"He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered--everything.
"'Oh, my God, my God!' He covered his eyes with his hand." - p. 259
Sooooo....
....
Did he kill Lenina? Bryan, you can't answer because... I already know. What you think. Is a fragment. But still. It would explain his otherwise rather overreaction-y dismay at remembering "everything." Otherwise, "everything" is just... soma. And stuff. There you go. There's a theme: Everything is just soma and stuff. That's what the civilized people think.
I just became surprised and kind of sad about the Lenina business. But I have to go watch Chamber of Secrets some more. Harry doesn't die, and I knooow it because... straightforward is good.
"From time to time he stretched out his arms as though he were on the Cross, and held them thus through long minutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became a tremulous and excruciating agony; held them, in voluntary crucifixion, while he repeated, through clenched teeth (the sweat, meanwhile, pouring down his face), 'Oh, forgive me! Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!' again and again, till he was on the point of fainting from the pain." - p. 244
He's just like Dobby. Just like Dobby! He's aaaaaall content with his lighthouse, and then he realizes he never set out to be haaaappy, and then... masochism. Yep. Seriously I have to watch Harry Potter now.
Ummm...
Oh yeah, so I decided to blog about the first half of chapter eighteen and then a second post about the second half of chapter eighteen. But... I read the second half already. So this is hard. And I am cheating. Empty sentences. Aaaaand go.
"'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'" - p. 240
Wow. Wowowow. I wish I... knew how to say profound things right after somebody makes an argument against me. I have to rehearse thoughts for hours in order to make them sound like that. That was awesome.
His certainty about that baffles me, also. I am very ambivalent about everything. It takes a while to deciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide how to feel about sssstuff, y'know? Okay. I'm watching Chamber of Secrets right now; not gonna lie. These sentences are about eighty percent empty. Or twenty percent full. It's a shame because this is one of the best chapters in the book! But you know, I'm not getting a grade for this, and... priorities. So here's a picture of what's really on my mind:
"'I should like a thoroughly bad climate,' he answered. 'I believe one would write better if the climate were bad.'" - p. 229
It's true, I think. I find that terribly worrisome, considering my career objectives. Let's look at some examples.
J.K. Rowling is the richest woman in the world. She's got more money than the Queen of England. Everyone loves her, with the exception of people who think that Harry Potter is either annoying or evil.
Emily Dickinson, about whom I wrote my Famous American report in third grade (and also one in seventh), is, for all her confusing capitalization, one of the most-read poets of all time.
Charles Dickens... well, we've all read some Dickens at some point in our lives, haven't we?
You know what they all have in common? They're all varying degrees of miserable.
J.K. Rowling, after moving back to England from Portugal with her daughter as a single mother, wrote the beginning chapters of Harry Potter on napkins in pubs while her baby daughter napped.
Emily Dickinson was a hermit. She was also depressed.
Charles Dickens described himself as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy."
For the sake of avoiding unnecessary mental crises, I am going to stop there.
I have this autographed picture on my desk in my room. Sometimes people think it's a new frame that still has the random picture in it.
"And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Savage what he must do; it was as though a shutter had been opened, a curtain drawn back." - p. 210
That's an epiphany if ever I've seen one.
John knew all along, I think, that he hated this soma stuff, and that something had to be done about it. He just didn't feel like being proactive. He didn't feel a personal responsibility for any of them. He had been too busy mooning over Lenina. The realization that Lenina wasn't really his type and the death of his mother--these in rapid succession-- provided the impetus/incentive for him to make his move. That soma-smashing session reminded me first of the Boston Tea Party and then of the scene in Order of the Phoenix in which the prophecies all get smashed. The Boston Tea Party is the better parallel in terms of intent, but the Order of the Phoenix parallel works better for me because I saw that one happen, and it sounds smash-y-er in my mind.
Thaaat reminded me of a scene from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the movie, not the book, and it made a lot of people--not me-- mad).
Also, this one reminded me of the same movie D=!
"'Is she dead?' he asked.
"The Savage stared at them for a moment in silence. Then in silence he rose to his feet, in silence slowly walked towards the door.
"'Is she dead?' repeated the inquisitive twin trotting at his side." - p. 207
1:50-2:20 of this scene, to be precise. The difference is that the creepy twins don't mean any harm; it's all in their conditioning. Dudley is just a jerk-face who's been conditioned to be a jerk-face by his jerk-face parents. Ahem. Sorry. It is Harry Potter Week.
Also, maybe this is just juxtaposition of the two different cultures, but John seems almost excessively attached to his mother. They told him this was coming, and I'm perfectly aware that knowledge of terminal illness doesn't make the imminent end any prettier or less traumatic, but his denial seems... off. Preposition. I'm going to label it the Oedipus complex because I like to put intelligent-sounding things in my tags... but also because I think he might have a touch of an Oedipus complex.
"There was a moment's silence; then, in a very low voice, 'I love you more than anything in the world,' he said." - p. 192
0:45-1:00
Only sometimes. Unfortunately for John, this is one of those times. Kind of.
The problem with this scenario is that John and Lenina have very different (and extreme) definitions of the word "love." John believes it's the Romeo and Juliet, I-have-to-kill-myself-immediately-if-my-loved-one-is-dead definition. Lenina thinks it's the wow-that-guy-is-physically-attractive-and-positively-interesting kind. That's... not a very sturdy foundation. Bad things are bound to happen, and as we've seen, they did.
