Reflections on Blog

Mr. Mitchell,

___________________________________________.

         This is how the beginning of a blog entry feels.  I need to fill in the blank, and I can fill it in any way I want to.  It seems almost like the open genre creative project, except that I usually feel like I should just use the writing genre (although I guess that's not really the case).  I often wrote on the books we were reading, but I tried to branch out sometimes, because I wanted to write about related essays or books or ideas.
        For me, I really enjoyed the blog process, because it did allow me to simply fill in the blank in an essay-type form.  I think this was very beneficial for me, because I would also be thinking constantly about writing something in a blog as I read the books.  This kept me alert to more than just surface-level qualities of the books we read.  However, since some students did not write except at the end of each mid-quarter, I don't know if the blog actually helped them think about the book on their own (I guess I can't say this for sure, though).  To help students be more active on the blogs, I would actuallly suggest biweekly checks with fewer entries required per check, because it would force students to work on the blog in the middle of books instead of at the end of them.
        I think I would prefer the blog to a possible return to journaling, because that way I can edit my work easily (a few times, I would post, and then decide I wanted to edit something, and this was very easy).  While writing in a journal, I usually just start somewhere, and keep rambling on, never going back to check if what I wrote actually made sense, because I knew that editing would be difficult.  Also, I can get my ideas down faster with a blog, and thus produce more work in a given amount of time.
        However, because it's easier to edit and because it's typed, I feel more pressure to write a coherent and deep post.  I think it's important that students rid themselves of the idea that each blog post has to be a mini-essay.  I feel that in saying this I am being hypocritical, because I like the mini-essay form, but I think that the act of typing into a blank slate feels awfully like typing into a blank word document at the beginning of an essay and that this might cause some people to dislike the blogging.  There is some quality to the time-tested journaling experience that gives a more relaxed and personal feel to expressing your ideas.  I think it's hard to get that feeling when writing a blog entry.
        Another thing is that I think it would be interesting/beneficial/cool if students started utilizing all of the media forms that the blog offers.  Did anyone post a video of themselves discussing the book if they didn't feel like typing?  That might interesting, and maybe some people might have preferred other media forms (I don't, and again, maybe I'm being hypocritical, but I feel think some might feel constrained to this form).
        Lastly, I think it would be beneficial to have everyone write a blog post on panel presentations, because that's still a very open-ended prompt but it would make people be more active during panel presentations and make them think about the literary criticisms.
        I don't know if I really got across what I'm trying to say.  I really like the blogs, because it gives me a half-formal way of writing about the books that doesn't feel too intense (but not too relaxed either).  I think some alterations are necessary so that everyone takes full advantage of their own blogs.  Yet at the same time, for someone who enjoys writing entries (and can be pretty long-winded as is evident here), I really appreciated the open-endedness of the idea.  Just...write a blog.  On anything.  Somewhat daunting, but nice.

Thanks,
Chelsea

Antoinette = Milkman?

As I was writing the previous blog entry, I had one final thought that relates to Song of Solomon.  Milkman, just like Antoinette, was born into a privileged household with history that he wants to escape but has to live through instead.  He tries to make friends with Guitar, because in some ways he simply does not want to be part of a rich household which both the poor blacks resent and the whites resent (if they are racist).  This is very similar to how Antoinette reaches out to Tia.  Yet the class tensions between the friends are much more pronounced in Antoinette's case, because she does not even have the option of fitting into any community.  And just like Guitar tries to hang Milkman, Tia throws a rock at Antoinette.

Yet Milkman, as a male in a modern-day society where he therefore has more mobility, has some chance of escaping his situation.  He can buy a plane ticket and fly away.  Though he was protected and stuck in his situation for a long time as a boylike 30-yr-old and wanted to get out, this would have probably been preferable to Antoinette's scenerio.  She was made to come of age way too fast for her own good.  And as a female in a ante-modern era, she was not able to simply leave.  She had to marry, and thus was stuck forever.  Milkman was therefore more resentful of being stuck in the situation than the situation itself, because he knew he could escape if he could be given the chance to fly away.  Antoinette, on the other hand, was resentful of the situation itself rather than being stuck in it, because never would have expected any sort of chance to fly away.  This could explain why it never occurs to her to actually leave, even though she could easily get out of the room at night.

Rochester and Antoinette/Bertha in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

I have been putting off this post for a long time because I've wanted to get as far as I can through Jane Eyre before writing about the depictions of Rochester and Bertha=Antoinette in that book as opposed to in Jane Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.  Unfortunately, I am just now ready to start Part 3 of the novel, so we haven't gotten to the burning-and-jumping-out-the-window part yet.

I began reading this book because there were so many references to it during our Wide Sargasso Sea discussions that I was becoming really interested in the book itself and in what Rhys was basing her characters and character relationship on.  I will explore this in the following.

When we are first learning about Rochester in Bronte's novel, he begins to discuss how he has "plenty of faults of [his] own" but that he likes to "lay the half the blame on ill-fortune and adverse circumstances" because "nature meant [him], on the whole, a good man" (173...Chapter 13, Volume 1).  This is an interesting statement from the perspective of Wide Sargasso Sea.  He lays the blame for his own faults on circumstance.  Is sex with Amele purely circumstance?  Possibly...but what is circumstance?  I would argue that the cause for this action is actually a string of decisions that are based on circumstance.  Antoinette is born into resentment and craziness.  This circumstance is what makes Sandi write the letter, which is what makes Rochester pull away from Antoinette, which is what makes Antoinette decide to get Christophine to help her using obeah, which is what in turn makes Rochester angry and causes him to have sex with Amele only separated from Antoinette by a thin wall, which is really the last straw for Antoinette.  I would not call this ill-fortune.  I would call it negative reactions to adverse circumstances that have dire consequences.  Both Rochester and Antoinette may have had good intentions, but they most definitely made unintelligent decisions.

The idea that Rochester takes adverse circumstances and makes the wrong decisions with it is entirely consistent with his character in Jane Eyre.  He is attracted to Jane because of her constancy and pureness, so much so that he decides he wants to marry her even though she has no class and even though he is already married.  Thus, Jane's own father objects.

The portrayal of Antoinette/Bertha in Jane Eyre is interesting when compared to that at the end of Wide Sargasso Sea.  When Bertha cuts and bites at Mr. Mason, he said "she said she'd drain my heart" (269).  In Jane Eyre, she seems to be associated with blood and killing.  Jane tells Rochester that she reminds him of a vampire, after their failed marriage ceremony.  Yet in Wide Sargasso Sea, she is always focusing on fire.  She derives her heat from the fire, because England is cold, and she dreams of fire and reds seem to be associated with fire for her.  Her red dress symbolizes her old life where she used to live in freedom, and she thinks all the way back to when she might have really found love, with Sandi.

