Mad Love

     Even though it was a little while ago, I'd like to go back to Wide Sargasso Sea for a minute. So, there's the main relationship between Antoinette and Rochester. We brought up a lot of the gender dynamics going on there. Antoinette wants someone to love and care for her, but Rochester's basically in it for the money. While it's not quite as stark, I think there's a lot of the same story in Song of Solomon between Ruth and Macon Dead II. Ruth was also pretty secluded, though not as adamantly as Antoinette was. Ruth was part of a middling class that had basically two people in it -- herself and the Doctor. It's a lonely place, as has been suggested, but then Macon shows up. Macon's all about wealth and success, and what could be the greater symbol of making it than Ruth? She's of a higher class than he is. He inherits from the Doctor, and also has a beautiful new wife, whom he can, and does, show off to the rest of the community.

     It's made clear that Ruth and Macon used to have a more passionate relationship like Antoinette and Rochester did, and also like in Wide Sargasso Sea, they started to fall apart. It's not even clear that they really love each other, they just happen to be married.

     What's really interesting to look at between these two relationships and even, or perhaps especially, Milkman's relationships with female characters in Song of Solomon, is the significance of gender. Antoinette is totally dependent on Rochester when Rochester who needs her for stability as well. Rochester also specifically needs Antoinette, whereas  she would be fine, and perhaps even happier, with someone of a lower class who just made her happy.

     Ruth is totally submissive to Macon. I don't think she would even really know how to stand up for herself, since it doesn't seem to have ever been a habit of hers. Her daughters seemed to be the same way, until Corinthians met Porter and Lena told off Milkman. It seems they have more power than Ruth is ever able to show, even over Milkman. Ruth was close with Milkman, but didn't fight Macon at all when he was unhappy about it. She just sat there and took it, and now Lena is standing up to Milkman explain how they all just took it. 

     It's more than just the nuclear family dynamic that shows how gender roles play out. There's also Pilate and her side of the family. Pilate's house seems to be the place for strong women, the only thing is that there are no men there (unless Milkman visits). That makes it seem like Pilate only fends for her family because she has to, but not because she would husband or no. Then the fact that she degrades herself into this apologetic, naive woman before the police is all the more intriguing. It says she knows she is strong and she knows what effect she has on other people (let alone her childhood story about people reacting to her stomach). Pilate seems to be the only woman Milkman has genuine respect for. She is imposing and powerful.

     Then there's Milkman's relationship with Hagar. She is older than him, which at first seemed to make him shy, but as they grew up together, he took over more and more power from her. Now it's gotten to the point where he just cuts ties and she actually needs him to be hers. Her life has been taken over by Milkman's. She scooted over to make room for him, just like Corinthians and Lena did.

     This is the way Milkman has always been treated and it's the way his life has always gone, but now he has such lack of respect for the women in his family, that Lena has taken somewhat of a stand. It seems to be too late for Milkman to change because he just brushes her aside as his silly sister as he always has. She was always just there, but never really a person to him.

     This is what Antoinette became to Rochester. She was his. She was mad, so he could dismiss anything she did that wasn't submissive to him as her madness. Macon Dead II even explained away any unsavory behavior of Ruth's as being 'dirty' (implying 'just like she was').

Basically Living in an Asylum

     So, I think it's pretty obvious now that Milkman thinks anybody who does something a little bit abnormal is crazy. It's the first thing out of his mouth and he seems to keep that opinion for quite a while. Macon Dead II tells him all about his mother. She's crazy. He goes to meet Pilate and she's crazy too. Now Hagar is trying to kill him and she's understandably crazy to him. Then Guitar spills on the Seven Days and he is also crazy. All of these people can definitely seem crazy, but Magdalene called Lena? Yeah, not so much. Each 'crazy' person has their story time in the book. The 'Milkman, sit down and let me tell you something about...' is a familiar dynamic by now. Each person has their own set of logic that sets puts everything in an even more skewed light most of the time, but Lena's argument seems the most sound.

