End of the semester thoughts

So the semester is almost over so I'd like to use this blog post to post some of my final thoughts about the books that we read. To my surprise, I actually liked all of the books that we read, although to different levels of like.
1. The Mezzanine
The Mezzanine was definitely not what I was expecting to read in the class first. It was right after summer break and school was just beginning. The Mezzanine was also rather boring to read at first and it became more of a chore, especially after I saw the extremely long footnotes. It was the discussions in class that saved me. With all the interesting points that people were making about the novel, it was difficult not to get into the story. Beneath the seemingly everyday life that is portrayed in the novel lies tons of interesting details and tidbits that all tie back to his thoughts.
2. Mrs. Dalloway
I found that Mrs. Dalloway was a good book to transition to right after the Mezzanine. One of the recurring features of all the novels that we have read is that they seem simple or straightforward in the beginning but often become much more complex beneath. I really liked the dynamic between Clarissa and Septimus, how they are completely different people and yet share many of the same struggles that Clarissa has. It's very ironic that Septimus is unable to control his emotions from coming out while Clarissa is unable to express herself. The fact that the whole novel took place in a single day is astonishing. What is even more exciting is how Woolf manages to seamlessly weave all of the characters into one narrative without having the story seem awkward or disconnected.
3. The Sun Also Rises
I think that this book was the one that exceeded all expectations. This was the first book by Hemingway that I have read and I wasn't disappointed. Hemingway is so masterful in his use of the subtext and manages to convey a novel that is filled with details and richness with a minimal amount of pages. It was especially great for conversation because of the open statements that Hemingway leaves for the readers to interpret leading to occasional heated debates between opposing sides.
4. The Stranger
The novels just keep getting better and better. The Stranger was probably the novel that I had the most fun reading. This was also the time that we had our first open discussion. It was difficult for me at first to pick up on whether or not Meursault was as he is portrayed, apathetic at best. To read this book right after The Sun Also Rises led to me trying to pick through the minimal amount of details to attempt to portray Meursault in a better light.
5. Wide Sargasso Sea
Wide Sargasso Sea ties with The Stranger and The Sun Also Rises as the top novels of the semester. I've never read Jane Eyre but reading Wide Sargasso Sea will definitely change my opinion of Bertha if I do read it. Reading the back story is always interesting and portraying to story from both Antoinette and Rochester leaves the readers at a standoff of whether to support Rochester or Antoinette.
6. Song of Solomon
Reading this book is....weird. I'm really not sure how else to describe it. Perhaps it is the names or the scenes that Toni Morrison describes but it is a big change from Wide Sargasso Sea, which I found to be more tame and emotional. Nevertheless, Toni Morrison does a wonderful job telling the stories of all the characters in a compelling and interesting way that just draws the readers in.

\Overall, this was a very interesting semester. I'm kind of sad that it is ending because all of the books and discussion have been really beneficial and interesting to me. I think the best part about reading these books is that you can continue to read them over and over and just pick up on new details that weren't there before. Anyways, this was a fun semester and good luck on finals!

Milkman and the Similarities to Daedalus

One of the topics that was brought up in class on Tuesday was the fact that Milkman doesn't seem to be a very interesting main character because there doesn't seem to be a clear development as the novel progresses. There isn't really a sense of time going on the story. Although this is partially because Toni

