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One of the fastest growing artforms in the world is digital media. Computers and other
technologies allow users to create new and vibrant works of art that could not exist in any other
medium. An excellent example of this is electronic literature. The term “electronic literature”
may seem like an oxymoron, as we often think of literature as physical books. Reading a book
that is projected on a computer screen is no different than a book that is printed on paper! Online
texts, however, are not what the term electronic literature refers to. Electronic literature
capitalizes on the unique qualities of computers and the Internet to create and distribute original
literary works designed for a digital age. Unlike traditional literature, electronic literature—e-lit,
for short—is not bound by the limits of the written word. E-lit marvelously blends literary
techniques with aspects of film, digital art, and poetry that could not practically exist in
traditional literature.
Many universities around the world have already started courses based on electronic
literature and other digital humanities, but there is plenty of debate as to what such a course
should be filed under. The University of Bergen teaches specific courses on electronic literature
in their Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies (UiB). The University of
Victoria, however, “hosts the annual Digital Humanities Summer Institute to train new scholars”
instead of sequestering the field to English or Art departments (Kirschenbaum 196). Then there
is the interdisciplinary English and Digital Humanities program at Marylhurst University which
“integrates literature, digital technologies, the humanities and service-learning in a hybrid
format” (Marylhurst University). For the past year, my Honors Project has been to figure out
how to introduce electronic literature to the University of Louisiana at Monroe. I have chosen to
present my project not as a fantastically large thesis or a knee-tall dissertation but, instead, as a
prototype English course similar to those taught in other universities.

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The core reason I have chosen to frame the course in the English department is because
the focus of the class will be electronic literature, not the entirety of digital humanities. Students
who take this course will be applying literary criticism and analytical tactics often used in
English courses to digital works that use the English language as their primary medium. There
will not be any in-depth examination of the coding of the works or any assignments that require
students to craft their own electronic literature. While there are many examples of classes in
which these lessons are taught, such as the aforementioned Marylhurst University’s “Hypertext
and Electronic Literature” course, I do not have the expertise to accurately relate to students how
to perform these tasks (Stommel). Such a project would most definitely be an interdisciplinary
feat, but it most likely be a hybrid between a creative writing course and a class on computer
programming. The course’s problems are also compounded by a lack of a dedicated department
for digital humanities here at ULM. Digital media is largely taught by ULM’s Communications
department with some sections sourced to the Art division and the Computer Science section.
While ULM may amalgamate these divided programs into a singular digital humanities
department, I have decided to focus purely on the analysis of the texts themselves for now.
In what ways, then, should electronic literature be analyzed? When I started my research,
I assumed this was a simple question. If someone were to have asked me this a year ago, I would
have replied, “Well, you’d look at it like literature!” This is not entirely false. In any narrative
medium, one can apply literary criticism with relative success. It is not difficult to find, say, a
Marxist examination of James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar or an article comparing
Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy with Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire (Tang
657, Crandell 91). There does exist criticism and research from within each medium, however, to
provide extra information and exploration of the technical and medium-specific portions of each

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work. Literary criticism is not the only way to dissect a film, a play, or a piece of electronic
literature. It is, nevertheless, what I and any student who chooses to take this course will use, and
thus it belongs in an English department.
There was only one other issue I needed to resolve before I could finally set to work on
the project. To prove that electronic literature should be taught as literature, I have to prove that
it is, in fact, worthy of being called literature. The first objection I encountered was that the
medium focuses less on literary techniques and more on flashing lights and heart-racing set
pieces. In other words, the question was whether electronic literature actually focused on using
English first and everything else second. The issue that this question brings up is often discussed
in digital humanities through apologetic essays and examinations of the medium itself. This
question, however, often would devolve into one major core dilemma: what is literature? As
Epsen Aarseth states in his work Cybertext, “apologetic claims and chauvinistic counterclaims…
illustrate only too well the partial and conservative state of the human sciences, in which nothing
can be studied that is not already within a field; in which the type rather than the individual
qualities of an object determines its value as an accepted member of some canon or other” (16).
To bar electronic literature from literary studies because it can be flashy and noisy also directly
singles out the use of film in literature courses. While film is its own medium, academics
continue to scrutinize the literary and narrative techniques used within those works as if they
were literature or in conjunction with literature. I will not attempt to redefine literature in this
paper, but I will say this: one cannot condemn the works of electronic literature before one
examines them under the lens of literary criticism.
Of course, a new question quickly arose once this direction was set: what works do I
include or exclude? If a person were to catalogue how much larger the pool of electronic