     In class, we talked about how lots of people seem to have difficulty expressing love, and that's why they can seem crazy. Lena, however, lays out a perfectly logical argument. It doesn't even seem like she's throwing a huge bias into it, or that her logic is all that twisted. In fact, I totally agree with her. Now for many of the other 'story times' Milkman wasn't particularly polite or respectful. He made all sorts of assumptions and started seeing the worst in other people, most notably Ruth. Now Lena sets out a nicely wrapped argument, trying to explain that he's been 'pissing' all over the women in the house his entire life. She basically says he wants the power and the attention but none of the responsibility his father has. In fact, it seems to me like Milkman has been explicitly avoiding responsibility. He doesn't want the responsibility of buying Hagar another gift, and he doesn't really want to go talk out their relationship with her, so he just writes a letter. It's not all that thought out and he has a marked disrespect for Hagar and her feelings.

     With all these stories coming out slowly over the course of the book and Milkman's reactions to them, it seems like he sees the worst in everybody. Then, that 'worst' that he found, seems to be exactly how the characters seem. Morrison just sets all of the action and the pacing up so that we can see that Milkman has a point in calling two thirds of the characters crazy, but it's starting to seem like Milkman might just bring all that out in people.

     When he goes on his trip to Pennsylvania, everyone seems so nice and polite and pretty accommodating for the son of Macon Dead II. Milkman even starts acting more like his dad, engaging in pleasantries that even he has never noticed himself use before. The one time he isn't acting like himself, everybody seems so nice. The rest of the time, the characters are all mysterious and vague.

     There's some form of 'be careful what you wish for' that ought to apply here, but Milkman's protagonist status really throws an interesting light on everybody else. If this was Ruth's story, we would know everything about her from her point of view and she'd probably make Macon Dead II out to be a horrible person. Milkman's just in the middle, but he still judges. Now it's up to him what he's going to do with all this information, and what to do about the gold.

Stranger Things Have Happened

     I know not everyone went to the movie night, but we saw "The Man Who Wasn't There". You can look up a description if you're curious. I just wanted to throw this idea out, since I felt like the only one who was laughing the whole time. There was a lot about the movie that we questioned the deeper meaning of, and there's definitely merit to that. We could see the absurdity of the movie paralleling the absurdity in the book. I've actually seem this movie before, I'd just forgotten that I had. Seeing it the first time, it was definitely weird. The impulse is to try to break down everything that happened and understand exactly what the philosophical connotations of it all was. I'm sorry if this sounds irreverent to you -- well, actually no, I'm not sorry -- but that movie was hilarious. We seemed to be laughing at the ridiculousness because we didn't understand it, but I'm saying no, this movie was supposed to be funny. It's more of a comedy than an intro to a psychological phenomenon, or something like that.

     Come on guys, there were spaceships. SPACESHIPS. In a movie based on a book that had some really serious themes. They're slapping you in the face with ridiculous things, not just throwing them in there because they can. I think we saw a lot of humor in the movie, but seriously, this. is. a. comedy. I mean Big Dave's wife? Totally there for comedic purposes. I mean spaceships. SPACESHIPS. Yes, that was an excellent way to show that Ed (Meursault) had accepted his lot in life and wasn't going to try to change it just because some aliens opened his cell door and a door out of the prison.

     What really made the movie, in my opinion, was Billy Bob Thornton's totally straight face. The humor was all absurdity, so you can't have any of the characters laughing. They just have to go with it. What really made it good, though, was the fact that there were so many scenes that just had inner monologue where Ed had his totally straight face staring right into the camera. He was in the center of the screen with a relatively symmetric set. Anyone who knows anything about photography knows the rule of thirds. You never put your subject in the dead center of a photo, or at least you don't make the picture symmetric. The dissonance, then, makes the image more interesting. It invites your eye to wander around. Not so in "The Man Who Wasn't There". Ed looked the camera head on. It made you look at his face and nothing else. Your eyes did not wander in those scenes. The book has the liberty to show you everything through Meursault's eyes. The movie had to come up with some way to do that as well. I think the voice-over of those symmetric shots was perfect. You are looking right into Ed's face as he tells you what he's thinking. He almost seemed like a straight man.