Morrison likes to jump around to different moments in the characters' lives, I was really shocked at the gap in Milkman's life when we suddenly found out that he was in his thirties. His behavior when he was a teenager compared to when he is thirty seems very similar. Also, Toni Morrison seems to focus more on other characters, giving long and very detailed stories about them while Milkman listens. To me, this was confusing at first because Milkman should be the main character but Toni Morrison doesn't go into his perspective at all. Milkman just seems to reject the explanations and the stories behind his life and his family. For a while, it was difficult for me to be sympathetic towards Milkman. He prided himself on not being like his father and yet he shares similar characteristic; he loves money and his attitude towards the women around him is similar to his father's. For these reasons, I find it very difficult to understand why Milkman is the main protagonist in the novel.
However, as part 1 ends, I find myself believing that Milkman will change by the end of the book. Part of the reason is because it wouldn't make sense to make Milkman the main protagonist otherwise since he doesn't carry any of the qualities of a protagonist that we have seen in previous books in the semester. My main motivation for why he will change goes back to the very first chapter of the book. If you remember, the novel opens up with the death of Robert Smith, the insurance agent who believed he could fly. In the first chapter we also get a section where it is described that Milkman "lost all interest in himself. To have to live without that single gift saddened him and left his imagination so bereft that he appeared dull even to the women who did not hate his mother" (9). This was because he found out that only birds and planes could fly. The notion of flying appeared many more times in the book, from the winged woman that Milkman sees while he is in the car to the plane ticket that Milkman would buy if he was in a dangerous situation. These didn't really seem to connect to the story at first, especially the first seen when the insurance agent died. As the novel progresses however, slowly everything begins to fall in place. Milkman despises the situation that he is in. He mentions several times throughout the novel that he is surrounded by abnormal people and how he wishes that his family was normal. His main reason to steal the gold from Pilate is to escape from his family and live on his own. He wants to "fly" out of his situation. To make a connection to Robert Smith and Milkman, the first instance of the flying contraption that Robert Smith used was the myth of Daedalus. For those who aren't familiar with it, the story of Daedalus is a Greek myth where he fashioned pairs of wings for him and his son Icarus so that they could escape from the tower/prison that King Minos kept him in. This bears many similarities to Milkman's situation where King Minos is Macon Dead and Daedalus is Milkman, who is trying to escape from his prison. It seems by the end of Part 1 that he does leave as he shuts the door after the lecture by Lena. What will be interesting to read about is what happens after. In the myth of Daedalus, his son Icarus died because he became too cocky. Perhaps Milkman is more easily related to Icarus.

Zombi culture in "The Wide Sargasso Sea"

I'm not sure about other people, but for me, I was really confused about what was the "zombi" that we see show up multiple times in the novel. For one, the spelling threw me off as usually, "zombi" is spelled as "zombie". However, there also seems to be some cultural differences between the zombi that the novel refers to and the zombie that we think about today. To the islanders, a zombi is much more than a walking corpse that eats people as depicted with the image on the side. In a book The Glittering Coronet of Isles that Rochester was reading, it describes the zombi as a "spirit of a place, usually malignant but sometimes to be propitiated with sacrifices or offerings of flowers and fruit" (107). In this sense, a zombi seems more like deity and it makes sense why the islanders would be afraid of Christophine since she was rumored to be able to control these beings.

Reading about zombi gave me a sense of deja-vu. Some time ago, I read the book called The Serpent and the Rainbow, which some of you might have heard of. The author Wade Davis goes to Haiti to discover the secrets behind the zombies that the Haitians were talking about. At first, the book was rather shocking. Zombies were always just part of my imagination before, about as real as vampires and werewolves. Apparently however, the Haitians were able to create a death-like state by applying various medicinal powders onto the wound. The person would re-awaken into a psychotic state that would resemble a zombie. The person could also be more easily controlled because they "knew" they were dead. This all sounds kind of absurd to me, but it's interesting to find out that the zombi that the novel refers to has such an unique back story.

Trial of Meursault

Haven't done a blog post in a while, but hopefully this one will be interesting to make up for it. I was going through The Stranger again, looking for information for my response paper, and I was quite intrigued by the trial that basically took up half of the novel. I found the whole trial very ironic. Meursault, who we know throughout the book as indifferent and rather silent, is now denied the chance to speak in court when he actually wants to speak. When he does get to speak, he fumbles his words and says that it was because of the sun, causing the audience to laugh at him. It is moments like these that really make me sympathize with Meursault. I love what Camus has done in The Stranger. He manages to present Meursault, who was clearly guilty killing the Arab, in such a way that the readers are able to connect and empathize with Meursault.
Going back to the trial, I found the whole event rather preposterous. We mentioned this in class too, but none of the lawyers seem to tell the right story of Meursault. From an outsider's perspective, the prosecutor does portray him with quite a lot of accuracy. It isn't too hard to understand where the prosecutor is getting his information and yet Meursault's lawyer also provides evidence that is kind of correct and yet doesn't present and accurate picture of Meursault. During this whole time, Meursault has been meaning to speak but can't because his lawyer doesn't want him to. This frustrates me even more because not only does Meursault want to speak but can't, but his explanation for what happened sound pretty ridiculous anyways.
Camus's portrayal of the court of law doesn't really reassure me of the system that humans have created. The idea that truth will come to light and prevail in court doesn't appear in The Stranger and our system is criticized instead. The movie that we watched, The Man Who Wasn't There, also had a similar portrayal of our court of law.
SPOILER ALERT
Freddy Riedenschnieter (best I could do) chose which story would stick the best in order to try to prove that Doris was innocent. In the end, he ended up giving this rather confusing and ridiculous explanation that didn't have anything to do with Doris. This movie complemented the image that Camus was depicting, that the court system is flawed since the court authorities try to make up their own story that goes along best with the evidence, even if the story is false.
On a side note, I recently started to Suits which, along with most TV shows, separate the characters from good and bad pretty quickly. I've always wondered about the back stories behind villains and The Stranger is definitely helping increase my curiosity.

