Pilate

Pilate can be seen as the protagonist of Song of Solomon because she is the story's moral guide. Although the narrator hardly focuses on what Pilate is thinking or feeling, her presence is strongly felt throughout the novel. Despite being named after the Roman statesman who crucified Jesus Christ, according to the New Testament, Pilate has a complete lack of cruelty. Very often, she is leading someone who is in need of guidance.

Although Pilate's role in the novel isn't as visible as someone like Milkman's, it is definitely just as important.  Pilate having been a survivor of strong racism is nevertheless loving and altruistic. Her loving nature implies strength rather than weakness. When a man beats her daughter, Reba, Pilate pushes a knife within an inch of his heart and persuades him never to touch Reba again. Even though Pilate is in her sixties and the abuser is a strong young man, Pilate prevails.

Morrison suggests that Pilate’s supernatural powers, great strength, lasting youthfulness, and boundless love come from African-American cultural traditions. Although Pilate suffers the same disadvantages as Macon Jr., she is still able to preserve a link to her family’s forgotten past. By singing folk songs about Sugarman’s flight, Pilate recreates a past in which her ancestors shed their oppression. Her recreation of this past sustains the characters who live in the present. Milkman later realizes that Pilate is the only human being he knows who is able to fly without ever leaving the ground. That is, she is already liberated and does not need to escape to attain freedom. Ultimately, Pilate becomes the novel’s model character, showing that strength does not have to come at the expense of gentleness, and that personal freedom is not necessarily compromised by love for others.

Impressions of Blogging

At the beginning of the year when I found out that we would have to be writing journals, I was dreading having to keep up something like that and constantly remember to write about something, but as the year went on, I started to enjoy the writing. It's a chance to see what other classmates think about certain parts of the book, presentations, or other random stuff that might fascinate us! It's also a good opportunity for people who don't like to speak up in class to state their opinion.

I definitely prefer typing an online journal to having a handwritten one. It goes a lot faster ,it's much easier to correct mistakes, and no matter how bad your handwriting is, a typed version is always really organized and easy for others to read.

All in all, I guess that I support the idea of having a blog as a good way to share ideas and see what each other is thinking. And I definitely feel that an online blog is a much better idea that a handwritten journal!

Themes in Song of Solomon

While reading Song of Solomon, there were several recurring themes that I noticed throughout. These were a couple that I found.
 
Allusions in Name: Names hold a special significance in regards to each character. Pilate, a biblical reference to the Roman governor who allowed the execution of Jesus Christ, shares some similar traits with her namesake, such as strength and power. Although she is not cruel in her authority, Pilate is a male name suggesting that she bears the stereotypical characteristics of a man, at least as perceived by society at the time. Circe's name bears homage to the enchantress in Homer's Odyssey, who provides Odysseus with crucial information on how to end his voyage. In Song of Solomon, Circe supplies Milkman with segments of his family history, so that he may end his search for his family heritage. Hagar, a biblical name, is a direct explanation of her strained and desperate relationship with Milkman, who abandons her, as can be predicted through the Bible.

The family surname of Dead is a spiritual wordplay. Milkman's family accidentally received the name from white oppressors, thus suggesting that their real name died, and at that point, so did their family history. The importance of names relates to a sense of belonging, to being able to trace one's roots through the ages. Throughout the entire novel, there are continuous references to Milkman being Dead, both in terms of name and character. Upon Milkman's rebirth, he no longer can be called Dead, neither by name nor by personality.

Singing: The theme of singing and song is a reference not only to the African oral tradition but also to the days of slavery. Slaves, as means of getting through their work on the plantation, sang spirituals. Such songs talked of faith and hope, and how to live with the spirit of God. Singing was a way in which slaves could express their personal feelings, and it was also a means of cheering one another up. Many songs also contained "secret messages," for instance making indirect references to the Underground Railroad.