At the end of Wide Satgasso Sea, Bertha thinks of herself as mentally strong and physically weak.  She is physically trapped and physically unable to get her way with Mr. Mason.  Yet mentally, she is relatively held together, but simply cannot communicate her true thoughts because there is no one who could possibly come close to understanding her perspective.  She can think straight, though, because she managed to have an interaction with a lady to get the knife.  She plays the mental game to get out of her cell: wait until Poole is drunk and asleep, and then steal the keys.
However, in Jane Eyre, we see that Bertha is an extreme physical menace, who has absolutely unknown mental capacities.  Jane notices when seeing her for the first time that she is "in stature almost equalling [Rochester] and corpulent besides" (368).  Mentally, while the characters treat her like she cannot think or speak for herself, they acknowlege her "cunning" (368), and her action of ripping Jane's bridal clothing seems very reasonable.  She is portrayed like an animal, described as a hyena and as having a mane, and as moving on all fours.  She may be strong mentally, but is assumed to have less mental capacity, yet how are we to know for certain?  Why, if she can get out of the room, would she not simply leave the house completely?  Why would she go to Jane instead of to Rochester?  She does burn Rochester's room, though.

Another interesting concept is Antoinette's relationship with Grace Poole.  Why, in Jane Eyre, would such a violent, senseless, bloodthirsty animal never attack Poole?  Obviously, she has some sort of positive relationship with Poole...and yet Poole talks to Rochester and the rest of the wedding party as if Bertha is a wildebeest.  In Wide Sargasso Sea, however, Grace's italicized thoughts at the end show a certain amount of sympathy for Antoinette.  She feels that she is probably protecting Antoinette from a world: "which, say what you like, can be a wicked and cruel world to a woman.  Maybe that's why I stayed on" (178).  In Antoinette's case, the world is definitely wicked and cruel, but yet Antoinette would rather live on in it.

Having read Wide Sargasso Sea, I found Jane Eyre's portrayal of Antoinette to be a little maddening.  She has neither a voice nor a say, and never has had one in her life despite her privilege.  I would really call her situation circumstance, or maybe bad luck, much more than Rochester's.

White Peacock

        As Milkman and Guitar are "sauntered down route 6, stopping frequently...bantering each other about the best way to burglarize a shack that, as Guitar said, 'didn't have a door or window with a lock'" (177), a white peacock appears on the roof of a building all of a sudden.  It has no name, is actually very unimportant to the matter at hand and in the wider city, and it comes from nowhere.  Yet it acts important, knows that it can show off to others, and acts like it comes from somewhere important.  The two men actually speculate where it comes from (the zoo?  no), as well as one about its behavior, and it is this discussion that might lead us to the symbolism of the peacock.  The peacock seems to symbolize something, but what it symbolizes is not served to the reader on a silver platter.
        Milkman describes its flying as "jive" (178), which is an odd descriptor because Google dictionary defines jive, the adjective as "decietful, worthless," whereas Morrison states the Milkman "felt again his unrestrained joy at anything that could fly" (178) just before Milkman describes the flight as "jive."  This almost implies that Milkman is actually decieved by the material qualities, in a sense, that the peacock possesses, and that he realizes it.  Milkman is liable to like anything that has the ability to fly, something that he doesn't possess.
        Whereas Milkman focuses on the fact that the peacock can't fly but acts like it can, Guitar focuses on its "tail full of jewelry" (178).  The peacock opens its tail, and Guitar's instinct is to catch it; when the peacock closes its tail, "the two men stood still" (179).  Guitar interprets the peacock's tail as something he can't have, and so he wants to chase it.  Similar to Milkman, he realizes that the peacock is just showing off, and really doesn't have anything special.  He, too, is liable to be attracted toward the peacock because it possesses that quality he can't have.
        Morrison ties together the two qualities of this peacock together, and manages to twist them in with racial tensions.  Milkman asks why the peacock can't fly, and Guitar replies: "All that jewelry weighs it down.  Like vanity. ... Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down" (179).  As Guitar addresses Milkman's question about something important to him, flight, he implies that Milkman has something that weighs him down, too.  Just like Milkman, the peacock seems like it should have the potential to fly, but it cant.  What is behind it holds it back, just like Milkman's past holds him back.  And in both cases, it is something that would be very difficult to cut oneself from.  In answering Milkman's question, Guitar also realizes that what he was attracted to, the riches, is deceitful, showy, and does the peacock no good.  And since the peacock is white, he connects the wealth, color, and ostentatious air of the peacock and labels the peacock as a "white faggot" (179).  Just like the whites that Guitar is so violently against, the peacock has something that he wants, and has this because of fate: it was born into it.  And Guitar holds this against the peacock, just like he holds it against the whites.
        It is important that the peacock seems to embody all of the qualities that either man might want, but actually doesn't embody them whatsoever.  It seems like it could fly but it is incapable.  It seems like it has riches, wealth, but all it really has is vanity and feathers.  And it likes to show off what it has, strutting along the pavement and opening its tail.  Because the peacock has what both Guitar and Milkman are tempted to get from the money they are stealing (Guitar hopes to use a lot of money and Milkman hopes to buy himself a ticket to fly the heck away from his hometown), it leads them to think about the final outcome of the gold, not how to procure the gold in and of itself.  When Milkman and Guitar finally get back to planning how to get the gold, the final decision is that they would not plan anymore, and simply go for the stealing the next day.  Just get riches and flight without thinking: the peacock, here, spreads its tail.  Its action shows that the two of them are eager to fulfill their wishes, but implies that they will never really be able to get what they want.  The peacock is neither actually rich, nor can it actually fly.

The Use of Violence: Pilate vs. Macon Dead (the Elder)

Today in class, we were comparing the differences between Milkman's father and Pilate.  An idea, which was difficult to express in chalkboard-worthy shorthand occurred to me, and we expanded upon the idea in class.  I am writing ideas about how both Macon Dead and Pilate are violent, but their violence is somehow different.

Macon Dead is portrayed as slapping his wife before he even drops his fork, because he is so angry in the moment.  Macon is not controlled at all in his action.  He is trying to communicate with his violence, but since he is communicating an emotion for his own good (instead of common sense for someone else's good like Pilate is doing), his violence does not have any sort of good effect.  His communication effort is aiming toward opinionated disapproval, and comes off as seeming abusive to Milkman.  (As a side note, when Milkman retaliates, his efforts are also unsuccessful at changing the situation because he is also trying to communicate opinionated disapproval, which in turn simply appears to his father as "abusive").

However, when Pilate uses violence (the knife incident), she is very calculated in her actions, and acts not in the moment of her rage, but as a method of controlled rage in place of her daughter's potential momentary anger that could backfire (like it does for Macon).  She acts violently to try and protect her family to try and make her family safer and happier.  She uses violence because she knows that potentially lethal actions will really make the threatening man listen to her.  Unlike Macon, when she wields the knife, she seems totally in charge of her actions.