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literature becomes every hour, he/she would wonder how one could possibly cram it all into a
three-hour English class. It has taken me months to get the syllabus refined to its current state,
and even now I stumble upon things I overlooked that could work better than what I have.
So, what is not considered e-lit? This might come as a surprise, but e-books, such as
those one finds on a Kindle, are out. They are basically books with the push of a button
substituting for the turning of a page and do not fully utilize the electronic medium on which
they are viewed. Most journalism online is also excluded; however, special consideration should
be given to the blogosphere as that was borne from Internet culture imitating real life and should
be considered for its own course. There are also other types of media such as podcasts and
videos, but those are not exclusively made in the digital sphere of the computer. What we are
looking for in electronic literature is something that takes advantage of the medium on which it is
produced and presents a uniquely digital experience that cannot be replicated in another format.
What is left to choose from, then? First, we have hypertext. Hypertext is a fairly old form
of digital storytelling, by Internet standards at least, in which the user will navigate each screen
through a link to the next one and so on. Most users are familiar with this storytelling technique
already just from browsing the Internet. Take for example a news story on an online site. Upon
reading it, one finds links at the bottom of the page or highlighted words within the text itself
that take the user to other stories that are related in some small way to the story currently
displayed on the browser. Clicking one of these links takes the user to a new page with a
different story. In hypertext narratives, authors utilize the links to construct a fractured tale that is
sequestered away in fragments behind each link, placing an emphasis on what is front and center
on the screen rather than creating a single wall of text. Readers are then forced to piece the story

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together on their own as one would a puzzle, but there is typically no true path or arrangement to
construct the story, which leads to multiple and, at times, conflicting narratives.
Second, we have the adventure game. Also known as text adventures or “interactive
fiction,” this style of narrative pits players against a computer program. Just as one would type
into a Microsoft Word document, typing a word into an adventure game evokes a response.
Unlike Word, this response tends to move forward a plotline that the player chases, creating a
game of cat-and-mouse until the resolution of the story is reached. One of the genre’s key
features is audience participation. As Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, explains,
“You are not just reading about an event that occurred in the past; the event is happening now,
and, unlike the action on the stage of a theater, it is happening to you (Murray 81, original
emphasis). The player’s personal interactions with the “storyteller” program construct a cohesive
narrative experience that is unique to each player but overall the same story. One player may
spend an hour going around in circles, unaware that he/she is being led astray, while another may
find a rare character who gives him/her aid. This may make adventure games more difficult to
teach in a classroom, but the ability to tell multiform narratives is one of the strengths of the
genre that deserve recognition.
One of the more controversial items I have included in the course is video games. The
reason that this is more difficult to make a case for is that many people are still debating about
video games and their societal value. We have conflicting reports that say that video games are
“linked to increased aggression in players” but “insufficient evidence exists about whether the
link extends to criminal violence or delinquency” (APA). Even the U.S. Supreme Court has been
called in to make a statement on whether video games count as free speech, to which they have

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stated that video games, like other forms of media, “communicate ideas—and even social
messages” (Woodham).
This problem is furthered by the apparent focus of games on violence and mature content.
An oft-quoted example was the astonishing popularity of Grand Theft Auto V, which broke the
Guinness World Record for “highest revenue generated by any entertainment product in 24
hours” by grossing over $815.7 million on its release (Guinness). This particular game stirred up
a storm of kickback with its depiction of graphic violence, torture, drug abuse, and crime.
Discontent among consumers led to petitions to take the game off of store shelves, which
actually succeeded in Kmart and Target stores in Australia, but it somehow went over many
peoples’ heads that “the 18+ rating for the game means that children and vulnerable people
should not be playing it anyway” and that those stores also “sell other DVDs and games with
high age-ratings” (Griffin).
It is remarkably easy to target games for their offensive content because players generally
enact the violence themselves. I do find it odd, though, that very few actors are scrutinized for
their roles in mature films or that authors like Cormac McCarthy are praised for their depictions
of violence as “the site where divergent interests converge for dramatic effect” (Brewton).
Violence is not all that lies within McCarthy’s works, and that is also true of video games. If
done well, violence in games actually provides insight into the conflict between central
characters and their respective ideologies as well as providing a mirror to the causes of violence
rather than being only a spectacle.
We have spent so much time trying to figure out if video games are good, bad, or in
between that we have forgotten that new genres always face challenges from those invested in
the status quo. Similar discussions were had thousands of years ago over the written word. In