     One thing that was a pretty serious theme, but was comedic at times, was how everyone trusted Ed immediately. In the movie, we could see why that was in a way that was less obvious in the book. Ed was quiet, just sort of went along with things, and his reactions just made him look like an honest guy. We talked about how honest Meursault can be, but Ed looks honest, which can hit home more than just reading about him can. Ed was then surrounded by characters who were pretty much all dishonest in some way or another, and to varying degrees. The fact that Ed doesn't react to any of that very much, and that so much of the movie just seems random, just makes the absurdity actually funny. Even some of the actors are traditionally associated with comedic roles. So yeah, I was laughing pretty much the whole time.

Monsieur Meursault est heureux

     Meursault is not a sociopath. At least not completely. He has feelings, and we see that every once in a while. It's just that he doesn't feel very strongly about many things. By the end of the book, we are really more worried with what the trial thinks about Meursault than how he feels about the situation. It's easy to just miss how Meursault feels since he mentions feelings so sparingly. By the end, I would argue, he has reached a sort of happiness. I don't mean the kind of happiness where he could ask for nothing more. Obviously he would jump at any chance to get out and find Marie. I just mean that he isn't particularly upset by his lot at the end. He understands he is going to die and finds that knowledge freeing. Is that really so strange to us? Many characters in many books have a sense of freedom as they knowingly go to their deaths. Is Meursault's reaction really all that surprising?
     I suppose this is the time when we figure out how he feels about his mother - that burning question, lit from the first sentence. There's been a lot of argumentation over Meursault's guilt, but that's all our opinion and the opinion of the court. He is sorry she died and would rather that she hadn't. At the same time, that's just life, as far as Meursault can tell. She seemed perfectly happy in the Home, and he hadn't mistreated her or anything. He did the best he could for her, so really there's nothing left to worry about. Except that's not how people are 'supposed' to react. People are supposed to be terrified of death. They're supposed to be irrational and afraid and to cry over things they have no control over. People are supposed to have to fall apart before they can learn and change their lives; before they can find happiness.
     I would argue that Meursault just sort of skips a few steps. He is an extremely logical person. He doesn't really care about social norms. He just wants to be liked. Being sad doesn't really serve a logical purpose other than sometimes it can make you feel better to get it all out there. Meursault doesn't have anything to get out there. Whatever closer he needs, he has already found. What reason would he have to break down crying? It would just make him even more uncomfortable with the heat and everything else. Meursault just skips right to the acceptance. Maman is dead. That's all there is to it. But the understanding, the learning part doesn't come until he does snap, in a way. He seems perfectly fine with death, but he doesn't understand his mother until he flies off the handle at the priest. Then it all just dawns on him. Everything is meaningless. Therefore, we must create our own meaning. The court could never understand this concept, whether Meursault was to defend himself or not. The Magistrate dangles a cross in front of his face for goodness sake. There is no way that a group of people who completely believe, and in fact know that there is a One True God and that there's some larger plan for everyone and that they are all basically pawns with their own raison d'etre could possibly understand atheism. So they don't, and they kill Meursault for it. They kill him because humans are still and have always been afraid of what we don't understand. It is easier to reject the unknown rather than question it. Meursault is still human. He's just more rational. The irony being that the jury can't make sense of his logic.

