Overview

      I am starting to really really like this book. The more that is uncovered, the more exciting it becomes in my opinion. It is like a Sherlock Holmes mystery; nothing makes sense until at one point things start coming together, and they start coming together faster and faster, tumbling down the hill, taking the reader with them until the last puzzle piece is in place and the reader awakes from a misty dream not remembering the tumble but sure of one thing, that everything makes sense. And this is how I feel about the Song of Solomon. As Milkman travels to uncover his past and his destiny, he goes through so many events that change him, no matter how little, to form his reality, and lead him to his maturity and final acquiring of manhood. And it is interesting to think of this story as a mystery, because if could be so many different things. For one, a fantasy tail of a seeker searching for the key to his soul or ultimate understanding or a mystery where one man who cannot die has to face death many times over on his search for the clues to his past. This story can find its place in the heart of almost everyone as it can be interpreted in the style of the reader. And, Milkman showed a lot of maturity and development throughout the book. Having read Chapter 12 now, I have seen multiple times where Mikman did not panic, did not act out of panic, but rather was calm, true and honest, or at least humble. He did not give Guitar away, or panic when Guitar did not believe him that he was not shipping any gold to Virginia. Everything is becoming more down to earth, and Milkman, is starting to fulfill his destiny and becomes like his grandfather. From hearing about his past he is filled with pride and strength, he starts to grow, and his feet even out. We see wussy Milkman come out strong, and we can imagine him working on a field, plowing, working the earth in his power, making peach orchard bloom, and rising up to be the men that many come to live in the rays of. And compared to the depressing, miserable life he had before, this is a complete relief. Milkman is on his way to become a hero almost, one that overcomes his fears, his problems, and defeats the dark tests that challenge his way to the utmost knowledge: the gold. Gold is yellow, and shiny, and whenever one thinks of gold, one thinks of something brilliant and glowing. Symbolically, the gold could represent the light, the fire that Milkman goes to retrieve, the light with the power of life, something that he starts acquiring on his quest. At the end of the book, he will no longer be Macon Dead, he will no longer be already dead and in that way immune to death, but rather he will become a full, breathing man who has come back to life, and will fly back home to bring up his family and amend and change the future.

Flight and Change

     Initially, I really did not enjoy the book and did not see how Milkman was maturing. Even when Lena called him out, he still seemed to be like, ok, whatever. But something must have struck a chord and he started subconsciously maturing. Thats when we start Part two of the book; the flight.
    
     All through the first part, we hear of how Milkman always wanted to fly. It was the biggest disappointment to him when he realized he could not take off and fly above the Earth. But in Part 2, Milkman's soul starts to fly. The section starts out with him taking off and flying physically, in a plane.  We see Milkman as happy, something we have not seen throughout the whole book yet. He is by himself, doing something for himself (or at least that's how he sees it), and going out into the world for the first time. It is almost like he is given a second life, he is born anew. We watch him experience so many new things that normal people experience from their first days. He starts his life for real this time, and it is very refreshing, and optimistic for us as readers to read. But mentally, he isn't flying yet. Before he goes hunting, he is still of the same mindset as he was before with the exception that he gains some confidence in some places, and loses it in others. But it is in the forest where he "confronts death" and wins over it. In mythical terms, this is like the test of mind and body as here he is, confronted by his best friend which is an extreme emotional test. But he turns around and beats the dark, and the second sight opens up to him. Milkman sees the world differently now, and the world start accepting him. No longer is he doing stupid things, but rather he is living in the world, not along side it. He begins to start thinking ahead for the first time (when he thinks of his travels to the Byrd house and how he had to get back before dark and as to what he would take with him) and he is no longer stuck in the front seat between his parents, looking back into his past. Yes, on this trip he does delve into his past a lot, but this uncovering of truths comes with his progress forward. It seems as though gold becomes the point that when reached, he will know all of his past, some grave secret or realization will be released, and with the gold will come the last test and the last piece to the puzzle; the puzzle of Milkman's past.

