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Esme and her Particular Branch of Innocence

In class, we talked a lot about what Esmé means to the narrator and why he finds her to be such a comfort. Personally, I believe that Esmé represents a break from the chaos going on around him. Right now, about to go off to war, everything is uncertain, terrifying, and real. Stumbling upon the children’s choir provided the narrator with a small haven of innocence and purity when the world around him is everything but. 1t4 It’s very important to note that the practice the narrator witnesses is a practice instead of an actual performance, and Esmé, who he focuses on, is tired and over the whole rehearsal instead of enlightened and perfectly pure. Normally we associate the beauty of children’s choirs with the beauty of the special connection they seem to have with higher beings when they sing, as well as the fact that they’re all too young to be developing issues and negativity. The fact that the narrator finds the imperfection to be the best thing about the choir shows that there’s ...
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A Quest for Ancestry

We’ve discussed Song of Solomon as a hero’s journey novel, and I definitely agree with this idea. Milkman is essentially going on a quest for manhood and ancestry. Before he embarks on his quest, Milkman is essentially a twelve year old in a man’s body. He’s immature, passive, and incredibly self-centered, all qualities that are reflected in Milkman and Guitar’s adventure in stealing from Pilate. Instead of simply brushing off the embarrassing end result, Milkman chose to learn from it, and in further pursuing the gold he was further pursuing growth and development. Journeying to Pennsylvania gave him a pride and appreciation for his ancestry, a stark contrast to the hate he’d harboured for his father all his life. It also gave Milkman his first taste of how racism affects him and his family. This development is important because, due to his privilege, Milkman never really had to deal with racism and thus never cared to take a stand against it. Finding out that the white family wh...
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Are You My Mother?

One theme that I found repeated over and over in Wide Sargasso Sea is Antoinette’s attachment and resortment to objects in order to replace the people around her. In the very beginning of the novel, her narrative voice is established as somewhat void of emotion, yet sullen at the same time. She rarely narrated her emotions or provided vivid imagery, but when describing the nature at Coulibri, her tone completely changes. Antoinette describes in detail everything about the garden, painting it as a romanticized and beautiful scene. Contrast the sheer emotion she puts into her description of the garden with the narration involving her mother. When talking about Anette, Antoinette is cold and matter of fact, and we can only derive her emotions from small side notes or the facts she gives us. Slightly later, Antoinette describes the piece of wood that she keeps under her bed. She narrates, “I grew very fond of it, I believed that no one could harm me when it was near me, to lose it wou...
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The One Where the Court Feels Uncomfortable

My biggest question after reading The Stranger is why was the whole court process the way it was? Why did they care so little about the crime itself? Why were they so determined and desperate to find anything they could to let Meursault off easy, while still focusing entirely on judging his soul? I don't know much about twentieth century legal proceedings; perhaps that's just how courts ran back then, but somehow I doubt it. Similar to Kafka’s slightly surreal world in The Metamorphosis, this world seems to be slightly off. If this reality is altered, then the big question is why? Why did Camus choose to alter reality in this way, and what does it contribute to the story? I think that the court is meant to represent the reader, and in turn humanity as a whole, to show the power of an uncomfortable empathy. Nobody cared about Meursault’s oddness for the first part of the book. Despite Meursault being very upfront about his lack of strong emotion for or desire to marry Marie...
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Another Way of Looking at Kafka

After today’s panel presentation about seeing The Metamorphosis through the lens of ageing, I decided to write my Kafka blog post on my own (admittedly stretched) possible interpretation of the novella. Reading Kafka’s story, I couldn’t help but envision Gregor’s transformation as an analogy for mental illness and the way it was dealt with during Kafka’s time. Mental illness in general could definitely fit Gregor’s narrative, but autism makes even more sense. I did some research and found that there’s a smattering of people who agree, so bear with me. The biggest evidence to support this analogy is Gregor’s inability to communicate with anyone else, and the lack of effort to communicate on the family’s part. Think of a child with autism in the 20th century. There wasn’t much knowledge about autism during this time period, and nobody really knew how to communicate with autistic people, so they often didn’t try to communicate at all. On the other hand, autism often renders a pers...
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Does Brett Really Love Jake?

In The Sun Also Rises , the narration makes it very clear that Brett is in love with Jake. It’s easy to assume the narrator is reliable and take this statement at face value, but I think that if you really delve into the relationship between Jake and Brett, her true feelings for Jake become more ambiguous and disputable. Brett states again and again that she loves Jake and wishes they could be together. Now I hate Brett with a passion, so I have a strong bias, but I believe that Brett’s actions show otherwise. We’ve already discussed how Brett is incredibly manipulative of Jake. Knowing that they can never be together, she flaunts her relations with other guys in front of him. She even goes so far as to ask Jake to set her up with Romero. While you could view this as Brett essentially asking Jake’s permission to go after Romero, I think Brett’s intentions are more malicious. While Jake is holding onto Brett because he's so in love with her that he can't let go, Brett keeps...
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Woolf and Gender Expression

Woolf, having an ambiguous affair with a woman herself, quite obviously explored sexuality in Mrs. Dalloway through such relationships as Sally and Clarissa and perhaps Septimus and Evans. In a slightly more subtle fashion, Woolf experiments with gender expression and androgyny through almost every character she depicts. Let's start with the guys. Septimus is probably the most blaringly obvious example of this as a man who cries all the time, is incredibly sensitive, and lets his emotions and experiences affect him. Even more, he joined the military specifically because he was too feminine. Even Richard appears effeminate in his passiveness and bumbling awkwardness. Then there are the women. Sally is overtly exploring her gender expression through her sexual bravado (in running through the halls naked), smoking cigars, and the overall confidence and spontaneity she exudes in comparison to the passivity expected of women. Lady Bruton and Miss Kilman are also shown as masculine...
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