Is Bill a likeable guy?

        When the character of Bill Gorton is first introduced to the plot in Hemingways' novel The Sun Also Rises, you might not be sure what of make of him. He's brash, unapologetic, and often says things that can scratch someone's ego. What others call racism, he defines as irony, he he isn't afraid of flaunting his ironic talents no matter where he may be. For example, he uses the n word on a regular basis. However, unlike Jake, who uses it in a very negative way to depict people of African descent with whom he has quibbles, Bill is jovial in his use of the word, describing a boxer as "a very noble-looking n--". The use of the word alone is enough to strike a nerve with some people, but personally I think that it just emphasizes aspects of his character: being an ironic but playful and frankly hilarious jerk. He contradicts himself, by using a slanderous term and a compliment to describe the same person, and in a way it takes some of the punch away from the potency of the word. Ultimately I think you have to be a bit forgiving considering not only the time period in which the novel takes place, but also the personality of the character speaking.

       Bill can really have his moments. There was a scene in Spain, in which he was ragging on Cohn for insulting the bullfighting. Robert Cohn had proclaimed that he was afraid of being bored at the bullfights. After they had all gotten back from a thrilling show, he insisted on continuously nagging Cohn. "You weren't bored   were you?" "I hope that wasn't too boring for you, was it Robert?" That sort of thing. In this scene I felt myself subconsciously rooting for Bill. Cohn seems to be the guy that everyone loves to-(not hate, but closer to be-annoyed-by-frequently). There's something about him that irks people and makes him easy to tease. Bill, of course, takes full advantage of this and not only teases him about his comment, but about getting sick when one of the bulls spears a horse with its horn. No one does anything to stand up for Cohn, because they seem to see him as towards the pathetic end of the spectrum. Bill seems to dislike Cohn more than others though, and blames it on Cohn's being Jewish. His anti-Semitic feelings lead him to make some nasty comments about Cohn that are undeserved.

        Bill makes other border-line offensive comments throughout the book, such as making a joke about the Ku Klux Klan in front of a Catholic priest he just met. These are usually made just in the nature of good fun, but it's sometimes hard to see them this way. However, these get balanced out (at least in my book) by his hilarity. When Bill drinks, he becomes this lively, energetic, and witty character who can really make the scene. His spiel about taxidermy, for example. Bill, being a taxidermist, of course notices a store window displaying stuffed dogs, and mentions over and over how much Jake would enjoy the company of "a nice stuffed dog". A few lines later he considers stuffing the cab-horses, and then debates giving an engaged couple a couple of nice stuffed race-horses as a wedding present. The absurdity of what he's saying and the way Hemingway writes the dialogue just makes you appreciate Bill's humor and disregard some things he has said in the past.

        I suppose that every reader of The Sun Also Rises will have to determine their opinion of Bill individually, but I find that I enjoy his presence in this novel.

parallel characters in The Hours

After finishing The Hours, a lot of things that I was previously confused about started to make sense, helped by the discussion in class. The three stories in the movie and the book are all parallel stories that connect with each other. For example, I noticed how similar Virginia Woolf and the Richard Brown in the movie were. Both had natural curiosity that they satisfied, or at least tried to satisfy,  by asking the people in their lives to describe the most minute details of their days, nailing down subjects that they could later put into a novel. They even had similar writing styles, both being able to spend time and paper on things that seem inconsequential in every day life, such as buying nail polish or flowers. Others have compared the suicide of Richard Brown with that of Septimus Smith, but I agree with those who say it more closely resembles that of Virginia Woolf herself, because it was more personal and heartfelt in a way. They spoke their last words (actually the same words) to people they loved, and it was less of a spontaneous thing than Septimus' suicide.

I also found that Laura Brown and her son in the movie were similar, because both had that same feeling of hopelessness and both contemplated suicide, though only Richard followed through. However, the depression of Laura was actually paralleled with Mrs. Dalloway, because they both experience that feeling of having everything they could ever want in life and yet still feel trapped in their lives. Richard and Septimus, like Laura and Mrs. Dalloway, feel trapped in their own bodies, but in both of their cases they have had significant trauma I think this is an important distinction between the two types of cases, because Laura and Mrs. Dalloway seemed unsure of what they wanted, almost like they were just starting to explore in the world of depression and had to figure out how they felt about being depressed add what to do to fix it. Both, unlike Virginia, Richard, and Septimus found ways to lead their lives without taking their own lives, just by making changes. Mrs. Dalloway began to think more about what she had and less about the past life she used to have, while the more drastic changes made by Laura (abandoning her family) gave her true freedom, as she put it.

