away to buy a disguise so he will not be harmed by any of Ras's men. Surprisingly, due to dark green glasses and a wide hat, people begin to approach him and refer to him as Rinehart. He is able to go unnoticed by Ras but is constantly noticed by others as Rinehart, by lovers and zoot-suiters. Going back to a bar he normally frequented, he is still mistaken for Rinehart and is almost swept along into a fight with Brother Maceo. Later, on the way to Hambro's, the narrator uncovers a church where Rinehart is a reverend. His many identities and obvious manipulation of people's faith disturbs the narrator greatly and he approaches Hambro even more cynical than the Brotherhood left him. Hambro attempts to indoctrinate him into the new program, describing the scientific logistics, but to no avail. The narrator feels he can finally see how the Brotherhood and so many organizations in his life have swindled and manipulated their constituents. Resolved to attack the Brotherhood from the inside, he plans to "yes" the white men to death, referencing his grandfather, and to find a woman whom he can seduce into giving him inside information.

He chooses Sybil as she is vulnerable and married to an important brother, however she surprises him by wanting him to rape her. He escapes the situation when he is called uptown to Harlem for a crisis, although she attempts to tag along. A riot is in action and the narrator is swept along with it, nearly shot, and aids in the arson of an apartment building. The climax of the riot occurs when Ras rides through on a black horse dressed as a chieftain and wants the narrator hanged. Running from Ras' goons, the narrator falls down a manhole and realizes that he must live underground for awhile. The Epilogue is his resolution to reemerge into the world of social responsibility.

KittynMeow SG

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (where Captain Nemo came from)

The book starts out with a naturalist named Pierre Arronax. Hes a man that is fascinated by underwater life, and enjoys watching and studying underwater creatures. News spread worldwide about a serpent-like creature, part of the whale family, had been ramming ships and seeking them with ease. Pierre was very interested in this issue.

One day, while Pierre was staying the night in a hotel in Paris, he received a letter. The letter said that the American government was going to build a frigate to chase down and kill the sea monster. The letter also said that they would be more than happy to have him come along. Pierre and his trustworthy servant, Conseil, were going to attend this expedition. They packed up the belongings that were necessary, and then headed out to the dock to meet the ship, named the Abraham Lincoln. He gets aboard the ship, and the crew set sail to kill the monster.

On the ship they meet a Canadian harpooner, Ned Land. He is the one who is supposed to kill the monster when they find it. The crew goes on for about four weeks without finding any sign of the monster. Just as they are about to give up, Ned spots the monster! The monster proved to be 100 times faster than the Abraham Lincoln. After chasing the monster for a long period of time, they finally get close to the monster. They thought that maybe the creature was now sleeping, because it wasnt running from them like the previous times. The monster seemed to be letting off a radiant glow in which nobody had seen before. The crew decides they are going to go for the kill. The men start firing guns at it, and start shooting different weapons trying to kill the beast. Nobody seemed to get close to hitting the beast, and if they were, it wasnt effecting it. One elderly man steps up with his gun, and he decides that he is going to take a shot at it. The old man proves his marksmanship by hitting the beast dead on. The crew celebrated, but it still showed it wasnt taking any effect. Ned Land steps up and decides to take a shot as well. He decides to try to create a serious injury to it. He grabs his harpoon, and he then takes the shot. Pierre saw the harpoon soar and then hit the monster, but it made a sound as if it had hit some kind of metal. The light from the animal then went out, and the object could be seen moving at the ship full speed. It then hit the ship, making a big triangular shaped hole in the side of the ship. When the monster had struck the ship it had then threw Pierre overboard.

Pierre sunk about 20 feet into the ocean. He was a pretty good swimmer, and he managed to swim back up to the top. He could see the Abraham Lincoln slowly drifting away. Thoughts were racing through his head about his life, and he was wondering if they had noticed he had been thrown off the ship. He swam desperately trying to make his way to the ship. Pierre started growing tired, and the ship started getting away faster. He started trying to scream help, but it was no use. He grew tired of swimming and just started to sink, but was then grabbed up by the collar by somebody. He coughed up water, and realized that it was his trustworthy assistant Conseil. He thanked him, and tried discussing how they were going to make it. They decided to help each other swim, and take turns pulling each other. The two men swam for a while and the struck something hard. They then realized that they were on top of the giant monster. It turned out that another man was on top of the monster. It was Ned Land. Ned explained to them that the reason that the harpoon and the guns had no effect on the monster was because it seemed to be made of some sort of metal plates. The object rose to the surface a little more. The three men then discovered that it wasnt a monster at all. They started stomping their feet, and then a man with a mask on came out of the top of it. He started screaming a German language at them. Before they knew it, a group of men grabbed the three men, took them in their ship, and threw them in a dark room.

, Pierre, and Conseil realized that they hadnt been chasing a monster, and a monster hadnt been sinking those ships. They realized that it was some sort of submarine. They walked around the dark room. It seemed as if there werent any doors in it. They stayed locked up for a while. Then they heard latches and locks opening. There in the door stood two men on each side of a person that seemed to be a captain. They tried speaking to the captain in all kinds of different languages. They were trying to tell them their story, and what had happened. The captain just stood there, then just left. Shortly after, a man walked into the room and served them dinner. Ned hated the place, and attacked a butler trying to get answers. He was pulled off of him, and then he calmed down again.

