Hellboy, Aileen Thomas

1. Rising Action: Hellboy is faced with the cold, hard fact that the people for whom he works find that Roger, the homunculous, is expendable. He poses a dangerous threat should he decide to turn against them for, after all, he isn't human. Hellboy asks if there will be a time that they decide he too is expendable. As he faces an alien threat this theme of human vs inhuman beats heads until the point where Hellboy has to make a decision on whether or not destroy Roger.

2. Rating: PG-13 for language, dark themes and mild violence.

3. Springboard: World War II, design and poetry. People have already talked about WWII and Nazis so I'm going to talk a little about this conqueror worm from Edgar Allen Poe's poem.

There are many interpretations and analyses that people have made about this poem. The average man (at least those who post responses on the internet which may or may not be average people, perhaps less) seem to all find it as the story of how Heaven stands idly by while men are destroyed. Another popular belief is that it speaks of how our dead bodies are food for the worm.

But according to GradeSaver, ("GradeSaver(TM) ClassicNotes are the most comprehensive study guides on the market, written by Harvard students for students!" - Amazon.com) it says that people are controlled, that there are "unseen forces," such as emotion, that push and pull man. Then as man is controlled angels cannot help them as they destroy themselves. Then, as it is read in the context of the story Ligeia (for which it was originally ended) the girl who reads it interprets that man die because of their lack of will and so with her strong will she later comes back from the grave by taking over another woman's body after she leaves her own.

This plays in really well with Mignola's story in that there is an alien force without body or form that comes into the world by way of a dead host and everything it breathes on become a different creature and are then consumed.

(Go here to read The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe.)

It pays to read the entirety of something. Someone who misuses a quote can be considered a great fool. Take for instance the story of the man who when looking for inspiration opened the Bible to any page and read of the suicide of Judas. Stupidly the man takes that as a sign and goes and kills himself. When trying to find true depth and inspiration one should actually try to learn what their source is saying. Mignola obviously did an actual study of the poem from which he based Hellboy: The Conqueror Worm and was neatly inspired. Had he just read the short poem and gone off his first instincts of the meaning we may have ended up reading a story about zombies and fallen angels instead of the more clever tale of nazis, an alien race, humanity, control, the will of man and the madness of man.


4: Apply: So often I'll go onto the internet, find a little fact and go running with it. Other times I'll actually spend time studying and learn a great deal more as well as eliminate falsehoods. But never have I tried to study a poem further than reading it and talking to peers about it. Even in highschool I'd just come up with ideas, which is good, then I'd let it rest at that. Now I see that such studies can actually become the basis of great inspiration and stories. So, I'm going to just learn everything I can whenever I can and see what brilliance shines.