#nick carried-with-men carraway

[nitttstdsdtoastd]

i have three modes: queercoded poet, queercoded newsboy, and queercoded unreliable narrator

[nick-carra-gay-for-gatsby]

petition to rename nick carraway as nick carragay or nick carried-away-with-men carraway

i am on board with this petition 👍

[lol-jackles]

Season 3 ask (I'm the anon who thanked you for being a light when I was unwell). Season 3 is my favourite season. Jared padalecki acted so well and outpaced jensen ackles in so many scenes. It stands out because usually I get drawn to following dean in joint scenes, but this was more Jared's season, more than S.5. the season carried the foreboding of deans deal. It may only be referred to occasionally but it permeated it all. I dont understand how they achieved this technique. Can you explain?

Disclaimer: I have not re-watched season 3 in ten years except for a few classic episodes like "Mystery Spot" and "Very Supernatural Christmas", but I think it will actually prove my point in answering your question.  This is what I remember about season 3: Sam's struggles with Dean's deal, Sam looking for ways and options to save Dean, his emotional turmoil and all the in-betweens.  I remember Dean's impending dire fate but I don't remember what Dean was actually doing during that time.  Some readers shared with me that they were surprised that they seem to "forget" Dean when they recall specific storylines, I said that's kind of supposed to happen with the support-protagonist.  Do any of you remember what John Watson did in the classic Sherlock Holmes?  Or what impact Nick Carraway had in The Great Gatsby?  They all kind of disappeared into the protagonist's story.

What sets Han Solo apart from the disappearing-supporting-character is the humorous hypocrisy dialogues.  For example,

Luke Skywalker shoots down a tie fighter:  I did it!  I did it!

Han Solo: Great kid!  Don't get cocky.

Han had already been portrayed as an arrogant, cocky smartass.  We found out only later that he has a heart of gold under his rough exterior.  But the irony of the most cocky of men advising his much younger friend not to "get cocky" was brilliant because he was in denial about his own flaws.  Humorous hypocrisy.

Fans say Dean Winchester gets the funny and best lines and Jensen delivers them brilliantly, but the missing piece in the lines is humorous hypocrisy, which is important because Dean is mostly in denial about his own flaws.  Only when Sam brings it up and Dean responds with, "come on, don't quote me back to me", makes Dean memorable at that moment even if you don't remember which season or which episode that line was spoken.

Let's go back to Nick Carraway, we see Jay Gabtsy through his eyes.  Nick is a flawed human but doesn't recognize it and is dishonest about his own shortcomings, so he becomes an unreliable narrator and readers and audience of the movie easily forgets that Nick is present in every page or scene.  The few times Nick is memorable or visible is his interaction with his love interest, Jordan, and we see his honest emotions and vulnerabilities.   Sounds familiar?  Like Nick, Dean is an unreliable narrator.  Like Nick, Dean becomes memorable in his interaction with his 'love interest', Sam, where we see his honest emotions and vulnerabilities.  So unless Dean is honestly interacting with Sam or unwittingly verbally revealing his hypocrisy, he's in danger of becoming forgotten.  This is partly why the Dean in fanfictions bears little resemblance to the Dean in the show, especially destiel fanfictions because they remove Sam or the Sam/Dean relationship entirely from the stories. 

“the season carried the foreboding of deans deal. It may only be referred to occasionally but it permeated it all.”

Because Sam is absorbed and embodied by the foreboding Dean’s deal while Dean is in denial.  As pointed out earlier, when characters are in denial of their own shortcomings and don’t have humorous hypocrisy lines, they end up kind of disappearing into the background.

At first glance Sam Winchester and Scarlett O'Hara couldn't possibly have anything in common, and they don't except for three distinct traits: they don’t conform, they change with the time, and they're not hypocrites, or at least they are the least hypocrites of all the characters in the book/movie/show.

