Country Roads Take Me Home

“You have to carry the fire.

I don’t know how to.

Yes you do.

Is it real? The fire?

Yes it is.

Where is it? I don’t know where it is;

Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.”

The Road was an inspiring book to me, to a point that I teared up reading the last few pages of it. The novel is about the lives of a man and his son, trying to get to the sea where it’s warmer. It shows the consequences of a nuclear war, the world is dark and cold and cannibalism took over humanity. The book is very simply written with short staccato sentences, which makes it very easy to read. At the beginning the narrative structure had me lost and confused to a point that I asked myself: Why does everyone love this book so much? It’s after a quarter of the book that you get a glimpse at the true beauty of it. Simple sentences go from being annoying and misleading to flowingly easy to read. I was grasped by the story and felt like if I put the book down, someone’s going to die. I love these experiences, these bonds you form with a book and its story, and The Road perfectly made this possible.

The main focus of this book is the deep and trusting relationship between the father and the boy. The father has been the only person taking care of the boy since his mother decided to take her life, because she thought that they were just running away from death with no goal at all. The boy, being young and thin, trusts his father with all his heart. They are each other’s world entirely. A child in normal circumstances would probably have rebelled after few weeks of travelling in the frosty cold without hardly any food at all, but that’s when the relationship between the two makes a difference: The boy believes his father when he says that in the south it will be warm. Even after reaching the coast (grey water instead of blue, no ‘good’ people reunited like he hoped, no child to play with and a father that has a bad cough) the trust in his father stays alive.

The belief that keeps them alive is that they’re carrying the fire (see quote above). I thought that The Road was a unique book, written in a style I’d never seen before, and that’s what makes it special. I wish that there was a another ending to it though, just because it is so uncertain.

After reading about Pooja's ideas in her blog http://poojasivhlenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/dystopian-or-post-apocalyptic-review-on.html about The Road, I was impressed by her arguments about the missing plot of the novel. Looking back I think that I was impressed by the fact that the end moved me so much, ignoring that all the same things had been happening over and over again in a different context. I enjoyed reading her blog for this exact reason: It might have changed my mind about the book. However, I think that there is no doubt that The Road is an outstanding novel, striking through by being different.

Trying to find the magic, Trying to write a classic

“Any form of authorial writing where the narrator sets himself up as stagehand and director and judge and executor in text, I find somehow unacceptable” writes James Wood in the chapter Narrating of his novel How Fiction Works.

Isn’t it true that everyone hates a book where the narrator knows everything, acts like he/she’s God and judges the story along the way, commenting all actions of every character? That is what the author is trying to say and I agree with him. A narrator like this reveals too much and there is no ‘reading between the lines’. By nature we are repulsed by a person that acts like he’s God. In the Road we find some very interesting narration. The narrator is omniscient (third person) but at the same time we don’t get the feeling that he knows much. It’s written in the perspective of someone who just stands next to them watching what they do, hearing what they say, as well as knowing the thoughts of the man. An astonishing fact is that the man and the boy are never called by their names. The narrator never gives us background about the characters, only through the father’s thoughts. Wood suggests that a third person is reliable (omniscience) and a first person narrator is unreliable because he knows less about himself than the reader does. However he feels like the perfect narrator is someone who knows what the rules are and knows the answers to certain questions, this I find is a difficult thing to do but I think that the narrator in the Road did an amazing job achieving this. There is so much suspense and mystery only due to the fact that the narrator doesn’t know too much.

James Wood makes different statements throughout his piece of text about reliable and unreliable narration as well as omniscience, coming to the conclusion that omniscience does not exist. He goes on and analyzes narration of many different authors in depth which to me ruins a good book when you know all of this because you learn to look more closely at a text instead of just enjoying or disliking it. This realization reminded me a lot of theatrical analysis. When you learn about all the details that make a good actor, a good speech or a good setting you pay so much attention to these small details that you forget to just enjoy the play. When you’ve studied theater or English for a long time, I think it might be possible to just unconsciously realizing the details while loving a good theater performance or relaxing while reading a good book. To get to this point, is another challenge I have to overcome.

All the literary features such as irony that are discussed reminded me of the text On Language by Zamyatin that I read a few months ago. Both texts are very helpful when used for a deeper understanding of a text such as the Road and We by Zamyatin. Even though I prefer reading about people and their stories instead of reading about narration and literary features, this text is an immense help while one is trying to understand a text or a novel in detail.

What is Love? Baby don't hurt me, no more.

