"Even if you have kept silent for the sake of the dead, you cannot rest in your silence, as the dead rest."
I think it should he considered good et
"Even if you have kept silent for the sake of the dead, you cannot rest in your silence, as the dead rest."
I think it should he considered good etiquette not to attend a funeral even if one is invited, if one isn't heavily grieved by loss of the deceased or of his/her close ones. I mean what is point of creating an indifferent crowd busy in gossiping and telling tales when there are people genuinely mourning? Isn't disrespectful for dead? As it is, there is friction enough even among those genuinely grieved (which explains the argument in last chapter for me) Mourning seems to be a very private thing that people are forced to do in public.
The impersonal, distant narration - with a lot of conversation thus had made this book a two star stuff. Because although the description was realistic, it was also too much at surface. It is only in second last chapter that rating started picking up when we go inside protagonist Laurel's mind - know about her relationship with her father and only then I could understand the motives behind her actions. It is one of those novels best appreciated in retrospect.
The same can be about Fay. Marrying a rich man twice her age, hiding the existence of her family and too melodramatic ways - she doesn't seem to get a lot of sympathy. In this way, she is like Edith from Stoner, since whatever suffering made her like this remains hidden ( only some subtle hints are given) she comes out as a villain.
"You don’t know the way to fight.” She squinted up one eye. “I had a whole family to teach me.”
At one point, an army officer thinks about scolding his soldiers for mixing with French women who had been living in a territory just freed from GermaAt one point, an army officer thinks about scolding his soldiers for mixing with French women who had been living in a territory just freed from Germans but decides not to because it would be like scolding birds. You could basically say the same about reviewing Cather. There is no defining why exactly I love her writing so much. You could say she writes about Prairies or rural life so beautifully and you could say, about this particular book, that she created a magnification character in Claude - an idealist whose wish for an idealist world was left unfulfilled in an increasingly materialist (thanks to indsutrial revolution and consumerism) world, who seems like a man born in a wrong era and yearns for good old days when there were proper social connections, a man who feels the dullness of inactivity of Utopia-like happy Society he is forever to live in .... until the world war I comes in giving him an opportunity to fight for his ideals; to show to him that there are people still willing to die for an idea (His need for a war, to be able to play the hero, the lack of purpose he would feel in peace he fights for all kind of reminds one of Captain America) ..... But saying all that is still not doing justice enough to Cather. She writes far more like poetry and the poetry is made of material of emotions that, unlike words, refuting analysis in their purest forms. In Father's case, the emotion used as material in three books by her I have read is same .... Longing....more
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
I’m not much into romantic stories – I mean how much of ‘
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
I’m not much into romantic stories – I mean how much of ‘Ellen, I love you’ and ‘Newland, it is wrong’ one can bear? More so, love triangles – and why they call it love triangles. Just look at this one – Archer has relations with May and Ellen but the two women do not love each other, so where is the third side of triangle? Shouldn’t it be called love angle or love V? In fact, if you think about it, a love triangle is only possible when at least one of three people is homosexual or bisexual ... well, that is just the kind of thing I wonder about when not working on my paper on quantum mechanics involved in motion of Nitrogen particles in low atmospheric temperatures.
Also, I don’t much like leisure classes; for me they represent half the things that are wrong with the world – they are hypocrites, full of ideas of ‘society’ and ‘common folks’, vain, sinfully rich, are always talking about useless subjects like- other equally boring people, balls, marriages, clothes (clothes! Clothes!), food etc.
The good thing is Wharton doesn’t much like them either.
Innocence
There can be many meanings of the word ‘innocence’. The people of society pretend to have and collectively impose on themselves conformity to standard of an innocence that is more of an ignorance and a willingness to stay the same - “ the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!”
But in reality these things come involuntarily; you can’t shut them out when they come; although you can always pretend. And so, almost all characters of 'society' are hypocrites.