Strangness

      This is a very peculiar/strange book. And each character's story is weird in itself. We get Macon who is an arrogant, strict, money-breathing brute of a father as it seems, while Ruth is a strange, love-deprived mother who pays maybe just a tad bit too much attention to her deceased father. There are the two sisters who grow up to be 40 year old 'girls' without a breath of the world, and a boy, Milkman, who is just totally confused and reluctant to grow up. As the story unfolds, we start learning various parts of everything. After Ruth's story after the visit to the cemetery, I honestly did not want to hear another word from her. Her story was feeble, and to be honest, it kinda sounded like a story that a woman from back then was supposed to have. Weak, mellow, and emotional. I did not like it. It sounded like a defense not an account of a story, and in this aspect Macon's story was much more realistic in its presentation. The only person that I am more or less likely to side with is Lena. Her calling Milkman was so different from the rest of the story. Everyone is so weak and somehow in his or her own world. But Lena is the only one that sees what is really going on. And this is a great breath of fresh air for us. After listening to Macon's money tainted speech, Ruth's love-filled pleas, and Milkman's completely carefree attitude, it is nice to get someone who can let us look into the family form the outside, from a normal view. We get a real perspective that opens to us in two pages what has been happening for the past chapters. In that, the story itself begins to change. The plot moves on and starts maturing Milkman, but the narrative also becomes more real. The change is gradual, but it is like Lena started chipping away at Milkman's thick hide of indifference and when Guitar tries to kill Milkman in the forest, the shield finally shatters. Milkman now becomes a man, sees and understands his own actions, sees his family from a different light, and finally finds a mission for his life. Nothing is pointless anymore. And in this sense I like the book more. Things start to go on a realistic course, and it feels great when the main character finally starts understanding things about the world around him. So overall, I feel like the book got better and better after Lena's rant. Everything started finding its own place.

Journals: Electronic or Paper?

      As old-fashioned as this may be, I believe that using notebooks to record thoughts and write entries would be much more effective than writing blogs. For me personally, it is easier to keep a notebook as it doesn't need battery power or internet access to thrive. I also do not feel comfortable with the idea of putting thoughts out on the internet without a way of knowing who saw or viewed my entries. This makes me reluctant to post, and a written journal would be much better in this case. A journal is a journal and when you show it to someone, you know who saw it and what they thought. But the most important reason why I like notebook journals over blogs is that thoughts flow onto a page without any second thoughts to edit or structure the text. With online journals I know that someone will read them, and I always have a sense of need to edit and redo my entries. Because they are available a broader audience, I feel that they have to be perfect for posting. In a notebook though, I don't hesitate to think and things just write themselves in a way. In fact, I end up having less mistakes in my notebook entries than in my blogs because I am not worried about the outcome beforehand. I am always more willing to pull out my notebook, and find a nook somewhere (wherever I happen to be) and write whatever comes to mind. Therefore now I am going to write down a series of "entries" that I kept in my journal. They are no doubt not as perfect as supposed to be, but they are more interesting and reflect my thoughts more accurately than if I wrote a blog post from the start.

The End

      To be honest, I did not really like the ending of Wide Sargasso Sea. Having read Jane Eyre I already have an opinion on Bertha and Mr. Rochester, and those opinions are completely opposite of what this book tries to instill on the reader. Mr. Rochester is a very likable character who is doomed by being wedded to a lunatic without being informed of Antoinette's mental condition beforehand. Bertha Mason is presented as an animalistic, crazy, possessed woman that tries to kill Rochester and attacks her brother. Although I understand that Wide Sargasso Sea is supposed to present Bertha's story, I personally am already swayed toward Jane Eyre's perspective, and I see everything in that light. If I hadn't read that book first, I may not have seen Antoinette so crazy as her actions in reality are not that of a mentally unstable being. But already having that preconception, I see things in a different light, even in Wide Sargasso Sea.

     Also, I do not really like how we do not see Rochester or Jane at the end. Everything happens in such an alienated way that I feel no connection between her and the world, and that's what I would expect from her, once again, due to having read Jane Eyre prior. In the end I do see Antoinette as crazy, the way she sees things and imagines things. However, I do pity her. The way she describes the red room with the candles and how she was desperate to light all the candles and to find the altar just seemed so childlike and hopeless. But no matter, she still came off crazy to me. And I really would like to see Antoinette's perception of Jane, and her shock and despair when she sees the veil. I think that addition would have lightened up my view on Bertha. But on the other hand, maybe that is the suspense. Maybe that is the mystery that we will never find out and what makes us think, what really happened between the two books?