The extract from Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale portrays Offred’s notion of love. Through instability in tone she conveys the two-sided face of love, while diction and imagery show her feelings towards love and men.

The ironic tone in this extract shows the relationship Offred makes between love and religion. She says that she ‘believed in it’, the past tense indicating that she no longer does. The extract states that God is love, but that they reversed it and love, like heaven, was always around the corner. The tone implicated here is almost sarcastic, indicating that she can’t believe that she once fell for that because she was let down and she had to realize that love, like God does no good. The fact that it was ‘always around the corner’ brings a negative tone to it, if not boredom. She writes ‘love’ with a capital L, like ‘God’.  Love is comfort, God gives you comfort but at the same time it is hard to remember when it’s over, like pain. This idea is one of the main ideas in this extract. She mentions that sometimes she would look at a man one day and think I loved you. This reminded me of her hope that’s lost because she doesn’t believe in God, and neither does she believe in Love. Her love is gone.

The chosen diction portrays Offred’s instability and struggle with her own feelings. The first paragraph shows repetition of the words ‘I don’t’ and ‘I could’ and then ‘so far’. Even in these few lines there is a mood change going on. First she says that she doesn’t want to tell the story, then she says that she doesn’t have to (twice) and she considers her possibilities by saying what she could do, and the words so far show how she’s losing hope. This loss of hope is to be seen in the next line with the words “Why fight? That will never do”. Speaking of love, Offred says that it was so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. She describes her positive and adventurous feelings towards it, but then it the last paragraph she talks about the man next to her, sharing her love, with very negative diction using words like shadow, darker and cavernous, representing her doubts. The last sentence of this extract is a question: What if he doesn’t love me? That shows how insecure a woman gets when she falls in love. In that paragraph the narrator talks about a man, showing that women are practically lost without men and love. This simple question shows her instability and her reliance on men. What does a woman do when he doesn’t love her?

The third and last devices Atwood uses in this extract is imagery even though it’s closely related to diction, it shows us a whole other side of Offred’s feelings towards love by suggesting that love is like a fall. In this extract much imagery is considered to describe love. Love is pain, love is heaven (always around the corner), love is a fall. From these three comparisons, the last one is the most important to Offred. Through the extract we see a pattern of repetition of the verb falling. Falling in love, falling into it, I fell for him, falling women, still falling. To her, love is a downward motion. It’s great when you’re on top of the hill, up so high looking down at the sky, but then when she starts to fall in love, she seems to scream don’t let me fall. Love is like flying, but since you have to come back on earth eventually, it hurts when you hit the ground. Offred was let down by love.

This extract of the Handmaid’s Tale is one of the best to portray Offred’s feelings for love. Through the book we can see her trying to hang on to those memories she has with her lost husband, but we see eventually that there weren’t just good sides to that marriage and that she felt suppressed sometimes by him in a way that she didn’t allow herself to ask or say the things she wanted to.

I don't need a man

The article ‘Blame it on feminism’ by Susan Faludi sums up the main ideas of the previous articles I blogged on. It says as well that women today look for something else to worry about, since they don’t have to fight for their rights anymore. Women these days have more power than ever, but still they aren’t happy. Women might be free and equal now, but they’ve never been this miserable. Working women suffer from too much stress, which sometimes leads to infertility, and single women suffer from the lack of a man. This can be referred to one of the previous articles about the teen mags. They gain their money by talking about what every single woman wants to know: How to get the perfect man? How to know if he’s the one?

This behavior can lead to eating disorders, hair loss, bad nerves, alcoholism and even heart attacks. It seems like women need some problem they can think of, some problem that they have to overcome. And if the problem is not a war or a lack of rights, why can’t it be a man?

The article focuses on the fact that women are suppressed by men and that it isn’t the women’s fault. This strongly relates to the book ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ where women are objects to conceive children. They’re like a machine, not human anymore. The women have lost their right to control their actions and bodies. When impregnated, their body is used like an ice machine, just that instead of producing ice, it produces a child. Once the child is born, it is given to the Commander’s life, a woman with an higher status.

The article also states that the women still don’t have the same rights as men, at least not at work. The U.S government still doesn’t give a family-leave and child care programs for working mothers. On the other side this is just a small aspect in the rights and equalization of women. If this is all the women have to worry about, then why can’t they be happy, might say a woman that lived in the years where women completely suppressed by men. Surveys indicate that women still don’t feel liberated, regardless from their rights. Women still think that they are discriminated at work.  This myth of men being stronger and better at everything (apart from cooking maybe), still isn’t worn out. Some men still believe that women belong in the kitchen and that they are incompetent in various jobs that involve physical work.

