Cool Blogs by Kelby

In Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, the story is, as we can tell from the title, supposedly centered on Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway. However, as the book drags on, it often gives characters other than Clarissa more pages in the book. Characters like Peter, Sally, Elizabeth, and Richard do play important roles in the book, but the most crucial ideas of the book feel more centered around just two characters; Clarissa and Septimus. When we first discussed Septimus' larger significance in class, we drew a bubble diagram of the interconnectedness of all the characters' interactions in the novel. In the diagram, our class gave Septimus and Clarissa seperate central bubbles because they interact with seperate sets of characters in the book. However, I do think that Clarissa and Septimus are connected, except on a deeper level that is not as simple as a visible line on a bubble diagram.  The only physical branch between Clarissa and Septimus is Peter's senseless interaction wit...

     While reading The Mezzanine by Nicolson Baker, I always found myself asking why Howie's mind works the way it does. In looking for an answer, I found that the first bit of information that seemed to attempt to explain his behavior was earlier in the book, in a passage that talks about how Howie feels that he has finally reached a hyperobservation phase of his life that everyone in his family told him he would one day reach. At first I believed that the prophesied sudden shift in the way he saw the world was the reason behind Howie's odd behavior. However, after being in Howie’s mind for 135 pages I think that the root behind his hyperobservancy goes back much farther and that in actuality Howie has always been hyperobservant and that there are many details in this novel that support this.     For starters, Howie deeply respects and admires his father: including his taste in ties. When we first meet Howie's father on page 28, we learn that Howie p...