Scarlett O'Hara is ruthless and very practical in every way (except for Ashley) and she just takes in what is going on around her and does her best to make it work to save herself and her family from starvation.  Scarlett became an outcast of Atlanta society because she refused to be a hypocrite and conform, instead she change with the changing times, as did Rhett Butler, while the rest of the characters, including the noble Melanie Wilkes and even their servants/former slaves, refused to do so and cling to their old pre-civil war past. This is why she is one of the most memorable characters for the past 80 years.

Sam was ruthless in his pursuit to save Dean from his deal and even said he has to become like Dean, he thought he should change, while everybody else just carry on the same as they always have.  Season 3 show the various state of Sam’s psyche that would later remind me season 14 Sam’s shredded psyche while Dean blindly accepted his dire fate without putting up much of a fight.  Sam has consistently been a (mostly) dynamic character, a quality one usually finds in the lead protagonist.

[armoiresdemonesprit]

All the sad men: Eric

I sometimes find myself feeling like Nick Carraway, The phlegmatic receptor of stories. The pit stop human beings take in their journey through life. Reasonable censis I'm an independent being carrying out research on the social condition of human kind. Much like a Moderater it seems I'm naturally shackled with the burden of judging morality; between right and wrong. But I'm just a melancholy soul.

I found myself doing what my mother told me not to; like I do sometimes. It was a Monday. Beginning of the month . I was full of funds. As I walked in the bar Betty smiled at my familiar face and gave me my usual. I guess I'm family. I settled down, lit a marboro and exhaled towards the streets open to my eyes. My favourite seat in the room because I have a tendency to watch people. I love to watch people, like ants on the ground I regard them as they go about their daily business. The bus conductor shouting 'wynberg' with so much conviction I felt I actually wanted to go there. I laughed to myself and popped the Marlboro menthol.

I looked to the left and saw Eric. Rough as usual, the chosen one in this church of drunkards. I braced myself and hid my cigarettes for the story he was about to lay apon me. For he was a sad man. And they always have stories.

Of course he approached me. I was a bit annoyed because I was groggy from my hard day's work cooking from the night before, but remember who I am. I am Nick Carraway. His cap turned backwards he dropped it from his head and he was sad. Swahili is what he spoke to me. The mother language. It's funny because he cried for his mother.

A drunken soul Eric spent his days head low, demeanor defeated but ever fighting. His madam had left him.He got robbed and his sense left him as well. The colour blue was his banner like Monday and his cap was also blue. Lamenting, Eric was confident in asking for money. But once he got his fix of the black label he would put his head down. Put on his head phones and drift away. I gave him R30. The last I had for I felt sorry for him and I spent thousands in one day; a sad man.

Eric slammed the bottle on the table. My solace disrupted. I thought he would leave me alone, but my donation was an invitation to tell me his story; Nick Carraway. Spinning my mind was undertaken by the ethanol so I told myself'listen'. I judged him as a drunk, but I understood what what he was saying. She locked down his sensibility during the lock down. But the only thing she locked down was his pain. He sighed and asked for a cigarette. Eric owed me too much, and the cigarettes cost me more when two are smoking for one. I gave him one.

Sad man I took out a Marlboro as the music kicked into gear and regarded the environment around me before I exhaled, regarded the conductor as he yelled 'wynberg'. It was now dark. I felt like I want to go there. I popped the menthol cigarette, half way, took one puff and walked home. A memory from the wardrobe of my mind.

Milimo

[justforbooks]

Towards the beginning of The Golden House, there’s a soireè scene, where the eldest of the three Golden sons, the loquacious Petya, offers a brilliant display for the guests. The narrator recounts:

“That night he talked and drank without stopping, and all of us who were there would carry fragments of that talk in our memories for the rest of our lives. What crazy, extraordinary talk it was! No limit to the subjects he reached for and used as punching bags.” 