The act of singing communicates the importance of the oral tradition, demonstrated through Pilate's "Oh Sugarman done fly away..." The song, originally a reference to Solomon, tells the tale of Milkman's great-grandfather. It is this song that transmits Milkman's family history, and steers him towards his spiritual rebirth. Overall, songs underline the rebuilding of a spiritual and emotional bond. In the novel, Pilate, Hagar and Reba all bond through the act of singing. And, after Hagar's death, Reba and Pilate comfort one another through a song.

Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre: Read Together or Alone

While doing a presentation comparing the symbolism in Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre, there was one quote from the article that became a strong discussion point for the majority of the students: “The novels must be read together in order to fully appreciate how they complement each other, and how each is also a novel in its own right, with distinct character and plot.” A lot of people disagreed about whether or not you would necessarily need to read one in order to read the other. Some people thought that Wide Sargasso Sea works well on its own, while others thought that you need to read Jane Eyre before in order to get a deeper understanding for other characters such as Rochester. 

Personally, since I read Jane Eyre before Wide Sargasso Sea, I think that it if you are only reading Wide Sargasso Sea, you wouldn’t need to read Jane Eyre because it easily stands alone as a good book. However, when reading Jane Eyre, the reader doesn’t meet Bertha Mason/Antoinette Cosway almost until the end of the novel. She is such a mysterious character, and we hardly get to meet her, that it makes the reader want to know more about her and know what made her become the way she did.

Rochester

Since I know the story of Jane Eyre very well, and now having read Wide Sargasso Sea, I have two very different views of Edward Rochester. In Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, Rochester plays a very crucial role. Although it is hard to like him at first, as the story goes on and we learn more about his story, Rochester becomes more and more likeable to the reader. However, in Wide Sargasso Sea, the reader gets a very different view of his personality. He is a very difficult person to admire. He is self-centered and arrogant. Eventually he is unfaithful to Bertha (known as Antoinette at the time).

In class, we discussed who we felt more sympathetic for in Wide Sargasso Sea and, not surprisingly, most people definitely feel much more for Antoinette because they know her story and how much she has been through. Although I am sympathetic towards Antoinette, I also feel a lot of sorrow for Rochester. He is basically being forced into a marriage that he doesn’t completely want to be a part of, although he eventually comes to appreciate Antoinette. In Jane Eyre, the reader can’t help but feel sorry for him. He is such an unhappy and lonely person and it is clear that his heart is full of the pain of his past, but it is understandable why it would be hard for people who have only known him from Wide Sargasso Sea to feel this sympathy towards him.

The Intricacies of Racial Interaction

Subtleties of race and the intricacies of Jamaica’s social hierarchy play an important role in the development of the novel’s main themes. Whites born in England are distinguished from the white Creoles, descendants of Europeans who have lived in the West Indies for one or more generations. Further complicating the social structure is the population of black ex-slaves who maintain their own kinds of social rank. Christophine, for instance, stands apart from the Jamaican servants because she is originally from the French Caribbean island of Martinique. Furthermore, there is a large mixed-race population, as white slave owners throughout the Caribbean and the Americas were notorious for raping and impregnating female slaves. Sandi and Daniel Cosway, two of Alexander Cosway’s illegitimate children, both occupy this middle ground between black and white society.

Interaction between these racial groups is often negative. Antoinette and her mother, however, do not share the purely racist views of other whites on the island. Both women recognize their dependence on the black servants who care for them, feeling a respect that often borders on fear and resentment. In this manner, power structures based on race always seem to be turning in the other direction.

Wide Sargasso Sea vs. Jane Eyre

The most impressive difference between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea is that the latter transforms Rochester's first wife from Bertha Mason, the infamous "madwoman in the attic," to the lively yet vulnerable Antoinette Cosway. She is no longer a cliche or a "foreign," possibly lunatic, but a real woman with her own hopes, fears, and desires. Wide Sargasso Sea tells her side of the story as well as Rochester's, detailing how she ended up alone and raving in the attic of Thornfield Hall. It gives a voice not only to her, but to the black people in the West Indies whom Rochester regards with such hatred. In Rhys' version of events, Antoinette's insanity, infidelity, and drunkenness are the result of Rochester's misguided belief that madness is in her blood and that she was part of the scheme to have him married blindly.

