Money hungry men and abandoned women

Throughout Song of Solomon, a few clear gender roles pop out to me: the men are driven by money and their personal ideals rather than reality and the women in the book often end up alone and somewhat mad.

Let's start with the men. The three main males in the novel are Milkman, Macon, and Guitar. We can see that Milkman clings to his own perception of the world rather than reality because he stays in a somewhat childlike state into his thirties and need others to point out his flaws. If he would've just accepted the reality of his situation, he would've left his father's house sooner, maybe had a family, and would be able to find fault in himself without having to have one of his sisters yell it at him. Macon Dead also suffers from a similar alternate reality. He is stuck in the delusion (or truth?) of his wife's sexual relationship to her father. Even though it is unclear what exactly went down, when Macon tells the story to his son, he neglects to tell him about how he tried desperately to kill his unborn son. Maybe if Macon would've tried to figure out the real truth, he and his wife could've returned to their previously functional relationship. Guitar is driven by how the Seven Days view the world. To many people outside the Days, he sounds more like a psychopathic serial killer than a vigilante superhero fighting to preserve the balance of the population but Guitar truly and completely believes that he and the Days fight for good. In his reality they do make a difference and though it is hard for him to care it is his duty.

The men are also driven by money, as illustrated by their quest for the gold. All three of them long for the gold while they assume Pilate, who they think has it, would be able to just hang it from the ceiling completely untouched. Milkman allows his desire for independent financial security to fly him to Pennsylvania and Virginia. I think this thirst for wealth amongst the men is because wealth means financial stability and independence and thus symbolizes freedom.

The women on the other hand often end up alone, abandoned by the people that once surrounded them and a little crazy. Again, three examples come to mind, Hagar, Pilate, and Circe. Hagar was obviously abandoned by Milkman. After he so tactlessly tosses her aside, she takes to stalking him and using any available object to kill him. She becomes obsessed with his death yet cannot kill him. She seems pretty crazy. Pilate is abandoned when her father is killed and her brother leaves her after killing the miner. She is all alone in the world but still manages to make a home for herself. She and her home are both classified as crazy by many people. She is doesn't fit the preexisting gender role of women. She is a bootlegger with a child and grandchild but no men around. Her house is loose and free, especially sexually. Finally, Circe. She is abandoned when the man of her house dies and the lady of the house commits suicide. Abandoned by all human company she becomes a unreal, ghostly old woman breeding dogs in the empty mansion. She seems crazy too. It is important to note though that the women are only perceived as crazy by some people.

Some of the characteristics of the two genders are easily observable as following these patterns. It is interesting how these two roles interact throughout the book and create the confused social interactions throughout the book. Morrison takes these general roles and presents them again and again in different scenarios to emphasize her point.

Flight and Escape

Flight is an obvious motif throughout Song of Solomon. The epigraph, "The fathers may soar and the children may know their names", is the first clue the reader gets to this theme. The opening scene of the novel makes as even more explicit reference to this theme. Robert Smith, an insurance agent, commits suicide by jumping off the hospital but in his last note, he doesn't see it quite like that. He says, "I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings." In his eyes, he is escaping from the pains of the world through his "flight". Milkman too has his own encounters with flight. First, when he finds out that he, as a human, will never be able to fly without the assistance of some kind of machine he is devastated. Through this piece of knowledge, he loses freedom and means of escape from his family. The next encounter that comes to mind is the winged woman on the hood of his father's car. He stares for hours on end at her and yet she can never escape the hood of the extremely unhappy Dead car. If she could fly, she would be able to eliminate her bond to the car and escape. The primary example of this motif of flying is that Macon finally escapes his family and the lifelong rut he's been in by actually flying away from it in an airplane. Here this motif becomes so wonderfully literal that it is pretty hard to deny. Though Milkman is still connected to his family, flight allows him to escape from the people that had been around him for virtually his entire life.

Also, as a potentially relating note, Pilate could not fly away from her problems and old life, though she did walk away from them, which could be why they still seem to follow her.

Online journals...

I think the online journals are a very useful tool. I found that when I was using mine religiously, writing solid posts, and reading what classmates wrote, it was much easier to construct good papers are topics of discussion in class. It's nice to have a place to just spew thoughts and then go back later to pick through the bits of randomness to find a gem. Though I have never experienced Mr. Mitchell's paper journals, I think that I would prefer the online format to the older hand written ones. First of all, I like the public aspect of the online journals as it facilitates the sharing of ideas outside of normal class discussion. I have often used other people's journals as a starting place for a paper or post of my own. The public aspect encourages a higher standard of writing as well. Also, although I prefer paper books and notes to devices such as Kindles, I like the way it feels to sit down at my computer to write. I think it makes the journals seem more legit, more like writing a real paper. Comfort is a big factor too. I can sit comfortably on my couch working on something else on my computer then immediately switch to my journal without the fuss of finding a notebook and pencil and sitting somewhere more conducive with writing. Also along the lines of comfort, I think typing is faster and easier than hand-writing. The discomfort of handwriting puts me in a test mindset and subsequently I tend to rush unthinkingly through handwritten assignments. Editing is much easier when typing as well. If you think of something after two or three more lines have passed, you just arrow up and make the addition. The editing process of handwritten works involves many more arrows and scratch outs resulting in a graphite mess from which Mr. Mitchell later must extract the genius hiding amongst the scribbles. Another convenience resulting from the online nature of the journals is that they are pretty easily portable. I can access mine on my phone whenever I get an idea and when Mr. Mitchell is grading he doesn't have to carry like a million of them around with him.