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Plato’s Phaedrus, the philosopher Socrates stated that writing would “make [the people]
remember things by relying on marks made by others, from outside themselves, not on their own
inner resources, and so writing will make the things they have learnt disappear from their minds”
(Plato 78). Socrates may have failed to stem the tide of the then-new medium of writing, but
other forms of writing and art have come forth since then, bringing with each its fair share of
protesters. Theater in the early middle ages was considered “idolatrous, obscene, and dangerous
in [its] effects on the audience members’ passions” by the Christian Church until they began to
produce their own plays (Gainor 26). Novels, too, are still attacked for their content. For
instance, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is banned in many libraries and public schools for
“controversial issues” and “sexually explicit” content (ALA). It is almost as if “all the
representational arts can be considered dangerously delusional, and the more entrancing they
become, the more disturbing” (Murray 18). The reactions of society to video games have thus far
been similar to what we have seen in the past when new types of art are introduced. They have
been neglected, then ridiculed, then attacked, but now it has come time to accept them.
To order to do so, I have constructed this course. I have divided the course into four main
modules that emphasize a different way of examining electronic literature as well as literature
and art as a whole. Due to the overwhelming cache of electronic literature, I had to limit myself
to a handful of items, but I was also restricted because this course could draw in people who are
interested in e-lit but possess little experience with the medium. Because of this, the works I have
chosen may seem simplistic compared to other examples. Should more advanced courses in
electronic literature arise, however, more time can be allocated to each genre and to more
complex works.

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Prospective students’ unfamiliarity with e-lit is one of the reasons why the first module in
the course is a novel titled Neuromancer by William Gibson. Written six years before the advent
of the World Wide Web, Neuromancer describes a world in which humans have created
something known as cyberspace, where they can conduct business and search for pleasure in the
blink of an eye. Sound familiar? “Cyberspace” as a term was actually coined by Gibson in a
different work, but it was Neuromancer that popularized it with this definition:
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate
operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphic
representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system.
Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and
constellations of data. Like city lights, receding… (Gibson 51).
While we may not physically jack into the net like the characters in the novel do, the Internet of
today is highly reminiscent to Neuromancer’s cyberspace as the Internet features faceless
organizations that use technology to terrorize those they deem enemies (albeit without any Guy
Fawkes masks) and new fads that appear overnight online only to disappear the next day.
Neuromancer also provides a great place to start the course due to its tight link to Internet
culture. Reading Neuromancer will also allow each and every student to practice and learn
techniques for literary analysis that will be the basis for examinations of electronic literature.
This similarly allows everyone in the course to be on the same level, as some students might
have taken twice as many literature courses as others in the class. By the end of the first module,
students will be capable of examining how Gibson’s novel exaggerates the cultural link between
humans and technology while simultaneously observing how those very machines could shape
and create different cultures, associating the major themes in the novel with the time period in

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which it was created, and exploring how the characterization of Case raises questions about the
validity of a heroic protagonist.
The second module is something of a grab bag between new and old electronic literature
formats. We begin with the controversial Depression Quest by Zoe Quinn. The work is an
adventure game which attempts “to illustrate as clearly as possible what depression is like” by
placing players in the role of someone who slips further and further into depression (Quinn). The
game does so by giving players a variety of options from common life events. Depending on
how badly the character is depressed, the choices that the players want to make can be blocked
off, which could encourage a downward spiral if not handled delicately. One of the most
interesting parts of the game is its description, which catalogues the game as “(non)fiction”
(Quinn). The game does contain semi-autobiographical content from Quinn and her
collaborators, but it refers more to the nature of the story itself. While the game’s protagonist and
the events that occur to that character are fictional, there are numerous real cases of depression
diagnosed every day. This adventure game merely puts those stories in the format of a game and
asks the players to place themselves in the mindset of another person.
The reason that Depression Quest is controversial has less to do with the work itself than
its reception by the gaming audience. Many of these same users bashed the game for not being a
“real” game due to its serious content and presentation. This criticism eventually died out, but it
was brought back again when Quinn, along with many other female game developers, were sent
numerous death threats and harassed by thousands of online users in an event known as
“Gamergate.” This debacle started when Quinn’s ex-boyfriend posted an open letter online that
claimed she slept with games journalists in order to get good reviews for Depression Quest. This
essay sparked the ire of numerous members of the Internet who became “a faceless multitude,