Those subjects range from the collapse of foreign currencies to the sex lives of British royals, from the lyrics of Bob Dylan to the flaws in Stephen Hawking’s theory of black holes. Petya, “glittering-eyed and babbling like a brook,” flies from topic to topic, drawing spontaneously on his vast reservoir of knowledge, “like a whole cable box full of talk-show networks that jumped channels frequently.”

Veteran readers of Salman Rushdie will recognise this tendency from the author’s body of work. Like Petya, Rushdie is a polymath. His books – and his lectures -– overflow with myriad allusions, digressions, and stories within stories, sweeping through eras, continents, and cultures. However, unlike Petya, who suffers from a crucial “flaw in the program,” Rushdie is the master storyteller in his latest book, never losing control over what is, ultimately, a suspenseful thriller.

Return to realism

In The Golden House, Rushdie abandons the fantastical elements of much of his previous fiction, choosing realism over the magical realism for which he has become renowned. His return to realism may not be all that surprising in a novel that examines life in the United States in recent years. Actual events in America have proven to be so bizarre that the need to invent fabulous ones may have been eliminated.

In any case, this book is set firmly in the real world – in contemporary Bombay and New York – the city of the author’s birth and the city where he now resides. Its present action coincides with the eight years spanning Barack Obama’s Presidential term. As in some of Rushdie’s earlier work, most notably Midnight’s Children, the story of individual characters runs parallel to that of a nation caught in the throes of transformation.

The novel’s immediate setting is the Gardens, a grassy quadrangle in the heart of Manhattan that forms “an enchanted, fearless space” for the exclusive community that resides around it. It is in this idyllic space, where fireflies sparkle on summer evenings and children play freely, that our millennial narrator René lives with his liberal, academic, parents. At the beginning of the novel René is “just a young man dreaming of the movies.” He is, in fact, an aspiring filmmaker, in search of a subject.

On the day of Obama’s first inauguration, an event marked by a sense of unbridled optimism across the city, the grand mansion that has lain empty behind the Gardens for years is finally occupied, by a wealthy foreign family who refuse to divulge any information about their previous lives. The family’s imperious patriarch, like many immigrants before him, seeks to reinvent himself in America. He christens himself Nero after the last of the Caesars, and his sons choose their own names – Petronius (Petya), Lucius Apulius (Apu), and Dionysius (D). The mansion itself is renamed The Golden House.

Nero Golden shares many characteristics with another American literary hero – a mysterious past, unexplained wealth, decadent parties, a mythic property. Like Jay Gatsby’s guests, Nero’s new acquaintances try to fill the gaps in his narrative by spinning tales about him. René, who fancies himself as a modern-day Nick Carraway, makes several references to Fitzgerald’s novel. But unlike Gatsby, Nero is not alone.

The golden sons

In a sense, this is a story of fathers and sons. Each of Nero Golden’s sons is idiosyncratic and distinctive. Petya, afflicted by high-functioning autism, is an incredibly intelligent and erudite but socially awkward man who spends much of his time inside his bedroom bathed in the blue light of computer screens. When he is not expounding on the many subjects that crowd his brain, he immerses himself in the virtual world of gaming. Petya’s manic conversations conceal a deep and endless suffering.

The second son, Apu, is the artist in the family. Romantic and political, Apu becomes a successful painter and dabbles in activism before growing disillusioned with what he regards as liberal posturing and ineffectualness. He has a way with women, which places him and Petya firmly on the warpath.

The youngest son, the beautiful, androgynous D, is forever the outsider. Born of Nero’s extramarital liaison with “a woman of no consequence” 18 years after Apu, D has never felt like he really belongs in this family. Tormented by his illegitimacy and plagued by questions about his sexuality, D is the first to leave the Golden House and find refuge elsewhere – in Chinatown – outside the cloistered precincts of the Gardens. There is something deeply tragic about each of the sons. Their vulnerability shines through at key moments. These are the most moving sections in the novel.