The family dynamics of Pilate's household and Macon's  household tie into the way their violence manifests.  Since Pilate is all about equality and representation for her daughter and granddaughter (both of whom she treats relatively the same way in terms of importance: no hierarchy), she can act for their own benefit, but would never do anything to be violent to her own family members.  Yet if Pilate is the protector, then Macon is the dictator: he acts as if all of his family are subordinates, with his wife at the bottom of the ranking.  Thus, he can punish her for her actions, since she is so subordinate and she is not fitting his definition of how she should be thinking and talking.

Societal Perceptions - Antoinette vs. Meursault

Yesterday during the panel presentation, the idea arose that Antoinette was not fully mad by the end of the book.  Several students were saying that of course Antoinette is mad, that you cannot argue otherwise, because obviously society claims that she does not act normally, and therefore she could not be sane.  It does not matter how she became mad or why, but simply that she is mad.
I would like to dispute this argument by drawing a connection between societal perceptions of Antoinette and Meursault.  Society writes off Antoinette as mad because she tries to kill her uncle and because she says weird things and acts oddly; society writes off Meursault as guilty because he killed a man, and therefore must be guilty.  Society cannot understand either of their actions, and it decides that the character is guilty or mad by default.  But society only tries to figure out why, and to what extent, in Meursault's case.  Unfortunately, in Antoinette's case, they feel secure in simply writing her off as mad, and not trying to legitimize or figure out why: they think of it as a hereditary issue.  She has no trial, no defensive attorney, just a world of prosecutors to face.  This in itself could drive her mad: in fact, I think it does.
Anyways, I think it is difficult for society to believe, to conceive, or to explain Antoinette's saneness for the same reason it is difficult to accept Meursault's innocence.  Yet this does not mean that Antoinette is in no way sane, that Meursault is in no way innocent.  Yet because we occupy Meursault's consciousness as he becomes guilty (during the murder scene), we can become easily frustrated by his prosecuting attorney.  I see that Antoinette is in a similar situation as Meursault, but it is more difficult for the class to become frustrated with the society labeling her solely insane because we did not inhabit her consciousness during the transformation and thus do not have her perspective

The Relative Inevitability of Relationship Breakdown in The Wide Sargasso Sea

Today in class, we discussed the possibility that Rochester has an inferiority complex.  This is definitely a possibility, because he often longs to write a searing letter to his father, whom he partially blames for this mess.  He has spent his whole life feeling wronged an inferior.  He is thus very compassionate to anyone who sympathizes with him, and indulges this feeling in him.  He likes to hear that people feel bad for him.  This is why he is immediately taken by Cosway's letter: he loves Antoinette very much, but as soon as he reads the letter, he stops physically loving her (which seems to be the only love he has with her, except maybe a small flame of "mental" love in danger of burning out).
He is pretty compassionate with Antoinette when she begins to tell him her story, but he does not feel very connected with her, still.  It is almost as if they are struggling to give life to the flame of "mental" that has been almost stamped out.  And then, the next morning, he realizes immediately that he has been wronged, again, from his point of view, because Antoinette has put a love potion in his drink.  He is addicted to this feeling, and immediately relapses, because it is difficult to shake this off after his whole life of this worldview.  In light of this, to get back at Antoinette, he goes to the girl who has always sympathized with him...does he feel that she understands him better than Antoinette does?  In any case, she sympathizes with him, and he is attracted to this sympathy, as one of the few people who expresses sympathy for him in his entire life.  His act with Amelie also makes him feel superior, something that he has long wanted.
And yet, in this act, he has spurned Antoinette, who wanted to love-potion him simply to improve their relationship.  She has been struggling her whole life to have someone love her, truly, and hsi subsequent act with Amelie makes her madly angry.

Thus, both Antoinette and Rochester are, in a sense, looking toward similar goals, but in ways that are not compatible.  Rochester is trying to stop feeling wronged and start being told truths; Antoinette is trying to stop feeling wronged and start being loved.  Yet their thoughts about the way they are being treated are based on their perceptions.  Since both tend to percieve themselves as statically deceived/unloved, and it would be difficult for anyone to change their perceptions about the way they are being treated, their happiness and fulfillment of their wishes is neigh impossible.  When one perceives the relationship to be on the upward slope in terms of their personal goals about how they are treated as an individual, the other is usually questioning.  Neither has enough faith in the relationship to make it work.  Neither one knows or understands the other, so neither can believe that the other could fulfill their wishes about how they should be treated.

When the steps relationship finally does inevitably fail, it could (theoretically) have had a chance for recovery.  Yet the relationship does not recover, because of the extreme one-sidedness of the blame that is placed on the mishap.  In the end, Rochester places none of the blame on himself, and Antoinette places all of the blame on herself.

The reason for this difference is derived from their childhood situations.  Both Antoinette and Rochester grow up feeling that they should be considered innocent, but only Rochester is able to fully legitimize this feeling of innocence in his childhood mind.
Antoinette is constantly being told that she is somehow direly guilty, even though she could not possibly be guilty of her parents’ deeds.  She cannot simply brush these people off in a racist manner, since she loves Christophine and Tia.  Yet she also cannot blame her parents for what they did, because she loves her mother.  She therefore internalizes the guilt partially, but gets a mixed message about her innocence.
Thus in the relationship between Antoinette and Rochester, Antoinette is constantly wavering between feeling and acting innocent in the relationship problems, and taking full self-blame, that she was not good enough for him.  She never blames her historical setting for anything that happens, and she never blames Rochester, or her family, or Christophine for the failure of the potion.  Even at the end of the book, when she is mad, she refers to Rochester as “the man who hated me” (189), which shows a frightening spectrum of the depth of her self-blame and her lack of feeling loved by anyone, even to the end.
Rochester, on the other hand, is able to place blame on his father, his family, and on the fact that he was born the younger brother.  Since he was not alone in this feeling (he almost without doubt shared them with other younger brothers his age), placing the blame on others became part of his nature.  Thus, even when he is going to Jamaica to achieve monetary success as a younger brother, he is quick to remove the blame from himself when the situation does not work out.  He is quick to blame his family as soon as Cosway writes him.  Later, he also blames Christophine.  Interestingly, he also blames Antoinette, but not as harshly because he does not understand her situation fully.
Thus, when Antoinette calls him a wide variety of names, it is really injurious, because she is essentially calling him inferior.  This is as close as she comes to placing the blame on him; and it seems to be a last-straw moment for Rochester.  Yet Rochester still cares about Antoinette’s well-being and is mad at Christophine for making her a drunk even after their whole fight.  He tries to stamp out the flame of love from their relationship but at this point he still wants to stay friends, in a sense.  He visualizes them living in the same house.
So why does Antoinette end up by herself in an attic, saying that Rochester never came back?