Similarity

      While reading part three of Wide Sargasso Sea, I realized that there is a tiny similarity between Jane and Antoinette in this section. Both are forced to be in the shadows while life goes on. Although I do not remember every detail of Jane Eyre, I remember how, her being the governess of the house, she had to stay low around other people, in other words, be invisible like the servants. Antoinette is the same, except for different reasons. When she sneaks out while there is a party going on downstairs, she encounters a girl on the stairs. That girl describes Antoinette as a ghost to yet another girl. At this moment, I wanted to reread Jane Eyre to see whether there was a possibility that one of those girls could have been Jane herself.
   
     Interestingly enough, Antoinette does not recount anything that happens at Rochester's manor in reference to other people. She does not consciously go into Jane's room and rip up the veil, she doesn't set Rochester's room on fire. To her, all of the people are nonexistent, and besides Grace Pool, everyone is described at a distance. Antoinette definitely seems out of this world by the way she thinks and seems to be alienating herself more and more. In Jane Eyre, it is presented as though Bertha is a animalistic person that has a complete sense of thought, and it is thought that she knew what she was doing when she wandered the house. Jane felt as though she were followed, or that there was this monster that wanted to attack her. Curiously, Antoinette felt the same way. She recalls hearing voices and footsteps, people laughing at her. In the shadows of the house she seems to be remembering her childhood and her fears.

     Of course Antoinette and Jane are very different, but sometimes we can get just a glimpse of parallels between the two stories. In fact, if there were a third book to come out, for everything to be inline it would have to have Jane and how her fantasies and "love" with Rochester turns foul as he grows old and becomes self centered, and she realizes that she is stuck with a man that is more afraid of his own death than interested in spending his days with her, leading her to trying to leave him, he feels the same rage and sense of possession and locks her up in his castle, thus leaving two doomed souls with Bertha being the warning and Jane not following it. With this ending the picture would be complete to a three part tragedy where love is the cause of all misery.

Denial

      Working off of the idea of the lie, I feel it so creepy how Rochester is trying to erase all that there is about AntoinetteAt the very beginning, he tells of how he tries to imagine her as a beautiful English girl whenever he sees her after the marriage. Then, later in the book, he changes her name to Bertha, and does it subconsciously implying that everything about him is repelled from acknowledging Antoinette for being who she really is. He is desperate for control and steadily convincing himself out of reality and trying to reestablish a new reality on his life.  He is programmed by cultural values to deny his marriage, and he makes no effort to change his attitude.

      Rochester compares Antoinette to a doll constantly, taking away her human qualities and making her something established. A doll is a doll, it has no secrets, no surprises, and no free will. You can do whatever with a doll and not be affected by its feelings as it has none. Rochester feels very out of place in Jamaica, and feels as though he is always surrounded by lies and fiction, therefore he grasps Antoinette as something that he can control and have so stability with. The more he dehumanizes her, the more power he has, leading to the end where he looses all feeling for her and throws her, like an unwanted toy, into imprisonment for life.

      Rochester's dreamlike perception of his surroundings accent his denial and justify his willingness to see Antoinette as a lie. He sees a lie as a secret that can be held, a doll that can be hid. He sees all of this in dreamlike form where such transformations and comparisons could easily form. Rochester wants to understand Antoinette completely, he is desperate to know of all her secrets, and therefore in his mind he tries to ignore what he doesn't know, and slowly convinces himself more and more of how nothing is true. Maybe it is something from his past, from mal-upbringing or from never feeling any control over anything before that leads him to feel the need to exert power here over the only thing he actually can do it with. Subconsciously, he is a coward, and a wimp, and in a place where he has no stabilizing points, he acts without the presence of respectability.

