“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
The biggest criticism with this book or, at least, with its characters is racism and misogyn
“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
The biggest criticism with this book or, at least, with its characters is racism and misogyny that shows up. However I think author was recording how people behave. The patients aren’t racist and misogynist in their thoughts and actions, but are so in a self-defence based on a kind of fallacious reasoning. It is general tendency that whenever we are harmed by an individual, we just can’t make do with forming opinion about the person but find a group of which he or she is a member but we aren’t – and hold that whole group responsible. And so even though patients develop a friendship with other women and another black men, they just assume that Ms. Ratcherd’s behaviour is so because she is a woman and when there is a fight with black ‘boys’, they start using racist language. That might be kind of why hate-crimes increased after 9/11 in US – people who had no prejudice against Muslims suddenly developed it in some sort of cognitive response (although I’m not sure what that word means). I think author is just portraying behaviour of people and none of his characters is perfect. Foxes and Rabbits
“nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
One of the characters uses a metaphor of foxes and rabbits in the story. The rabbits are most of us and the foxes are the kind of people, who seem to want to use other people and are even prepared to harm others for their personal advantage. They are usually the kind of people who end up rising higher up in the hierarchy – managers, generals, your stereotype type bad boss, the people who have the loudest voice s when they are debating, the bullies, the pickup artists etc. We all know the kind – the people who will feed and increase your insecurity, who are prepared to eat into you for personal advantage. They would think the whole world is a game of chess and you are at war with everyone, wherever they find someone weak, they make their move. Most, that is, rabbits are not like that – we are natural, peace loving, easily trusting people who can’t hate someone enough to harm them in such a planned way, so lack the kind of competitive spirit and tend to avoid conflict.
“Seen 'em all over the country and in the homes—people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin' you where it hurts the worst.”
And rabbits are bound to lose to such foxes for rabbits only play defensive, they can’t be aggressive.
“She don't lose on her losses, but she wins on ours. To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.”
Most of the rabbits adapt to this constant threat of being attacked and so learn to live in the world – with fear and insecurities and in conformity to rules against them. Think workers working on minimum wages in MNCs! Shut-ins
“But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you?”
However there are a few who can’t handle such attacks and can’t confirm either, they give in, break down, go mad or shut themselves away – they come to believe that they can’t live in a world like that. The asylum is full of patients who are exactly like that. Many of them are there voluntarily – to shut themselves away from the world. They are willingly to accept the torturing treatment given to them by society instead. The point they seem to be missing is that they are hardly better being shut in. They aren’t any less vulnerable to those foxes, but being away from all the soft pleasures of the world that eases life when one lives among normal people, they might in fact be far more vulnerable. Perhaps what is lacking in them more than anything else is self-confidence and assertiveness - and that laughter is the best medicine.
“you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy”
Mckensky, a rebel, con-man and a psychopath (now that is kind of protagonist I like), slowly realises the problem – he does more for these people than institution ever did. He teaches them to fight back in self-defence. We aren’t all naturally good fighters, some of us have to learn. And he had to break rules, start rebellition for that. And so was asylum intentionally keeping them down? Well, perhaps not intentionally. But I think that there is general agreement about mental hospitals not being best of places to cure a diseased mind.
“The air is pressed in by the walls, too tight for laughing. There's something strange about a place where the men won't let themselves loose and laugh”
The narrator is prone to Shyzopernic – and it puts an asterisk on this whole black-and-white imagine of characters.May be the Big Nurse was the good person after all. It reminds one of a class-room scene where class rebel is questioning some rule difficult to follow and teacher is like ‘it is for your own good’ and you can’t be sure who is right. But like most good unreliable-narrator books, it is more fun reading if you take the narrator on his word, rather than guessing the truth behind what he is saying.
“But it's the truth even if it didn't happen”
* And now that the author chose to give away our secret i DON’T SEE ANY REASON FOR KEEPING IT:
“The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.”
And this ismy favourite:
“You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.”
Kind of like movie 'Titanic' minus the setting in ship and the happy ending. A young woman choking in the boredom and hypocrisy of English life is attKind of like movie 'Titanic' minus the setting in ship and the happy ending. A young woman choking in the boredom and hypocrisy of English life is attracted to a man from another world.
There are a bunch of metaphors. The view the room offers is the temptation to escape. Lucy's name means light, Cecil, her fiance's name means dark or blind, may be because unlike Lucy yearning for view, he likes sitting in dark. Lucy is not sure about whether she wants to stay engaged with him or not. I mean look at the names! I might have liked it more if it hadn't been such an overused theme. And then the ridiculous love triangle! How many women in fiction break off or were tempted to break off with their sick or ordinary significant others - Lady Chatterlay, Emma Bovary, Lucy, Rose, Edna Ponteller. ...more
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
"It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.
Hurston wrote
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
"It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.