It's the Eyes

   So what if Gregor wasn't an insect? What would happen if he had turned into, say, a fluffy puppy? Assuming no one in the family had any allergies, would they react differently? Gregor's appearance has a lot to do with how they react. Yes, as a puppy they still wouldn't be looking at the same Gregor anymore, but puppies aren't so bad. People love puppies. There are shelters and adoption and all that. Nobody adopts bugs. Why? Well there's a ton of them, for one. Also, they aren't very pretty (no offense if they are any literate bugs out there). Seriously, though, bugs - with the eyes and the antennae and being far less closely related to humans than puppies - are not so cute. Giant bugs are even worse, right? You can't avoid the eyes or anything. How many scary bug movies are there in the world? A ton. And then another ton on top of that, so really it's two tons. And how many scary puppy movies are there? ...yeah see? 'puppy' and 'scary' don't really belong in the same sentence. Unless there's a 'not' somewhere in there. I mean really, there's even a kids' television show about a giant dog. Clifford the Big Red Dog. Clifford has all sorts of genetic problems, what with the being ginormous, red, AND GINORMOUS. Yet Clifford is still super cute. Everybody loves Clifford. And then there are the giant bug movies. Note how A Bug's Life still had normal sized bugs. The scary bugs are in Lord of the Rings, Eight Legged Freaks, Empire of the Ants, not to mention how aliens in scary movies always look like bugs. E.T. was a little more humanoid, no?

     This concept is pretty straightforward. We fear what we don't know. Stuff that looks more familiar and more like us isn't as scary. For example, racism on the whole, also tomatoes were thought to be poisonous due to their being red (and yet Clifford gets away with it?), also the entire concept of aliens, and also lots of people find bugs unnerving. Ahem Harry Potter, anybody?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUNg9v5TQ5Q

  I'm imagining something fluffy and adorable with the wet nose and big eyes. He used to be human and his name is Gregor. As a puppy. Nobody's scared of puppies (okay I was, but not anymore!). The Samsas certainly wouldn't hate to look at Gregor. If he goes bump in the night, would they really be so unnerved? A scratch at the door to be let into the living room? Jumping on his mothers' lap for affection? Who could say no to that wagging tail? The story would be completely different, and also lose it's point. I don't think this story is just for the sake of weird. It shows how Gregor's family valued what was on the outside. They got a paycheck out of Gregor. He was as normal and boring as can be imagined before his metamorphosis. Now he looks a little different. But what do you do with a giant bug? They don't do that thing where they look into his eyes and just know deep down that it's still him. Nope, they probably don't want to look at him long enough to think about it. Sorry, buddy, but looks still mean something. Also, Grete. Anybody notice how at the very end of the book, her parents look at her and instead of seeing the strong, responsible,  independent girl she has exhibited herself to be, they see a pretty girl who needs a husband? Anybody? It's all about her beauty, and Gregor's lack thereof. Even Gregor understands that he's kinda gross. He has to be gross or there is no story. That clip we saw Wednesday where Kafka couldn't decide what Gregor would turn into was ridiculous for just one more reason. Kangaroos are too cute. Bananas, we are pretty comfortable with. It had to be something bizarre, not something some guys with a scary number of knives stuffed up his sleeve thinks of as a friend. Gregor Samsa in his present state is nobody's friend. Nobody lines up to pet him. And nobody ever will. Not even his family, apparently.

Also for fun, I give you bugs... (there's some blood if you're at all squeamish)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaWCkQzKopo

and cute puppies...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpl-IkGg3tI

