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Lena's Rant

Lena’s Rant Lena’s rant was strange especially after never hearing from Lena and often only seeing her as connected to her sister and never really having a separate voice or action from First Corinthians. Although we heard similar messages from Guitar when he tells Milkman to get serious with his life, Lena seems to carry more gravitas when speaking to Milkman. We know he is drunk for at least part of it, we can see this when he first talks back to Lena asking if she wants him to pee more. This causes Lena to hit him which we are told sobers him up. Lena brings up plenty of good points that readers maybe hadn’t noticed because when there are so many other characters who are doing bad things. Compared to others, although Milkman seems arrested in his development, Milkman doesn’t seem like a bad person. This can kind of blind the readers to see some of his shortcomings in the treatment of the women in his life. Readers have a bad picture of Ruth because what Macon s...
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Antoinette's identity

A topic that often came up in class was who does Antoinette identify with. She and her family are not accepted by the local black community because Antoinette’s parents had slaves and treated them poorly. Since the Coulibri estate collapsed financially Antoinette and her family have been heavily judged by the local white community. It is also clear that Antoinette’s father was considered a bad man who was drunk all the time. Antoinette is in a hard situation because she played no role in the act of having slaves nor the financial downfall Coulibri. Also, in the beginning of the book when readers see Antoinette’s memories she has many instances were she is bullied by other kids and she hears of other talking bad about her family. We also see her seemingly innocent relationship with Tia that only turns bad when Antoinette brings degrading racial comments into their argument. In my opinion, Antoinette obviously does not get to choose to be black, especially consideri...
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Is Meursault a bystander?

A big discussion we have in class about Meursault is when did he officially cross the line into the bad side. Was it when he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral, slept with Marie a day later, seemingly not care about Salamano’s dog, accept food from Raymond, help Raymond abuse a woman, or when he kills the Arab? At first glance I thought the first instance where we see Meursault's indifference allow the abuse of someone else, this being Salamano’s abuse and especially when we learned of Raymond’s abusive nature. However, in class people mentioned the of Salamano’s dog is ignored by Meursault and everyone else in the building who seems to know of the situation, the only reason we are really mad at Meursault is that we have seen more examples of him being heartless. A question that continually came up in my mind throughout the first part of the novel, before we really see him commit crimes, what is the role of a bystander? Google defines a bystander as “ a person who is present at an...
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Kafkalternate reality

Kafkalternate reality The whole premise of the metamorphosis is strange a man turns into an insect, seemingly for no particular reason. Not only that but his family dynamic and job are extremely peculiar, he is a few minutes late and a representative from the company is already there to check on him. Also the parents seemingly rely on him to pay the debt but don’t seem to treat him very well. Throughout the entire story, I had this image that Gregor and his job and family were particularly peculiar, but I then I realized that maybe Kafka set this story in an alternate reality. Not an alternate reality where people turn to bugs but an alternate reality were work for young men is very intense. The amount of concern Gregor has for missing one day of work is in our reality very strange and hints at what would be considered an abusive work environment. So maybe an explanation for why Gregor sees his family as eternally benevolent is that that's how he and many others were raised. ...
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Does Jake's preconceived notions and alcoholism make him an unreliable narrator

Does Jake's preconceived notions and alcoholism make him an unreliable narrator The book starts off with Jake introducing Cohn in a very rude and often antisemitic manner. Later we find out why Jake may have has some issues with Cohn and why he would introduce him so negatively despite how they seem to have had somewhat of a good friendship. There is almost never a moment where Jake and all the other characters aren’t heavily drinking. A panel presentation in our class brought up the evidence of alcoholism in the book and how it explains a lot of the characters behaviors. Therefore maybe Jake wasn’t a very reliable narrator because his opinions of people are often based on their interest in Brett and their masculinities, he is also, in theory, wasted all the time. An easy connection to make for why Jake doesn’t like Cohn and is so rude to him is because Cohn was pretty annoying about Brett for a long time. First of all Cohn didn't pick up the obvious hint that Jake and Bret...
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How similar are Clarissa and Septimus?

I have been interested in the connection between Clarissa and Septimus and how those similarities differentiate enough for Septimus to end his life even though we never really got an idea that Clarissa was thinking the same. The first thing they have in common is that they both had a traumatic experience and they responded with a peculiar reaction. Septimus fought in World War one for a long time and lost one of the few people he seems to have ever had a close connection with. When this happened he seemingly had no feeling and that was a good thing in his opinion. In comparison, Clarissa’s sister died it was unclear how much this affected her because we only ever hear about it from Peter Walsh which may be considered peculiar seeing how much of her personal life we see. Another similarity the comes up a lot is, are they happy? With both of them, especially Clarissa, we never have a full picture of if they are happy. Septimus has terrible hallucinations and is desc...
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Did Clarissa really love Sally?

From the surface it seems pretty clear that Sally was the one who got away. Their kiss was the most exquisite moment of Clarissa’s life and when it happened she felt out of this world. On the other hand, Sally wasn't mentioned until later in the book, after Peter and Richard, and technically she married Richard and was content with the way their relationship panned out. I believe it was pretty obvious that when Clarissa thought of Sally there were some elements of passion and curiosity. The reason it’s unclear whether Clarissa loves Sally is because Sally represents these radical ideas that go against society and as we have noted in the past Clarissa doesn't love the idea of being Mrs. Richard Dalloway and is interested in what Sally talked to her about. I think Clarissa’s amusement with the anarchical ideas of Sally gave her too much to think about her mind was already blown by these new ideas she never considered the more radical idea of being in love with a woman. If Sally h...
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