     Overall, there is a sense of dehumanization from both parties. While Rochester takes it into his own hands to dehumanize Antoinette, his actions of doing so dehumanize him. He becomes cold and heartless as he gets angry about his situation, and the more he tries to repress Antoinette, the more he represses himself. There is yet another part in the book that may change all of this, but to me, I feel that this book is definitely headed for disaster where two heartless souls deal with their confined emotions to clash together in chaos.

Imminent Tragedy

     So far, Wide Sargasso Sea has not been at all a happy book. Antoinette is followed by anger, fear, and misfortune ever since the beginning of the book. The word "trouble" is the fourth word of the book, signaling to a galore of unhappiness in the next pages. When Antoinette marries Rochester we hear him say:

"Very soon she'll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. . . . She's one of them. I too can wait--for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie. . . ."

      By saying this, Rochester transforms Antoinette identity to that of a lie and justifies his own misuse of her, causing more misfortune between the couple. Rochester is becoming more and more cold-hearted to Antoinette, and plans on leaving her, but then in the last moment Christophe comes in and spikes in him a rage that will make him decide to take Antoinette and lock her up and make her his secret. But it is the way that he tells us this that made me realize that he too is becoming a little crazy. The way he addresses her as "my lunatic" does not seem affectionate, but rather, desperate and slightly obsessed. It was it this point that I actually felt a little sorry for Rochester. In this moment we can see how weak he is, how feeble and desperate. He never knew what he was getting into by marrying her until it was too late, and now he is desperate to get something out of this. He is desperate for a type of ultimate control with which he can waive away the past. Rochester is like a child, who tries to hide his broken toy under his bed so he will never see it again. He knows what he has done, he sees what he is left with, and he is hopeless and pitiful. Everything just seems so glum.

      When Christophene comes in, the conversation seems like it could have an effect on Rochester. As the reader, we get a chance of change. Rochester could be hit in some spot of his heart where he would realize or reconsider his attitude. But then, a different chord is struck, and we see outright that there is no more chance. And those who have read Jane Eyre see that this is the point where imminent tragedy develops. In fact, having read Jane Eyre most likely escalates my sense of pity for Rochester near the end of Part 2. I already know that both will be stuck together in misery for a long time to come.

Accepting the Strange

       In class, we have accepted to interpret The Stranger as a story of a man who is a stranger to society, and therefore, a complete stranger to us. Yes, we do come to know and understand him, but that is simply through knowing the truth about his past rather than actually understanding his personality and drive in life. But what if we subconsciously do understand him? After we get the hang of his character, we stop judging him as a person. Meursault's neutrality is so natural that we adopt his character easily and we stop feeling for him. In reality, we don't consciously feel for ourselves when we are hurt or something or other. Sympathy is something that is used on others and rarely on oneself, and in this case, we have accepted Meursault's mind to the point that we don't feel for him. We go along with his story as we go on with our lives. In fact, his actions are almost taken for granted in our minds. We are no longer surprised by him, and we can half-predict his responses to his environment. Could this be yet another way by which an author synchronizes the mind of the character with that of the reader? People say that Chapter 6 was the most human part of the whole book as we see so much emotion coming from Meursault's mind, whereas I would argue that that was the 'strangest' part of the book. It was unlike anything that we have seen of Meursault, and it was out of place in our understanding of his mind. At that moment, his thought process is almost possessed, alien in way, estranged from us as our mind comes to think that this is not the Meursault that we knew.
       Whatever the stance on familiarization with the main character is, there could be completely different interpretations on our relationship to Meursault, and although this one is more like playing the devil's advocate, I, just the slightest, think that this could be a possible interpretation of the book.

Illusions

      During discussions of The Metamorphosis, the story and plot is often described as "dream-like" or "nightmarish." These were mostly in response to how Gregor was like a dead person watching the living, trapped in a body through which he could not connect with his family in any way. But to me, it also seems that the way that Gregor narrates is also somewhat dreamy. The way he sees everything his family does for him as so nice and sweet, how his dear little sister tries to find out what he likes, and offers him different food, or how the family leaves the door open so he can watch them from under the coach. It seems that at the beginning of the book we see everything through a lens that bends our perspective. It's like Gregor wakes up and has to adapt to his new vision (as bugs have those eyes that have lots of little eyes inside) so he does not perceive things exactly, but as he gets used to it, he becomes more and more aware of reality for what it really is. Or, another analogy: sometimes when people wake up, they have some sort of film over their eyes that they have to blink away so that they can see clearly. This is usually portrayed in movies as the character opens his eyes and we see from his perspective and its blurry right away but then everything comes into focus. Same thing with Gregor, his perception is dreamlike, and blurry, just like our vision is right after we wake up. Then as time goes by, he becomes more keen on what's really going on, and what seemed like a sweet dream is really turning out to be a grotesque nightmare where chaos is about to break loose.
   