"“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”
May is a typical example – she knows that women are expected to be innocent in above mentioned meaning of the word and so acts naive to affirm to the standard. In affirming to social expectations, she refuses to be honest with her own emotions. The only time she breaks away from social expectations is out of compassion for Ellen and Newland - ’her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself’ However, her need for conformity defeats even this exemplary compassion once institution of marriage is thrown into equation.
One other meaning of the word ‘innocence’ is honesty to one’s emotions and ideas – to cry when one feels like crying, to say and do what one thinks is right and not to take society’s dictation. Far few people accomplish that - Ellen is explicitly told not to talk about her emotions. The only people in the novel who are innocent in this later sense are either misfits (Ellen) or from so-called common people (M. Riviere). And that is why I think that the title is ironic.
Newland, the protagonist, is much more rebellious than May. For one thing, his training into matters of social form was not as closely watched; then there was all the sentimental education from novels. He struggles between social conformity and honesty to one's emotions.
And that often makes him contradict himself. Sometimes he is saying saying sexist things like “What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?” and taking offence because too much of Ellen’s shoulder is visible. At other point he is fighting for women rights. At one point, we are told “Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offence against "Taste," while later he will want to run away with Ellan.
In the begining, he is revolting in that he argues for equality of sexes but only in as far as he knows his would-be wife won’t be taking those liberties. But really people are like that. A lot of people I know in real life have this NIMBY attitude – they want equality for women but only when that ‘women’ represents distant vague sections of society like people from tv or newspapers – but they lack similar initiative in their family where habit of traditionally available advantages stops them from doing that.
These themes are similar to Lawrence, when compared to his, the psychology of Wharton's characters is more believable and she doesn't preach in as obvious a manner.
In fact, there is alternative way of looking at the novel – Archer’s oscillation between passions and conformity represented in Ellen and May; is a story of many such people; had the novel been written by a man he would have been accused of using May and Ellen as metaphors (especially given how subtly the characters of two women are developed).
"“He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.”
"I simply asked him if he was making any money. Is that a criticism?"
I don't know if Miller intended it as such but it might as well be a criticism
"I simply asked him if he was making any money. Is that a criticism?"
I don't know if Miller intended it as such but it might as well be a criticism of capitalism.
Just look at what Willy has to say to his boss upon being fired:
"You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away — a man is not a piece of fruit."
but this criticism is more existional:
"After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive."
or
"Work a lifetime to pay off a house — You finally own it and there's nobody to live in it."
or
"Nothing's Planted, I don't have a thing in the ground."
Unless you are rich, money is a very strong determinant of your self-worth. Willy and Biff struggle with the realty of fact that they haven't made much. The desire for greatness and having to accept that one is not great is another theme. Awesome.
"Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."
"I've always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all I've done is to waste my life. "
According to its google defination, satire is supposed to do two different things 1. Expose stupidity or hypocrisy of people being satired and 2. To dAccording to its google defination, satire is supposed to do two different things 1. Expose stupidity or hypocrisy of people being satired and 2. To do so in way that makes you laugh. You see everyone knows that everyone else is stupid and hypocrite - and so no one will read a book telling them that unless it is also funny. The problem is humor is something different from person to person. I personally almost never find satires funny. I mean I might love them for different reasons (for example Guliver Travels) but rarely for being funny.
Toole's book is rarely funny but it is a brilliant work of satire. Brilliant because protagonist has something archetypical about him. He leaves a lasting impression (if it be of a wrong kind) like Don Quixiote, Joker, Sydney Carton etc . Three stars just for creating that character. But then merely creating one great character ain't enough to satisfy me - which was why Don Quixote didn't got more than three stars either....more
“It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.” - Henrik Ibsen
The African village Natie visits in this book had t
“It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.” - Henrik Ibsen
The African village Natie visits in this book had this ritual where members are initiated to community though facial scarring. Something easily accepted by most villagers, but with which embarrasses a more conscious Tashi:
“ Tashi is, unfortunately, ashamed of these scars on her face, and now hardly ever raises her head.”