To concisely conclude, I like them. Not the paper ones. Do these next semester.

Meursault vs Ruth: Innocence, sympathy, and morals

Thus far in Song of Solomon, I have already observed many similarities between it and the books that came earlier in the semester. One comparison in particular caught my attention as I wrote my research paper on a similar subject. The issue has to do with serious moral failings but ambiguous reactions by the reader due to the innocence or naivety of the character involved. My comparison is between Ruth and her sexual encounters with her father and son and Meursault and him murdering the Arab. For some reason, I find Meursault a much more sympathetic character than Ruth. Even though his crime would be considered worse by courts, his innocence of consequence in the world is more compelling than Ruth's supposed innocence of the wrongness of her sexual endeavors. In all honesty, I think it is introducing sex into the equation that makes Ruth's innocence so much less believe. Sex is often used as a symbol of loss of innocence so when Morrison says Ruth is innocent in issues that have to do with sex it was difficult for me to sympathize with her. This ambiguous state of affairs foreshadows what Ruth later tells us about herself, her father, and Milkman's father.

"Hoodoo Love" and Obeah

A while back, Hoodoo Love was being preformed at Krannert in the Studio Theatre as part of the theatre department's showcase this year. The play deals with obeah or hoodoo in a similar situation to how Antoinette tries to get Christophine to use it on Rochester. The female protagonist in Hoodoo Love tries to get her traveling lover to stay with her and be true to her by going to her neighbor and famed practitioner of hoodoo magic. Similar to in Wide Sargasso Sea, the two lovers in the play begin to fall in love by natural means before the magic. In both stories, the women then deal out the appropriate potion and get their respective men intensely ill. The man in the play, however, doesn't realize that his partner tried to put a spell on him and doesn't figure it out until much later in the play. When he eventually does figure out what his girl is doing, he is extremely angry and it ruins their relationship. The reaction to people doing magic on a character to control their emotions is always frantic and intense.

So why does this idea of magic and love freak people out so much? It has to do with free will. Especially in hopeless situations, the only thing that one can be sure of having is the ability to choose. The idea that this inherent right of humans can be simply taken away by a potion or a ritual, is really terrifying. If you are inclined to take Rochester's side, you can use this instance in his defense. It is not a stretch to call Antoinette a villain because she is trying to alter the sacred institution of love with a sort of magic. I guess (not really), that you could say Rochester's retaliation is a fair punishment for someone like Antoinette. I am not inclined to this opinion because I favor Antoinette and don't think it's fair to think that Antoinette should somehow just know she didn't need to magic him while he is being so bad to her.

As a side note, this idea of love and magic and their interaction has been used as a theme in a variety of works. For example, Shakespeare's (or Bacon's depending on how you are inclined to believe) A Midsummer Night's Dream deals with the same issue but with a different, happier ending. Also, in Aladdin he isn't allowed to wish for love, just to tie in some Disney movie knowledge.

Christophine in a new light

I have really thoroughly enjoyed this book but when Antoinette went kind of crazy and was like biting Rochester I was concerned because she was really the only character I liked. I didn't know who I was going to side with now that my initial favorite was not entirely sane. After a brief time of wandering around in the book favorite-less, Christophine and Rochester started fighting and I started liking Christophine. In the beginning of the book, Christophine seems like this emotionally distant, creepy character. As we get to know her, it becomes apparent that she has a particular attatchment to Annette. The first time we see her emotions get the best of her is at Annette's funeral. Her initial impression on me was not a very good one. It bothered me that it seemed like everything she did for Antoinette was really to please Annette. I was of the opinion that Christophine had little personal attatchment to Antoinette. In this battle with Rochester (153-161), Christophine defends Antoinette passionately and she seems like the most sound character in the novel. She is in her right mind and conducts herself accordingly. During his time in Jamaica, Rochester has made no attempt at learning about the country and in regards to Antoinette, no attempt to bond and learn about her past. For some reason, the only person he believes about her past is that man who claims to be her half brother. Antoinette tries to enlighten him about her past the night before but he spends the conversation interupting and judging. I like Christophine in this scene because it just seems like she is fed up with all of Rochester's crap and she is going to tell him exact what kind of awful person he is and what he should do. I don't like Rochester and I liked seeing him being called out on what he did to Antoinette, who was somewhat unstable throughout the whole novel.
I don't know if I'm quite done with this post but I've said mostly what I wanted to say. I like Christophine and think that she is the most stable and strongest of the characters we've met.