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who together were profoundly more frightening and disruptive that Gjoni’s blog post ever was”
(Dewey). I hope that by introducing this recent topic into class students will obtain a broader
view as to the societal value of “serious” games, how conversations on the Internet occur and
become distorted, and how disastrous events like Gamergate get started.
The next genre we will examine is hypertext literature. I have chosen two distinctly
different works in an attempt to show how varied the genre itself is within electronic literature.
The first is My Body & a Wunderkammer by Shelly Jackson. The title refers to a drawing of
Jackson’s body, which is the central tie of the work, and how each part is like a drawer in a
“wunderkammer”—literally, a cabinet of curiosities. Like opening a drawer in a cabinet, the
reader will click on a part of the body and “open” a web page detailing Jackson’s experiences
and self-exploration of her body. These range from her childhood fascination with her
fingernails, her various attempts to sketch a nose, and poems about her internal organs. The
content and tone of each piece is connected through blue hyperlinks in the text, allowing readers
the ability to traverse the entire wealth of the work without necessarily having to go back and
forth between the “table of contents” that is her body and the works hidden within her. This
autobiographical work places the literary spotlight on the parts of us we neglect and take for
granted while also cherishing the inquisitive nature of children, preteens, and teenagers as they
attempt to understand their own bodies.
The other work, The Brain Drawing the Bullet by Alan Trotter, depicts a single blank
page that grows in content as the user follows the links. As the reader progresses through the
story of a man known as L, they will find that L has been obsessively combing over the story of
the author William S. Burroughs and the events that led to the death of his wife Joan Vollner.
This case, which did in fact occur, is then presented through the testimonies of Burroughs and his

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companions. The story is complicated, however, as words begin to shift and change on the
screen. As more testimonies are brought forth, the previous testimonies are adjusted in an
attempt to revise what occurred. The end result is a constantly altering narrative that leaves L
with one course of action, which is to replicate the event and see if the result is the same.
Readers will likewise question what the true course of events was, as the characters in the story
cannot do so in a trustworthy manner.
Just as writers use media other than prose in traditional literature, prose is not the only
way creators can express themselves online. Sometimes people need to add a little bit of style
and flair to the words through poetry. E-poetry, therefore, is “poetry that arises from engagement
with the possibilities offered by digital media” (Flores). E-poetry is not simply “poetry on the
Internet,” though, and this is illustrated by the works I have chosen for the course. Robert
Kendall’s poem “A Study in Shades,” for example, is visibly split in two. On the left are the
thoughts of an old man with Alzheimer’s along with a bust of his face. The right side contains
the thoughts of his daughter, who is also pictured above the poem. As readers advance through
both sides of the poem, the father’s face grows darker, and the daughter’s face disappears,
representing the debilitating effects of the disease. This poem is stylistically the most “poem”-
like of the group, as it uses a small amount of hypertext and some digital images to frame the
story and the mental state of the old man.
Christine Wilks’s “We Drank” also uses multimedia to illustrate and emphasize its major
themes and motifs. In this case, readers are subjected to a young couple who try to use alcohol to
hide and forget their relationship problems. As the two delve deeper and deeper into the bottle,
the words that appear become muddled, constantly being replaced with their opposites. This
poem is drastically different from Kendall’s poem, as it incorporates kinetic typography, musical

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accompaniment, and haunting imagery to emphasize the descent of the characters into an
alcoholic stupor.
K. Michael and Dirk Vis’s “Ah (a shower song)” also uses kinetic typography, but its
tone is significantly more upbeat than Wilk’s poem. In “Ah,” the words of the poem begin as a
single line of text, jumbled together along with thoughts on Einstein and breathing. After a time,
the words begin to flow in all different directions. The poem is intended to represent the
scattered and calmed state of mind a relaxing shower can bring as well as to more accurately
picture the stream of consciousness.
Bruno Nadeau and Jason Lewis’s “Still Standing” is a third example of kinetic
typography, but its use is very different from both “We Drank” and “Ah.” In this case, the poem
initially is scattered onto the floor of a projection. As people walk in front of it, motion detectors
cause the poem to scatter and fly in the direction that the person in front of it moves. If the
viewer stands still, the poem will eventually form a shadow for the person, allowing the reader to
finally find out what the poem says. In this way, Nadeau and Lewis convince the reader to take a
moment to practice “still standing” and to actually pause to read the work they have created.
The final poem, “A Hole in the Sky” by Niyi Osundare, utilizes the power of video to
present a choreopoem, a genre which sets poems to music and emphasizes the speech of the
orator. The accompanying video helps to define regional words and enhance the experience for
the viewer. By both reading and watching Osundare’s poem, readers will be able to hear the
poem as poems have traditionally been read aloud. The poem itself deals with the ever-present
issue of climate change and humanity’s impact on the natural world, another popular and current
topic to discuss.