Compared to the men, the women seem less vulnerable. From a relatively minor character such as the exotic Somali sculptor Ubah Tuur to the “astonishing” Vasilisa who presides over the novel, their physical perfection and power over men make them both magnificent and slightly removed from the reader. Even when they suffer – and they do suffer, often because of actions taken by the men – we rarely get inside their souls in quite the same way as we do with the men. At one point René makes a telling statement when he says, “‘The art of the cinema,’ Truffaut allegedly said, ‘is to point the camera at a beautiful woman.’” It is perhaps fitting then that our narrator is a filmmaker.

Watching from the window

However, this does not mean that the women are not interesting or indeed fascinating. And no one is more so than the one whose machinations change the destiny of the Goldens: the Russian émigré Vasilisa. At once goddess and witch, Vasilisa is seductive, manipulative, and ruthless. It is her all-encompassing ambition of living a life “worthy of her beauty” that propels the plot forward. In a book about immigrants, Vasilisa embodies the immigrant desire to start over. “The past,” she says, “is a broken cardboard suitcase full of photographs of things I no longer wish to see.” Contradicting forces for good and evil literally struggle within her soul. Again, this seems more mythic than human, but whether or not she will ultimately prove to be one or the other is one of the many mysteries the narrator will have to uncover.

The auteur-narrator makes numerous references to movies throughout, and the influence of cinema, both on him and on the novel, is unmistakable. Like Jeff in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, René watches the Goldens – and other neighbors – from his home, overhearing noises and catching glimpses of scenes that hint at secrets and scandals. He soon discovers that the place the Goldens have fled is none other than Bombay. His research – and imagination – reveal that they left behind a city infested with corruption and crime, a world of underworld violence and international terrorism. “The worlds are less different than we pretend,” Nero tells him.

Initially, René is only a witness, but soon he finds himself becoming a participant and getting further and further entangled in the events. Poet, philosopher, and chronicler, René serves as the conscience of the book. And while he is flawed and complicit in the events that unfold, he says, “Allow me this at least: that I am self aware.” That he is, and it makes him the most endearing character of all.

Truth and lies

Even though this is not a work of magical realism, the distinction between lies and truth is often blurred. The Goldens of course tell “stories about themselves, stories in which essential information about origins was either omitted or falsified.” The characters frequently betray each other. The structure of the book further contributes to the blending of lies and truth, as René begins to invent scenes for his film in progress. Several sections are written as script, with scenes dissolving or ending with the director’s cut, and the camera zooming in and out. Some include voiceovers and other stylised effects. At times it’s difficult to say what really takes place and what is invented by René. If you don’t know the truth, fellow filmmaker Suchitra tells him, use your imagination.

Meanwhile, even as truth and lies begin to collide inside the Gardens, outside it, in the wider world of America, the greatest betrayal of all begins to take shape. The world readies itself for the 45th US presidential elections between two unlikely contenders. On the one hand there is Batwoman, “who owned her dark side, but used it to fight for good, justice, and the American way.” On the other is the Joker – a green-haired, white-faced, red-lipped, real estate tycoon who is “utterly and certifiably insane.”

Rushdie uses rants by minor characters on the streets of Manhattan, as well as observations by our protagonists, to explore the growing “discontent of a furiously divided country.” It is tempting to find the author’s own well-known views on certain topics in the characters, for instance, when Apu chastises “wishy washy” liberals for attempting to sanitise language due to political correctness, or when René defends his suspicion of organised religion. While much of this author’s prior work has dealt with political events, this book’s preoccupation with many of the burning issues of the day makes it particularly urgent and relevant.

The personal and the political

Of all those issues, the question of gender identity is especially prominent. The Museum of Identity where Riya works represents the quest for identity in general, but for D, this quest is very personal. “Come inside and learn about the new world,” Riya tells him. What follows is an education, mostly about transitioning and “gender identity, splitting as never before in human history, spawning whole new vocabularies that tried to grasp the new mutabilities.” Some of their dialogue on this subject sounds didactic, like an introductory lecture on the transgender community for a beginner, which of course is what D is. Nevertheless, the effect of this new education on him is profound and real and will eventually lead to the most poetic, moving section in the book.