D'awwwwwwww

Endings

Upon finishing Mrs. Dalloway and The Sun Also Rises, I felt like both of them were really anti-climactic. Both books ended in an extremely familiar place. While I like that sort of ending, I feel like the point is to show how the characters are in an almost identical place as they were when the story started, and be such different people. The goal is to show just how much has actually changed, usual internally, and make that change stark against a familiar backdrop.
Mrs. Dalloway ended with all of the Bourton characters back together for Clarissa's party. We finally got to meet all of these extremely influential people and see how they compare to Clarissa's view of them in the past and how they affected her when she was younger. Clarissa is standing in this party with all of her old friends beside her, contemplating suicide, and then she doesn't. She goes back to society and is almost completely unchanged from where she started that morning.
The Sun Also Rises ends in exactly the same place it started. Jake and Brett are in a cab driving who knows where and talking about the hopelessness of their situation. Neither of them have any new opinions about it and appear to be unwilling to change anything about their situation for the better. They also don't appear to be any more resigned to the facts than they were before. The dialogue exchanged is even the same as before.
With both of these books, the end didn't feel like any sort of resolution for me. The characters end the story with exactly the same problems as they started and the entire book seems to serve the sole purpose of explaining what the problem is and offering no solution to it.  I think this is really representative of the feelings of hopelessness associated with the post-war world, but it isn't typically what I enjoy about a story. I always want there to be something satisfying about the end, where something has significantly changed in the situation. For Mrs. Dalloway, it seems like the whole point is that nothing exactly changed for Clarissa. The same thing really goes for Jake as well. He and Brett are still far from resolving their relationship issues at the end of the book, but we went on this great journey through Europe with them.
I think this in general is a theme with 20th century novels. The point is not to have a conflict and a resolution, but to show nothing but conflict, really. There was so much conflict that these novels aren't about happy endings, but realistic ones. Fiction helps us understand things that are going on in the world that are hard to deal with in our own lives. Some character can screw it up for us and we suffer no consequences while still watching how everything plays out. Since we know Virginia Woolf committed suicide, I have to wonder just what Hemmingway's problem was.

Richimus

     So, I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, even after finishing The Hours a while ago, but I wanted to talk about the Richard/Septimus character(s). There's obviously Richard Brown, who shares the name Richard but is similar to Septimus, but there's also his dad, Dan Brown (not the mystery author). For a while, I thought Dan was supposed to be Richard. He's got that general happiness and simplistic lifestyle. He's completely in love with his wife and can't see how unhappy she is. Laura seems to be an ideal to him. He tells the story of how his idea of her got him all the way through the war and back. He has such an abstract idea of this girl he had never really met, but yet he decides to marry her. Similarly, we aren't entirely sure just what about Clarissa Richard's in love with in Mrs. Dalloway.
     We talked about how Clarissa marries Richard because he's the 'safe' choice for her. At the same time, he's in love with her in a way that's not obvious from Clarissa's point of view, or anyone else's. I almost wish that scene where Richard can't quite bring himself to say he loves Clarissa had come up in the movie. The movie characters, however, would not have fit that bill as well. Dan is very open and gushes about his family and how happy he is all the time. I felt like that open gushing would have made it harder for Laura to tell her husband how she was feeling. She really does seem to want to make her family happy (ex. the cake).
     It's pretty obvious that Laura doesn't share the same enthusiasm and love of life that her husband does. At the beginning, she is resting and  sounds tired. She also seems to be forcing a smile for Dan's birthday. Then she almost commits suicide and it's pretty clear that she's an extremely troubled woman. We learn later that she left her family, which is perhaps a much better thing to do, even if Richard's poetry is all about 'that monster'.
     Richard Brown, contrary to what the name suggests, is closer to Septimus. There's the obvious reason of his suicide, but there's also the fact that he is sick. His life is dictated by doctors and pills and Clarissa's visits and her nagging. Septimus' life was also dictated by his caretakers. They both needed people to take care of them, so I'm not saying this aspect was all in their heads, but they both hated the fact that they were dependents. I believe that Richard killed himself for similar reasons as Septimus. Not only did the filmmakers copy that scene almost directly from the book, but Richard even said that his life had lost meaning. He wanted Clarissa to move on.
     Between these two characters, I think we get several aspects of both Richard and Septimus all smushed together and then split differently. Richard Brown was not in the war and is able to explain his unhappiness. Dan Brown has the war experience and the fabulous wife (in his eyes), but he also completely falls apart after she leaves (as we hear Laura hint at later).
     Where some critics argue that Virginia Woolf's whole novel was about making people understand shell shock and recognize it as a real disease, The Hours didn't address that specific problem at all. I didn't think that necessarily took anything away from the story. I was just different and had a different focus. It's their prerogative and I actually liked what they did with the story. For more than half of the movie, however, I was struggling to figure out where the movie was going. That came mostly from not realizing exactly which movie characters were taken directly from the book characters. After finishing the movie, however, I really liked it. I think reading the book beforehand helped me figure things out to some extent, but The Hours really stands on its own.