I believe the half of the phone conversation at the end of the chapter was an alert to John that Linda's not doing so well. Soma overdose, probably. Maaaaaybe Lenina will come back after that? Probably not. They're all conditioned to be all right with death. Maybe that would be good for people. Hmph.
"It was the Helmholtz of daily life who forgot and forgave, not the Helmholtz of a half-gramme holiday." - p. 180
I picked that quote initially because it sounded really, really nice. Then, when I was writing it, I realized that it sounded nice because of the consonance, mostly. Helmholtz half-gramme holiday. The niceness of that quote fits well with this chapter that so emphasizes the impact of language, which Helmholtz and John mutually appreciate. I thought Bernard was a fan of it as well, but he seems to have grown rather bitter. I can understand that, I guess. It's not a shining personality trait to get jealous like that; envying the friendship of two people you've brought together is certainly not going to make them like you more. I'm not supposed to use "you" like that.
Helmholtz's reaction to Romeo and Juliet was a bit disappointing but altogether to be expected, really. The three of them--Helmholtz, Bernard and John-- they've been drawn together through the mutual characteristic of being misfits. They're not that much alike, but who else have they got? Aaaand because I can:
Hagrid: I remember when I first met you all. Biggest bunch of misfits I ever set eyes on!
You reminded me of myself a little. And here we all are, four years later.
Ron: We're still a bunch of misfits.
Hagrid: Well, maybe. But you've all got each other. And Harry, o'course, soon to be the
"'Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour,' said the Station Master impressively. 'What do you think of that, Mr. Savage?'
"John thought it very nice. 'Still,' he said, 'Ariel could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.'" - p. 158
Mister Savage! My brain can hardly comprehend! Such juxtaposition is at work! The audience reads "Mr. Savage" and better grasps the drastic change that has taken place in John's life. (Savage isn't on his birth certificate or something, is it? Surely not. They must have given him that for... kicks. Also it is pretty appropriate, considering.)
Ah! Harry Potter reference time. Good. I've been slacking in that regard.
Just as Harry Potter came from being the outcast (as the despised only magical member of his household) to being a different kind of outcast (as the beloved Boy Who Lived), John has gone from being the weird half-civilized kid who can read to being the weird but fascinating half-civilized kid who won't take soma.
"My father! The laughter, which had shown signs of dying away, broke out again more loudly than ever. He put his hands over his ears and rushed out of the room." - p. 152
They really are all like children. It's like a bizarre parody of a scene from a movie about third graders bullying each other.
I really had no idea how fitting that would be; I've never seen/read it, but it's a hit at the library. Especially the purple one.
I'm not sure how this proffering of the LindaJohn is going to help save Bernard from being excommunicated (?) to Iceland. The director was pretty furious... slash humiliated slash in serious denial. Parallelism is hard. Also, it was weird of Huxley to skip over the moment in which Bernard arrives back in New Mexico to find that John has smashed the window?door? to the place where he's staying with Lenina. He just overlooked that, did he? Is Lenina still sleeping, then? Er, sorry, soma-vacationing? That's really messed up, by the way.
"Her green slippers were the most beautiful things he had ever seen." - p. 143
Chapter nine has been my favorite chapter thus far. What a ridiculously hyperbolic statement. I mean, who am I to judge that her slippers aren't the most beautiful things he's ever seen? But... they're slippers... so....
House slippers, even, I think. Not ruby, not glass, but house. I chose that quote because it was lit-termy, but this one is my favorite, I think:
"Zip, and then zip; zip, and then zip; he was enchanted." - p. 143
It's a little bit adorable. He reminds me of Herman Melville, the lake monster from Doug's 1st Movie. Anyone? Anyone. No? That's all right.
"'O brave new world,' he repeated. 'O brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once.'" - p. 139
Chapter eight contains a flashback! It's not very well-marked. I was initially convinced that Bernard was getting seriously cozy with Linda =|. But it's okay if it's little-kid John, I guess. Poor kid. The function of all that is that Bernard learns, along with the rest of us, "All [John's] life." That apparently drives Bernard to invite him and Linda to come on a trip back to "civilization" with him.
Predictions:
- Bernard will get in trouble for this. But, you know... Iceland.
- Linda will not want to go back.
- John won't like it as much as he thinks he will.
- John will do something dramatic that will terrify commitment-phobic Lenina.
I'll leave it at that because one hundred is easily divisible by four, so I can give myself a grade later, and everyone will be very excited.
Unfortunately, I still have no idea what Bernard and Lenina are doing on this Reservation. However, I did catch on to the fact that Linda is the DHC's long-lost-ladyfriend. Hey, alliteration.
I didn't write myself any helpful notes while I read this chapter because I was too focused on reading it, which I perceived would take Herculean effort, but it wasn't so bad, in spite of the dinosaur paragraphs.
I have actually never seen Hercules.
Anyway, the only thing I can think to do is speculate where this interesting plot development will take us. John seemed a little smitten with Lenina, there. Maybe he'll teach her the importance of monogamy... or something. And Linda will maybe offer interesting insights into the brainwashing effects of the outside world. One would expect her surroundings to have split her infinitives or rubbed off preposition on her more by now. Instead, she's so overwhelmed with relief at the sight of someone "civilized" that she starts crying and hugging.
"'Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen to seventeen,' said Bernard wearily, as though to himself.
"'What did you say?'
"'I said that progress was lovely.'" - p. 100
That was irony, right? Let me consult the list to figure out what kind.
