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Milkman: The Antithesis of Macon Dead II

Up to where we are in the novel right now, I viewed Milkman as the object of the struggle between his mother and his father and I believed that Milkman was the complete opposite of everything his father was. Milkman seemed to empathize a little more with his renters’ struggles than the cold hearted manner his father dealt with them. Milkman also seemed to put little emphasis on the business, therefore eliminating the chance of obtaining his father’s snobbish manner, and made friends and interacted with people, such as Guitar and Pilate, that his father never would. Lastly, he hit his father for hitting his mother, which demonstrated to me Milkman’s want to be ideologically different from his father. However, in Chapter 6 during his discussion with Guitar, Milkman stated: “He wondered what they would do if they didn’t have black and white problems to talk about. Who would they be if they couldn’t describe the insults, violence, and oppression that their lives (and the television n...
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Rochester’s Transformation or Maybe Not?

In our class discussions two opposing ideas and observations were brought up: Rochester undergoes a transformation that drives him to be evil or that Rochester is inherently evil and has harbored this evil inside him from the very beginning. The consensus seemed to be that Rochester undergoes a transformation throughout the course of the book, however, I would like to argue that Rochester’s character and Englishness manifests itself as “evil” throughout the course of the novel.             Our very first impression of Rochester is in part two of the book with his statement, “So it was all over, the advance and retreat, the doubts and hesitations. Everything finished, for better or for worse” (38). His voice strikes a similar tone to a conqueror drawing parallels to the British Empire’s expansions and demonstrating that he view his marriage militaristically. Rochester is the embodiment of the “English identity” and his mission ...
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Meursault as a Sociopath?

In class it was brought up that Meursault might be a sociopath and of course being the expert I was since I watched the whole Shane Dawson series I was intrigued and decided to actually do some research on how sociopaths are diagnosed. From visiting a couple of sites on Google here are the characteristics I gathered: Glibness-superficial charm Grandiose sense of self-worth   Need for stimulation   Pathological lying Conning-manipulative Lack of remorse or guilt Shallow affect Callous-lack of empathy Parasitic lifestyle   Poor behavior controls Promiscuous sexual behavior Lack of realistic, long-term goals Impulsivity Irresponsibility   Failure to accept responsibility   Many marital relationships Criminal versatility The implication of diagnosing Meursault as a sociopath is that we must interpret his actions throughout the book quite differently. No longer is his tone and mannerism neutral, but instead demonstrative of his callous-l...
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Family in the Metamorphosis

Ah, family, the bunch of people you are eternally related to. Their problems become your problems and your life is constantly being influenced by them. Sometimes you’re glad you have them and in short bursts of anger you are resentful that you cannot choose your family (ahem ahem siblings). However, in the Metamorphosis we never see Gregor display any strong resentment as a result of events that would have riled up any other normal human being. Gregor somehow manages to take outright thievery and attempts on his life and spin it in a positive manner. Gregor is fittingly turned into an insect because that is exactly how his family sees him: expendable and insignificant. His father, mother, and sister, who we all see are perfectly capable of working later in the story decide to bankroll a lavish lifestyle off of Gregor’s labor. Gregor’s family is completely unmotivated to resolve the debt and are content in letting Gregor’s misery last an additional five years. Indeed, it’s quite ...
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Is it just me?

My first thought about Jake et Gang was, What a great care-free life! All they seemed to do was eating great meals and going out for a drink or dance. Jake and others, despite their flaws, seemed to be harmless, and I enjoyed their antics and banter as I loved their ability to never take anything too seriously. However, I began to despise them as I witnessed how they, the so-called friends, aggravated and brought out the worst in each other. I felt disgusted when in Spain Jake started to purposefully make fun and provoke Cohen, punishing him for his infatuation with Brett. Jake no longer was the pitiful scarred lovesick man but a bully intent on pushing his enemy into mental misery. I extremely disliked this powerplay and the intentional harm Jake inflicted on Cohen. I hated the drama and the fake friendships.   Rather than having honest moments, the characters always put a facade of civility and pretend they are getting along when everything is going to hell. The chara...
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The Making of a Clarissa

Similar to the white background trick in The Mezzanine, Woolf formulates her thesis for Ms. Dalloway in my favorite passage: Clarissa has theory in those days – they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the us going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not “here, here, here”; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter – even trees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, wit...
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Not So Ordinary After All

The protagonists of The Mezzanine and Ms.Dalloway are what we would consider mundane protagonists, who have no aspirations or grand adventure to embark upon. However, Howie and Clarissa Dalloway capture our attention and pull us into the minute details of their lives and thoughts. As the authors uniquely develop each stereotypical mundane character’s life, emphasizing Woolf’s point in her essay that anyone’s life can be a novel, the question arises, how do Baker and Woolf make the ordinary extraordinary? Maybe the simplest way to tackle this question is to delve into a quick analysis of how the authors build the characters. In Ms.Dalloway, streams of consciousness are interwoven around Clarissa’s, allowing us to experience the world not only through Clarissa but also through the perceptions of other inhabitants of Clarissa’s world. Using multiple streams Woolf adds sublayers to scenes, such as in today’s discussion of Clarissa’s and Peter’s conversation. If there weren’t any st...
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