Reacting, Thinking, and Paraphrasing Parts of “Hope and the Absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka,” and Determining Some of Camus’s Views on Tragedy

Camus begins by discussing how “nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work,”  (92) because it is difficult to know exactly how a symbol essentially maps onto a story or vice versa.  He then discusses how Joseph K. in Kafka’s The Trial  is a symbol for “naturalness” or “the human condition,” (93) which is difficult to define or wrap one’s mind around.  This symbolism is similar to the idea that Meursault in Camus’s The Stranger represents Christ.  The representation on the surface seems ridiculously far-fetched, but without reading too far into it, the symbolism is highly apparent (especially after reading the article my group presented on in the panel presentation).  Looking at symbolism is like looking through a far-off galaxy: you can see it through your peripherals, but its image weakens and melts into blackness if you look directly at it.

Camus argues that in all of Kafka’s works, there are many paradoxes in the characters’ situations.  All of the works are absurdist, which is why the paradoxes exist.  Absurdism also means, according to Camus, that “the mind projects into the concrete its spiritual tragedy” (93).  Therefore, to the absurdist, it makes sense to say that each person has some difficulties in life, and their mind is focused on these difficulties such that they appear to the person as having some negative effect on the rest of their lives.  In other words, discussing this in terms of tragedy, each character would have a struggle, and this struggle would permeate throughout their entire life and become a tragic struggle.

Kafka goes on to say that tragedies are more effective if the characters’ actions are logical and natural: then fate will have played a greater role.  This comment is interesting to consider in the light of The Stranger, when Meursault actually committed murder.  Meursault’s actions are not logical, especially because he never makes a conscious effort to keep from getting the death sentence, or to escape arrest in the first place.  Thus, wouldn’t one expect Camus’s tragedy not to be very effective, by his own definition?  However, on a closer look, is Meursault made to kill the Arab (by the sun, in my view, or by fate…from any perspective except the jury’s, Meursault’s actions in this scene are influenced by something).  He is persuaded into all his decisions simply because of a lack of want or ability to refuse to do anything.  If Camus intended Meursault’s actions to have been fated, then we see that by his own definition, his tragedy could have been effective.  If, on the other hand, Camus intended Meursault to be Christlike, then does Camus believe in predestination for Christ?  Or does he intend for his tragedy to not be as effective?  Or does he even remember that he wrote this about Kafka?

Part 2, Chapter 5 Observations

As I was reading the last chapter of Camus's The Stranger this past week, I made some notes on my impressions and ideas in the margins.  My goal is to jot these down here, and explain my thoughts a little.

• Meursault goes through a thought process towards the beginning of the chapter which results in his idea that "from the moment [his sentence] had been passed, its consequences became as real and as serious as the wall against which I pressed the length of my body" (110).  This is the first time in the novel that Meursault essentially admits to himself that actions did have consequences.  It is the closest he ever comes to regretting anything, to saying that he regrets not trying to do anything to keep himself from being sentenced to death, or sentenced at all, or from killing the Arab.  The inclusion of this statement brings out a little more humanity in Meursault, because it hints that he is not so focused on the present as it might otherwise seem.
• Meursault is having a very philosophical discussion about being condemned and having no chance when he begins a new paragraph by saying "I was also made to see that until that moment I'd had mistaken ideas about these things" (111).  The reader expects Meursault to continue even more philosophically than before; instead he surprises the reader by discussing stairs on guillotines vs. lack thereof.  This seemed to me starkly simple and anticlimactic compared to what I was expecting.  However, readers are made to recognize the significance of the stairs through a veritably “Bakeresque” focus on the mundane.
• Meursault convinces himself at about the middle of the chapter that he “had to accept the rejection” (114) of his case in court.  He reminds himself that whether he dies now or later really would not matter in the big scheme of things…and yet, he has been constantly promoting this idea throughout the book.  Thus, Camus shows that death is the ultimate test of existentialism, that if one is truly existentialist, they would not care whether or not they died if that was what was happening to them.  And Meursault passes this test in this passage here.
• Meursault discusses Marie and says that since he won’t see her, it doesn’t even matter whether she is alive or dead.  He then says, “I wasn’t even able to tell myself that it was hard to think those things” (115).  This comment begs the question: how and when and where is Meursault writing this novel?  Are readers supposed to assume that because the book ends before Meursault is executed, he is writing the book prior to execution?  The rest of the book seems very immediate, as if Meursault is narrating events as they occur.  And yet, the whole thing is in past tense upon closer inspection.  Interesting…
• How does Meursault’s resolution not to become religious relate to his existentialist views?  I think we answered this question during the panel presentations on Thursday.  Camus sees humans as trying as hard as they can to add meaning to their meaningless lives, so he shows the Meursault sees religion as another one of these attempts at adding significance.
• As Meursault describes his longing to see Marie, he describes her face as “as bright as the sun and the flame of desire” (119).  This comment is interesting because he is comparing her face to the sun even as he had just accused the sun of being guilty of murdering the Arab.  He also complains about the sun during his mother’s funeral and in the courtroom, but it does not bother him when he is swimming, or on his Sunday afternoon.  And the very last mention of the sun in this book after it has played such an important role is in a passing description about Marie’s face, which he had “searched for…in vain” (119).
• At the very end of the chapter, Meursault begins to give more thought to his mother, a fact which in itself is interesting because it shows his love for her that no one else really seemed to have ever seen, maybe not even his mother herself.  In any case, he says that “nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her” (122).  This comment serves as a possible explanation for Meursault’s behavior at his mother’s funeral: if he considers crying disrespectful in some sense, then he was treating his mother with the greatest respect if he did NOT cry, or for that matter show emotion.  .  The fact that this sentence exists in the book serves to shed new light on Meursault’s behavior in the first chapter of the narrative.  It is likely that Meursault also intends his comment to disparage customs behavioral expectations in general, specifically French ones.

Food for Thought

For the panel presentation, our article argues that Meursault is like Jesus, giving a lot of evidence based on his actions from the book.  Camus himself wrote that he intended Meursault to be like Jesus...and yet Camus also intended Meursault to be existentialist.

The Question: If Meursault is Jesus, how could he also be existentialist?  How is it possible to have an irreligious Christ figure?
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Having thought more about this issue and done more work with the panel presentation article, I have a thought as to the answer to the above question.  I think that Meursault and Jesus share the same type of mission (amongst many other similarities): to spread the truth about the nature of the world.  Meursault's mission is to spread an ironically irreligious existentialist philosophy, whereas in Jesus's case, it is to spread a suitably religious philosophy of God/Son/Holy Spirit (depending on what you believe).

The Metamorphosis vs. Frankenstein: Modernism vs. Romanticism

The Metamorphosis, by Kafka, and Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley are similar in that they make similar points and observations about society and are different in that they are writing from different perspectives and different time periods.  I got some information about the Romantic vs. Modern periods from Wikipedia, from my English notes last year, and from http://staff.edmonds.wednet.edu/users/hansonk/LITERARY%20PERIODS%20AND%20THEIR%20CHARACTERISTICS.htm.