Oops. That's not the list; that is Facebook. Let me try again.
I think it's dramatic. Bernard and the audience both understand that Bernard is expressing exasperation with his society, but Lenina is in her somacoma thing, so she... goes with it. I suppose the effect of that on the work is that we understand that the system is indeed flawed. It's generally dangerous when the masses go about their lives without ever questioning the state of things. In a broader sense, I guess that's why Sci-Fi is valuable. It proves to us that it's important not to be apathetic about things, even though that's generally the easier route. It makes us understand the value of paying attention and caring and saves us the trouble of learning the lesson the hard way. It's the same reason we have to learn about history, except it's more exciting because we get to make stuff up. <--preposition
Furthermore, I read this chapter right before I went to bed last night, and my last note in my reading journal reads, "106 - Iceland? uncivilized world?" Bernard is for real getting sent to Iceland because he upset the D.H.C. guy? And I forget what was going on with the uncivilized world business. It seemed like there was some isolated region in which things had remained the same as they were before the time of Ford, but I don't remember why it was being mentioned, so I'm hoping for clarification in chapter seven.
"As they flew over the Crematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when it passed into the descending chill beyond.
"'What a marvelous switchback!' Lenina laughed delightedly.
"But Henry's tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. 'Do you know what that switchback was?' he said. 'It was some human being finally and definitely disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was--a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon. . . .' He sighed. Then, in a resolutely cheerful voice, 'Anyhow,' he concluded, 'there's one thing we can be certain of; whoever he may have been, he was happy when he was alive. Everybody's happy now.'" - p. 75
My first comment about that quote is that "switchback" is a euphemism for death, I'm pretty sure. Somebody's getting cremated, I guess? It sounds sinister to me, but cremation seems sinister to me too, and that's socially accepted in most circles, I think.
It also seems to imply, in that quote, that people are happier in the time of Ford than they were previously, which I don't think Bernard believes to be the case.
I'm still exceptionally confused by a lot of things, and I'm more or less afraid to speculate. That aside, "The Greater Being" usually refers to God, but these people are crazy and possibly not even considering themselves "human beings," what with how they refer to human beings as almost something other than themselves. I do that sometimes, but that's because I am weird, and I know this. Separateness. When they drink to "[their] annihilation," "the Greater Being," and "the imminence of His Coming," it seems like they're drinking to the apocalypse, and that is weird to me. Maybe they're wanting to be raptured.
The songs they sing are really bizarre. That "Bottle of Mine" song reminded me of this, which bothers me, but I'm embedding it anyway because my post lacks pop culture references so far:
"The various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College of Emotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-story building in Fleet Street." - p. 65
So as it turns out, the structure of this book is even more convoluted than I thought, and from this point forth, Huxley's got his chapters divided into parts, so that's weird.
Furthermore, this relationship between Helmholtz Watson and Bernard Marx seems sort of unexpected. Helmholtz is the cool kid on the block with the rumored six hundred forty girls in four years-- which is about a hundred sixty per year, which ends up being about one every other day, which is pretty crazy. Bernard is the scrawny one of whom people are allegedly suspicious, although I don't understand why yet, and I hope I haven't missed something there. Anyway, I don't trust it. It calls to mind the Marauders and Peter Pettigrew, which is a Harry Potter reference for anybody who doesn't get it, and in that case, read this.
"A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism." - p. 69
That sort of paragraph makes me feel inadequate on dual levels, the first being that I can't in all honesty say I know what the latter half of it really means, and the second being that it just sounds so nice, and I wish I could do that. Both of these reasons make me want to... well... harbor resentment toward this Huxley guy. That's not very exciting at all, but I don't think it would be terribly productive to exaggerate, in this situation. On a side note, "asceticism" makes me think of Siddhartha, and because of Siddhartha, I did remember vaguely that ascetics seem to try to rid their lives of the ability to feel, although my dictionary widget says it's mostly about self-discipline. I thought "impotence" was the same as infertility. Anyway, the general idea (*salute* "General Idea.") seems to be that they're both isolated because they're different, so... I guess they can relate to each other, but I'm still not really sure they're friends.
Aaaaand I almost forgot, a simile:
"Besides, can you make words really piercing--you know, like the very hardest X-rays--when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing?" - p. 70
"On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger--a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark." - p. 33, Brave New World
"Professor Quirrel, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin." - p. 126, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
I'm just saying.
Also, I would like to point out, with no small amount of frustration on my part, that ninety-nine percent of the words I have to find in the dictionary end up making me feel uncomfortable. I'm not saying it isn't better to say "copulate" and "pneumatic" than the other words that could be used, and I'm not saying Huxley should be censoring those parts, and I'm not saying we shouldn't read it. I'm just saying that I hope no one ever looks through the history on my computer dashboard's dictionary widget.
The structure gets pretty crazy in this chapter. The perspective/scene changes with every paragraph, most of the time, and there are these little encircled lightning bolts randomly placed within the text, and I can't decipher their purpose. Maybe there isn't one. Also, at the end of chapter three, we see the start of chapter four, which is headed with a nice bold "Part One." What have I been reading, then? Part Zero? Some three-chapter preface?
Furthermore, a metaphor: (rhymes are exciting)
"Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier." - p. 43, BNW
flood=feeling=passion=madness
This reminds me of some sort of mathematical property. Stupid equals sign shortcuts. Is it the commutative one? I don't actually care; math hates me.