If Gregor was a dog

One of the things that we mentioned in class today was why Kafka chose a bug instead of some other animal and what would happen if Gregor was an animal like a dog.

The thought of a Gregor as a dog was a really entertaining idea. It made me think of Clifford, the big red dog, one of my favorite TV shows when I was younger. I can just imagine Greta sitting on Gregor, trying to play with him or Gregor trying to push himself out of his room. If Gregor was turned into a dog instead of a cockroach/beetle/bug, I feel like the reaction from his family would be a lot different. Dogs have a lot of benefits for the humans that live with them because apparently, studies have shown that dogs can decrease stress and depression. Dogs also tend to be louder and more noticeable (a giant cockroach is still pretty noticeable) and harder to neglect. This would also be one of the reasons that Gregor as a dog might cause more trouble for the family because a dog is harder to take care of.
I think one of the reasons that Kafka transformed Gregor into a cockroach was because of the association that we have with bugs. Generally, bugs, especially cockroaches, are associated with unclean conditions. Another reason would be because of the behavior of bugs. Bugs tend to scurry around and hide and dark places, trying to stay out of notice. Gregor's personality before he became an insect would reflect more of a bug than a dog. I think that a dog is able to convey it's feelings better than an insect and so they plot of the story would change a lot more if Gregor was a dog.

Love in the Sun Also Rises

One of the details that I wanted to focus on in The Sun Also Rises is how Hemingway depicts love in the novel. The main reason that Brett could not be with Jake was because of his physical faults despite the fact that they both love each other very much. Hemingway seems to view love as a physical relationship. Hemingway's depiction of love mirrors Sigmund Freud's interpretation of love, radically different from Plato's view.
Plato separates love into two different forms. The first kind of love is the "Vulgar Eros" or earthly love. The other kind is the "Divine Eros" or divine love. Divine love is also known as platonic love. Vulgar Eros is physical attraction towards an attractive body for pleasure while Divine Eros may start out as a physical attraction but gradually transcends it to become a supreme love that is non-sexual, a meeting of minds.

Freud's interpretation of Eros is that it is strictly the sexual component. This seems to fit with The Sun Also Rises the best because Brett engages in many different relationships throughout the book. One of the most interesting points that I noticed Freud mention was something called the Oedipus complex after Oedipus Rex who was in love with his mother. Surprisingly, this actually relates to The Sun Also Rises. One of the things I noticed from writing the Hemingway essay along with reading some interpretations online is that Brett occasionally acts as a motherly figure (ignore the partying and drinking). For instance, when they were in Spain and Mike was drunk and causing trouble, Brett acted as the intermediary. We also know that she was a nurse in the war and a nurse is a very motherly like figure. So if Brett is the mother like figure, that would partially explain the reason that so many men are in love with Brett or at least where Hemingway got the idea for this love story from.

In my opinion, I find this theory kind of far-fetched. Though Brett does exhibit some motherly-like characteristics, we also know that there is a side to her that isn't really parent-like, her habits of partying and hooking up with other men. I'm not really sure where Freud got this idea of all men are in love with their mothers but I can definitely see where some of Hemingway's influences might have come from.

Pamplona and Spain

I haven't written a post for a while, but I thought it would be great for it to be about the scenery and culture references in The Sun Also Rises.
One of the first most memorable passages that I remember would be the one that had the wineskin. The thought of Bill trying to drink the wine and dripping it over himself is pretty funny. It's kind of how I imagined the guy to the right felt, although minus the heart shaped glasses. The wineskin is also called a bota bag and it is made out of goat bladder (I imagine that would hold liquid really well) and then the insides are coated with tree sap to prevent liquid from leaking.