It is a novel about people reacting to very similar scars given to them by society. Some of them protest. To someone like Sophia, the instinct to rebel comes naturally. Then there are others who must need be inspired. Celie, the protagonist, falls in this latter category. You will have to look hard to find a character in a worse social position. She is poor, mostly uneducated, ugly, homosexual and a woman.
You know how we just buy a book and just start reading it– ya, don’t do that with this one. It has the most heart wrenching opening ever. Abused by life, or more correctly, by men who should have been responsible for her happiness; she accepts it all as fate. It just doesn’t occur to her to protest.
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” - Alice Walker (not this novel)
If she hasn’t already protested, it was because she suffered a far worse poverty- feeling of being unloved. Remember Mother Teresa, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness and feeling of being unloved.”
She did find this capital of love when she grew close to other women. And so finally she asserts her existence.
“I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.”
No longer able to bear it, she is angry with God. Initially, I thought that writing the book in form of letters to God is just a literary trick but it was more than that. Celie stopped writing to God, being angry with him.
” If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place“
and rather choose to write to Natie instead, another symbol of how women can support each-other. Her anger also shows up in her misandry causing her to say things like
” Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown.”
and
Take off they pants, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss ’em, as far as I’m concern, frogs is what they stay.
You know, it hurts.
Anyway, here comes my favourite part. In the end Celie forgives God. Celie’s anger was just another thing stopping her from enjoying her life. It is not enough to protect yourself from injustice and submission, even more important is to continue searching for happiness, to celebrate the beauty of life:
“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”
The problem with Celie and many other women taking roles expected of them by their culture is that their lives are based around men:
“All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could.”
Which means they won’t notice the color purple:
“ You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall.”
(It really hurts.)
Despite all the fem. talk (oh Devil, I badly need some gangster guy or screwed detective book), the novel is more than a feminist story. A lot of it is about the unnatural relation between oppressors and oppressed whether it is racism or sexism. The oppressor in both cases doesn’t want the oppressed to get education and won’t talk to later except concerning work. Then too, neither of them look into other party's eyes as if of guilt. And the oppressor suffers too (to lesser extent of course); who seem similarly struck with their role. As Celie’s husband confessed in the end when they had become friend-ish “ I’m satisfied this the first time I ever lived on Earth as a natural man.”
*
“Here us is, I thought, two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars.”
“But all things look brighter because I have a loving soul to share them with.”
Now it looks silly to judge a book because it has racist characters. It is like judging Jane Austen books to be materialist because it is about rich pNow it looks silly to judge a book because it has racist characters. It is like judging Jane Austen books to be materialist because it is about rich people. You can't call a book racist because it has racist characters - the more exact measure is whether the book has a world that justifies racism. Scarlet justifies slavery by arguing that black people are too naive to manage to do anything unless they are ordered. Yet, you see this argument refuted when some of the minor black characters achieve success. Farm slaves abandon their masters and join the Yankees showing they didn't agree with the southern values as most white southerners believed. It is in this way that the novel acts as an argument against slavery. If you need another proof, then there are black nanny character - an important minor character who is never named in the book. The only black characters who show submissiveness are house servants - for one reason going with Yankees would have been much riskier than their present life and secondly, they weren't the lowest in the racist hierarchy and so had something in the system to take pride in.
One argument against this is that it doesn't highlight the miseries of slaves but it is written from and limited to point of view of Scarlet, who was a teenager girl living in a protected environment till the time of war. She can't have known the terrible things done to slaves. She didn't know much about prostitution either.
There are so many things to like in this book - the way feel of book changes in different eras, the well-written characters, Rhett and Scarlet start at opposite poles in some ways (Scarlet popular and trying hard to be a good southerner and Rhett a rebel and outcast) - and towards the end comes a point where they have exchanged their roles.
Mitchell meant it to be a story of survival - and that is a theme no one here seems to be exploring. Scarlet hardens herself in face of difficulties and survives while also saving a bunch of weak ones - but this same hardening means she is no longer able to enjoy her life when she had chance. Melly who probably wouldnt have survived without Scarlet is better able to live happiness of life. Charlie's selflessness fails him in the jungle rule that followed end of war while Scarlet and Rhett are saved by selfishness. Even the last sentence is something one might say in face of a hopeless situation.