This chapter also introduced the idea of the instability of feeling strongly; it was on page 41 or so. I sense that that will show up a lot in this novel because dystopia novels seem to, in my experience, stress--in their dearth of feelings we societally consider to be "normal"-- the importance of those feelings. On a side note, I really dislike the word "feelings." Anyway, I do understand their point. We can get awfully sidetracked if we let "feelings" grip our minds too firmly, but they're pretty important to meaningful existence. That's a vague explanation, but in our society, at least, I think it's relatively axiomatic.
A few last side notes:
1) "History is bunk." That's weird. I don't know what it means yet.
2) I think Bernard Marx is going to be our trusty nonconformist.
3) I think freemartins might be the ones in charge of keeping the world populated, since they apparently are unlikely to be seen with contraceptives.
4) A.F. started with the release of Ford's first T-Model.
"Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks-- already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly." - p. 21/22
That's called Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning, apparently. It's alluding to the Pavlov's Dogs experiment, which Ms. Schembra pounded into our brains day after day in health class; it also comes up when I'm at the library, and the sound of books thundering (and sometimes tumbling unpredictably in crazy-making individual doses) onto the conveyor belt calls me immediately to retrieve the asparagus key to unlock the door so I don't have to WAIT for the conveyor, because that would be ridiculous. Usually. Tangents are great. *broad hand gesture*
Huxley also alludes to Henry Ford, who is apparently a Godlike figure in the lives of these Greek letters in A.F.214. They make the sign of the T, which made a lot more sense when my half-sleeping car-ride-addled brain concluded that it stood for Ford. Now I am confused again. And generally they just say Ford where people nowadays might say God. Maybe in 1932 they said "Lord" instead. That would be a more satisfying substitute, in that case.
I would also like to address this concept of hypnopœdia. I'm terribly sorry to say that it just dooooesn't work like that. I know this because I recorded myself reading my AP US History outlines and played them while I slept in the day(s) leading up to my first semester final, and I still got... I don't remember... but it didn't work, is my point. The only part that worked was the part where I read it the first time. Now it's saved in a random playlist on iTunes, and occasionally when it's on shuffle, I have to lunge for the space bar in an effort to avoid being conscious while listening to my own voice. Also, they're teaching the children mean things. Azi says "stupid" is a bad word.
Also, this:
"Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob."
There are so many things about that paragraph that bother me. Not in the sense that I am actually at this point harboring ill will toward Aldous Huxley, but in the sense that... actually, I am. Not only is that sentence excessive-sarcastic-air-quoting lacking both a subject noun and verb, if I'm not mistaken, which assumes bravely (pun?) that we will connect the description to his previous paragraph about the overall process of hypnopœdia, but also it ends a thing in a preposition, which I really try to avoid even though nobody cares except for me, and also he used the form of "till" that means "to prepare land for the raising of crops." And "sibilant with categorical imperative"? Come on. Preposition. You know he's just showing off. Preposition.
It is actually pretty sick that I still remember that, so... take from that what you will.
I understand that frozen and dead could call to mind ghostliness, and I suppose I understand that light could be ghostly, but it still seems like a weird metaphor to me.
A lot about this book is weird to me so far. For instance, the sentence "Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs" makes little sense to me, but maybe I should actually research this "theremogene" stuff if I am actually that curious. I just hate that moment when I realize I'm researching something that doesn't actually exist; it could very well be fictional, for all I know.
Also, this business of the "whole world problem" being solved by this crazy bokanovskification thing makes no sense to me. The goal seems to be population stability, but that's definitely going to get out of control either because of simple exponents (oxymoron?) or because, if it's a case of only a few randomly selected individuals being given the job of reproducing, like in The Giver (I think?), people will just get mad, eventually. That is all conjecture, of course.
I'm also perplexed by the point of view. The narrator seems to be a big fan of this utopian society, which is not usually the case. Typically, the narrator is the one that's not content with the way things are going -- Winston in 1984, for instance.
And I have no idea what a "freemartin" is; it sounds like some sort of androgynous creation. The whole business of creating people to be happy with their predestined roles in society is questionable. It's like house elves being happiest as slaves. I dunno how they came to be like that, and it doesn't seem quite right, but it's better they be happy as slaves than unhappy and free . . . right? I don't know. That sounds really messed up.
Also, there's a random mention of "three ghosts" and of weirdly colored people like Lenina, and somebody shouts "Ass!" and I have no idea what that's all about, and why was making "them taste the rich blood-surrogate" ever considered a good idea? And the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons--are those their names? Is everybody just given a Greek letter for a name, or is that the way their role is determined . . . ?
And what does A.F. mean? Anno Flamingo? Sorry. That was flippant.
I think that concludes my halfway comprehensible ramblings.
. . . wrote a lovely little foreword thing in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which I began reading at 3:49 AM on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 after waking completely, abruptly and inexplicably. It's in french, though, which I don't speak, so I'm going to use Google Translate because Google is alive, so he'll probably do a good job, right?
"Utopiasappear to bemuch morefeasiblethan waspreviously thought.Andwe are nowatafar morefrighteningquestion: How to avoidtheirfinal completion?...Utopiasare realizable. Lifemarch towardsutopias.Andperhapsa new centurybeginsthere,a century in whichintellectuals andthe educated classwill dreamhow to avoid utopiasand return toa non-utopian, less"perfect"and more free."
I guess his point is that anytime there is a "utopia," it is actually a dystopia, and that's never good, so we should avoid them, even though they seem tempting in theory.