The men remained locked up in the solitary room for a long time. Then one day the captain walked in and introduced himself. He told the men that his name was captain Nemo, and that they were aboard the Nautilus. He told them that he despised life on land, so he built a submarine, and decided to live underwater. Captain Nemo said that he got all of his necessities from the ocean, and that nobody knew about the submarine except the crew, and the three men now aboard. He said since they attacked his ship and since nobody was supposed to know about it, that they would have to stay aboard the ship forever. Ned Land wasnt happy. He then lets them roam the ship.

Professor Annorex and Conseil found the ocean depths to be a new world! Many life and death experiences made Ned Land feel uneasy about his new life aboard the Nautilus. He was determined to escape.

Captain Nemo took them to many wonderful places. They experienced hunting and searching for pearls. They went to Viglo Bay, a hollowed out volcano, and the underwater city of Atlantis. Captain Nemo took them to the South Pole, where no man had ever been before. That made Captain Nemo the first person ever there. They almost died leaving the Great Ice Barrier. Then they also got in a fight with a giant squid! The only bad parts about their voyages were that Captain Nemo seemed to be seeking revenge on ships from his own country. He used the powerful Nautilus as a weapon to sink many ships. After ten months of being aboard the Nautilus, they completed their underwater exploration covering 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Later on, a maelstrom hit the Nautilus. The prisoners had then planned their escape. Professor Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land, already in the dinghy ready to escape, were thrown from the submarine. They then floated to safety, and returned to their homeland. The mystery remains. Nobody knows what happened to the Nautilus, and its infamous Captain Nemo.

KittynMeow SG

I tried to find a sufficiently informative version of his story but dem... he's got too many stories to sum it all in one... those of you who want to find out more abt this character... go read the books.
anyway...

Allan Quartermain

Allan Quartermain, famous literary hunter/explorer, is the hero of H. Rider Haggards novel King Solomons Mines. First published in 1885, that story was followed by sequels including Allan Quartermain, in 1887. The fictitious heros exploits were serialized in Longmans Magazine before the novel was released in book form.

Conceived in the late 19th century by an Englishman who thought more of colonial conquests than indigenous competence, Allan Quartermain (Haggards literary hero) has a Victorian attitude toward the people of Africa where his exploits occur. Alan Moore, author of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, gives Quartermain a very different vision and mission.

About King Solomon's Mines

A classic in its day, this book is one of the more famous titles from the Victorian eras. It is very much a classical boys own adventure typical of the genre.

The story revolves around a group of three Englishmen searching for the lost brother of the three. The story is narrated by another of the three, Allan Quatermain, who is something of a big game hunter type of adventurer. They have a lead that the missing brother is somewhere in the interior of Africa lost on his own quest for King Solomon's mines.

This book is particularly interesting as it is an excellent example of how a fantastical, fictional story actually became the basis for real events in the scramble for Africa. When diamonds were discovered in such abundance in South Africa many people were convinced that the geology of the continent must be conducive to more of the same riches (in fact, exactly the same theories were expressed when gold was also discovered). King Solomon's Mines plays on this theory and many of it's readers would not have found this adventure story in the least bit too fantastical. To emphasise this fact, and the racism implicit within, many people ascribed the discovery of Great Zimbabwe in Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe) as being easier to explain in the terms of the biblical stories of King Solomon rather than to credit any African civilisation for their creation and construction.

This book demonstrates nicely the kind of technological gap that existed between the whites and the blacks. It gives a description of how the white hunters demonstrate their magic tube that speaks to some tribesmen that have never seen a white man before. The exhibtion of firepower on some of the largest animals on the plains would have been as equally impressive in fact as it is here in fiction. The fact that the tribesmen then think that these white men must be from another planet can not have been too far from reality and must have been a source of terror and awe for millions of black Africans.

Reading this book enables the reader to look at the world through a typical nineteenth century mindset. The concepts expressed of fair play and philanthropy make very uncomfortable company with the racist commentary that can be detected throughout the book. This superiority complex of whites over blacks almost seems to find an exception in the budding romance of one of the heroes with a black woman who cares for him when he is injured, and ultimately dies protecting him. However, just in case any nineteenth century reader was concerned at any such interracial behaviour, Haggard reasserts the inadvisability of such an occurence with the heroine utterance: "Can the sun mate with the moon, or the white with the black?" In fact, just in case you miss this warning, he goes on to repeat it later.

It's alway easy to condemn an earlier generation by today's standards. However, it must be remembered that both the author and his audience were very much products of their time. This book, allows you to transport yourself back to that time and judge for yourself the, at times highly complicated, relations between the races.

At the end of the day, this book is an old fashioned adventure novel written for boys and young men. It succeeds admirably in conveying adventure, battle and the hardship of life on the frontier. Reading it will cast light on all sorts of unexpected areas of Imperial study.

True_Xerion SG

actually Moore himself belongs to the LXG hee hee, check these out:

- Batman: The Killing Joke
- V For Vendetta
- Saga of the Swamp Thing
- Watchmen

'nuff said Smile

KittynMeow SG

Think after all that, I'm still most intrigued by Dorian Gray.... keke

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