Changing up the narrator

The initially vague and disorienting changes of narrator in Wide Sargasso Sea have an interesting effect on the book and how its read. At first, I didn't like leaving Antoinette, our first narrator, because I didn't want to leave the character I was beginning to side with and viewed as the protagonist. I thought it put a bump in the flow of the novel just as I was settling in and getting oriented after the somewhat confusing start. Still, even with my concerns, I continued to enjoy the novel so I decided that it wasn't all that bad and began trying to figure out why Rhys would choose to switch narrators as she does. I have come up with a few reasons. First of all, getting an outside opinion of Antoinette helps develop a picture of her more completely in a reader's mind. During the first part, the reader only hears from Antoinette speaking about her isolated unhappy little world. She tells us about herself on the inside but having the narrator change and hearing about Antoinette from someone who is shoved into her little world and forced to try to connect with her gives us a better idea of what Antoinette appears to be on the outside. It also helps the reader get to know Rochester, who, to many, seems like a villain in this story. If the whole novel was told from her perspective, Rochester could seem like this terrible man who came, uninvited, into her life and who didn't even try to make their relationship work. When Rochester narrates, we get his side of the story and we learn that his home life was extremely unhappy and as a result, he continues trying to please his father in his adult life. We also see how Rochester thinks of his relationship with Antoinette and how he sometimes tries to comfort her or regrets not loving her and it makes him and his position much more sympathetic. The third and most subtle effect the changes of narrator have is that they sort of mimic the confusion, disorientation, and sense of not belonging that Antoinette feels. Throughout her life she struggles with finding her social position in the community she lives in and passes through a variety of different living arrangements as a result. I guess it is kind of a stretch but going from narrator to narrator keeps us a little confused about who we should side with just like Antoinette. And If, in fact, the two narrator are supposed to mirror Antoinette's awkward position between black culture and white, and Rochester is clearly the white culture side, does that mean in that Antoinette would be representative of black culture? and if so, what does this say about the side Antoinette chooses, or wants to choose, to identify with? and Why would she identify with the black culture more that white? They both seem to hate her. But why wouldn't she?

It seems that my last idea left me with more questions than it answered... but its still an interesting idea.

Antoinette and her Mothers

Children, daughters especially, are significantly effected by the relationship that they have with these female figures of authority in their lives. Though in this early stage of the novel, we don't know Antoinette, it is evident that her troubled relationships with all of the mother figures in her life is part of the reason she has such feelings of loneliness and depression. Thus far, it seems that Antoinette has three mother figures, her real mother, Annette, Christophine, and the mother of the convent she stays at. Each of these relationships are odd and distinctively unhappy.

First off, Antoinette's relationship with her real mother. Being a child, Antoinette has a very strong affinity for her mother but Annette does not reciprocate the affection. The interesting thing about their relationship is that Annette is not unkind to Antoinette but her behavior toward her child is better described as cold. Even when Antoinette is trying to smooth the wrinkles from her mother's worried face, Annette pushes her away. Another disturbing part about their relationship is how much Annette seems to value men in her life more than her daughter. There are two obvious examples in the book, Pierre and Mr. Mason. Psychologically this cannot be good for Antoinette. The convent as a setting has a really interesting effect on how we see Antoinette because it gives us, the readers, a chance to see her away from any men who may overshadow her and take her attention.

The next mother figure we meet is Christophine. Christophine is presented as the more loving of the mother figures but this relationship is no as happy as it may at first appear. The inherent problem with this mother-daughter relationship is that they aren't actually mother and daughter. Christophine is really an ex-slave so caring for Antoinette is part of the job rather than a choice. On the other hand, one may argue, Christophine could leave the family as she is no longer a slave but to use this in an argument, one must evaluate Christophine's motives for staying. It seems that her connection to the family is really through Annette and not Antoinette. Although Christophine is much more attatched to Annette than Antoinette, she still is connected to Antoinette through the fact that she want Annette to stay happy and Antoinette is kind of a part of Annette.

Both of these mother figures are soon lost, Annette dies and once she dies Christophine leaves to go live with her son. The next mother figure to come about is Mother Justine. Mother Justine and Antoinette are not related but their relationship seems to be based on a kinship they have from their religion. Like Christophine, Mother Justine takes on a motherly role in regards to Antoinette as she teaches her about how she should compose herself and act like a saint. Also like Christophine, Mother Justine has little personal connection to Antoinette; she teaches Antoinette and the other girls as part of her duty to the church. The church is to Annette as Mother Justine is to Christophine in a way. The other issue with this relationship is how the girls tend to mock Mother Justine which is contrary to the respect they are expected to have towards their leader.

I think I'm going to need to come back to this analysis as we continue reading the book and finish off some of my ideas but this is a start.

Does the murder add meaning?

One of the panel presentations brought up the theory that Meursault killing the Arab added meaning to his life. I thought this was really interesting because it seems to be true but in a sort of ironic way. I think the murder does add meaning to Meursault's life because it is the first time that his actions make a difference. Throughout the book, Meursault claimed that it didn't matter what he did because his actions had no definite consequences. When Meursault pulled the trigger and killed that man, he ended up condemning himself and in Meursault's religionless world, death is final and absolute. At last, something that Meursault did, did have a definite consequence. This idea goes against his theory that life is absurd but at the same time, life around him will go on even after his death, affirming that, in fact, his life was meaningless and absurd. The kind of meaning that is added to his like is really just being an example to those who have not realized how meaningless it all is. By being publicly executed, Meursault is both an example of the punishment that comes with breaking the law and a tool that makes the people watching the execution appreciate life. The people see Meursault's life ending permanently and even for the most religious person, the idea of it all ending is terrifying. Meursault, in his enlightened state at the end of the novel, would say that this affirms the idea that even though life is absurd and appears, in the long run, completely pointless, human beings love being alive and love living their insignificant little even though it will all have to end. Its interesting that the depression of impending death led the seemingly emotionless Meursault to such a life affirming  conclusion.

"If you're not against all this, you're for it"

The quote that is the title of this post is from the musical "Caberet" (recently performed at Kranert). For those of you who are unfortunately unaware of even a musical as famous as Caberet, I will provide a little background. Caberet is set in the years closely preceding WWII and was published about ten years after. It stretches the social bounds on issues such as sexuality and mocks the atmosphere of the 1930s which is filled with racism and, in Germany where the musical is set, the Nazis are on the rise. The quote that pertains to the book we are reading now, The Stranger by Albert Camus, comes from an American novelist as he rebukes his land lady for breaking off her engagement with a Jewish shop owner because she is scared of the Nazis. This quote struck me as particularly relevant to The Stranger and Albert Camus because he held similar beliefs about resisting the Nazis or being passive and he demonstrates his ideas in this book.