"He sprung from the cabin window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance." - 166
So he's probably offed himself by now, yeah? That's no good. I have decided to re-tell the story in such a way as to make myself feel giddy in spite of all the everybody's-dead-now-ness.
Once upon a time, there was this guy who met a guy who made a guy. And when the guy made the guy, he was like, "I immediately regret this decision."
Then, the guy the guy made was like, "But daaaaad, I can't help it I look different from everybody else!" But nobody listened to him, so he got reeeeal bitter.
All of the guys had a bad case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. When he was feeling particularly cold and lonely, the monster-guy realized that all he wanted was somebody like him.
So he went back to his dad, and he said, "Make me one of thooooooose, or I'll follow you forever and ruin your liiiiiiife!"
^not exactly
So obviously, the dad-type agrees, but then he changes his mind, and everybody gets sad and mad and dead.
"The course of the Rhine below Mayence becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly, and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and, on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene." - p. 112
Looook aaaaat myyyy bloooog piiiictuuuuuuure! That's a vineyard along the Rhine! I've never been more delighted at recognizing scenery before. I was there last year on the spring break trip to Germany, and this was my favorite part =D. There were lots of castles that looked like Hogwarts.
The reason there are so many castles is that after the Crusades, knights just sorta plopped down and built them, then made a living by charging tolls.
Also,
"'I have seen,' he said, 'the most beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water....'" - p. 113
The Alps! We went up a crazy lift to the top of those. A Nice Man told us not to get off when we were halfway up because the lifts don't stop. Also, there is a very frightening/steep/abrupt drop on the way down--I guess because "the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water," eh?
I look downright absurd in this picture, but it doesn't matter because I'm in the Alps. Side note: I totally could have gotten lost in Switzerland. I got left behind whilst souvenir shopping. But it's okay because there was a chaperone from another group still in there, and I hung out with her, but it caused quite a stir, apparently.
"During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind; and if I was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be--a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself." - p. 116-117
Well, I guess that's a metaphor, right? There's no "like" or "as." I can't say I really get it. Do bolts enter the souls of blasted trees often? Is that some sort of crucifixion reference, or do I just think that because tomorrow's Good Friday? Maybe he's saying that he's not "what is beautiful in nature" because he's too discontented. Ergo, he's a "blasted"tree instead of a beautiful, thriving one.
"Oh! stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me: if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness." - p. 107
I have lots to say about that sentence. Primarily, I can't decide if the talking to the stars and clouds and winds is more personification or an apostrophe or both. Also, I don't like the loosey-goosey grammar rules of the seventeen hundreds that made it okay not to capitalize the words after the interjections. Also also, I am not sure about the colon usage; I feel like they should really both just be semi-colons. (SeewhatIdidthere?!) I guess I can't talk, though, having just written an essay with an incomplete sentence as the first word of the introduction. (I neverever DO that! I just don't. I am thoroughly embarrassed.)
In any case, it's personification because Victor's telling the stars and clouds and winds that they're going to be mocking him any second now, which is simply not normal atmospheric behavior. It still seems kind of like an apostrophe or an invocation, though, because the stars and clouds and winds can't hear his aimless chattering.
"Sweet and beloved Elizabeth!" I read and re-read her letter, and some softened feelings stole into my heart, and dared to whisper paradisiacal dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the angel's arm bared to drive me from all hope." - p. 139
I thought it was interesting how focused the story has been on Adam and Eve parallels. The orange phrase is an allusive way of saying, "...but the deed was done." Mario recognized himself as having been created in a way similar to Adam's creation in Paradise Lost, which I've never read, and then he realized what he was missing--his Eve, apparently. He also made the same mistake of wanting knowledge, wanting to learn the ways and affections of humans, and he started wanting things that society wasn't prepared to provide for him, even if they were due him.
It's unfortunate for Mario because, unlike Adam and Eve, he didn't eat any forbidden apples, at first. It was the problem of Frankenstein having played God when he wasn't prepared to love his creation. That's what prompted Mario's vulnerability to the rest of the terrified and confused world.
P.S. I think Frankenstein's monster is in my house. (Note that I am referring to him as monster again. I don't care how sorry he is. Pooms-pachacha.)
But seriously, my nephew was over, and he was like, "But who eated the Goldfish cwackers?" And I was like, "It wasn't me! I promise! I don't even like them!" And then he was like, "Was it a monster?" and I looked down at the book in my hand and let my mom pick up the answer.
"A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title-page of my book and said, 'Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.'" - p. 20
Agrippa is the famous wizard Ron Weasley most wants to see on a Chocolate Frog Card; he's got about six of Dumbledore already.
Also, "Under the guidance of my new preceptors, I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention." - p. 21
Checkitout.
On a more academic note, I've noticed that Shelley was very into giving her characters a healthy appreciation of nature. In particular, our dear nameless monster has mentioned the moon at least twice in his account of his life thus far, which seems significant.
"Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens, and gave me a sensation of pleasure. I started up and beheld a radiant form rise from among the trees.*" - p. 71
*The moon [author's footnote].
"By great application, however, and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse; I learned and applied the words, 'fire,' 'milk,' 'bread,' and 'wood.'" - p. 78
He first noticed the moon when he was in that particularly overwhelmed-by-conscious-existence state, and I think he's grown sort of attached to it. He now uses it to tell time. I like this guy.