The Metamorphosis From the Modern Period, which tries to break away from traditional writing styles, including those of the romantic. Cautionary against not enough ambition.  Previous to metamorphosis, Gregor did not have enough drive for personal betterment so he could be used by his family, which could be an explanation for his metamorphosis. Modern authors reflected on Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest: Gregor dies partially because he is no longer fit to live in human society, since he is a cockroach.  He cannot be productive, and his family thinks he cannot understand them anymore. Modern authors reflected on Marx's idea that money and class structure define a nation.  We see Gregor trying to make his family become part of a richer class, but Gregor was part of a class who works extremely hard with no apparent gain.  His work is "insect-like" for this reason. The new technologies that emerged during the Modern period influenced Kafka's writing.  He includes technology as an integral part of life in passing (Gregor spent his nights studying train schedules) but withholds judgement.  Nothing from nature is glorified either.  To the contrary, Gregor's transformation is wholly unnatural.

Frankenstein From the Romantic Period, during which authors fit their works to a traditional frame of style and shape of novel. Cautionary against the dangers of ambition.  Frankenstein is ambitiously pursuing his ability to make a living thing, then begins to ambitiously pursue destroying this living thing; these two ambitions combined destroy his life. Though from the Romantic time period, Frankenstein believes his creature must die for the same reason.  He looks repulsive, and Frankenstein thinks he cannot be loving or understand humanity, so he is not fit to live in human society. In Frankenstein, we see little reference to money or class structure, because it does not play an integral part in the judgement of the creature's or of Frankenstein's evil in this literary period.  Feelings and intuition ruled as a judgement method; Shelley condemns Frankenstein's science, or reason. Romantic authors were writing in response to the Age of Enlightenment, and so they portrayed nature and freedom as good and science and technology as bad.  Frankenstein's downfall is an overload of scientific discovery; he is happiest when in nature.

Kafka - What political system would he want?

As I was reading The Metamorphosis, I had some questions about what sort of a social system Kafka would have thought would be ideal.

Capitalism?  On the surface, certainly not.  He portrays Gregor as the one who works, and Gregor is absolutely dehumanized in his treatment, beyond simply the fact that he has been turned into a giant cockroach.  Yet Gregor is not one of the working class.  He is not one of the hardworking dregs of capitalist society.  He is not someone who can provide barely a hovel, working 12-hour shifts, with scraps on the table.  Instead, his family seems to be living in relative luxury, with a maid in a nice apartment.  So maybe Kafka would like capitalism, except for one thing.

It seems almost as if Kafka's criticism of society in this book is not so much that he does not like the working system of capitalism, but that he does not like some of the character traits it breeds.  He dislikes the arrangement of the man trying to support the family alone.  In a sense, Gregor's "fatal flaw" as the tragic hero is hubris, the all-time favorite.  Gregor plans to get his family completely out of debt alone, give them a wonderful apartment (it must be noted that the apartment was one "which Gregor had picked for" the family (42)), and give his sister a university music education.  And all this working as a salesperson!  Anyone would be skeptical, and wish Gregor luck.  And yet, from the first sentence of the book, Gregor is a cockroach.  As a cockroach, he continues to have these aspirations.  The aspirations are absolutely surreal, along with his bodily form, and yet we as readers can't help but wonder if he just might have been successful in all that he reaches for if her were not a giant insect.

Kafka seems to point out a flaw of socialism.  In a socialist system, one is distributed goods by the quantity and quality of work performed.  Yet Gregor would always be sneaking his family things that he had earned, in a socialist system, because he loves them and feels bad for them, whether or not they deserve it.

Similarly, Kafka points out a flaw of communism.  In a communist system, one is distributed goods and services based on need.  In The Metamorphosis, how do we define need?  It seems that Gregor is living in a one-man communist dictatorship, run by his family and the maid.  He is powerless to make decisions himself (for example, he cannot convince his family to stop removing his furniture).  So his whole life is run by other people, and what he gets is based solely on what they think he needs.  He is powerless to gain items for himself, to work for what he can earn.  He is distributed food on a need-based basis; the quality is lacking.  And when his family neglects to clean his room, what can he do about it?  Thus, Kafka may actually be showing an example of how communism does not work.  Another way he shows that "need" is not necessarily an easy measure is through Gregor's father.  When Gregor can work, we can assume that he wants to act as needy as he can, in order to maximize the amount of money that Gregor will bring home.  We learn that there were more savings than Gregor had thought, and that the general fiscal situation is better than he expected, and he is happy about this.  But this means that the family was hiding this information from him, making themselves seem more needy.  Herein is another reason why communism would not work, from Kafka.

Is there any existing system that would answer Kafka's plea in The Metamorphosis?  It would be interesting to know what his true political and social views were.

Why Brett is not Just a Bitch

It is difficult to argue logically for the "niceness" of a person who sleeps around.  But during the panel presentations, there were some arguments that completely ignored the humanity of Brett behind the sleeping around, the fact that not only did she feel guilt, but that she was not just "sleeping around" for the sake of getting men.
The reason it is difficult to argue for Brett is because her situation is somewhat a paradox.  Her mentality seems to be of the type:
"I must be cruel only to be kind."

She says that she was going to San Sebastian with Robert Cohn for his own good.  She does not pursue Bill whatsoever; probably because he does not pursue her.  She spends time with the count because she seems to like his company, and again because he seems to sort of be courting her, in a way.  In the least, he shows off his war wound to her.
According to Jake, she is marrying Mike for his money.  Why can we make this assumption as readers, along with Jake?  He never gives any evidence; we cannot use Jake's assumption as evidence toward this point for Brett's penchant for opulence.  We cannot assume that Jake is a reliable narrator on such issues anyways.  He will always be explaining Brett's actions in a way that is palatable for him.  In order to make her seem loyal to him (to himself), he must make her sound like she is simply having affairs shamelessly with a bunch of men.  This is not necessarily the case.  We must sort through the few things that Brett actually says about her own actions as the only source of truth.

3 Differences Mark the Splits between Books 1, 2, and 3

I see three major differences that mark the splits betwen Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3.