Rushdie’s prose is as always both dazzling and dizzying. Replete with clever wordplay and digressions, it includes allusions to Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, the ancient Chinese hexagrams of divination, the 1956 chess Game of the Century between Bobby Fischer and Donald Byrne, video games, superheroes, and Seinfeld, to name only a small fraction. References to current affairs range from Planned Parenthood and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States to the telecommunications scam and the 2008 terror attack against Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel in India.

People often appear and disappear within a few lines, but are given their own histories and eccentricities. They are, in René’s words, “minor characters who might not make it past the cutting room floor.” These people, like some of their dialogues and many of the allusions, might at times seem a tad gratuitous. The long, packed, meandering sentences can feel overwhelming. But, then, so is New York. Together, the obviously significant and the apparently insignificant help create the teeming, chaotic world of the city to which the book is a tribute of sorts.

The novel can be read as a chronicle of America in recent years, leading up to the present, troubled, Presidency. But that is only a part of it. At the heart lies a page-turner that is the stuff of blockbusters. There’s something breathtaking about the combination of contemporary events that we have all witnessed and are part of even now, and the gripping story of crime and passion, all narrated in such baroque prose.

Much suspense is created through René’s laments as he recollects events of the past eight years. Statements such as “it concerned all of us less than it should have,” and “I should have known there would be trouble,” suggest impending doom. Always, looming over us is the premonition of tragedy. “What would it mean,” René ponders, “if the Joker became the King?” The innocence, of both the Gardens and of Obama’s inauguration in 2009, cannot be sustained. This is the tale of a dysfunctional family within a dysfunctional nation, both hurtling toward disaster. At times it may be horrifying to watch, but it is impossible to look away.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[minddump-garden]

The Great Gatsby Analysis : Time and Decadence.

AP Literature

16 April 2018

                           The Great Gatsby Question Three

      In his novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald presents the story of millionaire Jay Gatsby, observed through the perspective of Nick Carraway, and his fruitless attempts to regain control and relive his past. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald incorporates both bustling and desolate imageries of the swift progression of time in the Twenties, questioning the effect of a rapidly changing era on the morality of American citizens. Through his depictions of the clash between tradition and modernity, Fitzgerald reveals the attempts of the people to rebel against the established law and traditions, and to reshape their world view and roles along with the time, illustrating the inevitable decadence it brings as immoral behavior and overindulgence is normalized.

   Through drastic juxtapositions of tradition and modernity, illustrated by characters and setting, Fitzgerald reveals the rebellion against conventional morality and law, establishing tradition to be fading as people adapt more self-indulgent principles, reshaping the beliefs and lifestyle of the era. The novel set to be post World War I, the narrator Nick Carraway had been a veteran of the war, who had returned to his home in the Midwest and realized that his old life had been outdated, realizing that “instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe--so [he ]decided to go east and learn the bond business” (3), actively inducing change in his life after the war. Nick was depicted to have abandoned the family tradition, not inheriting the “wholesale hardware store business” of his family but instead seeking to learn something new (3). Through his necessity to seek new opportunities and migrate East to New York, the center of urban life and progression, Fitzgerald establishes a changing era, where after the war, the old traditions of family, which were expected to be carried out, could no longer sustain the need for new experiences of the new generation. With symbols of dust and ash, Fitzgerald alludes to the fading of the past and its being overtaken by a new generation. Ashes and dust being remnants of objects that previously existed, Fitzgerald uses them to symbolize the past. He describes of a “valley of ashes”, stating it to be “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air”(23). The area’s description is incongruous to the urban setting around which the novel centered, echoing the past era of desolate gardens and hills and grotesque gardens, unkept and fading away just like the ashes themselves. Similar to the ashes, the garage of  the traditional George Wilson, who desired a faithful monogamy,  held a “dust-covered wreck”, with himself  covered in “white ashen dust” (26). The man was described as dumb, and old, while the cheating and indulgent Myrtle Wilson in contrast held immense vitality. Through the symbolism of the ash and dust, Fitzgerald separates the old and new lifestyles of the generation, commenting that the past traditions, similar to ash and dust, while still lingering, is ultimately doomed to dissipate. In addition to George and Myrtle Wilson,  the variety of people Nick met in New York, as depicted by Fitzgerald, each had some personal rebellion against societal expectations, furthering the desire to keep up with a changing era and overthrow established law and morality. Through the McKee family, Fitzgerald demonstrates attempts of overturning traditional gender roles. Mr. McKee was stated as “a pale feminine man from the flat belowy”, while Mrs. McKee “shrill, languid, handsome and horrible”(30). Feminine and handsome, respectively, are not traditional words in describing men and women, and through this unconventional usage, Fitzgerald shows the era’s progress towards rejecting traditional gender roles and normalizing non-traditional marriage.

  Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, demonstrated implicit homosexual tendencies. Upon Nick asking her about her residency, she “repeated [his] question aloud and told [him] she lived with a girlfriend at a hotel” (34). Girlfriend itself being an ambiguous term that may imply romantic or platonic relationship, her statement that they lived in a hotel adds a sexual undertone, implying that it may possibly imply the former. She then recalled traveling to Europe with another girl, with money and costly “private rooms”, implying that the two of them were entirely independent as they traveled and enjoyed luxury, furthering an intimate female and female relationship where there were no involvements of men. Catherine’s appearance was also described as artificial, having her eyebrows “ plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face” (34). The descriptions of Catherine, thus, in its entirety, illustrates a rebellious woman that question sexuality and female independence, going against the traditional views and expectations of women and instead actively engaging in the taboo. Not only was the rebellion against traditional morality and law evident in personal lives, Fitzgerald also references the act of bootlegging, due to prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s. Gatsby’s origin of wealth was also not dissimilar to bootlegging, constantly suspected by Tom and others for smuggling alcohol. Gatsby’s parties were “stocked with gins and liquors”, Tom was shown to have “brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door” (29), and people drank happily despite the law, normalizing illegal and immoral behavior. Fitzgerald provides an explanation for these actions, explaining it through Myrtle as she decided to cheat. He portrays the driving force for her to cheat to be the idea as she repeated, “you can't live forever, you can't live forever” (36), and it was evident that the idea was widespread, proven by the amount of people who had affairs and drank in Gatsby’s parties. Due to this driving principle, characters like Myrtle were thus encouraged to live indulgently. By depicting the incongruity of aged surroundings and a series of characters in their own ways rebelling against societal expectations, Fitzgerald proves the revolutionary change in the 1920s, showcasing its effect on people’s lifestyles and principles, where defiance of law and tradition are normalized.

  Fitzgerald, with the depictions of overindulgence and deceptions, comments on the materialism of the era that the changes brought, proving the drastic rebellion against convention to cause heartless impulsiveness and overindulgence within the people, inducing the decay of morality.  Fitzgerald, in chapter 3, describes fruits in Gatsby’s mansion: “Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb” (39). The convenience of the juicer was a fruit of modern advancement, but similar to the fresh fruits, as they were hoarded and had their juices massly extracted, the generation of people who lived indulgently were destined to become “pulpless halves”, spent and wasted after their life of excess. With the symbolism of the fruits, Fitzgerald warns of the grim repercussions of the lifestyle. Characters in the novel were also seen repeatedly acting deceptively, or excusing deception. Nick, upon his meeting with Jordan, could not recall the negative news he had read about her, implying that he did not deemed it enough to be memorable. When he did recall, he stated that “dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply--I was casually sorry, and then I forgot”(58). Despite acknowledging that Jordan was a frequent liar and prone to cheating, Nick excused it as a feminine trait, dismissed it, and still involved himself with her due to his attraction to her appearance. Through Nick’s romantic involvement with Jordan, Fitzgerald identifies Nick’s focus on appearance, contributing to shallow materialism that caused him to purposely excuse deception and cheating. Materialistic desires were even furthered by Myrtle, who, driven by her desire to indulge in luxury, was shown to demonstrate no restraint on marriage, money, or alcohol. She cheated on George with Tom due to his wealth and ability to give her luxuries she would not have otherwise, stating she wanted “a massage and a wave and a collar for the dog and one of those cute little ash-trays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother's grave that'll last all summer”(34), and even chose to remain with Tom despite him breaking her nose in a drunken fit. Through Myrtle, the cheating, a rebellious move against the era, furthered her materialism. With symbolism and actions shown by characters, Fitzgerald illustrates the decay of morality and normalization of deception evident in the changing era.

