Я все еще пишу эссе, хотя одно все-таки пропустила - совсем всремени не было. А последнее, по Готторну мне самой не очень нравится, опять таки дописывала в последний момент. А вот по Берроузу и Гиллман мне понравилось. Я когда начала сравнивать книги, казалось бы совершенно непохожие, я поняла почему Проф поставил их в курсе вместе, одним юнитом. При всей их идеологической противоположности, Принцесса Марса и Herland поднимают очень похожие вопросы - евгеники, технического / биологического развития общества, ресурсов. Они даже структурно близки - обе книги выстроены как воспоминания героя о случившихся с ним в прошлом приключениях, в обоих герой попадает в некий фантастический мир.
Я для эссе взяла тему бессмертия, там она интересно раскрывается.


Both these books have a theme of immortality, but present it different. In A princess of Mars there is an individual immortality in physical form through heroic actions. In Herland there is collective immortality through parthenogenetic cloning.

John Carter is representing the very picture of individualism. He is one of the kind being almost immortal: "I am a very old man; [...] I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood." (2) But Carter is not invulnerable, he is susceptible to injury and body needs. He still fears the death. Human culture have many ways to conquer this fear. Heroism is one such strategy: “society provides a “cultural hero system” that creates and perpetuates the myth of the significance of human life.” (3) Jack Carter is a typical hero - a warrior and an adventurer that won the princess and kingdom with his own sword.

Then there is another way to defeat the fear of death. Not through individual immorality, but through the prolonged life of the whole community. Herland described as a society dedicated to Motherhood. “This place is just like an enormous anthill — you know an anthill is nothing but a nursery.” (1) All women in this country was born via parthenogenesis and, in a broad sense of words, their First Mother continues to live in her many daughters: parthenogenetic offspring “having all of the mother's genetic material are called full clones” (4) There is no fear of death and no hunger for individual immortality. Once Ellador said about an eternal life : "I don't in the least. I want my child—and my child's child—to go on—and they will." (1)

Two books represent two ways to defeat the fear of death: individual of the hero and communal through the motherhood. The aggressive way to conquer the death or the peaceful one to cease it. Also, only in one of them the fear is missing.