The characters of Jane Eyre and Antoinette are very similar. They are both independent, vivacious, imaginative young women with troubled childhoods, educated in religious establishments and looked down on by the upper classes — and, of course, they both marry Mr. Rochester. However, Antoinette is more rebellious than Jane and less mentally stable, possibly because she has had to live through even more distressing circumstances. She displays a deep vein of morbidity verging on a death wish  and, in contrast with Jane's overt Christianity, holds a cynical viewpoint of both God and religion in general.

Themes in The Stranger

In the first half of The Stranger, by Albert Camus, Meursault, the protagonist, is clearly an unreflecting, unapologetic person. He is moved only by sensory experiences. Thus, Meursault kills the Arab because of his response to the glaring sun, which beats down upon him as he moves toward the Arab on the beach. The Arab’s death isn't particularly meaningful in itself, it's merely something else that happens to Meursault. The significance of this episode is that it forces his life and its meaning as he contemplates his impending execution. Only by being tried and sentenced to death is Meursault forced to acknowledge his own mortality and the responsibility he has for his own life.

Truth is another motif in the book. Meursault, despite being judged as amoral, is consistently honest and direct. In his unyielding candor, he never displays emotions that he does not feel. Neither does he participate in social conventions calling for dishonesty. Although grief is considered the socially acceptable or "normal" response, Meursault does not exhibit grief at his mother's funeral. This incorruptible honesty takes on a naïve dimension when he goes through the trial process; he questions the need for a lawyer, claiming that the truth should speak for itself. Much of the second half of the book involves this theme of the arbitrariness of "justice". A public official compiling the details of the case tells Meursault he will be saved if he repents and turns to Christianity, but Meursault refuses to pretend he has found religion. More generally, Meursault's honesty overrides his self-preservation instinct; he ultimately accepts punishment for his actions, and refuses to try put off justice.

       A main theme in the novel is the absurd, and it is a theme that at times throughout the book seems to override the responsibility aspect of the powerful ending. The ending seems to reflect that Meursault is in fact satisfied with his demise, to the extent that one can be satisfied with death, while also of course being terrified. It seems that, in facing death, he's found revelation and happiness. But even that revelation was in the "gentle indifference of the world". A central contributor to this theme was that of the pause after he shot the Arab for the first time. In one key moment, while being interviewed by the magistrate, he mentions how it did not matter that he waited and shot four more times. In this incident, Meursault thinks completely objectively, and truly there is no difference in tangible results: the Arab died in one shot, and four more shots did not make him any "more" dead.

Connected to the Lost Generation

When I was in sixth grade my sister, Emily, was studying in Switzerland for the year.  During Christmas break we met her in Paris.  Of all the places we went, my mom’s favorite place was a very crowded bookstore called Shakespeare and Company.  This bookstore was opened many years ago on a different street in Paris by an American woman named Sylvia Beach.  It was an English language bookstore, and it became very popular.  Many of the writers and other people who were part of the “lost generation” hung out there, including Ernest Hemingway.  After WWII a man named George Whitman opened a new Shakespeare and Company right across from Notre Dame Cathedral.  We have a book called Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation which includes pictures of him at the old store. He and Sylvia were great friends.   There were many Americans living in Paris at that time.  There were many other famous writers there such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.   When I read The Sun Also Rises I could picture the characters at the cafes and bars there.  We have a photo taken in front of Les Deux Magots which is a café Hemingway liked to go to.  It’s on a corner with many tables and chairs outside.  This is the type of place where Jake, Robert Cohn, Brett and the others would have sat and ordered drinks.  Hemingway experienced many of the things he wrote about in The Sun Also Rises.  I can imagine why the “lost generation” Americans would want to live in such a beautiful city as Paris

A Love-Hate Relationship with Brett

I noticed during class discussion about Brett that with most people, you either love her or you hate her. I would have to say that I’m pretty in between, because there were a lot of things that I really liked about her character, while other things that she did drove me crazy.