Meursault is really the perfect example of if you're not against it, you're for it because he is really not against anything and thus, ends up being for everything. Let's start with a minor example, first of all their is Marie. He's not for marriage or love but because he is not completely opposed to it, he agrees to it. This dynamic may strike the reader as odd but is really very inconsequential. The really obvious and more important point is Raymond and his issues. Meursault thinks writing the letter for Raymond leads to nothing meaningful, thus doesn't care and subsequently ends up leading the poor girl he has no connection to, to an awful encounter with Raymond. This shows how people can be indirectly hurt by one who does not resist a bad thing but rather proceeds passively. Meursault even refuses to get a policeman and remains completely neutral during the scene with Raymond and the girl. Camus even condemns partial resistance as he demonstrates when "the Arab" injures Raymond. Meursault stands by the fight, not becoming physically involved but tries to warn Raymond that the Arab  has a gun. Meursault has good intentions and for the first time makes a choice to become involved in the fight but his only partial involvement was not enough to make a difference. The final and most poignant claim that Camus makes is that being passive and not taking a side can actually cause direct injury to others. This is obviously when Meursault kills "the Arab". Meursault has no personal interest in the man he kills but because he is not against the way Raymond treat the man, he ends up doing permanent, grave damage to the man.

I think this is a really interesting comparison because it implies that many people were unhappy with the Europeans that didn't join the resistance because they thought it was safer to stay on neutral ground. It is also a really interesting moral question. Do you really have to be against something to not be for it? or vice versa? If that is the case, is there anyway that one can stay neutral or is neutral just a wishy-washy cop out position? It's really hard to say and somewhat intimidating to think about. Saying that you must be completely for or against everything in the world is quite a daunting idea. To take away a position of neutrality is to take away the point of view the majority of people choose on most issues. Its like politics. We are pretty much forced to be Republicans or Democrats whether or not we like either side. Weird right?

A variety of thoughts on the Hours

It was extremely interesting how the movie The Hours supported Clarissa's ideas about how people were connected. The most obvious connection is when Richard's mother comes to present day Clarissa's house. Through Richard's mother, Virginia Woolf is connected to the Clarissa living in NYC even though their lives are on separate continents in different time periods. Clarissa (from the novel) marvels at how the most unlikely people are connected by a fine mist of connections.

The music in the hours has received much acclaim. I think the acclaim is well deserved. With such a vast library of possible compositions and the original works of the movie's composer, the time needed to pull together and write a program that is so well-rounded and appropriate for each scene of the movie is extensive. The underlying musical motif that is repeated is appropriately manipulated and powerfully utilized to connect the characters and their downfalls.

Seriously? Leaving your family and running away to being a librarian in Canada is hardly choosing life... Through this choice she is essentially dead to everyone that matters to her and so, its really hard to say that she's choosing life. Like imagine if everyone that you know pretended you were dead and didn't exist.... would you be alive? I guess, technically, but what is life without anyone else. Seriously, she might've just died. Her choice of "life" was necessary for the connections between the plots, so I guess I forgive her.

Not a fan of "The Metamorphosis"

Unfortunately, after I've enjoyed all the books we've read thus far, I do not like The Metamorphosis. Coming into the book I was pretty excited. I had heard about the book and the infamous Kafka but no specifics. (It always puzzled me how so many people knew the title of the book and author but had no clue what it was about. Its just so strange how he is so famous but so unknown.) I sat down to start reading and began. I was puzzled by the first paragraph. I was not amused, not excited, not interested... just puzzled. There are a variety of things that I don't like about the book, from plot to characters and many things in between.

First let me start by talking about the extremely forgivable: tone. For some reason, the voice narrating the story does not appeal to me at all. It is difficult to go into a deep examination about why I don't like it because it is impossible to tell, just by reading one edition, what amount of the tone is from Kafka and what is just translation. That is the issue with translated works, particularly works that tend to employ nuanced language because, often times, words just don't have similar connotations across languages. For example, there is no word in the German language that is synonymous to "convenient". If you look up "convenient" in a English-German dictionary, "convenient" will be translated to "bequem" meaning comfortable. Just think about that though. Comfortable and convenient just aren't the same. So I forgive Kafka and the man who translated Kafka until I can read Kafka in the language he wrote in (so probably forever...).

Secondly, I really don't like the characters, especially Gregor. Gregor is just so pathetic I can't really sympathize with him. In general, I tend not to like spineless characters but for some reason I find him particularly loathsome. His intense, unquestioning submission and desperate need for approval are a HUGE turn-off for me in regards to his character. Those who surround him are also similarly perturbing. Let's start with Grete, who was briefly my favorite character. She starts off as being the only one deciding to do something (this is when she became my favorite). This intelligence is rather short lived though as she soon begins throwing pointless tantrums. Next his mother. She seems passive and emotional to excess. Finally, his father. His father basically sold him to the company to pay of his death, while secretly having enough money to pay off the debt. He also plays a role in Gregor severely injuring himself multiple times but still Gregor seriously desires his approval. It is such a strange unsettling family dynamic.