    Of course, that may just be over-reading the text. Yet I think that there is potential for the novels narration to have that same aspect of dreaminess and haziness. It is almost as if the whole book is following the process of a waking mind several seconds after deep sleep. At first, everything is oddly strange, yet acceptable. Gregor seems very fine with the fact that he is a bug. Then the first nerve senses start kicking in when he realizes he is late for work. The parents start knocking from different doors, symbolizing the different neurons sending shocks and signals through different stems. The moment that Gregor gets up to the moment he opens the door stand in for that split second where the brain cell has to adjust to the string of incoming signals, and as the door opens, it is ready to work. The months that go by show us the seconds during which the brain cell just works at it, getting used to the different types of signals, and readjusting to fit its needs. By midway of the story, we are starting to reach moments where the brain cells are being attacked by huge amounts of information, and are having a hard time coping with it all. The story goes in months, but really it parallels with the very first seconds of waking up; the transition from the dreamlike haven to the chaotic reality.

     I guess that this book could have a lot of different interpretations. And that is what makes it so interesting, as we can find so many different analogies and structures withing the plot, and the smallest of details can warp our views into the most bizarre interpretations.

Unbelievable Possibility

    Today in class, Mr. Mitchell mentioned that The Metamorphosis will have a very bright and happy ending. But to be honest, up to the reading for today, I have been getting more and more sure of how heart-wrenching this book will end up being. Everything seems to be going downhill for everyone. Gregor's family is tossed into a new way of life where they actually have to do something in their lives. His sister starts to realize how it is not really fun to take care of a gigantic maybe-this-is-Gregor cockroach. Gregor himself has become more short tempered and impulsive than how we see him in the beginning of the book. Everyone is starting to realize that things are not what they seem.

     Lets start with the family. Initially, the mother and father are really bewildered by the appearance of a huge cockroach in their son's room. Their initial reactions are lined with disbelief. Before they see what has happened to Gregor, the father and mother had an attitude of almost annoyance as they thought that their son was pulling their legs in some way or another. But even after they see him in his new appearance, there is that sense of,  "this isn't real, this can't be!" in their reactions. It is almost as if they want to tell him to cut it out, but they are just so shocked, they can't seem to do so. As the story develops, we see that the family makes attempts to try to accept Gregor in his new form by leaving the door open at dinner time, etc. But still, the father or the mother do their best to avoid any contact with Gregor. They do not enter his room, they do not talk to him. There is complete rejection, and then later, negligence on their behalf. At the end of today's reading, we just got to the part where the tenants are just about to notice Gregor at any moment. As I was reading the prelimanary passages of how Gregor creeps farther and farther into the living room, and everyone is just waiting there oblivious, but about to notice him in any moment, I felt that weird feeling of fear for Gregor, and more importantly, a foreboding feeling of all chaos breaking out under that roof as both the family and the tenants freak out at the sight of a giant cockroach standing half way in a completely dark room, staring at them. There is no way I can see this ending happily!

    Then, there is Greta and her behavior in respect to Gregor. At first, she seems very compassionate and caring, but we see this through Gregor's eyes. But lets suppose that she really is compassionate. She cleans Gregor's room, brings him food, notices his habits and tries to help him with giving him more access to the walls and ceiling. But after months, her care becomes minimal. She has lost her sense of responsibility, and Gregor, having nothing to reward her with for her diligence, is downgraded to literally the level of a bug. In her mind, he is isolated from the family, and is something that just scuttles around. This cockroach isn't even involved with the family in any way! Why should she put up with him? Why should she pretend like she cares?
Who needs this care? A cockroach doesn't know how to appreciate. That's something that only humans can do. Her irritation with him is becoming more and more apparent through the lessening quality of care that she is giving him day by day.