1.  The change in books mirrors changes in the phases of Jake's relationship cycle with Brett.
      In Book 1, Jake feels very attached to Brett but relatively hopeless that their relationship will work out.  This is evidenced by his time alone in his room: "Then I couldn't keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett. ...Then all of a sudden I started to cry" (39).  Yet at the same time, Brett and Jake appear to be relatively close both mentally and physically (they kiss a fair amount in these scenes).
      The end of Book 1 sets up for the beginning of Book 2.  Jake tries to kiss Brett a second time, whereupon she pushes him away with, "Oh don't!" (71) and leaves saying "I won't see you again" (71).
      The fact that Brett leaves Jake physically at the end of Book 1 marks the distance in the relationship between Jake and Brett that seems to be present in Book 2.  On the first page of Book 2, Jake says, "Brett was gone" (75).  Jake and Brett have no intimate interactions throughout Book 2.  Brett neither strokes Jake to settle him down or vice versa.  Nor does Jake really say much to Brett directly during the bar scene in which Mike is introduced, or throughout the entire fiesta, especially considering the long duration when the two were in the same places at the same times.  Brett is dealing with other men (Cohn and Mike and Romero) ahead of Jake and does not seek much social support from Jake during this time.  Their one-on-one conversation in this scene is basically Brett soliciting Jake's help in going off with Romero.  The fact that the two are spending alone time together does not mirror Brett's admiration and love for Jake in and of himself.  She is using him here to help her.
      The end of Book 2 is the epitome of Jake's feelings of apartness from Brett.  Brett has explicitly left him for another man, a man that Jake probably looks up to.  Not only is he a bullfighter, but he is attractive, has the ability to have children, and is kind, understanding, and passionate.  Moreover, Brett likes him.  When Brett pursues Romero, Jake purposefully gets "drunker than [he] ever remembered having been" (227).  When Brett leaves with him, he felt like "about six people were missing" (228).  He feels awful about the distance between them.
      Book 3 marks the beginning of the upward slope in the relationship between Brett and Jake.  During his alone time, Jake has a break from Brett, during which he is not explicitly happy.  Yet he does revel in the fact that France is "the simplest country to live in" because "if you want people to like you you only have to spend a little money" (237).  He might be ironic here: no amount of money could buy him a happy life with Brett, which is the relationship that he would really like to buy with money.  And yet, it is his steadfast quality of loyalty to Brett that brings him back together.  After all of Brett's disloyalty to everybody, she calls Jake back as the only one who she knows will permanently be loyal to her.  Thus, their relationship reaches a point where the two become mentally and physically more intimate again.  Again, they both think about a life together.

2.  A change in book marks the entrance and  fact that a significant change in setting will be taking place.  Book 1 largely takes place in France, whereas Book 2 takes place in Spain.  The end of Book 2 marks the end of the Spanish Fiesta scene; at the beginning of Book 3, Jake leaves Spain (though he returns to Spain upon Brett's call, the difference in Book is still necessary because of the major change in scene that is set up at the beginning of Chapter XIX).

3.  The change in book also marks the change in the groups of people with whom Jake will interact.  In the first book, Jake must interact with a wide variety of people from all over Paris simply because he spends most of his time travelling all over the city to drink, socialize, and do some work on the side.  Book 2 singles out a certain group of characters who is especially volatile when placed together.  Since they are isolated in Spain together, Jake is only communicating with select bullfighters and a group of men who are all fawning over Brett (he never actually says anything to Bill's girl, to my recollection).  In Book 3, after quickly saying goodbye to some other people, Jake has his first daylight hours of alone time, followed by his first daylight hours of one-on-one Brett time.

The Underwater Part of the Iceberg

The "hard-eyed" bull-fighters and bull-critics at the bar stared Jake as he left Brett alone with Romero.  He says, "It was not pleasant." (pg. 191).

How much is it possible to imply in one short sentence?  I think this is the epitome of the tip-of-the-iceberg idea that is used to describe Hemingway's method of portrayal of human life.  Jake is referring to the unpleasantness of the entire situation.  In terms of his own feelings, he just answered "Yes" to Brett's question, "Do you still love me, Jake?" (pg. 187), and is now leaving her alone with another man.  Additionally, he knows that she really feels close to him.  She tells him he is the "only person I've got" (pg. 185), even though her fiance is present in the town as well.  Yet, we know that she would not want to technically stay with Jake for her life, because he is incapable of giving her sexual pleasure.  Thus, she has also told him she feels like "such a bitch" (pg. 188), three times (probably meaning for having gone off with Cohn, for wanting to pursue Romero, and for being really attached to Jake, even though she is not physically attached to him, and for not really being too in love with Mike).  Thus, Jake is also dealing with Brett's guilt while he leaves them, and the knowledge that he could be in Romero's place if it were not for his war wound.

The fact that he had to walk away to the disapproving stare of the bull-fighters and bull-critics did not make his situation any easier.  He had had a conversation earlier that day with Montoya, and had recommended that Romero not go to the Grand Hotel, because such drinking and partying outings might destroy Romero's bull-fighting career.  It probably occurred to Jake that alone-time between Romero and Brett could be just as bad for Romero as going to the Grand Hotel.

Jake was probably also looking toward the future, when not only Montoya, but also Mike and Cohn, would find out about Brett's escapade.  If Mike's knowledge of Brett's affair with Cohn was not enough to put him over the edge, then his knowledge of her new affair while Mike was present, as an option, in town, would really make him mad.  Similarly, since Cohn had apparently been staying around simply because he thought Brett liked him instead, Jake must have known that this new affair would make everyone mad.

Therefore, when Jake left Romero alone with Brett, he was probably doing it because he loved Brett.  It was what she wanted, even though she knew it was not what she should do, would be expected to do in society, but it was what she wanted to do.  And she knew that Jake would be the only one to understand, and that no one else could ever fully understand.  Thus she left him the unpleasantness of leaving the two of them alone together.

Why "Book 1" and "Book 2"?

I have not yet finished reading "The Sun Also Rises."  At this stage of reading, I have some guesses and possible suggestions as to why Hemmingway split the novel into two books.  I don't guarantee that any of these may be correct, but I just wanted to write them down somewhere:
- He envisioned Book 1 as a sort of introduction to Book 2, in terms of solidifying character relationships in the reader's mind before moving on to the actual meat of the story.  In Book 1, he shows all of the characters and gives some insight into Jake's thoughts about the characters' personalities and lifestyles.

- There may simply be a difference in setting: Book 1 largely takes place in France, whereas Book 2 largely takes place in Spain. (I don't know if this is correct or not because I have not finished the book yet.)

- In Book 2, he might try and make a broader point about society that covers more than just specific people and their relations (With a little commentary about society that can be garnered from what he says.)  He sets up for all of the major characters to be grouped together in one place a the same time: a confrontation will occur.

- In Book 1, Hemmingway shows Jake's relationship with Brett, with their relationships to other characters thrown in on the side.  In Book 2, Hemmingway might be planning to show how the relationship between Brett and Jake changes when Brett is with the person she will actually marry.  This could partly explain why Hemmingway chose to split Books 1 and 2 between Chapters 7 and 8.  Chapter 7 closes with Brett leaving the next day.  Chapter 8 opens, "I did not see Brett again until..."  Hemmingway gives more background, setting the stage for when Jake sees Brett in the taxi a few pages later, about to get ready for when Mike, her fiance, arrives in Paris at 9 pm that night.

I plan to come back to this idea, assuming I remember, once I have finished the book, and write a blog on my theory as to why there is Book 1 and Book 2, and why the split occurs between Chapters 7 and 8.