  Through the rebellious actions of characters, Fitzgerald demonstrates the Twenties as an era of change, and warns of the decadence overindulgence in the rebellions against tradition will ultimately bring.

                        Works cited.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1995. Print.

[overthecuckoosnest]

Taking A Look At Chief Bromden

Even though I took a look last week at the characters of Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, I have neglected to take a closer look at our narrator Chief Bromden insofar. Part of the reason for this is that Chief, despite being the one telling the story, takes a side role in this story. Instead, McMurphy steals the spotlight and is the focus of the narration. It appears that this was an intentional decision by the author Ken Kesey in order to show Chief’s captivation (and perhaps even obsession) with McMurphy from the moment of his arrival in the ward. Chief Bromden doesn’t do a whole lot as he pretends to be deaf and dumb in order to avoid punishment at the hands of the black men; most of the time, he stands silent in the hallway and mops the floor. Chief’s character is unlike most real people in that much of what he sees is completely fabricated but he presents these things to the reader as fact. He is certainly an unreliable narrator and because of this, the reader must be on the lookout for inconsistencies; luckily, it is typically obvious when Chief is experiencing a hallucination. I attempted to draw a parallel between Chief and some specific person in the real world but I was unable to as he is so completely different from anyone that I have met or seen. If I had to pick a literary character to draw a connection to it would have to be Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby because of the unreliability he shares with Chief. This unreliability is exemplified in the scene with Mr. McKee, where it seems that Nick and he share an intimate moment but it is difficult to tell due to Nick’s erratic narration.

Even though Chief may not do much and has no dialogue with other characters (in order to maintain the appearance of being deaf and dumb), there are multiple points throughout the book in which Chief goes into vivid detail about his feverish hallucinations. In one particularly nightmarish scene, Chief describes how the ward assistants take one of the patients, pierce his foot with a hook, and leave him dangling from the ceiling. Chief then recounts how “the worker takes a scalpel and slices up the front of old Blastic with a clean swing and the old man stops thrashing around. I expect to be sick, but there’s no blood or innards falling out like I was looking to see--just a shower of rust and ashes, and now and again a piece of wire and glass” (88). It is clear to the reader that none of this actually happens, but what is quite curious is the part where Chief says that “two aides...and a young doctor lift old Blastic onto the stretcher and carry him out, covered with a sheet--handle him more careful than anybody ever handled him before in all his life” (90). Based on this, something really did happen that night but it was twisted in Chief’s brain to resemble some sort of nightmare and the reader is left to piece together what is real. By taking a closer look at Chief, I came to the realization that despite being the narrator, he takes on a far more minor role than McMurphy. And, as I mentioned previously, I found it interesting to compare Chief with another famously unreliable narrator, Nick Carraway. I am curious as to whether Chief will continue to remain on the sidelines so to speak as he did in the movie, or if he will take up a more active role in the plot. I think that Kesey may have been trying to allude to the oppressiveness of the ward Chief is in and mental hospitals in general with his characterization of Chief. Clearly, if Chief feels the need to pretend to be deaf and dumb in order to “fly under the radar” there is something wrong with the mental institution, which should have the goal of rehabilitation.