Then there's the bull fighting. One important distinction to make when talking about bullfighting is that Pamplona also has an event called bull running, also very famous. It's where they release a herd of bull into streets and people try to dodge and jump over the bulls to prove how brave they are. It's sounds dangerous but apparently only a few die and 200-300 people get injured. I would not want to be one of those guys underneath a bull. This is all part of a large 7 day festival called the Fiesta de San Fermin, like what we read in The Sun Also Rises.
The actual bullfighting takes place inside in a stadium. The seats are priced differently; the expensive seats are the ones that are in the shade and generally contains better behaved people. Bullfighting is divided into three different stages or "movements." The first stage is to allow the audience to appreciate the strength of the bulls. This would probably be the most famous scene where the bullfighters dodge using red capes to distract them. The second stage they try to stick darts into the bulls back. In the third stage they tire the bull by attempting to subdue it with a wooden sword and then they actually kill the bull with a steel sword. The audience can then reward the bullfighter with an ear or a tail if they are satisfied. Ignoring the more violent areas, I felt I could appreciate bullfighting more. Before, I saw bullfighting as crude and violent (some areas I still think are too violent). Perhaps after Hemingway's description of the bullfighters dodging the bulls with finesse I can understand it better. Calling the different stages "movements" also sounds more elegant, like a dance instead of a fight.
I got a lot of my information here: San Fermin Bullfighting
They even show you how to get tickets if you're interested in watching a live show.

Mrs. Dalloway vs The Hours

Because we're currently watching The Hours in class, I thought it would be appropriate to write a comparison between the movie and the book even though we haven't finished watching the movie yet. There are the obvious similarities. The modern day Clarissa and her friends have many characteristics, which I'm sure that they were intended to, that are similar to the characters in Mrs. Dalloway. In both the book and the movie, Clarissa is introduced saying that she will go buy the flowers herself. Both Clarissas seem to be high class ladies with taste. It also should be noted that both the movie and the book take place in a day, although in the movie we see three different scenes from different time periods.

The one that I want to focus on first is the storyline with the modern day Clarissa who lives in New York. She very much channels the aura of the Clarissa in the book. New York Clarissa seems to be very confident on the outside. She mentions to Louis how she has been taking care of Richard for many years and she is very adept at planning parties. This seems identical to the Clarissa Dalloway in the book who is also confident and very social. However, both Clarissas also exhibit a weak side, one that they try hard to keep it to themselves. New York Clarissa tries really hard to keep it together when she's taking care or Richard while Clarissa Dalloway has her own moments when she is afraid of what will happen in the future.
What was strange and confusing to me was the portrayal of Richard. In the book, Richard is shown to be a healthy politician who seems both physically and mentally strong. In the movie, Richard is sickly and a writer (poet?) who doesn't seem similar at all compared to the Richard in the book. In fact, I thought he seemed so much more like Septimus, who we knew was suffering from PTSD and once was considering to become a poet (wrote poetry at least). Seeing Richard in the movie gave me a sense of what it would be like if the Clarissa in the book knew Septimus intimately and provided a different view of Clarissa.
Louis seems to be most like Peter. He seems to be very laid-back and does things on a whim. He even falls in love with a person who he probably shouldn't be thinking about having a relationship with. What was interesting was that Louis was once in a relationship with Richard (at least that's what I picked up). This is radically different from what happened in the book. Richard was fine with Peter but Peter didn't seem to like Richard that much. To put Richard and Peter in a relationship is something that I couldn't see.
In the other storylines, there weren't as many connections that I could make to the book. I think the biggest similarity that I saw was that both Virginia and the other lady (I forgot her name) seemed to be conflicted with life and death. This is really similar to Mrs. Dalloway as both Clarissa and Septimus ponder about the meaning of life. In Virginia's case, I could see why her thoughts at the time lead her to write Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway seems to have aspects of Virginia Woolf that I could see better through watching the movie. Both Clarissa and Virginia are wealthy people who hide most of their feelings on the inside. Septimus also seems to be influenced by Virginia Woolf. I can see why Virginia Woolf portrayed the doctors as the "villains" in the book because Virginia Woolf herself dislikes the way the doctors treat her. I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say about the similarities between the two.

Why is Septimus here?