    Finally, Gregor himself is becoming more distant from his original self. He is anger more easily than before, and he has become more assertive in his behavior. His personality is becoming more bug-like as he does what he wants without really thinking it through. Greta's music lures him out into the open where he knows he should not be. Although he remembers human things, he still goes on the walls and makes himself comfortable in the insect-way-of-life. Inside him, more anger builds as he hears his family discussing their matters about moving and finance and he realizes that he used to be everything for the family, and now, he is still alive but completely at their mercy in a way. They just feed him for the sake of feeding him, and there is nothing more. What makes all this building up of anger potentially dangerous is that Gregor can't release his anger anywhere. He cannot yell at someone, or talk to anyone, or just get his thoughts across. So as the reader, I am just sitting here waiting for him to reach some breaking point and go and rampage and destroy everything in sight. This is just what everything seems to be coming to; total chaos.

     Yet, there is still another large section left in the story, and everything can change and resolve. It is just at this particular part of the book that I feel like things could not get better, that this story is on its way to some sort of horrendous ending where Gregor completely embraces his power as a huge bug and goes off in anger terrorizing and attacking people. Of course, we cannot expect something that predictable from Kafka, yet still I am pushed to think that this is how everything will end. But there is still much more to read, and we will see how this so seemingly doomed plot can reverse its direction and leave us on a bright and cheery note.

First Impressions

    On the first day of class, we were given a summary of the Metamorphosis; a weird book where the main character wakes up as a giant cockroach. From this, I expected the book to start out with the main character, Gregor Samsa, living his life normally, then about fifteen pages in, waking up, finding himself to have become a cockroach, and proceeding to freak out and do rash, funny things in his acts of desperateness. I missed the mark almost completely even though Gregor does act desperate, but he is desperate in a completely different way. But anyways, going back to the first paragraph. I was pretty much shocked. It seemed almost as though I was being sucked in to the story without noticing it, and every time there was something creepy or unsettling, I still kept on reading. It is like watching two cars crash, you just keep staring. Same here, no matter how gross things are, you still keep reading. We get the moments when Gregor is trying to open the door, or when he is running after the manager, etc. And then we get moments when he is trying to get out of bed, and when his dad is getting him back into his room; funny moments when you are both laughing and then thinking that you shouldn't be finding this funny. I am not sure if this is an appropriate analogy, but it's like while reading this book, I feel like one does when someone claws at a chalk board, or when chalk makes that loud shriek-like sound. This book keeps me awake, but at the same time I both want to put it down, but cant really, or unconsciously don't want to. Everything in the first section seemed to happen so fast. As Gregor was acting sheer desperateness, there was a lot of energy fed off to the reader, and it made everything seem so fast and uncontrolled almost. 

      There are also a lot of sad moments in the book. The part where Gregor is trying to stand up while at the same time muttering about his job and how he needs to stand up. Or when he tries to eat his breakfast and realizes that he doesn't like milk anymore. Sometimes these moments are slightly pathetic, but even so they are really sad. Kafka is really good at playing with emotions and reactions that come deep from the heart, not surface things like outright laughter or tears. The moment when Gregor is thinking about his sister and how he dreamed of how to send her to the Conservatory and how he had tried to so hard to get money for his family seem almost painful to read as Gregor doesn't realize he is a cockroach now. There is a feeling that he understands that he wont be able to do anything of what he wanted to, but its mostly the reader who understands this best. But we don't always feel sympathy for Gregor. There are times when we can be pleasantly surprised. For example, when he is talking about the amount of money that he had saved from every paycheck. He talks about it as if it were a small amount of money, but turns out that it is enough to hold the family through a year. In Gregor's humbled views that is a little, or more rather, not enough. But in reality, that is a lot of money considering that people need to pay for food, bills, clothes, taxes, etc. More over, there are four people in the family. So we get a sudden respect for Gregor's work as we see just how much money he has been making over this long period of time. And then, we gain even more sympathy and respect for Gregor when we find out that he solely has been responsible for the high quality of life that he has provided for the rest of the family. His parents have indeed used and exploited him. It is not like they live poorly and only the son could help pay off the debts. They live very well with enough food for the dad to get fat, the mother not have anything to do all day but lie on the sofa, and the daughter to go around and be pampered with pretty clothes. So, overall we become supportive of Gregor over the first half of the story.  

