Villette- Charlotte Bronte

It's been so long since I made time to discuss the books I'm reading! It took me ages to finish Villette, but its such a great novel! Themes are quite similar to those found in Jane Eyre but I found that I was taken by this book so much faster than I was by Jane Eyre. Perhaps its because at that point I was swept away by Bronte's writing style and her elegant choice of words, but I think the overall plot was more appealing as well.

Its nothing too crazy, really. A young woman by the name of Lucy Snowe, after some trials and hardships, leaves her home country, England, for the chance to claim her independence in France. There, she soon finds herself teaching in a little town of Villette and we listen enrapture as she describes some of her relationships and situations she enounters along the way. Although she becomes dangerously ill a couple times because of her emotional suffering, it still amazes me how her character can be so self-controlling and almost stoic when her situation turns for the worst. She is completely at peace with her place in life, as long as it is hers. I don't want to say that she is happy with her circumstances because it took great courage to go to France without the slightest idea of what might happen, where she'll stay.. but she's very slow to desire more.

She says herself that she is "not quite a stoic" emotions do seize her, as they do any other person, however it must only be "one sultry shower, heavy and brief" because "the Hope I am bemoaning myself suffered and made me suffer much".

I think the thing I admire most about her character, is how "levelheaded" she is and how well she can understand where others are coming from and how to act and react. For instance, when she is quite sad that she hasn't heard from the only people she is happy to be with she says:

"Of course I did not blame myself for suffering: I thank God I had a truer sense of justice than to fall into any imbecile extravagances of self-accusation; and as to blaming others for silence, in my reason I well knew them blameless, and in my heart acknowledged them so: but it was a rough and heavy road to travel, and I longed for better days".

I'm definitely not one to keep my emotions as "in check" as Lucy Snowe does time and time again throughout the novel. I believe her emotions get the best of her maybe twice throughout the novel.. once because she was accused of accepting the work of a fellow professor as her own and likewise forced into attempting to prove otherwise. and again because the person she grew closest to was being forced to stay away from her. In every other situation, she "suppressed [her] surprise, and swallowed whatever other feelings began to surge".

What I also enjoy about her character is how witty she is. Her relationship with Ginevra, with Dr. John, with every other character, is quite entertaining. I found that I would read only a chapter or two at a time, striving to delay the encroaching end. However, end it did. And although the end was not as clear as I should have liked, it was perfect. However, I would have liked to learn more about how her relationships developed rather than have a very brief and somewhat confusing summary of the changes that took place after the time the novel is mainly about.

Three Cups of Tea- Greg Mortenson

This is an amazing biographical account of super human Greg Mortenson! I was first attracted to this book because Mortenson talks about his attempted summit of K2 and I've mainly read about Mount Everest Expeditions and about Nepali Sherpa Guides so reading about Pakistani guides and the small mountain villages surrounding K2 has been really cool. I am just always SO impressed to read about people doing such amazing things without really realizing how great of an impact they're making. He was just a poor nurse who liked to mountain climb so much that he just lived in his car so he'd have the money to keep climbing- that is pretty cool I have to say.

The story takes off from his failure to summit K2 and his adventures in getting lost only to be "found" right where he was needed in a small village of Korphe. There his passion flamed on and he began trying to build schools for girls and boys, focussing on girls rights to an education. He had a whole lot of rocky moments where he didn't have the funds or materials to complete schools or water systems for poor villages all around Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I'm also really jealous that he became so close to people that don't generally take to "outsiders" and was quickly able to pick up 2-3 languages during the course of his work. However, I think the most important aspect of his book is the insight he has with these unknown and misunderstood cultures and religions. He addresses 9/11 and terrorism, understanding that these acts of violence truly result from a lack of education-- I am once again talking about forced ignorance. With the schools that he has been building (with A LOT of of help) are educating our youth, boys and girls. And I just really hope people will stop being ignorant themselves and understand that there are extremes in every religion...

Some important quotes:

"He didn't need to travel to the other side of the world to be useful, Mortenson thought [he helped a lot of people as a nurse]. He was helping here. But each shift, and the dollars accruing in his Bank of America account [from donors], brought Mortenson closer to the day he could resume construction of the Korphe school".