My third issue is with the plot. Its creepy and frustratingly unrealistic. It annoys me to no end that the characters act as they do. WHY DOES NO ONE THINK ITS WEIRD THAT GREGOR IS AN INSECT? I can't believe no one is asking why. And what happened to that doctor that Grete was going to get? For a while I really wanted him to come but then I realized he'd probably act just like the rest of them and I would just have one more person to dislike. With the scenario that has been set up, Kafka could have written a tear-wrenching tragedy, a hair-raising horror story, a side-splitting comedy, or even some kind of wonky love story but he doesn't. He writes a simple uncomfortable, eerie story.

But here's the thing, that could be exactly what Kafka wants... He could just be trying to alienate the reader and make the reader feel uncomfortable and strange. I think this annoys me too. I don't like being emotionally manipulated by an old German man via his character the bug-man. Or maybe, Nikita said this too, there is some part of the story that goes WAY over my head and I just don't like the book because I'm stuck here reading the book while the book is really presenting esoteric ideas I will never understand. I doubt that. I think that I don't like the book and I won't ever really know Kafka's motives but that's OK because at least its interesting to talk about with others and hear their opinions. Maybe by the end of the book someone will have said something that will change my mind, but I doubt that too.

Humor and Kafka

Personally, I don’t find much humor in The Metamorphosis. We had this discussion in class and I came up with no scenes that I laughed at. I think it’s all creepy. During our discussion in class it seemed that people found the utter absurdity of Gregor’s work ethic and the actions of those around him. Kafka gets a bunch of people to laugh at things that are awful and sad. For example the scene where Gregor is trying to get out of his room and follow the manager. A few people found this scene funny when it is really horribly sad. Gregor is causing himself unimaginable pain to try hopelessly to communicate with the manager and beg for his job back. It’s so terrible… Not only do Gregor’s wounds and efforts prove futile as he doesn’t end up leaving the room but even it they did he wouldn’t be able to communicate with the manager. Seriously, try to imagine desperately wanting to tell somebody something and they can’t understand. No matter how hard you try. They can’t understand. Its an awful thought and a intensely frustrating scenario. I don’t think that Gregor’s work ethic is funny either. It’s pathetic. It’s almost awkward for me as the reader to read about how Gregor pleads for approval. It’s the same kind of awkward that I felt in the first few pages of Mrs. Dalloway, like a, “I don’t know if the character wants me to know all this…” It’s also like if a kid is sucking up to a teacher and the teacher is just ignoring it. You, as the bystander, just want to escape. It’s weird to see someone struggling at personal expense for obviously unattained approval. Anyways, I don’t think The Metamorphosis is funny. Creepy? Yes. Weird? Yes. Funny? Definitely no.

Essay writing woes...

I found it incredibly difficult to write a paper on The Sun Also Rises. I had a lot to say about the book but  I found it a formidable task, condensing my thoughts into one thesis. I really wanted to find one scene and write about it and why it is the most important scene in the novel. This idea crashed and burned. I tried to remember one scene that was particularly germane to the plot and dense enough to write a paper on but none came to mind. I skimmed and skimmed searching for inspiration. I was troubled by trying to write a paper on a certain character as there is little character description in the book and a lot of the information we know about the characters comes from interpreting Hemingway's rare descriptive passages. I guess that that stupid article about not trusting Jake had me nervous and resisting a character analysis. My essay was EXTREMELY close to being about Bill Gorton and what he brings to the story. I just wasn't feeling it though. I finally settled on writing about Cohn and particular passages that pertained to him. I guess it was fine but this essay gave me seriously depressing writers block.

Protect me, Mr. Sarcasm

Sarcasm, irony, and joking are used throughout The Sun Also Rises to protect the emotionally unstable characters of Brett and Bill from painful emotions they both have. Their issues are different but they both create disinterested, foolish images of themselves when they are in public. They also both are forced to drop their facades when a situation they are placed in ends up getting out of hand.

First Bill. Bill is a war veteran who uses irony and jokes to deal with the emotional and psychological side effects of the war. By joking around and not taking things seriously, Bill lessens the possibility of being hurt. He puts on an air of not caring to avoid disappointment, loneliness, other emotional pains he could theoretically face. He is forced to abandon this pretense when Mike starts actually going in on Robert. Bill finds humor in the fight until he realizes it is actually serious. This shows that Bill isn't actually a mean spirited character (though he does love to get under peoples' skin) but rather prefers to keep social issues shallow and inconsequential. Bill also drop his act voluntarily and momentarily in certain scenes he has with Jake

Brett also employs a phony happy- socialite front. In public Brett appears popular, attractive, and contentedly unconcerned. The reader find out shortly after meeting Brett that she is "miserable" and her gayness is only an act. She uses this act to stop people from pitying her and to prevent her troubled feelings about her impossible love for Jake and her problems with her last marriage. Like Bill, Brett also renounces her happy mask deliberately when she is alone with Jake. Eventually, she is forced to renounce her act again when she knows she must part with Romero and call Jake.

This set up of characters is one that pulls the reader increasingly closer to the characters. At least for me, seeing how fake the characters could be made it hard for me to really like them. Then, all of a sudden, when I was finally getting used to these posing characters, they decided to be noble and return to reality when times got tough. This evoked my respect for the characters, just a few pages earlier, I was not enjoying. Hemingway does a really good job of creating emotionally unsettled characters that emotionally unsettle you.

