The Mystery of Guitar Bains

Guitar Bains is Milkman Dead’s best friend, and this has been the case for quite some time.  They grew up together, and even at the age of thirty years old still hang out regularly.  So, considering the strong bond that exists between the two characters, it seems strange that Guitar would come to kill Milkman, even taking into account the extensive changes that both of the characters experienced as they grew up.  

Even stranger is how these actions contradict his earlier ones so much.  For example, Guitar didn’t react in a super negative way when Milkman told him about the incident where he got Henry Porter kicked out of his house.  That, to me, seemed to be a fairly major and problematic event, since it put one of the members of the Seven Days in jeopardy, and I would have expected Guitar to do something violent towards Milkman then if at all.  

I suppose it is likely that Guitar became more and more suspicious about Milkman’s motives.  I think that it is important to note that Guitar never saw any of Milkman’s (rather sudden) character development, since it all occurred after Milkman decided to go for the gold solo.  I think that it would be reasonable to assume that Guitar became to get more and more worried about whether he’d get his share of gold.  After all, doing something like this for himself was new territory for Milkman.  Would he suddenly forget his promise with Guitar upon seeing the gold?  Guitar had no way of knowing.

Another interesting tidbit is how Guitar puts down his rifle and decides to fight Milkman in hand-to-hand combat after seeing him rise up and shout over to him.  I think that, since he knew Milkman for so long, he was able to spot some semblance of change in the way he acted, and out of respect for this decided to fight him fairly.  I certainly could have imagined it, but the way I read them, Guitar’s words “My man.  My main man” seemed to carry an element of nostalgia.

But the book never explicitly mentions his motives, both when he comes to shoot Milkman, and when he suddenly decides to fight him hand-to-hand.  What do you guys think?  What could be the reason behind Guitar’s change of heart?

How Do Mr. Mason and Rochester Compare?

In Jean Rhys’ 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea, there are two Englishmen that feature prominently in the story – albeit during different parts.  During the first section of the story, while Antoinette Cosway, the main character, is growing up, we have Mr. Mason, her new stepfather who marries her mother and comes over to the estate.  During the later parts of the book, when Antoinette has become an adult, we have (although his name is not mentioned for a very long time) Rochester, Antoinette’s new husband who marries her without knowing too much about the history of the Cosway family. 

Mr. Mason seems to be completely oblivious to what goes on in Jamaica.  When Annette, Antoinette’s mother, describes how the African American members of the community feel about their family, Mr. Mason brushes it off completely.  The interaction on page 32 between the two displays this well: “’The people hate us.  They certainly hate me.’. . .’You imagine enmity which doesn’t exist.’”   Mr. Mason thinks that the black Jamaicans are “too lazy to be dangerous”, and this attitude causes a lot of damage in the end – when he mentions his plan to import some labor in front of one of them, they form a mob and burn the Coulibri estate. 

Rochester, in comparison, is far more wary when it comes to Jamaica.  It probably helped that when he arrived, he felt very out of his element due to the change of environment (Jamaica being much more colorful and “wild” than his native London), and due to the fact that the natives seem to know something that he doesn’t about his new wife and her family.

These two Englishmen, looking at their general behaviors and attitudes, seem to be very different.  But I ended up realizing that there was one big similarity between the characters.  For example, Rochester and Mr. Mason both end up deciding that their wives were insane and locking them up inside the house – the relationship between their wives was affected by the history that the Cosway family bears.  What do you guys think?  What are some other big parallels between these two characters?

Bad Luck?

During Meursault’s trial, regarding the murder and the sequence of events leading up to it, Celeste says, “The way I see it, it’s just bad luck.  Everybody knows what bad luck is.  It leaves you defenseless.  And there it is!”  I think that this statement can be considered to be accurate or inaccurate depending on the perspective that you adopt. 

First I’ll cover Celeste’s viewpoint.  He removes Meursault’s responsibility from the equation.  He is implicitly saying that the whole situation is not Meursault’s fault.  Although this might seem to be a bit biased – Celeste considers Meursault to be his friend, after all (even to the extent that he says he doesn’t care excessively about whether Meursault has kept up with the bills he runs up at the diner) – I think there is definitely some merit to this statement.  The whole entire mess sort of starts when Meursault goes to get dinner with Raymond.  After that, feeling a sort of bond with Raymond, he decides to support Raymond when he goes to get revenge against his mistress for supposedly cheating.  After that, he ends up getting drunk, and the sun irritates him to the point that he squeezes the gun too hard and pulls the trigger.  When you look at it like that, it seems like Meursault is just the victim of some larger force here, just stumbling from misfortune to misfortune.