   I guess this book is just a toss up of emotions and perspectives as we constantly change from one to another; we are unsettled one minute, laughing another, or we are disappointed in Gregor, then supportive of him. It is a complicated mash-up of everything as if to see how much the reader can handle. But it is a nice arrangement of stress and resolve, or its lack of. It just makes the story so much more interesting, and in some way easier, to read. So I look forward to reading more, to see what unexpected situation Kafka puts Gregor in to test his metamorphosis. 

Jake and Irony

       A couple days ago, the question of Jake and his use of irony was brought up in class. More specifically, would it have been better if Jake was as ironic as Bill or Brett? Personally, I like Jake's language as is. Although vague and simple, it is very common place and straightforward. You don't expect to hear anything special, and don't leave your mind to sit and scrutinize the text that it reads, judging the input for its quality. The few things that Jake says are like little islands in an ocean of irony; completely separate but tied in all the same. Jake is the main character through the eyes of which we see the world of the novel, and his language is like a grounding point, we always return to it, and it brings us back to reality. It is through his language that we can get a sense of what is going on, even though most of the time he provides it through the smallest gesture. It is as if this is Hemingway's way of opening the rode to Jake's mind. Virginia Woolf described the mind, making thought flow onto the page with a seeming absence of borders and limits, where Hemingway provides us with a straightforward this-is-what-it-is report of Jake's thoughts. And that is nice once in a while (another point of importance, we do not hear that much of Jake, and those moments come almost paced, as if Hemingway is providing us reminders of reality just so that we don't go too far into the world of irony.) So no, Jake's lack of irony creates a good balance for the other characters.

First Impression

     When I heard that we would be watching a movie modeled after Mrs. Dalloway, I was really interested in how the directors would bring across the intimacy and complexity of the minds of the characters. I think that they did a good job with that, but I found other things in the movie either distracting or differing from my interpretation of the novel.
      First off, I found the music to be striking, but most of the time, completely missing the mark. Yes, it is very thoughtful and tense, but while reading into Clarissa's thoughts, I felt a more neutral aura for everything, and sometimes, rather peppy. I can see where such music would be ideal, as in the moments where Virginia Woolf is just sitting and thinking, as we can see that she is in some sort of dilemma that is not open to us. Music in films is a key carrier of feeling and emotion that cannot be narrated or simply told to the audience. And here, it seemed as the music kept adding more and more stress to the situations, and there was so much of it that I was just sitting there waiting for the characters to kill themselves by the middle of the movie. Every move was accented by stresses in the music that were never resolved. The minority of the pieces made everything more and more depressing while the tempo increased the drama and the tension. But the fact that there was no resolve really bothered my ear. Simply said, the music was over used and did not portray what I would think to be the more realistic and probable sense that it should have.
      Secondly, I liked and disliked the close plot lines of the three major stories. It was interesting how the same events and situations were carried through and adapted to the different years. But! It did get tedious when the scenes changed so quickly and if the trashcan appeared in one, it would definitely appear three scenes later in a different time and so on. Every time you saw something happen, you could expect that it would reoccur very quickly afterwords. Yet I have to give a lot of credit to the different interpretations of the same major story. The adaptations were very interesting and creative.
    And finally, something I did appreciate: the use of color schemes. First off, they matched the story and the music. Most of the time, they created really artistic scenes. That is as much as I will say on that as I want to develop this for a response paper. But overall, I think that the movie was mostly on mark with the book.

Least Favorite Character?