I actually found Laura not sympathetic. Even though it looked like she was having a tough time of it emotionally, she was everything in her life that many people have to work very hard for, and she threw it away because she didn't think that was the right life for her. She mostly made me mad, especially by the way that she left the so that loved her very much and depended on her, and left her poor husband as a single working dad of a newborn baby and a little kid. Maybe what she did was best for her, but to me it seemed very selfish and not thought through. It made me think of her as weak, which is a bit ironic because everyone already thought of her as a fragile person, which was part of the reason I think she hated herself and had to get away from her life. Was it her life that she hated and had to get away from? Or was it her own personality and inner self? News flash: changing your surroundings doesn't often change your soul.

The Hours??

The movie The Hours that we have almost finished watching had managed to confuse me to no end. I understand the plot and what's happening to the characters, but I don't understand why some of them  depressed in the first place. For instance, Richie's mother Laura. She almost kills herself before reconsidering, thankfully for her son. But, similarly to the way Mrs. Dalloway is almost made to commit suicide by Woolf, she has nothing to traumatize her. She doesn't even dwell on her past in the same way that Mrs. Dalloway does. I suppose that she could be feeling depressed because she is unable to satisfy or let herself experience her feelings for other women, especially her friend Kitty. But, she has family that loves her and I think she is just feeling confused.

Clarissa Vaughan is also a complicated character. She is experiencing a slow mental breakdown similar to that of both Septimus and Rezia, because her past is catching up to her mentally like Septimus, but she is also in the position of Rezia because she has to watch someone that she loves suffer and eventually take their own life.

I think that if both of these characters were able to sort out their thought and emotions regarding their respective pasts and presents, they would be able to lead much happier lives and hopefully not continually  influencing the lives of those they love in a negative way (especially Laura).

Meaning of Life?

    A few days ago in class we talked about the effect that certain life events can have on one's outlook on life. We talked about how Septimus could see how life really has no meaning for him anymore, and how Clarissa, who sees joy in small things in life, sees her life as meaningful and having a definite purpose. What I don't understand is why an event such as 9-11 or WW1 would imply that life has no meaning. Veterans, feel free to correct me, but I feel like living through such a catastrophe would confirm that my life has meaning. Actually, I don't know quite what I would feel, this is just an estimate. I just can't seem to understand the thought process that goes from disaster to life has no meaning.
    
Coming to this conclusion, however, has a huge impact on the life of Septimus Smith, who seems to feel like he'd enjoy being dead rather than alive, while also feeling guilty about not feeling guilty for the death of his close friend (lover?) Evans. This seems to be more common for people who have gone through traumatic events. However, even Clarissa, who enjoys summer breezes and looking back at her past, seem intrigued by the idea of this man throwing himself out of his window. She has experienced the death of her sister, so she too wonders about whether or not anything in this life h as meaning. I just don't understand why.

Drama

        As we were having our class discussion today, it struck me that one of the aspects I consider part of Woolf's aesthetic is the way she presents key plot elements. While in other, perhaps less mature novels is a way to describe them, even the smallest things are shoved in your nose, its easy to miss events that completely change the plot in Mrs. Dalloway. For example, I was reading the homework and all of a sudden I realized they were talking about hospitals and I had to flip back to discover that somehow I had completely missed that Septimus had jumped out of a window and killed himself. Not entirely sure how that happened, but there it is. The event simply wasn't dramatized. There was no dramatic pause or chapter break right before some sort of cheesy statement like ".., and then...he fell." or anything like that. The entire thing took place in less than a page, and if I hadn't gone back I would have missed it altogether.
        In a way this ties back to what I was saying before about  subtlety, but instead of leaving you wondering about the ambiguity of a character's opinions, now even important plot elements are being minimized. I think that this goes back to the way that Woolf views the world as we think she does: just a big web of consciences reacting in variation of ways to events that they have in common, but the events themselves are not particularly important. Woolf seems to be much more interested in writing about the way that Holmes and Rezia react to his suicide than the actual event.