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After viewing one of these poems, students will take what they have learned from
previous sections and apply those literary tactics in an explication assignment. As with any
poem, they will observe the form, meter, rhyme scheme, imagery, and major themes in an
attempt to uncover the meaning of each poem. In addition, they will also have to examine the
style of the e-poem and how it makes use of its digital format to emphasize its message.
The next major works are from Y0ung-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, the South Korean
group composed of Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge. Their short stories are excellent examples
of kinetic typography and of Aarseth’s concept of ergodic literature, a phrase taken from the
Greek term for work, “ergon” (Aarseth 1). Compared to traditional, “nonergodic” literature,
“nontrivial effort”—denoting more than the act of turning a page—“is required to allow the
reader to traverse the text” (Aarseth 1). Students will have already encountered this in the e-
poetry section, as poetry in general requires readers to agonizingly inspect each word of each line
in each stanza in order to interpret the deeper and hidden meanings of the work. Because of this,
the normally passive reader becomes an active participant. Here, students will have to pay close
attention to the story presented to them by the words that flash onto the screen. The reader has no
control as to when or how quickly the next line of the story will appear and thus will have to
make extra efforts to absorb everything that is occurring. This active experience is more difficult
than it sounds, as a boisterous soundtrack and the speed at which the words can appear will
undoubtedly challenge all readers to absorb as much as they possibly can in a very short time.
The third section of the course is a special module that I call “Compare and Contrast.” I
believe that lessons go better with themes, and so the theme for this section is horror.
Coincidentally, if this course should be taught during the fall semester, this section will occur in
October, making the horror theme doubly powerful. Students will be observing how three

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different mediums approach the topic of scaring the life out of us, but, more importantly, they
will be able to take what they know of traditional and electronic literature and apply them
practically by forming a short compare-and-contrast essay at the end of the module. The first
items on the list are two short stories by renowned horror author H.P. Lovecraft. His stories
popularized the “cosmic horror” genre, which is could be described as “attempting to describe
the indescribable.” Lovecraft’s tales of suspense, sleeping demons, and waking nightmares have
found a cult following on the Internet, as it, too, is difficult to describe at times.
Short stories like “The Thing on the Doorstep” and “The Call of Cthulhu” have inspired
many authors and artists, such as the group behind the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. I said
before that podcasts are not exactly electronic literature, and I stand behind that statement. I do,
however, believe they are a part of digital media I call “transitory literature,” which are products
of storytelling techniques that have been transferred to a new medium but are otherwise still the
same. Notable examples would be audiobooks and Osundare’s “A Hole in the Sky,” in which a
written story is told through the spoken words of another reader. This adds additional complexity
to the work by making both the words of the story and how the reader says those words of equal
importance. This is especially true in the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, which basically asks its
listeners, “What happens to horror stories when they are told by someone with a pleasant but
monotone voice?” Students who listen to Night Vale will be able to hear the elements of horror
that Lovecraft developed, but they will have to analyze them through these deconstructive and
sometimes absurdist performances. For example, “A Story About You” literally tells a story
about the listener, as the narrator Cecil relates all of the things that are occurring to you right at
this moment. While the “you” that Cecil describes is eluding government agents and trying to
figure out what sort of creature is hidden in the trunk of the car, listeners will notice that nothing