Hurston wrote this novel when efforts were being made by some sections of American whites to keep African Americans down using different methods. One such method was by writing fiction that portrayed colored people as racially inferior. In response to such fiction, a second movement was started which sought to show African Americans as perfect, law abiding citizens and that included presenting Black women as something sexless (and thus fight the stereotype that Black women were lacking in 'moral discipline). Janie's second husband and her life with him seems to metaphor -ise this second movement, he was a sort of ideal citizen who brought development to his people - she wasn't happy with him
Hurston belonged to a third movement, that didn't like the perfect characters of second movement and rather wished to focus on bringing out the prevalent racism in the country. (This movement, like the novel and like so many things too good for their own times failed to gain popularity.) Hurston's characters are thus far from flawless. Both the protogonist, Janie and her final 'true love' Tea Cake (now that is some name!) are far lookist saying things like "And he stood in the door and paid all the ugly women two dollars not to come in." Then, there is another black character who has a racist bad opinion of characters of her own race, thinking they deserve their misfortunes. Janie isn't always the most feminist character, letting herself be dominated and beaten by Tea Cake. There are, moreover, some Whites who are friendly and kind to Jennie and her granny.
Hurston's argument wasn't that African Americans or women deserve their rights because they were flawless, but rather they deserve them because they are humans. And so it is simply a novel about an assertive woman in pursuit of true love. Still, the novel itself is full of feminist and anti-racist tones portrayed by the bad treatment that they received.
"Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see."
Henry Miller is one of few writers who seem to be comfortable writing about sex and yet not make the book pornographic. There is very little by way ofHenry Miller is one of few writers who seem to be comfortable writing about sex and yet not make the book pornographic. There is very little by way of plot in here but there are a number of bursts of prose (mostly to effect of how the whole world is one giant gutter and we are just worms in it with STDs) which read like written by James Joyce's teenage son high on weed....more
Anyone who ever read history can observe how nations involved in great revolutions which bring great changes, slowly reverts to the old ways. A new woAnyone who ever read history can observe how nations involved in great revolutions which bring great changes, slowly reverts to the old ways. A new world can not be created out of old people - at least not in as short time as revolution tries to do. Revolution is an act of desperation by masses which is exception, efforts to make it a rule will always fail.
To quote one example, Napoleon took over dictatorship after revolution had established democracy in France. Animal farm brings this theme out perfectly, though it uses Russian context but even if you don't know about Russian revolution you will still enjoy it.
Russian revolution which aimed at establishing socialism had ended up just replacing Czars with new rulers who slowly started looking like the old aristocrats. Animal Farm is an allegory of Russian revolution and its history under its two dictators. There are too many metaphors to talk about.
Here is a list : Men = Czars/Upper class Political class = Pigs Armed Forces = Dogs Old Major = Karl Marx (or Vladimir Lenin) Snowball = Leon Trotsky Napoleon = Stalin
There are many more - the hard working horse who is blindly faithful and old Benjamin who was too wise to know what would happen and yet choose to keep silent.
George Orwell is not against socialism, in fact at many other places he has demanded socialistic reforms in England; what he is criticizing is the way Stalin manipulated the idea of socialism to his own interests, just like the way the pigs manipulated the seven commandments.
The advantage which an allegory offers is that it gives reader a new perspective of seeing things and thus one gets to reconsider the assumptions she or he has come to made over time. It is amusing, for example, how commandments were altered more and more to benefit of pigs.
England and Russia were at time of publication allies and so This book is NOT a propaganda book, in fact it was rejected by many publishers, and Ministry of Information of England strongly recommended against its publication. Orwell's preface to Animal Farm, also called 'The freedom of press' is an eye opener - do read it if you already haven't. ...more
You know how people say that some books are ahead of their time. I think Woolf's Orlando is a book which probably won't be understood for another decaYou know how people say that some books are ahead of their time. I think Woolf's Orlando is a book which probably won't be understood for another decade or so.
The sudden change of Orlando's sex and his several centuries old existence along with/her very easy acceptance of those things rings of magical realism. The fantastic bit that of Orlando's living through several centuries is used to develop the book into what looked like a poem on the spirit of Time. Through different ages, Orlando tastes the life and literary trends of each time, herself changing and maturing over tim, and all this is portrayed in Woolf's beautiful prose.
This is also supposed to be a sort of tribute/love-letter to Woolf's friend, Vita, I don't know how.
However what was hardest for me to digest (really hard) was that Orlando didn't notice the change of her sex for several days (really, really hard.) And (s)he only noticed it when (s)he started getting in touch with other people, and his/her further experiences to seem to validate the theory that gender behavior is induced by social expectations (rather than something inherent), a nurture thing rather than nature. I don't think such a theory existed at the time the novel was written. Even the best psychologists like Freud thought the gender differences are inherent in sex.
Even now, we tend to use the words 'sex' and gender' interchangeably. Psychologists differentiate between two, sex is a biological characteristic determined by one's private parts while gender is a social construct includes all the attributes (stereotypes, roles, behavior etc) that society expects from people of each sex.
Thus male and female are sexes, while masculinity and feminity are genders. Too technical, isn't it!.Woolf was pointing the difference between two and proposing that gender is a social construct (something society conditions us into though tools like clothes, language etc.), so loved by feminists, quarter a century before the term 'gender role' was coined. And she does it in subtle and, at times, hilarious manner.
