That One Escalator (Sasha)

While Rochester spends much of his time accusing or suspecting others of insanity, it is actually he who acts insane throughout the book. While he has clearly lost it completely but he end of Part II, Rochester actually begins to go mad much earlier in the book, perhaps as a result of his severe illness. Rochester’s mistrust of the West Indies develops rapidly into severe paranoia, and possible hallucinations.  Rochester does not quite understand the West Indies, which is understandable for someone who has just arrived there, and does not quite trust them either, which is also understandable for someone who immediately got a fever so bad he was confined for 3 weeks. However, this initial mistrust and understanding opens up an avenue for Rochester to to manifest all of his worst character tendencies, culminating in his state-endorsed kidnapping and false imprisonment of his wife.  Rochester’s mistrust begins to grow increasingly paranoid, believing that people are hid...

         Albert Camus’ The Stranger is, along with its other philosophical explorations, an exploration of the concept of neutrality, and what neutrality means. Meursault is portrayed as a character who does his utmost to preserve his “neutrality” in the face of all the actions and words of the other characters in the story, especially Salamano and Raymond. Camus’, in what is not much of a surprise, given his active participation in the French Resistance, seems to side with the view that neutrality in the face of evil is itself evil. This view is most evident through the first half of the book, while Meursault is a free man.  In the second half, the message on neutrality changes slightly. Not only will it make one complicit and ultimately directly responsible for evil, it will also fail to save oneself. Meursault is sentenced to death by guillotine, the standard method of execution in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981 (the other ...

        If we accept the premise of the article about Gregor’s transformation being a metaphor for aging, a number of interesting possibilities emerge. For instance, while we talked briefly about Gregor’s parents acting like his children, we did not talk so much about Grete.  Gregor, I think, acts like a proud and over-protective grand-parent to Grete throughout the novel. Or, since he can’t really act much, thinks like one. What do we see of Gregor’s interactions with Grete? Probably the most notable incident comes at the very end, when Gregor believes that Grete is not being properly appreciated, and that if she joined him he would truly appreciate him. This has all kinds of creepy vibes, but also vibes of “no one else sees the specialness of my grandchild , who is clearly a violin prodigy.” Gregor takes offense at the lodgers not appreciating Grete, like a grand-parent who feels their child has been insulted. He feels like he would truly appreciate e...

        Peter Walsh, in Mrs. Dalloway , is one of the first post-War men. He would be, in The Sun Also Rises , “one of them”, alongside Jake and Brett. Peter Walsh is usually, like Jake, fairly judgmental. He also demonstrates a fairly developed since of humor throughout the story.  Hugh Whitbread, in particular, is the target of Peter Walsh, much like Cohn becomes the target of his fellows in The Sun Also Rises , and for essentially similar reasons. Peter criticizes Hugh for “having no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman,”. The comment seems similar to what is regularly implied by the various characters in The Sun Also Rises about Cohn; that (in this case) Hugh is a relic of a past age. He does not understand the way in which the modern world works, and attempts to compensate for it by engaging in behaviors the other characters consider slightly or entirely ludicrous. Cohn constantly challenges people to fights fo...

            In Mrs. Dalloway , we are given the character of Septimus Smith, a man who has been broken by his experiences in war. There have been several suggestions in class, correctly, I believe, that part of his severe disorder lies in the culture of masculinity that pervaded England of the 1920s, and still pervades our modern culture (to an admittedly lesser degree).  Certainly, his ultimate suicide is caused by a male doctor failing to understand Septimus’ condition, and in the end, accusing him of “cowardice”, a ludicrous claim to make against a man who fought in the bloodiest war any character in the book has ever seen (with the exceptions of any very small children). Why is he accused of cowardice? Because he kills himself rather than once again bury his emotions, this time on the orders of a doctor, who spends his time essentially advocating that Septimus spend his time pretending that everything is alright, even when it clearly is not....

        The Great War shows its deep effects on English society throughout the sections of   Mrs. Dalloway  we have read so far. The clear candidate is the one of Septimus Warren Smith, but it shows through in other locations as well. It is mentioned explicitly in several locations beyond Smith, from mentions of “the dead, of Empire”, to talk of those who Clarissa knows have lost their children.  On page 19, we are given a description of the crowd watching the motorcar go by, from a Mr. Bowley, who “had rooms in the Albany” and is “sealed with wax over the deeper sources in his life”. But, the sight of the crowd, he admits, breaks past this seal over his character, and he gives a description of the people there: “poor women, nice little children, orphans, widows”, and then, “the War”. The war is given the status of human by Mr. Bowley, alongside the crowd, and alongside the results of the war, the widows and orphans of London. It is, of course, cap...