Give me liberty or give me death.... or being a librarian in Canada

As I voiced in class, it really bugged me how Laura, the 1951 woman, said she had to leave her family because that was her choosing life. I thought this was an awkward and somewhat faulty way to connect her to Mrs. Dalloway in the novel. I really don't think that you can call her choice life. By leaving the life she led with her children and husband, she was actually choosing death. The result if she had chosen to commit suicide would be pretty much the same to those around her. Either way she was considered dead to all those who she mattered too and mattered to her so is that really living? In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf presents the idea that we live on after our bodies are dead in the thoughts people think about us and how we've touched other peoples lives. Laura's choice led people, like her son for example, to completely try to block her out of his thoughts. So is she actually more dead than if she had committed suicide and her family mourned her more with sadness than trying to just forget her? When developing my thoughts on this topic, I ran into the issue of Richard's book. He obviously does think about his mother as he does write her into the book but the key fact is he writes that she dies. Thus, he perceives her as dead which brings me back around to my original question, Did Laura choose life? or did she actually choose symbolic death?

Virginia in "Mrs. Dalloway"

From class discussion, I knew that Woolf had used some of her own experiences in Mrs. Dalloway but I had no clue just how much of her life she used. Watching that mini documentary of Woolf's life was really interesting and made me realize that the reason the thoughts Woolf wrote for each character were so realistic because many of them came from personal experience. Woolf bravely bares some of her innermost thoughts and fears with the millions of strangers that would come to read her book. It is both intriguing and sad to conceive that she went through much of the pain documented in the book.

First, Septimus' dealings with medical professionals and their treatments came directly from what she went through during one of her several severe mental breakdowns. Like Septimus, Woolf was drugged by doctors with many different "medicines" and powerful sedatives to calm her mind and help her to relax. The Rest treatment, a treatment in which the patient must lay in a dark room doing absolutely nothing and drinking milk and being fed on animal fat, was also prescribed to Clarissa, Septimus, and Woolf. Over her life, Woolf began to develop the opinion that medical professionals were inept and under educated. She feels the same dislike for them as Septimus does and shows it, using blatant sarcasm and disdain to describe her villainous doctors.

Woolf also brings in her experience as a heterosexually married bisexual woman to describe the bond between two women. Woolf uses Clarissa and Sally to present her feelings on homosexual relationships. Woolf has both Septimus and Clarissa talk extremely negatively about heterosexual relationships. Septimus is the stronger of the two in these views and he even goes so far as to say it is cruel to bring children into the a world of such atrocities. Virginia also had no children, perhaps for the same reasons.

World War One and the impending WWII also had an intense effect on Woolf as WWI had on Septimus. Both believe in universal love but Septimus, unlike Woolf, has no way to communicate it. The most striking similarity though, is that war was one of the causes of both of their suicides. Septimus commits suicide because he no longer can deal with the incompetent doctors treating his shell shock from the war. In the mix of Woolf's numerous rationalizations for suicide was the impending invasion of the Germans and the start of WWII. It's pretty creepy to think that Woolf created such a disturbed character as Septimus then, later, took her own life for some of the same reasons as her character.

Woolf obviously pours herself into every bit of the novel, even disclosing her most private problems and theories to all readers. There is a rationale for doing this though. She did it so that her opinions and ideas could be shared and she could live on after her body died. She would live through her words and through the threads that attached her to each reader.

Team Peter, WOOT WOOT

This is really an awful comparison to make, but it must be made, as it keeps floating around in my head wanting to escape. The love triangle of Peter, Richard, and Clarissa is pretty comparable to that of Edward, Jacob, and Bella, with a little imagination of course. Before I delve deeply into the comparison of the two sets of lovers, I just need to say that I haven't actually read the books of the Twilight Saga. I have, however, seen the movies and so all of my points are based off the movies. I am sorry if I insult any of you hard core Twilight fans with my ignorance. So now I can begin.

To start out, we must match each character to their respective twin from the other book. Obviously, Clarissa and Bella are each others counterparts. I think Jacob is like Richard and Edward is like Peter. Before you think that I am wrong because Clarissa and Bella choose different boys, let me explain myself and I'll get to that discrepancy later. Clarissa and Bella are partners because they are both the only girl in their love triangle and they have the choice between two men they love. Although they are very different people they face similar problems when it comes to love. Jacob and Richard are similar because they are both the "safe choices" (or at least the safer  choice as I feel a vampire that doesn't age and wants to kill you is not quite as safe as a werewolf). They both love the girl in their book and the girl loves them but not with the same passion as the girl loves the other suitor. Edward is like Peter and vice versa because they are the dangerous, passionate choices.

The one problem that the analogy faces is that Clarissa and Bella make different choices in the end. To put it bluntly, the choices made are different because Twilight is a highly fictitious, angsty set of teen love/drama novels while Mrs. Dalloway is a refined critique of many aspects of British society. That is to say that choosing the dangerous choice as Bella does in the highly fictitious, angsty set of teen love/drama novels is way more exciting than choosing the safe man of Parliament as Clarissa does in Woolf's novel. Along the same lines, Clarissa and Bella are just completely different characters who share very little personality wise. Also, Woolf is making her world somewhat realistic while the world of Twilight is blatant fantasy. Thus, Clarissa chooses the safe choice because it is more realistic in the scheme of her life and Bella chooses the dangerous boy because it is exciting and she doesn't need to be logical because she is a teenager who is choosing between a vampire and a werewolf.

Thus ends my comparison of Mrs. Dalloway and the Twilight Saga. I hope their is some appreciation for it somewhere. Just note that the substantial content of the two works, other than the love triangle, is not at all similar. Just in case that was unclear.