Of course, you could look at it differently, saying that it is Meursault’s fault for just going with the flow and maintaining his impartial attitude, and that would also be valid.  If Meursault wasn’t like this, even if Raymond still approached him, he would be able to recognize how shady Raymond is and refrain from helping him accomplish any of his shady goals.  Everything could potentially have stopped after the dinner.  But that would change a major aspect of Meursault’s character to the extent that we probably wouldn’t recognize him afterwards. 

Personally, although I don’t condone that Meursault killed the Arab, I think that he did get unlucky.  Given his personality, Meursault seems to be sort of vulnerable to Raymond's brand of coercion.  Had he not become Raymond’s “pal”, he would likely have gone on with his normal daily life.  What do you think?  Which viewpoint do you think makes the most sense?

Is Gregor Ever Really "Home"?

In Franz Kafka’s 1912 novella The Metamorphosis, the main character, Gregor Samsa, formerly a travelling cloth salesman, faces the difficulties of living as an insect among an entirely human family.   the whole package, including misunderstandings, the communication divide, and the loneliness.  He is shunned and hurt by those who he cares for most, and even decides to starve himself to death once his sister starts to feel that he should disappear.  It’s as if once Gregor’s money-making potential went out of the window, his worth and presence as a family member did as well.  This is strange, especially since no one else in the family works (at least not until a while after Gregor transforms into an insect), and Gregor is working to pay off their debt.   

I feel that one of the reasons that the family feels so detached from Gregor (and has no compunctions about hurting him or treating him poorly after his transformation) is that he barely is able to spend any time at home from his job – the emotional connection he presumably had with his parents seems to have thinned out over such a prolonged period in which his presence in the household was so fleeting.  Because of this, it is probably difficult for Gregor’s family members to ‘find’ their son, let alone in such a horribly offensive creature’s body.  As the saying goes, “Out of sight, out of mind.”  And this holds meaning in both senses: his absence and his transformed body.

The only person who I think really shows a tiny bit of genuine concern or kindness to Gregor is his mother, and I think this is because she still holds a belief that Gregor will come back to them one day.  This is evidenced when she tells the rest of the family that she is worried that if they move the furniture out of Gregor’s room, he’ll feel like they gave up on him once he comes back. 

Even his sister Grete, who Gregor really cares about, seems to think of him as nothing more than a giant icky bug.  She volunteers to take care of him – and she does so initially in a somewhat squeamish manner – but apparently soon enough the novelty wears off and she starts to find him a nuisance.  Her attitude distinctly sours, and she becomes more hateful towards him.  I wonder why she grows to view this insect that used to be her brother with such distaste.  Does she resent him for his absence?  Does she just not feel any connection to him?  What about the rest of the family?  Tell me what you think!

Same Old Jake, Now With Less Friends!

Over the roller coaster ride of Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, our knowledge about the characters deepens, and consequently, so does our understanding of the characters.  I would like to talk about how Jake and his social circle changes as the story goes on as the book comes to a close.

I want to discuss how Jake changes through the end of the book, but actually (and this is perhaps in part due to the short time frame that the book covers – only a few weeks as far as I am aware) Jake doesn’t develop a whole lot.  Many of his fundamental views and behaviors remain unchanged.  He’s still more or less in love with Brett Ashley, remaining quietly jealous when a man he doesn’t approve of so much as looks of her. (His behavior toward her slightly changes, though – more on that later) He still rips into Robert Cohn whenever he can find a good opportunity.  And so that everything remains bottled up (ha ha) he still drinks so much that one might wonder how his liver looks.  However, recently we got the opportunity to see a relaxed and much happier Jake, the American aficionado who avidly watches the bullfighting and has Montoya’s appreciation – A Jake who truly belongs somewhere.  I think that this attitude is the biggest change to Jake over the entire book.  I liked this happy Jake much more than the usual gloomy one.

Jake’s friendships are sort of a mixed bag in a sense: some turn sour, like with Cohn and Montoya, while others remain the same, like with Mike and Bill.  It seems that the main catalyst for all of the drama and the bad dynamic that develops between members of the group is Brett, which didn’t really surprise me in the slightest.  After Cohn develops an attachment to Brett, all of the men act much harsher toward him, particularly Mike who can’t seem to control his foul mouth.  Additionally, when Jake introduces the bullfighter Pedro Romero (I like him, he seems like a decent fellow) to Brett, he loses his hard-earned rapport with Montoya, and the other bullfighters look upon him with scorn.  He gave up his place of belonging in mere hours.  With Brett, however, the situation is much more ambiguous.  On one hand, Jake appears to be trying to free himself from her grasp, as evidenced toward the much more detached attitude he adapts when talking with her at the very end.  On the other, the last sentence is very ambiguous.  “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”  Was he being sarcastic, or genuinely wistful?