"'Thus I relieve thee, my creator,' he said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; 'thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor.'" - p. 70
The monster can talk? I know, Jacob, I was surprised, too. He actually has quite the vocabulary, considering he was just created a few months prior to this scene. I have to wonder what kind of people he's encountered up to this point to acquire such knowledge of language.
Also, I would like to express my sympathy for the monster at this point. He's so scary-looking; I had a Frankenstein bookmark that I made in Kindergarten once, and it made me afraid to go out at night, but Victor ought to know better than that. He created the... fellow. He's right in thinking he has certain duties to him. Babies generally look kinda crazy when they arrive, too, but their parents get over it. This "daemon" hasn't gotten the chance due him. It's not his fault his eyes are yellow. It's Frankenstein's.
P.S. One time, in first grade, I was in the lunch line, and I guess I said something, and the girl behind me went, "You can talk?!" I nodded at her.
It rather annoys me to think that anyone would deliberately place such massive quantities of alliteration/assonance/consonance/what-have-you in a letter closing. Just... who... does that? Yes, yes, very impressive, Mr. Frankenstein. I'm sure your son is very impressed with your skills.
I assume that his purpose was not to annoy me, and I think that's a pretty safe assumption, as he is fictional, and also he is the brainchild of a lady who lived a long time ago who never had any reason to suspect I would exist. In poetry, I suppose it sounds nice, but in a letter closing, it just makes my reading brain-voice feel scared and confused, like my reading voice-voice would have stumbled there, and my brain-voice lucked out.
"People reading tongue twisters silently actually take longer to read tongue twisters than non-tongue-twisting sentences." - Hank Green
So was Shelley just trying to make me take my time? I doubt that she put that much thought into it, really. She was busy coming up with "a" and "f" sounds to put really close together.
"We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and everyone we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity." - p. 46
And then... there is a chapter break.
That isn't suspense, precisely. That's more of a "little did he know" situation.
That's not the precise clip I wanted; there's one where Harold Crick's literary professor/consultant flips out on him because he mentions that his narrator voice said, "Little did he know...."
Actually, he says this: "Little did he know. That means there's something he doesn't know, which means there's something you don't know, did you know that? "
What Victor doesn't know at this point is that his happy-skippy times are about to be disrupted. The reader can tell, though, from the placement of the chapter break. It's almost like dramatic irony, except that the audience doesn't actually know something bad is coming. Victor could continue to lead a perfectly content life from that point onward. That would make for some seriously dull reading, though.
I'm going to see John Green in Plainfield tomorrow. *happyskip* Therefore, this happens now.
"No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself." - p. 19
Oh, Victor... we all know you're hyperbolizing. It's simply not possible that our dear Frankenstein knows all human beings personally. Even with his fancy-schmancy science knowledge, he isn't that advanced. Also, eeeeverybody knows they didn't invent the Thought Police until... well, sometime in the 1900s, presumably, and Frankenstein takes place in the illustrious year of 17__. Good year, that. Anyway, somebody out there probably had a better childhood than Victor Frankenstein did. He clearly doesn't know it, but if he stopped and thought about what he was thinking, he might realize how preposterous such a statement that was, if taken literally. Of course, I suppose happiness is probably a pretty difficult thing to measure, so it'd be pretty hard to prove somebody else had it better. ...But still.
"He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother." - p. 370
I presume this is dramatic irony. It's sort of the kicker, though. Here's why:
The audience senses that Winston's love of Big Brother is not, in fact, a "victory." They have grown to know Winston's character and to identify with his hatred of Big Brother. No one wants him to fall into that terrible conformity. Everybody loves a rebel.
But we just don't know for certain. It's a liiiittle bit ambiguous. If you chose to take as such, you could argue that perhaps Winston loves Big Brother because Big Brother is worthy of Winston's love. More likely, it's a social commentary on the importance of questioning and whatnot.
It's kinda like Inception. Nobody's really sure what's real. Does Winston--the Winston we know to be the true Winston--really love Big Brother? Did Oceania really conquer the whole of Africa? Does the top ever stop turning? Does it even matter?
"He had worked more than ninety hours in five days." - 256
That's eighteen a day, in case you were curious.
"It was only an 'opeless fancy,
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!" - p. 293
...translates to....
"It was only a hopeless fantasy,
It passed like an April day,
But a look and a word and the dreams they stirred
They have stolen my heart away!"
I was never completely clear on the purpose of that lady, except that she made me not like Julia because she insulted her when she was clearly a nice lady (because I guess I trust Winston's judgment of character, which is foolish, as he severely miscalculated with O'Brien).
"'Why,' she added sentimentally, 'I might be your mother!'"
"She might, thought Winston, be his mother." - p. 305
This is followed by a brief calculation of what he remembers of his mother, and then he just forgets about it. It's like he really doesn't care. I just thought it was surprising.
"Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was the thought that defeated him." - p. 323
The uncertainty of everything pinpointed in that thought was unsettling.
"When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you." - p. 325
That reminded me of the theory I have had for a long time that the reason people have different opinions of things is that they don't perceive everything the same way. For instance, what I perceive as purple, maybe another person perceives as what I have come to believe is red. But as long as we agree that the name of the color is purple, we can never know.
"You do not exist." - p. 334
and then
"I think I exist." - p. 335
I wrote, "I think; therefore, I am." I don't know who said that, and I'm running out of time, so I'm simply not going to look it up.