When she wanted to, Brett could be a very kind and caring person. There is one scene where Jake is clearly in a state of depression and Brett is very gentle and understanding towards him. She even hugs him to give physical comfort, an act which I found surprising considering her personality.

When Brett has had a lot to drink she can be either very out of it or confused, and sometimes even mean, although that is rare. There is a scene towards the beginning of the novel where Brett is completely drunk to the point where she is standing in the street and shouting things up to Jake’s window.

There was also a lot of discussion on how Brett is taking advantage of Jake’s unending love for her in unfair ways. For example, towards the end of the book, when Brett is in San Sebastian with and runs out of money, but knows that Jake is at her beck and call and will come to comfort her and take her back home. It is also frustrating to many people that Jake lets himself be treated this way just because he is in love with her. He acts like he has no pride.

Although there is a lot of hatred towards Brett, I think that almost all of her acts have reason, though they may not always be good. She obviously has had some hardships in her life, before we, the readers, meet her, which could explain a lot and cause more understanding from people.  

Virginia Woolf vs. Ernest Hemingway

In class lately we have been talking a lot about the differences between the writing styles of Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemmingway. Some people might think that, because these two authors are from similar time periods, their styles of writing must be similar. However, it is quite the contrary. Woolf and Hemingway’s styles could not be more different.

Virginia Woolf loves to use lots of description and make the reader be right next to the person they are describing or in the room that that person is in. Her amazing attention to detail is what made Mrs. Dalloway the book that it was. She fills sometimes an entire page with description, from the red velvet curtains to sound that the car makes when it. Another one of Woolf’s traits is the way she likes to get inside peoples’ heads. A majority of the novel is spent in one of the characters heads, usually Clarissa, Richard, or Septimus’s.   Sometimes it’s not a lot, but it’s important. For example, when Richard is buying the flowers for Clarissa, the only way we know that they are to tell her he loves her is because we get inside his head and know exactly what he’s thinking.

Ernest Hemingway is very different. His pages are full of four or five word sentences. He has hardly any detail and is not descriptive about almost anything. He also has continuous back and forth dialogue that often causes the reader to get confused about who is talking. I also found that a lot of Hemingway’s comments were very politically incorrect and/or racist whereas, even if Virginia Woolf is implying some of the same things, it is much more subtle. Hemingway, on the other hand, is very blunt.

Another difference is that Woolf seems to write about more feminine topics, like flowers and parties. Hemingway tries to be very macho and his entire novel is filled with people who are very often crude and drink constantly.

Although they come from the same time period, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway have very different styles of writing, but the way they each write makes their novels all the more fascinating.

Mrs. Dalloway-the Movie

Over the weekend, I watched the movie version of Mrs. Dalloway to see how it compared to the novel. Overall I thought it followed the novel very closely as far as plotline and dialogue. However the main, very big, difference was the loss of the characters’ thoughts. This was what, I thought, made the book unique. While we are able to hear some of Clarissa’s thoughts through Vanessa Redgrave’s narration, much is lost. For example, a big portion of the novel discusses Clarissa’s hatred towards Miss Killman, but in the movie we don’t get any sense of how Clarissa feels. Another example is when Richard is getting the flowers for Clarissa; we don’t know that he is getting them to show her that he loves her, because we don’t hear what he’s thinking. One clever way of replacing the loss of thoughts was by showing it through flashbacks. In the movie, Clarissa hardly narrates about Sally. Instead, we learn everything we know about Sally through flashbacks of a young Sally and Clarissa.