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is actually happening to them. The story parodies the second-person narrative style of novels by
attempting to “narrate” the life of the listener, despite the fact that neither the narrator nor the
story has any power in reality.
Welcome to Night Vale’s status as transitory literature allows it to be an intermediary
between the traditional literature of Lovecraft and the electronic literature of Hideo Kojima and
Guillermo del Toro’s P.T. This game, technically a demo for the now-cancelled Silent Hills, was
released mysteriously with no advertisements and no announcements. It simply appeared on the
Playstation Online Store, but it transfixed the gaming world with its simplistic yet horrifying
story. The player is trapped in a never-ending loop of corridors as the world seems to degrade
and the protagonist’s unsavory past is brought to light. As the game has been removed from
digital stores, there are still many people who possess the game and many more who have posted
recordings of their playthroughs. I will attempt to track down a legitimate copy of the game for
the class, however I will be encouraging students to watch these playthroughs online. Like Night
Vale, I also expect students to analyze how the player they watch reacts to the events of P.T. and
how that influenced their perception of the game.
After experiencing the horrors of Lovecraft’s prose, the haunting absurdity of Night Vale,
and the player’s downward spiral into madness in P.T., students will work together to analyze
how each work uses the elements of horror to tell their stories. By placing students into a forum
discussion of the works, the assignment provides an excellent opportunity to take the literary
techniques they have practiced since the beginning of the course and apply it to three different
types of media. Together, Lovecraft, Night Vale, and P.T. represent the different stages of
literature as it has advanced over the years, and they provide students with a contrast between
what is read, what is heard, and what is seen.

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For the fourth and final module, I have chosen to feature what I believe to be one of the
most popular genres of electronic literature: video games. This section has a dual purpose. I hope
that not only will students obtain an appreciation of video game narratives but also that they will
see how the Internet has opened up discussions about stories, characters, and the player’s own
experiences with each game. For every game I list, I will post lists of YouTube channels
featuring what you could call the rising stars of the Internet. These Let’s Players focus on
engaging their audience in the story of the games while also showcasing just what makes each
title charming and emotional its own right. This also allows students to save a few dollars if they
cannot buy the game or are otherwise unable to play it.
To begin this module, we will first look at some of the discussions about video games. As
I have mentioned before, there are many who would rather see these works disqualified from
artistic discussions. An excellent example comes in an infamous article from the late film critic
Roger Ebert who stated that “video games can never be art” (Ebert). He later recanted this
statement, but many feel just as strongly as him. David Masciotra, as an example, claims that
“the novel is an adult medium” while “video games are overly stimulating…avenues into
arrested development, not art” (Masciotra). As the medium of the video game grows both in
quantity and in quality, the argument for why games should be or should not be an artform have
become more critically focused. As Phil Owen states, a notable jab is the distracting “video game
logic” that tells players of The Last of Us that they “need four scissor blades to make a single
shiv” and that continues to remind players that they are, in fact, playing a game (Owen). There is
also the dilemma of meshing narrative and gameplay. Owen explains that “if the gameplay is
itself part of the art, then that’s fine…, but endless repetitive shooting or dungeon crawls rarely
fit that bill” (Owen). To be considered as true art comparable with film and literature, the

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mechanics of the video game have to be interwoven with the narrative the developer seeks to tell,
so I must restrict what games can be literature by their reliance (or lack thereof) on the English
language as the core artistic element.
The first example of this narrow breed students will encounter will be Gone Home. Like
P.T., the house that the player explores is dark and filled with equally murky secrets, and players
will have to explore the house to piece together the central story. The similarities end there,
however, as Gone Home is significantly lighter in tone and would be better classified as drama
rather than horror. The story itself revolves around Kaitlin Greenbriar (played by the player), her
sister Samantha, and their parents Terry and Janice. When Kaitlin arrives at the house following
a year abroad, she finds the house empty as well as a note from her sister, who has run away
from home. The player must walk around the house and follow the clues to understand Sam’s
decision as well as the troubled family life of the Greenbriars. I believe this game does an
excellent job of setting the bar for games as both an artistic and a literary work. The mechanics
of discovering the mysteries hidden within the house and of examining the notes left behind by
the family members work together with the overall tale to create a cohesive narrative experience.
Following Gone Home is another game that involves a lot of walking and a lot of piecing
together of stories: The Stanley Parable. Unlike the previous game, there is no end to The
Stanley Parable. Every time a player believes they have “beaten” the game, it simply restarts.
The “story,” if it can be called that, is that a worker named Stanley is trying to figure out what
happened to his coworkers when they disappear one day. Or it could be just him shutting the
door and not paying the event any mind, only for the player to find the game has restarted once
again. The player’s attempts to find an exit to the labyrinth (which the player can observe in its
entirety during certain playthroughs) always lead back to the exit. This illustrates Murray’s idea