Musical Disorientation in The Hours

Mr. Mitchell inspired me to write an entry on the music in The Hours:

While watching The Hours, I was highly aware of an unnerving, seemingly unending, descending sequence of fourths.  An interesting choice.  In music theory, fourths are considered "dissonant" intervals, and as listeners, we expect them to resolve in the next beat or so.
The effect of the unending sequence is stressful and unnerving because the listener expects the music to resolve over and over and over, and it seemingly never does.  Once the music has finally resolved, however, the listener is dissatisfied, because by this time they had practically given up hope.
In the process, the listener has quickly lost track of what the tonic, the central pitch, should be.  In fact, it's almost impossible to know what the tonic should be (most can typically sense it, or can agree that a certain note is the tonic if it's played), because there is NO structure to the music at this point besides the sequence.  Does this have significance?  Does it imply that the characters have somehow lost track of their respective "tonics" in life?  Or does it imply that life has no tonic, no central pitch?
One reason the tonic may be difficult to identify is that the listener does not notice the pattern starting necessarily, but realizes the music about halfway through as the tension and stress build.  Does this imply that these downward spirals in life, or for the characters, cannot be prevented from being set into motion?

Richard--Connection to both Septimus and Virginia in The Hours

The Hours is an emotionally intense movie based off of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.  One of the more moving stories is that of Richie, a young boy whose mother almost commits suicide on her husband's birthday.  We make the connection that the young boy, traumatized by this event as a young child even though he does not actually see her attempt at suicide, is the same as the man who later commits suicide himself in a story that apparently centers around a different group of people.

Interestingly, we note this connection as watchers when a siren in the street below Richard's current appartment seemingly spurs his memory of a flashback to the scene in which he sees his mother again, after having guessed that she will commit suicide.  My theory is that the sirens connect The Hours back to Septimus, the PTSD ("shell-shock" is a more name accurate when taking into account the time period in which the book was written) character in Mrs. Dalloway. The siren in the street below that brought back memories for Richard could be connected to the effects of the shell-shock condition that Septimus had.  Sirens could have brought back memories of World War I for Septimus, from air raids or attacks on the front lines, for example, just like sirens brought back memories of being a little child afraid of his mother's likely suicide for Richard.

Richard's connection to the character of Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway is also notable for another reason.  Virginia Woolf is said to have written about Septimus's condition because she herself had experience with this condition.  Similarly, in the movie, Richard, who commits suicide in front of Mrs. Dalloway, is indirectly related to Virginia Woolf, whose story we are also following.  Both older Richard and Virginia suffer from mental problems and feel imprisoned in the places they are living.  Both consider suicide.  Finally, Richard also commits suicide because in part Virginia Woolf has seemingly decided that this will be part of his story.  She seems to be writing the other two plot lines that we are following.  Virginia has almost caused Richie's mother to commit suicide when he was a child, but says she cannot die, that someone else must die in her place.  Later, she remarks that this death must be the death of the poet, the "visionary," which infer later to be Richard.

Yet whereas the suicide in the book seems to have been caused by the approach of "humanity" towards Septimus in the form of the doctor, there is no real explanation for Richard's suicide in the movie.  We are left to wonder if his mother's almost-suicide has marred him for life like Septimus was scarred by the War.  Or is Richard's death simply because of Virginia's portrayed whim?  Then how would she explain the death if she were physically writing a novel about the instance?  Is it because she sees herself as an exact parallel to Richard, because her mother died when she was young and she wants to commit suicide?  Is Virginia writing her own story into the character of Richard in this movie?

So many questions are left unanswered, I am not sure where to begin, or where to end.  I was able to draw several inferences from this movie; the problem with movies is a lack of nonverbal communication.  Watchers are left to narrate the movie for themselves, based on their interpretations.  This can be effective sometimes, but for a story based on Mrs. Dalloway, which is centered around perceptions, it is difficult to understand the meaning without complete 3rd person narration to tell us the author's intentions.

Weaknesses and Strenghts in "The Hours" Woolf Pastiche

As I was reading the Cunninghan pastiche of Woolf, I noted several aspects that I considered consistent with Woolf, as well as a few inconsistencies.

Cunningham presents much of the mechanical aspects of Woolf's writing, some of which are more effective than others.  He has sidenotes in parentheses and the repitition of some ideas (e.g. Richard disagrees with the main character, saying "Beauty is a whore, I like money better." (pg. 11).  Later, the narration says: "Beauty is a whore, she sometimes says.  I like money better." (pg. 13)).  Cunningham also has lists with commas and semi-colons, though somehow is not as effective with these as Woolf is.

Cunningham's inclusions of subjectivity and impressions are not quite as pervasive as Woolf's.  Though generally he has achieved the untethered free indirect discourse of the 3rd person narration, Clarissa's conversation with Walter is not nearly as thought-filled as Woolf would have made it.  On pages 16-17, Walter and Clarissa exchange twelve lines of verbal discourse with no subjective.  An additional observation about this scene is that Walter and Clarissa's conversations seem planned: they always answer one another's questions clearly and seemingly understand one another quite well.  This contrasts with Clarissa's conversations in Mrs. Dalloway.  Based on the dialogue alone in Mrs. Dalloway, even without the subjective annotations, it is often unclear whether or not the characters truly understand one another.  The lack of annotation on pages 16-17 is similar to the lack of annotation in the Prologue when Leonard is reading V.'s suicide note.  It is completely out of Woolf's style to have none of Leonard's thoughts portrayed as he is reading this note.

In the Mrs. Dalloway chapter, Cunningham does not try to give the impressions of intersubjectivity or simultaneity, since he stays with Clarissa almost the entire time.  He does, however, follow both V. and Leonard in the Prologue.

Cunningham, in following with Woolf's style, does anchor the prologue with fisherman in a red jacket.  Vanessa sees him as part of her "last moment of true perception" (pg. 5).  The man is later the only thing that Leonard finds at the riverbank when he goes to find V.  For the prologue, multiple people's perceptions of the fisherman in the red jacket mirrors multiple character's perceptions of the chiming of big ben in Mrs. Dalloway.

A final observation is that Cunningham uses a slightly different vocabulary than Woolf.  The most blatant difference is on page 15 where Clarissa is having deep philosophical thoughts about why people want to go on living, "even if we're...shitting in the sheets."  Woolf would probably choose "defecating."  One possibility for Cunningham's word choice is that he is a man writing in the Post-Modern Age, not a woman writing in the Modern Age.  Another possibility is that Cunningham is depicting a woman who is not upper-class, whereas Woolf was depicting someone who makes up part of the highest classes of English society at that time.  We see evidence of the fact that Cunningham's Clarissa may not be upper-class later on page 15 when she first encounters Walter, and he greets her quite informally, with a nickname: "Hey, Clare."

Woolf - Syntax Errors? or Purposeful Sentence Shapes?

As I was reading the Mrs. Dalloway reading for today, I specifically made a mental note to myself to discuss two sentences towards the end of the section.