Still, I think it is too big an exaggeration to say Orlando won't notice the change for days. Any guy will smell a difference when he wakes up one day and .. lo, he has breasts ... I mean obviously ......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.”
whosoever Ethan loves, turns into a punishment for him by falling sick on him. Having given away all his happiness and opportunities for sake of his fwhosoever Ethan loves, turns into a punishment for him by falling sick on him. Having given away all his happiness and opportunities for sake of his family and seeing an even more dreadful future lay ahead of him, he is flirting with idea of running away from his duties and live, once, for his own sake.
Is it proper to waste away your life caring for a relation who is perpetualy sick? It might be romantic and a great gesture and all, but is it worth it to waste multiple lives instead of one.?
A good argument for changing that 'till death do us apart' oath into 'till death or a long sickness do us apart'. Beware you who enter there, Wharton isn't much into wearing boxing gloves....more
“Sex is just another form of talk, where you act words instead of saying them.
Lawerence could have loved those Hollywood movie scenes where chara
“Sex is just another form of talk, where you act words instead of saying them.
Lawerence could have loved those Hollywood movie scenes where characters start kissing each-other in the middle of conversation for no obvious reason. His last novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is one of most challenged works– on account of its use of then unprintable words. Its free publishing was one of the main events of sexual revolution of 1960s. And okay, I mean it is a great book but what will you say to a book that has conversations like these:
‘Well, young man, and what about my daughter?' The grin flickered on Mellors' face. 'Well, Sir, and what about her?' 'You've got a baby in her all right.' 'I have that honour!' grinned Mellors. 'Honour, by God!' Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. 'Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what?' 'Good!' 'I'll bet it was! Ha-ha! My daughter, chip of the old block,what! I never went back on a good bit of fucking, myself. Though her mother, oh, holy saints!
… Did I tell you the daughter in question is already married to another man? And believe me, it is a very modest sample compared to what this book contains.
Emma and Connie
Connie Chatterley sometimes reminds you of Emma Bovary. The similarity is not only limited to Adulatary but goes beyond. They both willingly married and to the men much than older themselves and both find themselves frustrated in their marriage. They are both well learnt specially for their time – Emma used to read romantic novels while Connie actually can and like to discuss intellectual subjects.
And now for the differences – Connie’s adultery is less revolting and she find at least a few supporters and lovers who won’t desert her. Emma’s frustration was because of her adventurous spirit, her romantic needs. Connie already had enough of adventures by the time she was married, lovers and all.
No, Connie’s needs are far more simple – all she need is sex. The novel starts when Clifford, her husband, returned home, being paralysed from the waist down due to a war injury. Connie is forced to take care of him and is full of sexual frustration (it might be the first book that brings out the concept):
“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”
Incomplete People and Imperfect Relationships
Unlike Emma, Connie is full of reflections and is always trying to find the meaning of life; she is constantly learning from her experience:
“In the short summer night she learnt so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died. Shame, which is fear: the deep organic shame, the old, old physical fear which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased away by the sensual fire, at last it was roused up and routed by the phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle of herself.
All Connie’s lovers as well as other characters in story were incomplete in one way or other – though she may count Mellers as an exception. Tommy Dukes, for example, never has a relationship because he cannot find a woman whom he respects intellectually and, at the same time, finds desirable. Clifford's physical disability might be a metaphor.
And since people are incomplete, so are the relationships. There are marry-and-be-done-with-it types, some fear being hated by their lovers, others want to bully them, still others let themselves be bullied, yet others who make face and want to pretend they are a happy couple. All Connie’s pre-marital affairs were mere intellectual as far as she was concerned – where physical act played only a secondary role. This view changed to the other extreme by the end of novel. She is disgusted by her husband’s idol-worshiping herwhich was result of his possessiveness. She is again disgusted by need people feel to mask everything by poetry.
There is a lot of sex in it – both theories and practical. Connie struggles trying to find out the right way to life – living among all those theories and discussions which Clifford’s friends air in the get to gathers at her house. Though don’t take it for mere erotica, it is more of a person’s discovery’s of life’s truths which had been veiled from her by the moral hypocrisy of humanity:
“I believe the life of the body is a greater reality than the life of the mind: when the body is really wakened to life. But so many people, like your famous wind-machine, have only got minds tacked on to their physical corpses.' He looked at her in wonder. 'The life of the body,' he said, 'is just the life of the animals.' 'And that's better than the life of professional corpses. But it's not true! the human body is only just coming to real life. With the Greeks it gave a lovely flicker, then Plato and Aristotle killed it, and Jesus finished it off. But now the body is coming really to life, it is really rising from the tomb. And It will be a lovely, lovely life in the lovely universe, the life of the human body.’
It is the psychology of whole thing which concerns Lawrence. Basically he can't help speculating over What-they-are-thinking-when-they-are-doing-it.
Prose
And of course, Lawrence has a lovely prose – willing to look at his own story from different angles; full of psychological insights; on the negative side he can be hazardously wrong on many things, can be repetitive, and does talk a lot – sometimes stupidly offending people but in the end see,s to be honest in a certain way.
“when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of the re-assumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst.
Loading...