At first, I wasn't sure why Septimus was in the book. He seemed like an out of place guy who didn't fit into the upper class society that Clarissa and the book seemed to be oriented around. In the passage where we first meet Septimus, his reaction is so radically different from everyone else's when the car backfires that it's really quite shocking to read. After reading the whole book, Septimus's character just seemed more and more interesting and I really wanted to find out why Virginia Woolf wanted to add in Septimus.
I'll admit that I was disappointed when I scanned through; I didn't find anything that really stood out. When comparing Septimus to other characters in the book, he seems, at first glance, to be opposite of Clarissa's. Especially after the panel presentations, I saw in rather vivid detail how contrasting Septimus and Clarissa actually were. I decided to make a thorough comparison of both Clarissa and Septimus and see how similar they actually are and also perhaps realize why Septimus was placed into the book. For one, Septimus is submerged in his own world, distrusting of everyone. Whereas Clarissa seems to be an outstanding citizens, throwing parties for her husband and is able to go out without freaking out to events that happen around her.
However, we know that there must be more to both characters. In class, it was mentioned that in the original version of Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa was meant to commit suicide. This seems very similar to Septimus. In fact, even though Clarissa didn't commit suicide, they still have a lot in common. Throughout the book, Clarissa is constantly reminiscing about her life, although in private. She feels as if she has aged and at the end, she identifies herself with Septimus.
In fact, there is more to be identified about the similarities between Septimus and Clarissa. It is rather obvious that Clarissa is extremely conscious about the judgement of others and the way the world perceives her. She feels that the only time she can be herself is when she is alone and she frets about her looks, how she is aging. Septimus, despite being in a different world, is also conscious of the way others look at him. In a particularly memorable passage where the car backfires, he worries that he is in the way of others as everyone seemed to stare at him. This seems different than the initial view that we get of Septimus, who seems off in his own world, paranoid and not truly understanding what is occurring around him when in fact he is worried about other people's opinion of him, though he might know that they are judging him because he's acting so strangely.
There are also a large amount of differences between Clarissa and Septimus. Clarissa seems to be surrounded by life; she throws parties, she enjoys flowers, she seems like a typical citizen. Septimus has a very different take on life. He sees everyone as wearing masks and hiding their true selves and ultimately, he committed suicide because it seemed like he didn't want to continue to interact with those people, in particular Bradshaw and Holmes. However, Clarissa might not be as ordinary as she first appears. We know that she has been thinking about life and death throughout the book and at the end, she remembers incidents from her past in that dark room that she feels was the moment that she could die and be completely happy (this is the time at Bourton where she was with Sally and Peter).
I think that Virginia Woolf introduced Septimus into the novel because she wanted to use him to further explore the depths of Clarissa's character. By providing a completely different character in her novel, she managed to show us parts of Clarissa that we wouldn't have picked up otherwise. This goes back to her belief that characters are the devices that drive the story and not the plot.

Drugs?

I know this is kind of late to be posting about the Mezzanine, but the thought just occurred to me as I was thinking about what to post on this newfangled blog of mine. Anyways, when I first picked up the Mezzanine and began to read it, I was always puzzled by the question of how could Nicholson Baker get so in depth about things that seem so meaningless. By coincidence, my tutor had also mentioned the experiences that he had from his (one-time) usage of drugs, LSD (unless if you count marijuana brownies as drugs, in which case it would be two). One point that I remember he mentioned was why drug users continue to say phrases like "wow" or "oh my god" or just open and close their mouth like a fish. Apparently, everything becomes equally interesting. Our minds desensitizes some irrelevant information like the details in the trees and the shape of the flowers because if we focus on all of the little details, then it would prove to be very detrimental for humans in nature. My tutor said that when he took LSD, it made everything seem equally important and he wasn't able to describe in words what he was seeing.

His description of LSD made me think back to the Mezzanine, and the intricate detail that Nicholson Baker put into the book. Apparently the 80's were a time of drug use panic. In the years before, drug use was popular and relatively more tolerated than today, though not necessarily encouraged. People took LSD and cocaine to get "high" or a sense of euphoria and some even reported to be able to see things that they normally wouldn't be able to and how taking drugs had changed their perspective on the world completely. In the 80's, drug usage had grown to a very large scale, mostly the usage of cocaine which is cheap and extremely addictive, and people were beginning to crack down on the rampant usage of drugs. Public awareness of the harmful side effects of drugs were gradually increasing and politicians were declaring a "war on drugs." I thought it was very interesting that Nicholson Baker published his Mezzanine during this time period when drug usage was so frowned upon. I'm not saying that Nicholson Baker wrote the book with the intention of supporting drugs, but I can't help but wonder why there seems to be a connection between the theme of the book and the effects of drug usage. In both cases, the "main character," Howie or the drug user, finds great interest in mundane stuff that normally people wouldn't pay attention to. This however might be too much of a stretch as it is true that Nicholson Baker wrote the Mezzanine with the intention of letting the readers see into the stream of consciousness within a human mind. I'd like to know what everyone else thinks; am I reading too much into it or perhaps Nicholson Baker did write the Mezzanine fully understanding the environment around him.