The first, at the bottom of pg. 139, reads: "How it rejoiced her that!"  The sentence shows what Rezia was thinking when Septimus described the hat jokingly as "an organ grinder's monkey's hat."  The description presumably made her happy because Septimus was acting normally.
Talk about an awkward sentence!  There seems to be almost no point to Woolf's placement of "that" at the end of the sentence.  Why isn't the less awkward phrasing, "How that rejoiced her!" suitable?  After today's class discussion, I decided that the intentional awkwardness was included because Woolf was trying to exactly show how Rezia was thinking through her grammar and punctuation.  One possibility is that she is still uncomfortable with English, even in her thoughts, because she is a nonnative English speaker.  A second possibility is that the less awkward version of the sentence somehow gives a sense of detachedness between Rezia and Septimus, and does not capture the immediacy of her thoughts.  A third possibility is that the possible addition of a comma before the "that" was not included because a comma would give a sense of slowness to this thought.

The second sentence, at the bottom of pg. 141, reads: "But directly he saw nothing the sounds of the game became fainter and stranger ansd sounded like the cries of people seeking and not finding, and passing further and further away."  Septimus  has just had a happy relapse into normality with Rezia, and is now transitioning into sleep.
This is the epitome of the run-on sentence.  I can think of two reasons for the intentional placement of this run-on sentence.  The first is that, since Septimus is always slightly preoccupied with the fact that his senses are constantly over-stimulated and analyzed, and thus is predisposed to thinking in a less orderly fashion.  The other possibility is that Woolf is using the run-on to imitate the way our thoughts string together  in an increasingly random, senseless, uncontrollable way as we fall asleep.

In general, I find Woolf's phrasing to be interesting, almost inspiring.  She is so deliberate in her breaches of proper grammar that she is able to emulate patterns of human thought with a surprising accuracy.

Another Thought on The Mezzanine vs. Mrs. Dalloway

Two potentially significant differences between the focuses of The Mezzanine and Mrs. Dalloway  occurred to me as I was reading others' posts:
1. Baker focuses on a reality that characterized largely by physical objects in the modern world, vs. Woolf, who only seems to focus on people.  This may be a reflection of the time period in which the books were written. (?)
2. Baker's character focuses only on his perception of the world, whereas Woolf's characters spend a much larger amount of time considering the thoughts and actions of other people in their own private thoughts as well.

The Mezzanine vs. Mrs. Dalloway Memory of Specifics

Upon looking back at my reading of The Mezzanine, I notice that I retained at least 98% of the material in the book.  When Mr. Mitchell would cite a specific sentence, quoting from the beginning of the sentence, I often found myself nodding, remembering the rest of the sentence and the context.  How unusual!  And I do not think that this effect was lost on the vast majority of the other students in the class.  How is it that Baker can write a book from which each sentence can be separately memorable?

Conversely, when I am reading Mrs. Dalloway, I realize that it is immensely difficult to think of one specific passage or sentence, and recognize the context, or know what occurs in the rest of the sentence.  Woolf' is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Baker in terms of sentence, plot, character, and action recognition.  Why would two books that are both generally trying to achieve a true representation of a real-life person, to encompass what humainty actually is through a character, both express it in such different ways?

I think in Mrs. Dalloway, the sentences are hard to keep track of and to remember specifically because they lead all over the place in general, because there are so many tangents, un-retraced, and unfinished lines of thought in Woolf's writing.  I opened up the book to a variety of random pages just now to find an example.  In trying to open the page randomly (several times, in fact) to select a specific sentence or sentence section to quote, I proved to myself just how convoluted Woolf's sentences seem to be.  I could not even select a coherent section out of a sentence, because they tend to go on and on, with the beginning of the sentence usually nowhere near the end in terms of subject matter.  However, the sentences are long enough such that there is significant space to concisely yet clearly transition between thoughts.  Thus I believe that it is difficult to remember specifics from Woolf's writing because of the lack of complete coherence of a section of her writing.  If each sentence cannot even stay centered on one topic, her sections definitely could not.

Yet the lack of complete conclusion of all thoughts and topics in Woolf's writing is essence of the reality of her writing style.  She is capturing the image of the "wandering mind."

In looking back at Baker's novel as a whole, it seems as if he is making more of a point about how we should think, rather than what or how we actually do think as humans.  He will spend long sections of writing focusing on minutia.  Baker overemphasizes his points, keeps focus on one of his minutiae or the other for so  long that the reader cannot help but comprehend.  And his focus on minutia has an unnamed attractive quality that also helps his cause.  Though Baker does follow tangents, his writing is almost outline-able.  His chapters all focus on specific topics; his paragraphs lead logically from one to the other, with completely, even overly-explained transitions.  Not to mention an innumerable number of a, i, ii, iii; b, i; c, i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi...etc.  Because Baker focuses so completely on coherence, even though it is widened coherence, it is very easy to remember specific sentences in his book upon mention, because it is as if his writes as if he is transcribing thoughts already catalogued into his mind.  The pre-storage of thoughts, mapped onto paper, is thus easily mapped onto the reader's mind, becoming their own memories.

Thus, whereas Woolf captures the thoughts as they are formed, Baker captures the thoughts after they have been purified and categorized.  Herein lies the essential difference between the writing styles of Baker and Woolf.

Chelsea's Response to Howie's Response to Aurelius

Having fully accustomed myself to Baker's style by page 120 of The Mezzanine, I remember that I read the quote from Aurelius quickly, expecting the meaning to soak in easily.  I continued reading before taking the minute amount of time necessary to actually understand Aurelius's point, but I was stopped at the first "Wrong, wrong, wrong!" (120) because I did not expect such sudden criticism.  To me, it seemed a bit harsh for Howie to clobber Aurelius's philosophical theory so roughly, presumably without even reading the supporting arguments for the theory.

My interpretation of Aurelius's argument is that mortal life (versus what?  immortal life??) is unimportant in the scheme of things because it passes by so quickly.  This point of view is completely against the idea of the novel in general, because the seeming purpose of The Mezzanine is to only focus on the extreme of the everyday, the mundane, even maybe the OCD.  Thus Baker's philosophical argument is that it is worth glorifying human life (I choose "human" instead of "mortal" because it is much more specific) as well as human error into something that makes us feel like we need to open our eyes to the immediate real world we live in and to stop looking at the past and future.

Howie, probably a partial figment of Baker's imagination, would have reacted exactly as Baker would have to Aurelius's argument.  Howie is so repelled by the passage because Baker was so repelled by the passage.  In writing this book, Baker could have chosen any quote, out of any book, to include.  Yet he chose this particular one, a choice that must be significant.  Baker is extolling his love of the commonplace by utilizing Howie's revulsion towards a sentence that argues hatred of the commonplace.  It is possible that the physical existence of The Mezzanine shows that Baker may have written his entire novel simply to try and crack open and let bleed philosophies such as Aurelius's.

Chelsea's IQs = Chelsea's Ideas and Questions....on 20th Century novels.