CHARMIN’ CLEARLY_______________________________________The ARGUMENT
This
hypertext tells the story about an incident between a student
called Charmaine Clearly and her teacher, Professor Blat. Like the author says:
“an incident including
sex, violence, culture, power, etc."
In
the story we have many narrators telling in different ways what is happening
with the incident of sexual harassment between the student and the teacher at
the university. With a wide variety of registers and three different links of
narrators, that helps to understand better the story. It begins describing
Charmaine as a talent woman, thinking all the time in basketball, as she is the
leader of a basketball team. It tells that being harassed by her teacher at his
office (or at least she said that) she hit him with a big book in the head and
that leaves Blat in a coma at the hospital. After that, the police start an
investigation about what had happened in that office. At first Charmin tells
her story saying that Blat is an obsessed teacher for looking at her chest and
she seems so angry with him.
You
can choose through 3 different links to read, although each version relates in
some way to the main issue, and some of them are written in first person and
some in third. But looking at ‘her story’,
she describes everything with great detail and in some point when she is talking
about professor Blat her language is very colloquial and vulgar because she
doesn’t like his behaviour. Then, she starts again talking about basketball and
the relationship with her father that she misses. Later, she thinks about
everything happened and wonder why she hit so hard to the professor and seems
like she is a bit regretful and nervous (but she is still describing him in a
rude way), because she could be excelled from the university.
However,
the second link, ‘his story’,
is a bit different. Professor Blat talks about Charmin in another way, because
he desires her, in a way that he describes her body and her dresses with
passion and he thinks of acting carefully because of his position.
Unfortunately, he feels that Charmin is thinking of him in the same way of
passion, which makes Blat thinking to seduce
Charmaine. Finally ‘the other guy’s’
is the rest of the people who takes part in the story giving an opinion and
being gossip. They are people from the university; students, Blat’s wife,
teachers, Charmin’s coach... In this link we could see several different views
whether she has been sexually harassed or not. Some people think that she’s the
victim here, one of them is her coach, Chip Michalek, who is trying to
defend her every time because he needs Charmin in the basketball team and
he thinks that she is a good kid. While out there, the campus atmosphere was
full of ineloquent rumours.
At
the end we do not have a clear conclusion because the author didn’t say who’s
guilty and who’s not; if professor Blat finally dies or Charmin is expelled
from university.
Academic year
2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Carmina Campos García
macamga3@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press