Challenge 287

On Second Bite...

Is Tim Simmons’ “In the Blood” a satire or a parody? What does it imply about scriptural literalists?

Compare “In the Blood” with the episode “Talking Books and Dying” in Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Other World. What new elements does Cyrano introduce?

Do the notes in episode 34 — including the hypertext notes — explain the theological problems in “Talking Books and Dying” and “In the Blood”? In particular, how might a mainstream Christian respond to Charlton Heston’s closing line in the film Soylent Green: “Soylent Green is people!”?

In Slawomir Rapala’s chapter “Empty Heaven” in The Three Kings, is the depiction of the Tha-kian slave ship realistic in terms of Earth history?

From the ending of John Drake’s “The Deer Hunt”:

Our enemies here are sex and death. That is why we will lose this war. You can’t fight sex and death. You can only succumb to them.

Death is an absolute. Is sex also an absolute for either men or women? Is the first-person narrator’s conclusion plausible or tendentious?

In the chapter “The Not-Sinning Ones” of Bertil Falk’s Eucharist for a Sinless Mankind, what is the “job” of Teresia Nightmare?

What does Julie Eberhart Painter’s “The Red Dress” reveal about American cultural mores in the 1950’s?

What essential similarities can you find between R D Larson’s “Night Stalker” and Alison M. Pearce’s “Serena”? What is accomplished in each case by revealing the main character’s identity only at the end?

Bonus questions: What essential similarity is there between John Stocks’ “Initiation” and Alfred de Vigny’s La Mort du loup? What essential differences are there?