You're beautiful

The feminist article ‘The Beauty Myth’ by Naomi Wolp, talks about the never ending discussion of beauty. Women nowadays have gained their legal and reproductive rights, pursued higher education, entered the trades and the professions, and overturned ancient and revered beliefs about their social role. Now they look for other problems, like their physical appearance. Their bodies, faces, hair and clothes become all that matters to them, because these aspects are what define them and let them stand out in society. The need to stand out comes from our long lasting history of women that didn’t have the same rights of men, or women in different classes. Superiority can only be expressed through beauty, wealth or intelligence. Of these three factors beauty is the one thing that everyone can see at first sight. It’s like an etiquette. Prove for this is the fact that the number of eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing medical specialty. It matters to us women how we feel physically, how we feel in our own skin. That’s an important factor for a healthy life even though eating disorders and plastic surgery aren’t the solution to the problem. A healthy lifestyle would be sufficient.  At once, the diet and skin care industries became the new cultural censors of women’s intellectual space. Going back in history, you can find several times at when there were similar behaviors. Sometimes beauty portrayed fertility and women were resources that men had appropriated for themselves. At other times in different places, the ideal woman had a fat vulva and droopy breasts. Therefore there can’t be a universal beauty.

Women should be treated equally regardless from how they look like. As long as one looks healthy, she’s beautiful. There is no definition of beautiful, no matter how hard we try to find one. Women in our society go with the beauty trends, as long as the trend changes, then they have to change again if they’re truly committed. ‘Aller avec la mode’ would say a French person. Beauty that can be created by clothes or a fake nose, isn’t beauty. One might perceive someone as beautiful while someone else would say they’re ugly. The myth of beauty is an unstable concept and it always has been.

Blondie one way or another

The article ‘Klaus Barbie, and other dolls I’d like to see’ by Susan Jane Gilman is a very feminist article that reminded me of the ‘Handmaid’s tale’ in some ways. The article was very harshly written, criticizing Barbie dolls. She openly writes that she hates Barbie and all the ideals that are associated with it. Barbie is a threat to young girl because they portray the ‘perfect girl’. Blond, blue eyes, tall, skinny, big breasts, shiny clothes. Then it gets dangerously close to Hitler’s ideals. The Barbies ‘instill in legions of little girls a preference for whiteness, for blond hair, blue eyes and delicate features, perched eternally and submissively in high heels’. One of the main focuses of this article was that Barbies discriminate all urban girls like black, Jewish, Latino girls etc. The author describes the situation of a young girl that wasn’t good enough to be a bride, a model or a princess because she didn’t look like Barbie. Barbie is the only toy that in the Western world that human beings actively try to mimic, she says, and I agree with that. Nowadays at our age you still see a lot of girls that dye their hair blond, and go on diets to look thinner. It’s impressive what kind of impact Barbie had on young girls, considering that teenagers still behave the same way. I’m not sure if I agree with the fact that Barbies are achieving what Hitler failed to do in the third Reich; I think that’s a little exaggerated. Barbies might have been all blondes in the past, but nowadays there are red heads, brown heads, flat feet, legs that are able to spread apart and a accessorized belly that is able to carry a baby (hence the Barbie isn’t skinny anymore). On top of that you have to consider that the producers and manufactures of Barbie industries are trying their best to make money, so why would they design a Barbie that overlaps fat and that has multiple pimples on her face? Nobody would buy that Barbie for their child, as harsh as it sounds.  I wouldn’t consider a Barbie looking like that fat but she surely wouldn’t look healthy, and every mother wants their child to be healthy.

The article ‘Teen Mags: How to Get a Guy, Drop 20 Pounds and Lose Your Self-Esteem’ by Anastasia Higginbotham, has a similar point of view. Teen magazines, it says, influence girls in their unstable years of puberty to care more about boys, lipgloss and weight than any other things. The magazines remind the girls everyday that if you’d like a boyfriend, you should be skinny. Just like the previous article, it critiques blondes: “the ideal girl is evidenced by the cover models: white, usually blond, and invariably skinny”, and this I don’t approve on.  It’s not like a girl has to be blonde to be pretty, and in my opinion it is unfair to always associate blondes with prostitutes, blue eyes, skinniness and above all stupidness. If everyone wanted to have blond hair, then why would there be so many jokes about blondes?