" After all, tomorrow is another day!"
*
“Dear Scarlett! You aren't helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God help the Yankees if they should get you."
Words like Holocaust, Slavery, War etc. loose over time the terror they should inspire upon one's mind. Reminding us about what these evils feel like Words like Holocaust, Slavery, War etc. loose over time the terror they should inspire upon one's mind. Reminding us about what these evils feel like is one important role art plays. Toni Morrison does exactly that in this book, and in a effective way.
Past
She starts her story in the middle when slavery is already banned and biggest horrors have already passed. however this is not a happily-ever-after. In fact, for people who have been slave (or to generalize suffer miserably in anyway) for any significant period of time; it is impossible to find a perfect happiness -there will always be ghosts of past to torment; slapping the Disney idea out of park of possibilities. In this case, we actually have a real ghost of past (the Hindi word for 'ghost' and 'past' is same).
Within very fist few pages Morrison takes art's ability of creating compassion to a new level as she makes us feel that dark past within our skins in which residents of 124 live; even if, like Denvar, we are ignorant of its details. It is scary and un-ignorable, almost visible - the characters are trying not to 'look' at it, which is understandable given its darkness:
"To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping past at bay."
We remember 'rememory' this past as Morrison brings us details in (irritatingly unannounced) flash-backs. A normal narration of events would have left readers only memories of darkest events, and we wouldn't have realised what it feels like to be a slave for all your life. The book works so brillantly because you could see the depravity felt in the smallest things and how much would those tragedies shadow any happiness that may fall in victim's way.
The past does figuritively become alive in form of Beloved, all flesh and bones. ""She reminds me of something. Something, look like, I'm supposed to remember." Although these are Paul D's words, they give experience of many people with Beloved. She was there or was a sort of metaphor of one's efforts to get over dark pasts. You can't run away from it, you need to accept it. The residents of 124 did - and they all come out of the thing better. Of course it hurt a little but Anything dead coming back to life hurts.
Slavery
How much bad do a life have to be, if a loving mother choose to kill her children rather than have them live it?
But what is slavery? It is being effectively reduced and compared to animals. It is not being allowed to love freely:
"Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to lo ve just a little bit; everything, just a little bi t, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one."
Being fueled by Morrision's prose, I could go on rambling but Baby Suggs' very first thoughts upon being freed seem to do it brillantly:
What for? What does a sixty-odd-year-old slavewoman who walks like a three-le gged dog need freedom for? And when she steppe d foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn't; that Halle, who had never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her. Something's the matter. What's the matter? What's the matter? she asked herself. She didn't know what she looked like and was not curious. But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, "These hands belong to me. These my hands." Next she felt a knocking in her chest an d discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? This pounding thing? She felt like a fool and began to laugh out loud. Mr. Garner looked over his shoulder at her with wide brown eyes and smiled himself. "What's funny, Jenny?" She couldn't stop laughing. "My heart's beating," she said. And it was true.
The book is simply genius. The book takes a child's point of view and does so brilliantly. Like any good story, it explores its theme with out explicitThe book is simply genius. The book takes a child's point of view and does so brilliantly. Like any good story, it explores its theme with out explicitly lecturing about it. That is probably why not all of us are able to understand it. The title itself is fine example. There are no mocking bird - dead or alive, in the story but the title is metaphor for acts that destroy a child's innocence and trough the story, you find characters whose innocence gets destroyed. The story explores how children go through various stages with regard to their views on morality. Also, it is pointed out, beautifully, that you can't understand a person unless you see life in his/her way.Another important theme is gender differences. That is even if you leave behind other more common theme like racism and pride. Initially, i thought it is famous only because it is all literature. Also it was based american urban life and as such, I won't like it but, the book is like a poem of humanity and equally enjoyable to all. .... and what is above all it explores those themes with a good humor....more
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