"The earth is the center of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it." - p. 340
We did formerly accept this as fact. It was called the geocentric/Ptolemaic system. We now know we have a heliocentric system.
I always boxed the phrase "Thought Police" because I find that concept highly disturbing and never really grew to understand how exactly they operated.
"If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens." - p. 352
and then
"It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is a hallucination."
This reminded me of an argument I once heard people who don't believe Jesus resurrected promote. They think the apostles suffered a group hallucination when He appeared to them. Also, they probably think oral tradition messes with stories.
"One day--but 'one day' was not the right expression; just as probably it was in the middle of the night: once--he fell into a strange, blissful reverie." - p. 353
That's the craziest sentence structure I've ever seen. Also it reminds me of Happy Gilmore's "happy place," but there's no space for more characters in my pop culture references blog post.
That video is less appropriate than I remembered.
"You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him; you must love him." - p. 357
...but it doesn't matter which, because, as they say, "All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens." - p. 352
"Most of the time they screamed abuse at him and threatened at every hesitation to deliver him over to the guards again; but sometimes they would suddenly change their tune, call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of Ingsoc and Big Brother, and ask him sorrowfully whether even now he had not enough loyalty to the Party left to make him wish to undo the evil he had done." - p. 318
This is the way my mind works, I'm afraid.
"Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?" - p. 324
Not anymore-- all the Time Turners got smashed in the Ministry of Magic in 1995.
"How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?" -p. 325 (and approximately eighty-seven other times)
Apparently, that's a very deep question in literary circles.
"He knew in advance what O'Brien would say: ... That the Party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others." - p. 337
I don't have a video clip for this yet because it'll be in Deathly Hallows: Part Two. *stifled excitement spasm* But Grindelwald, the dark wizard from the first Wizarding World War-- the one prior to Voldemort that coincided with World War II-- had a slogan, and it was "For the Greater Good." The point is that he was a very evil wizard, but he persuaded himself and those who loved him that what he was doing was morally acceptable. That's also the definition of the principle of double effect again.
"We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power." - p. 338
"There is no good and evil--only power and those too weak to seek it."
"We shall conquer [Eurasia and Eastasia] when it suits us. And if we did not, what difference would it make? We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world."
**Spoilers for The Hunger Games ahead**
The movie installment of The Hunger Games is still in the early stages, but in it, the world as we know it has essentially ended, and North America was divided into thirteen districts overseen but the infamous Capital. The thirteenth district was said to have rebelled and then promptly destroyed, and afterward, The Hunger Games were established as a punishment/entertainment for the remaining districts throughout the ages. However, somewhere down the line in the trilogy, Katniss realizes that District Thirteen does still sustain life, but it's being hushed up by the Capital because they don't want the other districts believing they can get away with rebellion.
"Do you understand that you are alone?" -p. 344
"Well if I were You-Know-Who, I'd want you to feel cut off from everyone else; because if it's just you alone, you're not as much of a threat." -Luna Lovegood, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort's plan is the same as O'Brien's, I think. Winston wasn't really alone.
"He was not bored; he had no desire for conversation or distraction. Merely to be alone, not to be beaten or questioned, to have enough to eat, and to be clean all over, was completely satisfying." - p. 349/350
That reminded me of Siddhartha, in which Siddhartha embarks on a quest for nirvana, which is the absence of desire, if I'm not mistaken. Winston sounds eerily as though he found it in that cell, which brings up an old quandary of mine. Is nirvana really a desirable state? I'm not questioning it with skepticism as my overriding feeling. In the state of nirvana, I'm given to believe that there is no real suffering and no real joy--just pure contentment. The reason we can feel joy is because we know that it's the opposite of suffering and vice versa.
On a similar note, what exactly is the difference between joy and suffering? It's nothing tangible. I'm just curious. I mean I know, in the vague sense that everyone can feel it, but... it baffles me a little that they can coexist, and we recognize the difference. I guess it's just a human thing. I don't know. If someone has an insight here, please share.
"They dono 'ow to treat a lady, do they?" She paused, patted her breast, and belched. "Pardon," she said, "I ain't meself, quite." - p. 305
She reminds me of this lady:
...from Wallace and Gromit.
"Inconceivable, inconceivable that one blow could cause such pain!" - p. 316
"He released Winston with a little push toward the guards. 'Room 101,' he said." -p. 356
That right there creates suspense. Earlier in the book, O'Brien's liiike, "You know what's in that room. Everyone does." That was a frustrating moment because I thought, "What about meeee, though? I don't know what's in there =|!" As it turns out, he tells us later, and then it's rats, which is dreadfully anticlimactic. (I know it's different for everybody, but still. Even the foreshadowing of that was weak.) Ah, but I digress. My point was that O'Brien finally said he was going to show us Room 101, and the reader's been wondering for a goodly many pages, now, what is in there, and then there's a section break, which is a structural technique of sorts. I don't know why authors do this. I suppose they intend for it to build suspense, but really.... We just have to turn the page. Actually, I just have to move my eyes approximately an inch-and-a-half further down the page. I did feel a little jolt of suspense, there, I guess, but I felt annoyed with myself about it afterward.
It's not like it's a new chapter of fanfiction, and you have to wait another who-knows-how-long to find out what happens next. That's called a cliffhanger, everyone, and I think they more or less died with Charles Dickens in terms of works of literary merit .
My title is dedicated to Bryan Cary and also Tito's mom. Shhhh....