Some of the younger versions of the characters were sometimes distractingly different looking from the older versions and some of the casting, I thought, was completely wrong. What I got from the novel was that Peter Walsh was supposed to be very handsome and charming, but in the movie, neither the younger Peter nor the old Peter was either of these. I think Clarissa, played by Vanessa Redgrave, was too old for this role and she didn’t have enough energy or show enough enthusiasm for this character. One character that I thought was perfectly cast was Septimus . Although we couldn’t hear what he was thinking, there were many references to Evans and anytime Septimus was thinking about the war, we could hear the sound of bombs exploding and people shouting, as if we were in the midst of a battle. However, he also did a great job of showing what a wonderful man he used to be before the war. The woman who played Rezia was also very well cast. She very accurately portrayed Lucrezia’s innocence and the way she was shut out from society.

These are just a few of my thoughts comparing the two and if I had to choose, I definitely like the book better!

Septimus vs. Richard

After watching The Hours in class, I found myself comparing it to Mrs. Dalloway. I was surprised at a few things, like the fact that Richard’s suicide in the movie affected me emotionally a lot more than Septimus’s suicide in the novel. I don’t think it was necessarily from actually seeing it happen, but more because I felt that in the movie, I got to know Richard more and actually understand what he was feeling. In the novel, there is a good deal more of Septimus (than of Richard in the movie), however almost anything about him was coming from inside his head, things he was thinking and these are things that weren’t very emotional. They were strange thoughts, almost hallucinations. The only time we got a glimpse of what Septimus was like before the war was when he and Lucrezia were making the hat and laughing and having a good time; she recollects that that was how she remembered him. In all of Richard’s scenes in the movie, I felt a deep sympathy for what he was feeling simply because we weren’t hearing what he was thinking, we were hearing what he was saying. I think that if Virginia Woolf had given the reader more of an idea of how people saw Septimus from the outside, I would have been able to have a deeper connection with Septimus.

Another Clarissa

Even though Clarissa Dalloway lives in the 1902s and has many restrictions of that time period, I think there are other Clarissas in more modern times. The movie The Hours shows us this. The more I think about it, the more I think my aunt was a lot like Clarissa. She wasn't extremely wealthy, but she had a very comfortable life. She used to like to act in plays and was very outgoing, but after she got married, she had a very quiet life. Like Clarissa, she liked to make everything perfect and beautiful. My mother used to say that when her sister wrapped a present, it was a work of art. Even though she could have gone to college or had a career, she didn't. She stayed at home and didn't have much to do, but she liked to have special dinners and make the house look perfect. She had mental health problems like Virginia Woolf/Septimus. She was often sick, similar to Clarissa, and her husband would take care of her. I think that my aunt had more choices than Clarissa Dalloway, but they both could have had many more adventures and much more excitement if they had married different people.

The Hours

So far, I have found the movie "The Hours" to be really interesting! I love seeing how the three different time periods are linked together through things that are more subtle and others that are very obvious. The very first one that I noticed, which was a pretty obvious one, was the way that the movie started out; Virginia Woolf writing Mrs. Dalloway, the single mom reading the novel, and Clarissa Dalloway saying the first line of the novel in her own context. I thought that was a really cool way to start the movie!

 I also like how there are certain symbols that they keep referring back to, like the cake that the single mom and her son make for the dad, which I think symbolizes how trapped she feels and how unhappy she feels living with her husband.

One other thing that I really like are how we get to see how the three women deal with their personal issues, due to the time period that the live in. It is clear that the more modern the times are, the more open they can be about their feelings, although there is still a huge difference between the 2001 setting and the 1950s setting.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this movie so far and I can’t wait to see how it ends!

A Modern-Day Septimus

 Last week, we spent a lot of time in class discussing Septimus and the affect that the war had on his life. There was a lot of debate about whether or not he was simply suffering from severe depression or something closer to insanity. I think that some argue that it’s closer to insanity, because, unlike normal depression, Septimus is hearing voices in his head, a sign of a medical condition much closer to insanity. I think that his medical condition is somewhere in between the two. Today, Shellshock is called PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is clinically closer to depressions than insanity.