        Although I have mentioned that I do not have any favorites among the characters, I can definitely say that I have a least favorite persona, Lucrezia. I am not sure exactly why, but from the first time that we were let in upon her thoughts, I found myself just waiting for her segment to be over. Unlike the thoughts of all the other characters, there seemed to be no depth to her mind. It seemed as though she had a very stiff mind that only saw things through one perspective, incapable of any other perception. She seemed to be in eternal desperateness and always overly conscious of attention. There was no sense of her even trying to understand Septimus or trying to accommodate her mind to his. In fact, I would go as far as to say that her tone of voice seemed a bit whinny at times. The only time that I actually felt more sincere to her was right after Septimus's death, but I do not attribute so much to her narrative as just to the situation. But on the overall, I felt little appreciation for Lucrezia as a character, and I think that I would have most likely enjoyed the book more if her character was more in tone with the other characters. Yes, Clarissa and Septimus can be seen as the extremes of this spectrum of this mental complexity, but all of the other characters display at least some degree of it as well. But Lucrezia's character is really out of synch with everyone else as she is so superficial  and almost self-centered in a way about how she perceives everything around her that it roughens up the flow of the book. As a matter of fact, the blandness of Lucrezia's perspective really made her a really unmemorable character for me, and I do not remember much of what she had said or done. But on the other hand, maybe Lucrazie is set to be the stabilizer of the complexities of Clarissa and Septimus's minds. With out her, we would not be able to so easily see the extent of the mental depth that dominates the narrative. She alone points out all the other characters. Or, do they all stick her out? It now becomes a question of what is normal and what is not.

Main Character?

     I can not say wether I prefer one's story to the other's. They are both very similar, and their actions through the book have similar patterns. It is almost as if Woolf is experimenting, putting different people through the same routine and taking us through their minds and perceptions as they walk down the same street, or look at the same thing. I can almost see Woolf marking off points on a map and titling each section as "Subject 1 down Bond Street", "Subject 2 down Bond Street". In the end, the experiment's results are given to us to read and analyze, we are given the choice to sympathize and lean towards one character or the other, towards "Subject 1" or "Subject 2". However, as I read the different stories, I do not lean towards one or the other. They are different and at the same time, similar, and when reading Mrs. Dalloway, I give all of the different brought up characters a pretty much equal weight in the sense of how much attention I am willing to focus on them.
     At the very beginning of the book, I found it, in a sense, soothing to be so completely in Clarissa's mind, the feeling being almost natural. Therefore, everything that I saw through her eyes, and through her mind, seemed very in tune with my perception of her events. Well, vice versa more like. And then we get to Septimus's story, and once again we go deep into his mind as if we are supposed to be there, and everything seems so natural. Almost perfectly right, in a sense. Yes, their personalities and situations are different, but when I read over them, I do not see one of them as better or worse or more important than the other. Both have a romantic aspect to them that makes our being in their minds a very simple thing to do and get used to, and I find their thoughts very interesting. Clarissa has a stream of thought that is on and off passionate, taking our attention yet at the same time letting us know of whats going on around us so that we do not find ourselves too blind at any given instance. Septimus takes us away completely into his revelations, which, although he says he cannot feel, are very emotional. Where Clarissa gives us the, at the time, conventional knowledge of who is who around us, Septimus, almost as if on purpose, blurs out those people as much as he can. When I read over sections where he is thinking, I can imagine scenes where he is standing, for example, in the midst of crowds, and everyone is slowly loosing their focus and going fuzzy, where as he stands very clear cut and sharp, the walking people slowly blend into each other until all we can see is Septimus standing in a flowing stream. It is practically the inverse of the scene in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie where Holmes is sitting against a yellow wall with his eyes closed, plucking a violin, and all the cacophonous sounds of the day came back to him in his mind as the camera zooms in to focus on his face. I feel with Septimus, the image is similar, but Woolf's writing style just sucks me in and places me, already in agreement, into his mind. In fact, I think that no matter what was actually going on in his head, I would find him just as interesting as Clarissa.
   You are probably thinking that I wrote so much on Septimus, yet still am saying that they are equal in my mind, that is just the smallest bit contradictory. But the case just is that I cannot really explain what it really is that makes Clarissa's thoughts interesting to me.  They are just like flowing water. They go on and on, effortlessly avoiding obstructions, taking us swiftly down a new path. The thoughts of both Septimus and Clarissa flow equally as swiftly, carrying me away down the center of the stream, and if there will be a split in the road, I am yet to see which way the stream of thoughts will take me.