"O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward but promising child." -p. 324 (in my bojankity version)
That's a Homeric epithet! That is, it's a "compound adjective" (wayward but promising) "used with a person or thing" (child/Winston). P.S. I keep forgetting Winston's name, which shouldn't happen after that many pages.
Homeric epithets are used for characterization purposes. Orwell may use lots of physical descriptions in his work, but he also likes to give his audience a sense of the demeanor of various characters.
Thinking about Homeric epithets makes me think about The Iliad, which makes me think about Achilles, which makes me think about hurty tendons. Ergo, Homeric epithets hurt in an entirely imaginary but nonetheless uncomfortable way.
1. "Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?" This reminded me a lot of Siddhartha because the premise of that novel was sort of that Siddhartha was, at least for a time, trying to rid himself of desire, as is the Buddhist idea of enlightenment or nirvana.
2. "Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home the other night--tried it out on our sitting room door, and reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her hear to the hole." I do not know what precisely an "ear trumpet" is, so my mind wandered to this:
0:40 Do it. Do it do it do it. Or don't. Your call.
3. "February your grandmother!" And here I thought Napoleon Dynamite was the source of all "your mom" jokes.
4. Also, I don't feel like citing every single time this happens, but I suppose I should use one. "The old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar, having some kind of altercation with the barman, a large, stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms." Orwell gives a physical description of everybody. He usually comments on their hair color and physique, but this example is sort of an exception.
I feel like I've made some interesting observations, but they're not so connected to each other, and I'm just going to shove them out there.
1. "It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard--a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheeplike quality." If there were a third Dumbledore brother, that would be this Goldstein character, I think. He's got Albus' spectacles and silliness and nose and Aberforth's goatee and... livestockishness. Observe:
Photo size symmetry fail, but you get the picture.
2. "There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts, only the knowledge that they must die in order that he might remain alive, and that was part of the unavoidable order of things." That right there sounds a lot like the principle of double effect, about which we're learning in Morality this very week. To fit those requirements, a situation has to meet these criteria:
the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral;
the agent intends the good effect and not the bad either as a means to the good or as an end itself;
the good effect outweighs the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing the bad effect and the agent exercises due diligence to minimize the harm.
3. "'Except--' began Winston doubtfully, and then stopped." "'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly." I like George Orwell's style. I really do. But Stephen King would tear it to shreds. “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.” -- Stephen King, On Writing
I would like to take this opportunity to rail against this Syme fellow. "In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words."
He's killing me, Smalls.
But seriously, I thought this Newspeak business was going to be a trippy little vernacular that I would bring into my own everyday language. I was going to start saying stuff was doubleplusungood, right and left. Now, I'm engaging in a senseless boycott of all such phrases, just because I don't like this fictional character and what he's doing to the English language. I bet you think I'm being dramatic for entertainment purposes.
Maybe a little.
In all seriousness, though, I can't see what the point of this Newspeak--
Wait. I remembered what the point is. They're making it impossible to commit "thoughtcrime" by erasing words conducive to discontent. Yeah. "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." That sounds like my worst nightmare. To feel that things are not quite right but never be able to understand why because of a simple... dialect insufficiency... would drive me insane.
Leaving aside for the moment the frustrating lack of punctuation in that thought, and also pleading forgiveness for the obnoxious and apparently irrevocable underline effect, I will now point out the paradoxical nature of Big Brother's three favorite slogans. It's pretty obvious.
War is the opposite of peace. They are antonymns. However, the Party would like everyone to believe that they live in a peaceful society, even though they don't, so they brainwash everyone to believe this stuff.
Likewise, freedom is the opposite of slavery. That sentence (fragment? run-on?) makes no sense, but people believe it because they no longer have evidence to the contrary.
The final "Ignorance is strength" idea is slightly less ridiculous, but only because ignorance is not the opposite of strength. Ignorance is a subset of weakness, though, and weakness is the opposite of strength. Everybody's drinking gin and beer all the time instead of water, though, and they're all (except Winston and a few others maaaybe) too gullible to understand that of course war isn't peace, and freedom isn't slavery, and ignorance isn't strength.
"The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand." -- 1984
Part of the way in which George Orwell has set the tone for this novel was probably utterly accidental. I told someone over the weekend that I was just starting reading 1984, and he told me how eerily close to accurate it was in some respects. It's meant as a frightening possibility-- almost a satire of sorts, except it's not really funny. The tone is supposed to be sort of foreboding, and it is, more than Orwell probably expected it ever could be, because here we are in 2011, and it's easy to see how these things could happen if somebody decided it was best for us. We type at least as many words as we pen. "Big Brother" can legitimately find all of our Internet conversations and tap our phone calls as it sees fit. There are security cameras on every corner. The paranoia is setting in. Sci-Fi was a bad choice.
I am frustrated by all these fake-outs. Where are all the happy endings?
A Raisin in the Sun: Family needs money. Family gets money. Family loses money.
(cop-out resolution to make author feel better: family maintains pride)
The Glass Menagerie: Girl has issues. Girl's brother arranges for gentleman caller. Girl and gentleman "hit it off." Guy remembers he's married. Brother escapes, leaving his mother and sister to their own devices.
(cop-out resolution to make the author feel better: brother haunts sister... for a while.)
Othello: Mmm... the pattern fails here because we know it's a tragedy from the get-go. We all pretty much knew Othello was done for.
Anyway, happy things:
That movie's a lot better than the trailer would indicate. Do not be deceived.