As he was at home with his family he realized he had to act:
"Mortenson, feeling helpless, paced his basement between calls to his contacts in Pakistan's military. And the reports he heard robbed him of the few hours of sleep that he ordinarily managed. Streams of refugees from the fighting were crossing the high passes [to avoid the war] on foot and approaching Skardu, exhausted, injured, and badly in need of services no one in Baltistan was equipped to provide. The answers weren't in the stacks of books piling ever higher against the walls and spilling off shelves onto the floor. They were in Pakistan".

At the inauguration of the Kuardu school:
' "I request America to look into our hearts," Abbas continued, his voice straining with emotion, "and see that the great majority of us are not terrorists, but good and simple people. Our land is stricken with poverty because we are without education. But today, another candle of knowledge has been lit. In the name of Allah the Almighty, may it light our way out of the darkness we find ouselves in." '

"And at first, Mortenson had supported the war in Afghanistan. But as he read accounts of increasing civilian casualties, and heard details during phone calls to his staff in the Afghan refugee camps about the numbers of children who were being killed when they mistakenly picked up the bright yellow pods of unexploded cluster bombs, which closely resembled the yellow military food packets American planes were also dropping as a humanitarian gesture, his attitude began to change".

Mortenson's encounter with a woman named Uzra who refused to let the bombings of her school prevent the children from being taught:
" "I was just overwhelmed listening to Uzra's story," Mortenson says. "Here was this strong, proud woman trying to do the impossible. Her school's boundary wall had been blown to rubble. The roof had fallen in. Still, she was coming to work every day and putting the place back together because she was passionate about education being the only way to solve Afghanistan's problems". "

Mortenson's reaction to the War on Terror:
"The time for us to turn all the suffering we'd helped to cause in Afghanistan into something positive was slipping away. I was so upset I paced the aisles of the planes all the way to Washington [D.C. , to talk to them about the men and women not being paid for their work in Afghanistan]," Mortenson says. "If we couldn't do something as simple as seeing that a hero like Uzra gets her forty-dollar a-month salary, then how could we ever hope to do the hard work it takes to win the war on terror?".

About our true enemy:
"The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise, the fight will go on forever".

I would really encourage EVERYONE to read this as it is very inspirational and can definitely have a great impact on your life. For one tiny little example- I've always been outdoorsey and I LOVE to climb and hike- this book got me into rock climbing and helps people understand our differences and finally see our similarities.

The fight is still ongoing and Greg continues to build schools for our children. Check out www.threecupsoftea.com

Angela's Ashes- Frank McCourt

So-- this was a tough read about hardcore poverty, religion and ignorance. By the end of the novel (which is autobiographical) fried bread, mashed bread with sugar and especially a hardboiled egg, sounded like heaven to me! It makes me feel terrible listening to little Frankie and his brothers having the luck of eating bread and jam, stealing an apple hear and there and enjoying the sweet little toffee once in a while when I can have every food item he mentions in a matter of minutes. He makes my childhood poverty look like the life of royalty.

His is a society of simplicity and therefore ridiculous complexity. What I mean by that is every time one hear's about or visits a small "simple" town where everyone "obeys" the church (tis in quotation b/c most never really do obey the church, they just sin in secret) and does so without question but the younger generation is always punished for this simplicity. They grow up in forced ignorance and like Frankie, get in big trouble just trying to understand things about the world they were never taught (like sex, which I think is implied).

McCourt's writing style does a GREAT job reflecting that forced ignorance. The lack of comas throughout the text were at first annoying to me but then I realized that it forced me to read without breaking/pausing, much the way a child talks. This was important to create a relationship between the author and the reader.

And what of the title?? While I was reading I anticipated the death of Frankie's mam, Angela. I dreaded it because I thought I knew it was coming and I hated to think about what would happen to the children (those that had survived the sickness and the hunger). I thought her death would force her husband from the North to sober up or force the children into the orphanage. But she did not die. Atleast not physically. I wonder if her 'ashes' symbolize the deathes of three of her children, her husbands problem with the drink and later Angela's decision to stop having sex with her husband to avoid another pregnancy. Perhaps it is her soul that did not survive the life Frankie writes about.

The Lover

I must say that I don't entirely like the style of the novel (I absolutely hated it at first), but the plot makes it rather difficult to put the book down. I think that if it were written differently, it would have been easier to follow and perhaps more enjoyable, but thinking about it, it needs to be choppy and difficult.

The content is quite controversial in that we are listening to a really young girl talk about her sexual relationship with an older man, insinuating a sexual relationship with one or both of her brothers, a lust for a young classmate (Helene Lagonelle) and mentioning some quite sinister thoughts. She talks of a desire to kill her brother, to watch her mother die, to ravage her classmate, etc.