The painfully disappointing ending of "Mrs. Dalloway"

I was absolutely horrified when I got to the end of the book and instead of a touching nostalgic exchange between the mysterious trinity of Clarissa, Peter, and Sally, I GOT NOTHING. I was NOT disappointed, mind you, that Clarissa's party was not described in more detail or that her story got cut off. I was disappointed that we never got to hear about the past and get more of Peter and Sally. In my mind, as the moment of truth approached, I subconsciously created a million different ways that the conversation could go. I was entirely excited for the friends to reconnect but instead it all just ended, without so much as one anecdote from their past shared aloud. So why did Virginia Woolf decide to drop the conversation?

After I had gotten over the initial depression that the lack of closure had caused, I realized the main reason why Woolf excluded this part; it isn't important. To have a significant plot point such as the reunion would be would do two things, 1) undermine the significance of the other huge plot point, Septimus's suicide, and Clarissa's thoughts about it and 2) go against Woolf's idea of a character driven novel and could turn Mrs. Dalloway into cute little love story rather than an insight into many facets of society and human minds. If I hadn't been so attached to the characters' personalities and personal stories, I would have been able to predict that the conversation would never happen. I guess it's just proof of Woolf's amazing character development.
Thus, the main scene at the end is the scene in which Clarissa goes into the quiet room and thinks about death and life privately. This is so essential to the book. The scene of her introspection is so wonderfully full of symbols and theories that Woolf is presenting about life and death, I read it twice. Each time I return to the passage I find a new meaning or interpretation of the passage. My plot loving brain still pined for the conversation of the three friends, but my psychoanalyzing and philosophizing brain utterly devoured the extraordinarily dense few pages. So I leave my imagination to satisfy the plot loving part of my brain and indulge my more intelligent part with Woolf's words.
Well, I guess the ending really wasn't as disappointing as I had originally thought. The ending as written ties the two main stories together with that fine mist Woolf and Clarissa both believe so completely in. It also sends home one of the main points in the novel. Though the reader never gets to meet Sally completely or hear Peter and Clarissa finally talk, the end of the novel is superbly crafted, classic Woolf.

Clarissa... past and present

From the descriptions we get, it seems that young Clarissa always thought herself destined to a life of leisure just like she ends up leading. She was a good hostess, proper and upright, and she was always content being socially adept. But Sally and Peter brought her away from that. Here's what I think:

I think Clarissa liked the conventions of social interactions because she was good at them and the formulas that were used to put together a good conversation were a kind of barrier to letting too much emotion creep into public. Clarissa would see the role models she was presented with and want to end up the same way, in a big house with servants to help and a active social life. The path to this picturesque life, as she saw it, consisted of learning how to be a proper young lady and marrying well. The well-mannered Clarissa saw no problem with this idea and a part of her really wanted that life. The other side of Clarissa came to bloom with the cultivation of Peter and Sally. Peter showed Clarissa passion and brought out her pugnacious side as they bickered constantly. Maybe I just see this because I like Peter more than Richard, but I think that Clarissa and Richard never loved the way Clarissa and Peter did. Clarissa and Peter had ups and downs but it seems their relationship was much more charged that her relationship with Richard. Sally showed Clarissa true and pure love and just gave Clarissa a whole new outlook on what was needed to be happy. Sally was daring and dangerous and that scared Clarissa but it also kind of inspired her. Clarissa admired Sally's courage but her initial outlook on life prevented her from adopting or at least adhering more closely to Sally's way of life. 

So, enter Richard and the picture begins to change. Clarissa is left with a choice: to choose the safe road she saw herself traveling with Richard, or to choose the danger, risk, and passion associated with choosing Peter. Clarissa chose Richard and she left Peter and Sally for her new, cushy life as a model wife and socialite. I think she chose Richard and what he brought to the table because she thought she wanted the picturesque life of a woman with a man in Parliament more than she wanted the emotion that she had in her relationships with Peter and Sally. Clarissa's thoughts throughout the book make the reader wonder if she believes she made the right choice. She is constantly thinking over days from her youth. As I started the book, I didn't read the  memories as regret or anything special but as I got deeper into Clarissa's head, especially as she talked about Sally and when we finally hear Sally talk about Clarissa, it seemed that Clarissa did regret, with maybe only a hidden part of her, leaving Sally and Peter behind. 

Leaving Sally and Peter behind almost symbolizes Clarissa leaving her youth behind; they were her best friends and her best memories of the past. I think it's really sad... I think Peter and Sally really cared about her and she chose Richard, not Peter, and a social position, not freedom like Sally. Then, when they come to her party, she doesn't talk to them. They seem pretty ok with it but I was like, "What?! You spend this entire novel thinking about them, then you won't even talk to them?". Again, she ditches them to play hostess. 

In Clarissa's defense, because she has these two competing sides, she has all this inner conflict and feelings that are semi-regretful. Clarissa has a lot of emotion, but not towards her current life, towards her past. For example, when she sees Sally and Peter and thinks about their experiences together, she has passionate and emotive but when she talks about her life in the present, she is content, simply content. She feels she chose Richard for the continuous contentment rather than the ups and downs. It's rational so it's hard to say she made the wrong choice.

Overall, I think Clarissa is the same person in the beginning of what we hear about her, to the end with a short detour in the middle lead by her two best friends. No matter how much she thinks about the past or readers wonder why she made the decision the way she did, nothing with change because its just a book.  Virginia Woolf wanted it to happen that way but why?