[wxthin-wxthout]

jurassicsniper‌:

Robert sighed and sat up, fixing his hair. He was still pale with blotches of color on his face betraying his recent illness. “Bloody…” As Nick got the door, he subtly reached for the gun in the night table drawer, just in case. 

Nick paused before opening the door, glanced back at his partner, then turned the knob. Two men were there, one familiar and the other new, the latter carrying a thick walnut briefcase; Nick assumed this was their solicitor. The familiar real estate agent smiled and shook his hand. "Mr. Carraway, good to see you again. This is one Mister Joshua Morrison."

The man in question grunted as greeting and Nick allowed them inside. At the sight of Robert, Mr. Stewart bowed his head respectfully. "Mr. Muldoon. I do hope you're feeling better. We'll keep things as brief as possible."

Home Sweet Home Milwaukee

[petrichorate]

The Great Gatsby: Thoughts

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Like everyone else, I first read The Great Gatsby in high school, where we harped for hours about the more obvious symbols, like the green light. But reading it again in my college English class has given me an altogether different lens through which to view this book—we talked a lot about the context in which Fitzgerald wrote the book, Fitzgerald’s personal background and influences, and alternative interpretations of the novel. 

Fitzgerald was famously anxious about whether he would be successful as a writer, famously disappointed in his father (whom he viewed as a failure), famously allured by the concept of ultimate wealth, and famously nervous about his relationship with the love of his life, Zelda Sayre. The Great Gatsby was, in a way, born out of these anxieties, and was written by Fitzgerald on the French Riviera around the time Zelda was carrying on a public affair (this also came after Fitzgerald had written a failed play, ‘The Vegetable’). Fitzgerald was always uncertain about his book—he kept switching titles, and when he didn’t sell many copies at first, he mused with his editor, Max Perkins, that it was a “man’s book” and that Gatsby was too vague of a character.

There is some evidence that Fitzgerald’s short story, “Absolution,” might have been the original introduction to The Great Gatsby, and the omission of this piece leads to some of the air of mystery around Gatsby. In fact, Gatsby himself seems to be more of a personality rather than a character—a personality that is created and formed. 

Fitzgerald’s obsession with the idea of wealth is ubiquitous in the book. Gatsby’s extravagant parties are almost an ethnography of the wealthy; the novel seems to comment on Fitzgerald’s ambivalence on how he feels about wealth. There is almost a cultural bankruptcy reflected by the repetitive and bland conversations during the parties, and he illustrates the wasteful nature of wealth and the profound skepticism arising from a sense of insignificance.

There is so much more to the book to talk about! On this second reading, it struck me just how much each gesture in the book played into a greater interpretation of the story and the characters; it seemed almost a stage, in which every motion contained a greater depth or social commentary (among the various possible analyses: Is Nick Carraway bisexual? Are noses connected to identity? Is Gatsby a depiction of the innocent Romantic, or is he also guilty, part of the decay of modern society? What do we make of the seeming parallels between Gatsby’s schedule in Hopalong Cassidy, and Benjamin Franklin’s writings on self-education? What is Nick’s motivation for preserving Gatsby in some way, censoring what he doesn’t want the readers to see, and taking responsibility for Gatsby’s character?). Having all these discussions made me think about what I might be missing when I read books on my own—in not nearly as analytical of a light, and without the richness of historical context available to me. 

Here are a handful of passages that especially struck me:

Nick, on warding off other people’s confessions: “Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.”

Nick, on feeling like a local: “It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. ‘How do you get to West Egg village?’ he asked helplessly.  I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler, He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.”

Gatsby re-evaluating everything through the eyes of someone else: “He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.”

Gatsby having lost something in his obsession: “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was...”

On the effects of heat: “In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life.”

On the attractiveness of wealth: “When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”

On carelessness: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...”