Persuasion

I read Persuasion by Jane Austen. In my paper, I want to write about the concept of the "ideal man/suitor". I want to mainly discuss Wentworth, Admiral Croft and Sir Walter and how society views them (Sir Walter being viewed as the most elite and "worthy" even though he spends without thought, etc, and Wentworth and Croft are both hardworking Navy men.)

Persuasion

I read Persuasion by Jane Austen. In my paper, I want to write about the concept of the "ideal man/suitor". I want to mainly discuss Wentworth, Admiral Croft and Sir Walter and how society views them (Sir Walter being viewed as the most elite and "worthy" even though he spends without thought, etc, and Wentworth and Croft are both hardworking Navy men.)

How bout no

I’d rather not read your silly book,
Or waste time dreaming of what was.
I won’t sadly sigh because
I made the most of how I looked.

You say their love was false, untrue?
You say what I chose I’d regret?
But I lived well, took the best I could get—
And that sure wasn’t you.

So no, I won’t bend beside the glowing bars,
Because your love so “true” has gone,
I’m glad to see you’ve moved along,
‘Cause I still don’t know who you are.

This Is Not Your Cure For Meanness?

So, I was looking through my blog to make sure I had all my posts and saw that I didn't have my review of the short stories I read for my paper. (I guess they didn't go through? Gah, I hate technology. So much.) But anyway, I'm going to try this again:

It is coming down to either writing about "What Is The Cure For Meanness" by Brock Clarke or "This Is Not Your City" by Caitlin Horrocks.

"What Is The Cure For Meanness" has a really dark, biting humor that I enjoy. Basically, after the dad leaves the mom, the son tries to make her feel better by giving her gifts. Each gift, in turn, dies or backfires. It's actually quite sad. I don't know what I'd write about this one, but I think I'd analyze the Clarke's style for the narrator's voice. It's very run-ony and fluid, the way someone talks when they're angry or nervous, where they just keep going until something stops them. To me, that's the main draw of this short story. I can really hear the narrator in my head--and he's a person I can relate to, to some extent.

"This Is Not Your City" is also pretty dark. Mother and husband split. Mother and daughter don't get along. Mother sells herself as a mail-order bride. Daughter gets new boyfriend. New boyfriend dies while with daughter. Mother and daughter bond. If I write about this one, I'm definitely going to be writing about language. It's hard to explain without actually writing down everything I thought about language when reading this, but the mom and the daughter have to learn a new language and there's definitely a theme about lacking a way to communicate. But I'd really want to tie it in to the last scene--the daughter has just told the mom that the boyfriend is dead. And then they sit in silence--and they're so much closer and communicating so much more in that silence than any other time. I really liked that.

Marlowistrate

Heart of Darkness and Waiting For The Barbarians are both tales of a character's recognition and rejection of a corrupt community.

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow joins "The Company" because his unbridled curiosity naturally makes him want to explore the unexplored and, more pragmatically, he needs a job. Shortly after accepting his position in the company, Marlow begins to recognize the darkness and corruption of what is actually a brutal, imperialistic, racist, and dishonest organization. When Marlow tries to reject this corruption, he is regarded as "unsound" and company members, who initially tried to ally themselves with Marlow (because they believed Marlow to be allied with Kurtz, and the company is, above all else, ruled by self-serving political alliance and desire for power and control)became wary of their interactions with him. Marlow seems to be inherently independent-minded. He recognizes inconsistencies (the brick layer with no bricks, etc) and is able to form conclusions about the lack of integrity in the company. He has no massive illusions of idealism he has to dispel beforehand (he even mocks his aunt's readiness to accept the idealist propaganda).

The Magistrate is different in this respect. He has been a tool of the Empire for decades. He believes in and, also significantly, WANTS to believe in the integrity of the Empire that provides him with his title and relatively worry-free lifestyle. He has ties to the Empire and is not inclined to oppose it. His character, therefore, undergoes more of a transformation than Marlow, though they both walk the same path of rejecting a corrupt power. The Magistrate's opposition to The Empire starts unintentionally. When he picks up the lantern, he never expected to see the dead, beaten old man and the tortured little boy. He even thinks of how he wishes he had never seen it, he doesn't want to be a part of any conflict, he simply wants to return to his normal life, but he sees too much and is not able to sit idly by. By the end of the novel, the Magistrate labels himself an enemy of The Empire and wishes to see no similarities between himself and The Empires agents (mainly Colonel Joll).

Snow and Dreams and Children and Stuff

In WFTB, the Magistrate has a recurring dream about the children in the snow:

“In the night the dream comes back. I am trudging across the snow of an endless plain towards a group of tiny figures playing around a snowcastle. As I approach the children sidle away or melt into the air. Only one figure remains, a hooded child sitting with its back to me. I circle around the child, who continues to pat snow on the sides of the castle, till I can peer under the hood. The face I see is blank, featureless; it is the face of an embryo or a tiny whale; it is not a face at all but another part of the human body that bulges under the skin; it is white; it is the snow itself. Between numb fingers I hold out a coin.”

Why is the Magistrate haunted by this dream? What is its significance? What does snow symbolize in WFTB?

Eben Bass Attempts to Word His Article So That His Point Seems Valid

I chose this article because I don't agree with Eben Bass.

In the first paragraph of his criticism, Bass avers that the "reader gets scarcely any sense of order" or time in Benjy's narrative due to his mental condition. I disagree. Though Benjy is unable to interpret incidents any better than a three-year-old, he gives very detailed accounts of his memories. His memories skip around and are not explained and analyzed, but he still "tells" readers about a few very distinct memories of his life, that can, for the most part, be placed on a timeline if the reader simply accepts that, since Benjy is not fully aware of the timeline his own memories, the reader must take on the responsibility of interpreting time himself.

Bass goes on to say that Jason's version of the story is also "flawed"--not in the sense that it was a mistake in the writing, but in that it doesn't entirely satisfy the reader's apparent need for a reliable, understandable, forthright narrator who outlines an explicit timeline--"in that he tries to go back in time by getting revenge on his sister." I don't buy it. Bass tries to set up his article to make the symbols he discusses more important than they really are--to make them the only threads that hold the story together. It's true, the continuity of certain possessions and places help readers understand what happened where and when, but so does the continuation of dialogue from certain memories and the actual narration of the three brothers. These things cannot be dismissed. Maybe Jason is living in the past, trying to get some form of belated revenge on Caddy, but that doesn't affect the reliability of his narration. He is dwelling in the past, making decisions based on the past, yes, but not actually so deluded as to interchanging past and present in his narrative or believing that he actually can alter what has been.

Bass also tries to write off Quentin's section because "he too arrests time, by committing suicide," not acknowledging the 70 pages of meaty narration readers receive before that point.

Bass then goes further, saying, that the "biases" of the three sections "serve to cancel each other out." If that were true, I could have just read section four and understood the novel as well as if I'd read it in its entirety! Even if the sections contradict each other, to say they "cancel each other out" is going too far, creating a poorly-worded, false, absolute declaration. At the end of the day, the three brothers' sections are different, but they tell the same tale and each brother's voice adds another dimension to the story.

After giving a slightly manipulative description of the inaccuracies and holes in the brothers' stories, Bass goes on to discuss how the story's ultimate truth lies in the consistency of the characters' "props". This discussion very quickly digresses into a simple listing of symbols in the story, citing how and when they were used. Awesome.