Sally and Clarissa, Septimus and Evans

What are these relationship...? Apparently, Woolf wants our opinions and therefore she gives us no definite proof of homosexuality or to the contrary. Which gives our minds the sometimes dangerous freedom to examine the evidence and anecdotes and ultimately make judgements for ourselves.
I think the point is that it really doesn't matter. Clarissa even comments on how there is something more pure about a relationship without a title. Which is an interesting idea. I mean so many relationships in high school are only titles. Two people say they're dating... But they aren't actually. On the other hand, you don't put a "title" on it but often friendships are much more meaningful than relationships.
Even if any of the four wanted to dub their relationship, if in fact the relationship was homosexual and no just homosocial, none of the above would have had the vocabulary to give it a name. To them, there would have really been no concept of homosexual relationships. But maybe that's whats so pure and strong about the bond between both pairs. Its new and unfamiliar and thus, exciting.
Personally, I think that both pairs bring up interesting ideas of what friendship is, specifically comparing homosocial interactions between men and women and their respective norms. Its interesting though how little hope Clarissa and Septimus have for heterosexual marriages and relationships, even though both are in heterosexual marriages. Its just another piece of Woolf's annoyingly ambiguous picture of both pairs...

Septimus speak

The way Woolf writes Septimus' thoughts is absolutely fascinating I think. We had a discussion about the passage where he is in the street watching the plane write in the sky but we kind of got cut off by the bell and so I want to go a little further about the way Septimus thinks here.
Septimus' thoughts materialize into words as a sort of poetry, which is a reflection of the old poetic Septimus. There is a difference in the poetry of his mind after the words because, rather that being passionate and emotional, it is almost creepily without emotion. Don't get me wrong though, His poetry is really vibrant and alive but it honestly just feels like beautiful, emotionally empty metaphors. It is almost like Septimus himself, who is in the prime of life, yet cannot feel. I was talking about Mrs. Dalloway on the phone one night with Joey and we got talking about Septimus. A theory I posed was that Septimus turns everything into a metaphor to try to attempt to synthetically create emotion using words. Judging from his fear at not being able to feel, Septimus knows what emotions he should be feeling but just lacks the emotion and thus the metaphors and vibrance of his minds is a product of him trying too hard to feel something.
Another theory we talked about was that Septimus uses poetry to revert to his mind before the war and escape from his current reality into the delusion he could create through poetry
before the war.
One more theory, just to share, is that because he has difficulty communicating, Septimus' thoughts appear to us as poetic because he is using the formula and conventions of poetry to facilitate his communication.
Just some thoughts.

The charismatic Howie

Nicholson Baker's character Howie in The Mezzannine convinces us to follow him on his escalator ride and through his anecdotes and opinions without being bored. He writes his opinions on the seemingly trivial details of life as well as the big picture often accompanied by a tangent expanding on his thesis. His stories could easily become dry and uninteresting such as how one puts on a sock or the evolution of straws but something keeps each detail ravishing. I account his wonderfully charismatic tone to Howie's intense enthusiasm about all the minutia of life and his comforting relatability factor in some passages versus his questionable idiosyncracies in others.

Personally, as I was getting to know Howie as the novel began, I was sort of skeptical of his seemingly unnecessary vim but I soon realized his odd fervor for the minor things made me want to read on to hear his justificaiton for such excitement. A classic example of enthusiastic Howie is his when he discusses perforation. "Perforation! Shout it out!" Seems like an excess of joy in the little recognized, though often used, invention of perforation... But you can't really dismiss his approval because as you read on, in the back of your nmind, it slowly becomes clear to you that you enjoy perforation a great deal; maybe not as much as Howie, but still a great deal. Over the course of the novel, I wondered if Howie was just making the reader realize the effect of small details on their life or if he was planting an idea and convincing the reader of it. Its an interesting question, isn't it? and kind of weird to think that some random character from a book is making you think differently about the details of your everyday life.

As for the relatability factor, Howie's outer appearance fits the bill. He works a normal office job, faces such average problems as broken shoe laces and who to eat with, he's just generally average. Over the course of the book though, we meet the inner Howie and discover his idiosyncracies that make him different from any other coworker. Howie seems more intelegent and intensely left brained than is normal. A particularly strange anecdote comes to mind when I think of Howie's oddnesses, that one being the story about him peeing through a sanitary napkin...... I really had no clue how to react when I read this passage so I read on attributing it only to deepening Howie's uniquely average persona.

Really, I think Howie was just such a well constructed character that he made the idea work. Similar to Virginia Woolf's idea of character, Howie made the premise work for him, rather than him being a pawn to the plot.

Howie on Aurelius

"Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice and ashes"


This is the passage that Nicholas Baker so vehemently refuses through Howie. I think Howie is so radically against this theory because, as we learn over the course of the book, Howie pretty much just loves life. The Mezzanine, as a whole is basically combating Aurelius' philosophy on life because Baker's book portrays even the most basic details as meaningful and Howie celebrates the most commonplace, overlooked minutia of life. Baker is pretty successful too... He made the random details of Howie's ordinary life interesting enough to keep a bunch of teenagers reading for 135 pages. So, I guess that's a win. I know he made me (and I'm sure a few others) smile or laugh at an everyday object/situation that I did not appreciate nearly as much as Howie. Even if the book was not interesting to you in particular, it does make you reconsider some of the particulars in life and realize that they effect the way you act more than it seems at first glance. Overall, it makes every part of life seem like it has meaning and takes the triviality out of every detail. I think it is easy to see why Baker is so opposed to the Aurelius quote given his outlook on life.