In the end, I think that Jake’s social circle changed a lot more than he did himself.  Do you think that Jake changed in any significant way as the story went on?  Do you think I missed something?  

Sympathizing With Jake Barnes

I like writing about characters that I find to be interesting, and Jake Barnes from Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is one of them.  Jake is quite a contrast from the narrators who guided us through Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine.  The differences in his character are made more pronounced by Hemingway’s writing style, which also differs greatly from that which was used in the other books.  Hemingway’s short and terse, but meaningful style of writing (following the Iceberg Theory) helped me sort of wear Jake’s shoes while not leaving me completely at the mercy of the narrator’s train of thought. 

From what we’ve read so far, Jake immediately comes off as sort of a macho man (This seems like sort of a parallel to Hemingway himself, who was described as being very masculine - holding an interest in fishing, hunting, being a womanizer, etc.) who holds men with less manly traits in a considerably lower regard.  For example, in the beginning of the book he describes his friend Robert Cohn to us, the readers, and he certainly doesn’t mince words.  His tone is sort of biting and carries a certain mocking undertone.  I’d even go so far as to describe it as venomous in a way, which is certainly not the way people typically describe their friends. 

Staying true to the Iceberg Theory, not much is directly revealed about Jake’s character, or even Jake’s past even as the story goes on.  Jake leaves many of the details out of the story he tells.  However, many inferences can be made from the minute (and sometimes trivial-sounding at first glance) pieces that are included in the story in order to fill in the missing details.  Probably the most important of these is the injury Jake suffered to his genitalia during the war, since although the damage is undetectable in plain sight, it affects him deeply even after the war, and is a major obstacle standing in the way of a happy relationship with Brett.

Jake’s injury gives him more depth as far as I am concerned – it sort of turns him from a jerk who can’t seem to find any flaws in himself with an unsettling hate for select other people into a much more complex character with a reason (how justified the way he treats other people is could be debated) for acting the way he does.  He, feeling as though he lost his masculinity, feels frustrated with others who have what he doesn’t but are ‘wasting their potential’ such as, in his mind, Cohn.  This frustration is exacerbated by the fact that it is a deal-breaker for Brett, and even though they love each other, they feel the need to stay apart. 

Once we are exposed to more and more of these small details, a broader and more vivid picture begins to form.  After seeing his weaker and more vulnerable side, I feel much more inclined to sympathize with him.  Also, given that his bitter side stays below the surface and doesn’t really present itself when he interacts with his friends, I feel more comfortable feeling this way.  Do you agree?

Septimus' Lens

I found Septimus Warren Smith, from Virginia Woolf’s work Mrs. Dalloway, to be a very interesting character.  When we are first introduced to him, we aren't immediately plunged into the inner sanctum of his mind - we first get the opportunity to view him as a non-omniscient bystander would.  The first description we get suggests that Septimus is quite different from the people passing him by on the sidewalk.  A sense of paranoia and strange behavior uncharacteristic of your average Londoner alludes strongly to a mental illness, but we don’t learn much about his circumstances until later – all that is evident initially is the abnormality in his thought process and the way he seems to see the world.

Septimus’ thoughts exhibit a markedly different style from the other characters.  Compared to Clarissa Dalloway and other more “normal” people, Septimus tends to spend more time fixating on the minute details and sensations present in each scene, and express them to himself with his characteristically elaborate description.  This difference in the ‘lens’ that Septimus uses to look at the world is probably due to his original profession as a poet – and it likely would have made him successful if he hadn’t had to abandon poetry during the war.  Even after his traumatic experience, which caused his mental illness, he has retained this lens, and it allows him to immerse himself in wondrous experiences such as viewing the plane as it wrote letters in the sky.  However, this trait seems to turn against him at times.  Suffering from hallucinations and delusions that twist the reality that others see, the lens forces him to focus on and experience such bizzare scenes like a dog turning into a man, and his friend rising from the dead.  

These things feel very real to Septimus – as real as anything else in his environment, and as such he has no idea that part of his world is constructed in his own head.  He can’t explain his feelings and thoughts to anyone else – even his own wife finds him inscrutable, and very different from his old self.  He finds himself unable to even get his thoughts across to his dismissive listeners.  This is his plight, to be privy to whispers and visions that no one else can comprehend.  Only if you look at the world using Septimus’ unique lens can you snag the messages he is trying desperately to convey to the rest of the world.