In Urbana, there is a homeless man named Bill that wanders the streets. The story is that he went to Vietnam and when he came back, he chose to live on the streets to live a life of simplicity. Since we read Mrs. Dalloway, every time I see him, it’s hard for me not to think of Septimus and what is going through Bill’s head and how the war affected his life. In a way, Bill is like a modern-day Septimus.

The Mezzanine versus Mrs. Dalloway

       While reading The Mezzanine, it is hard to ignore Howie's constant attention to detail abut everything, from something he did five minutes ago to a memory from five years ago. At first when I was reading Mrs. Dalloway, I thought it was going to be very different since it is a much older novel and isn't even divided up into chapters as The Mezzanine is. However, after I started reading Mrs. Dalloway and started comparing it to The Mezzanine, I found that the two novels are surprisingly similar.
        Starting with the differences, The Mezzanine is told in first person, as if Howie is telling the reader his stories, like we are his audience, and Mrs. Dalloway is told in third person. She doesn't know that we're listening in on her every thought. They are also different in the sense that Mrs. Dalloway takes place over the course of one day, and then seems like a short time, but The Mezzanine takes place over the course of about thirty seconds, keeping in mind that almost everything he talks about is a flashback or recent memory.
       Now for the similarities. Mrs. Dalloway takes place over the course of one day, and to most readers, this seems like an incredibly short time to have a one hundred and ninety page novel discuss, but in The Mezzanine, the story takes place over the course of about thirty seconds, making Mrs. Dalloway seem like an eternity. It is the incredible amount of detail that Nicholson Baker and Virginia Woolf put in to their novels to make them both so interesting. Since Mrs. Dalloway was published in the early 1920s and The Mezzanine in the late 80s, it seems like there should be such a difference in the style of writing because the time periods were so different and so were the most popular styles of writing for those time periods.
       Someone picking up one of these novels, after having read the other, might initially think that they couldn't be similar at all, but after beginning to read, I think they would be surprised to find how much they actually have in common.

Virginia Woolf's Unusual Style of Writing

Recently in class, while discussing the scene with the people gathering around the regal-looking car, I made a comment in class about who was narrating, mistaking it for Clarissa when it was really Woolf. I find that Virgina Woolf's style of writing can make it hard for the reader to keep track of whose voice they're hearing. In a traditional book, there would be a new paragraph for each  speaker. However, this is not true in this case, making it easier to mix up who is speaking or thinking. In this aspect, Mrs. Dalloway is very similar to The Mezzanine in that, although Baker does divide the book into chapters, the content of the novel flows together very well and is very connected throughout the entire novel. This makes it necessary to sometimes read more slowly or carefully making sure to catch all details for when any part of the plot (speaker, setting, etc.) is changing. Although Woolf's writing style can be difficult it adds dimension to the book and makes you want to keep reading.

Reaction to Aurelius

Throughout the entire novel, we know almost every thought going through Howie's head, but it takes more than just hearing his thoughts to know who he is. The moment, where he is baffled by the thought that someone could show so much hostility towards life, really gives us a glance at what a complicated character Howie really is. He has all these strange thoughts and memories, that we get to learn about, in the back of his mind, but not a lot of them show much emotion. In this passage, Howie shows the reader that although some of these memories and thoughts are not so good, generally, he has a great appreciation for life and everything that surrounds him. It's not the fact that he disagrees with Aurelius, but it's with what passion he disagrees. Howie is the kind of person that notices every detail from his childhood and can remember everything, whereas Aurelius' quote is basically saying that life isn't that great and nothing is that memorable.

I don't think that the book necessarily had a slow start, because it didn't really go anywhere, I think it just takes a while for the reader to get into Howie's mindset and get used to his thought process. Once I was able to do that, I really enjoyed the novel.