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of the rhizome, which is a “digital labyrinth” that is “like a set of index cards that have been
scattered on the floor and then connected with multiple segments of tangled twine, they offer no
end point and no way out” (Murray 132). This very postmodern narrative “[privileges] confusion
itself” and “frustrates our desire for narrational agency, for using the act of navigation to unfold a
story that flows from our own meaningful choices” by removing any significance those choices
could have (Murray 133). The rhizome is captured perfectly in The Stanley Parable as it “takes
the fact that [the player’s] choices in games almost always exist within a system that has been
predesigned and in which [the player’s] options are severely limited, and applies that to the real
world and the choices that society sets up for us” (Petit). The mechanics of the game are not just
exposed in this way but are also thrown into the faces of the players in a self-aware attempt to
remind players that they are trapped in a maze with no exit, save for shutting the game itself off.
Another type of story that Murray believes electronic literature excels at is the “journey,”
or something akin to the feats of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. Murray states, “One of the
consistent pleasures of the journey story in every time and every medium is the unfolding of
solutions to seemingly impossible situations” (Murray 138). While most people may not be
physically capable of stringing Odysseus’s bow or outwitting the Cyclops, video games offer the
ability to do so vicariously. One such game is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Like the Odyssey,
Brothers uses the mythic arc as a framework for its story, but how it tells that story is
extraordinarily unique. By using a controller, the player controls both brothers at the same time,
but each brother can perform tasks the other cannot. The player must solve puzzles and escape
dangerous creatures to survive and complete their quest, just like Odysseus did in his own
journey. Brothers, however, contains no dialogue, separating it from the other works in this
module. When the characters Naia and Naiee converse, they speak in a fictional language. The

19. Irby 19
story is instead told almost exclusively through the mechanics of the game and the animation of
the characters. I included this work for the distinct purpose of showing how a video game can be
a narrative art but not literature. While it does tell a beautiful and heartwrenching story, it does
so without utilizing the English language (or any language, for that matter), which is the key
characteristic of literature. Therefore, Brothers, while not eligible for the title of “electronic
literature,” does provide a counterpoint to the idea that all games that are art are also literature.
The final game of the module and the last work of the course is Undertale. Similar to The
Stanley Parable, Undertale seeks to deconstruct the standard game narrative by taking one of the
most controversial aspects of gaming and placing it front and center for the player to see:
violence. Undertale gives players the choice to “fight” the monsters they encounter, which
eventually leads to one killing the other, or to show “mercy” and seek a non-violent path to end
the conflict. Depending on the decisions the player makes, the world changes, and the characters
will interact with the player differently each and every playthrough, as every event is recorded
and saved regardless of how many times the player loads or reloads a save file. The three endings
of the game each depend on what the player does when given the option to inflict violence upon
others. Most players will achieve the Neutral route to begin with, as it triggers if any character—
regardless of their importance to the story—is killed. This ends with the player leaving the
Underground alone. Choosing to go to the extreme and follow the Genocide route will find
players systematically murdering monsters until none remain. Completing this route causes the
death of the player, who must sell their “soul” to restart the game from the beginning. The final
route, Pacifist, can only be obtained if the player refuses to kill a single monster. This is done by
either running from battle or finding a way to end the fight peacefully. This is not enough,
however, as the player must also befriend the monsters they encounter, and the player is

20. Irby 20
rewarded for their efforts by shattering the barrier that keeps the monsters trapped underground,
brokering a new age where monsters and men walk side by side. Each ending tells a portion of
the full story, and the actions the player makes in one route can drastically affect how characters
react due to the hidden record. It is a significantly longer game compared to any other game in
this course due to these three wildly different endings, so I will be giving students roughly three
days to analyze and complete the game.
At the end of the course, students will take what they have learned over the semester and
utilize it by researching another instance of electronic literature that they believe should either be
taught in this course or studied academically in a more focused course. Perhaps they will choose
a wealth of hypertext literature or choose another video game to add to the pantheon of e-lit. This
course is hopefully only the first of many, and, if we are going to have more complex courses in
electronic literature, we need to draw from and add to the international canon. When these
students complete the course, I hope that they will take with them a greater appreciation for this
new medium and seriously consider what this new style of literature can teach the world. Perhaps
we can even start that discussion by this having this course here at the University of Louisiana at
Monroe.

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