The girl seems kind of crazy but she is completely open and unapologetic, which makes it a little easier to read and possibly accept. I honestly don't know how to feel about the novel. The more I think about it, the more intrigued I am. Discussing the parallels of death and pleasure throughout the novel with two of my classmates helped me to understand Marguerite a little more clearly. It seems like she is never fully satisfied, never allows herself to be completely overcome by a desire or emotion and that seems to be because she doesn't want to be consumed by anything, to succumb and therefore die. A clear example of that is the acceptance of the fact that she will never marry. She also uses the phrase "unto death" I don't know how many times throughout the novel. By never allowing herself to take something to completion, she can't take it forgranted. Perhaps passion can never have a forever, it has to be fragile and shortlived.

Metamorphosis

After speaking with a couple of my friends about Franz Kafka, I was very interested in reading Metamorphosis because Kafka is well known for his original ideas (to say the least). I definitely thought Metamorphosis was different, I enjoyed describing the short story to friends and family because people don't tend to imagine a person-turned-insect so calm about the fact that [he] is a bug and worried about his family...

The short was entertaining but also quite serious. Many people have written about the hierarchal conflicts involved in the story and how the familial hierarchy is put to right when Gregor becomes an insect and his father is forced to start working again and leave his practically comatose lifestyle, but I think it is also important to see that the story is very much about the decisions people make. People either accept their situation (as Gregor did) and are squished like a bug in the process OR they decide to act (as Gregor's father and the rest of the Samso family did) and realize that they can grasp at a better life and prosper.

I was honestly a bit upset when the family reacted as they did and began to completely ignore and shame a member of their family, but I suppose that reaction is important because we need to think about the people we may inadvertently treat like "vermin". Do we stand aside and watch those struggling through a sad and difficult time or do we help them dig themselves out of that hole?

Although I'm not altogether sure about how I can expand on some of these ideas, I'm looking forward to seeing how they will develop.

Psychological Ruin of Dorian Gray

As previously stated, I do not think that Harry is to blame for Dorian's behavior. Harry only awakens in Dorian the "degenerate, rotten" person within. I think that person within was created by Dorian's grandfather and from the very beginning Dorian has lived his life of debauchery owning up to the image that his grandfather created. His relationship to Sibyl Vane was similar to that of his mother to a poor man, the murder of Basil symbolizing and indeed signifying for Dorian, the murder of his evil grandfather.

He hated his grandfather (wincing at the utterance of his name by a household servant) and Harry's influence forced him to remember that "there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now."

Dorian Gray II

Hypocrisy: Dorian Gray and Sibyl Vane
Dorian Gray blinding people with his beauty and poisoning them: they see him as inspiration but he destroys what they create.
Dorian’s obsession with Harry. He is in denial of it.

Influence on Dorian Gray: Did Harry totally corrupt him? Is it Basil’s fault for creating the painting? My theory: If Basil had not reacted to his painting as he did, but reacted the way he did later in front of Dorian, then Harry would not have been enticed to corrupt Dorian. Is it, in fact, a result of his bloodline? A karma that was passed down from one family member to the next. Hereditary doom, fate? “Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward’s studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed his life?” Or “were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realise?”

Is Harry jealous of Dorian’s beauty? Are they romantically involved? They bought an apartment together (which Dorian later released) and they would get away together every winter. It would seem that their’s is the only long lasting homosexual relationship portrayed in the novel. I am under the impression that Dorian had shared a serious 18mo. relationship with Allan (who later committed suicide) and the note used to threaten Allan to help him cover up the murder of Basil was a threat to tell the world about their homosexual relationship.

I do think that Harry and Dorian loved each other, but their relationship was based more on a love of art, of creating and seeing art. Harry was always intrigued by Dorian because he could create his own art through his own influence and manipulations. Dorian became more and more like Harry and would use his influence and manipulation to “direct” his own art on other people, lovers, friends, etc. It is their need to manipulate and to direct life that brings these two men together.

Dorian Gray collecting strange instruments, jewels, precious stones, textile and embroidered work, ecclesiastical vestiments… searching. Still seeing “the tragedy of his own soul”. Passions for music, “everything connected with the service of the church”…
They are all “modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne”. but then, that guild and fear, sometimes loathing of himself turns into a “pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own”.