Cool Blogs by Kelby

One crucial concept that this book explores is the opposing dynamic between Pilate and Macon. Pilate and Macon Jr. have always been at odds in their adult lives and eventually, as we see in the bulk of the book, it makes them act as though they don’t even know each other anymore. Pilate and Macon are so isolated from each other that our protagonist, Milkman, doesn’t even meet his aunt or cousins until the age of 12, despite living in the same town as him. As we can see, these two sides of the dead family are starkly separated, but it also poses the question, why are Pilate and Macon so different? As we later find out, this conflict between the two siblings did not always exist and according to Pilate “Macon was a nice boy and awful good to me. Be nice if you could have known him then.” (Morrison 40). Pilate makes it seem as though in some moment during their childhood she and Macon Jr. got along, but somewhere along the road, he changed for good and it caused him and Pilate to have a f...

     Going through the second part of The Stranger, I often found myself feeling like something was off with the way the trial went. Although the first part of the book definitely opened my eyes to the bizarre nature of Mersault’s behavior, I found the actions and testimony of the prosecution and the judge of the trial even stranger. From trying Mersault based on morals rather than the law, to twisting Mersault’s qualities that would normally be considered admirable into a flaw and a point of prosecution, the nature of trial is most definitely odd and worth looking at.       To start, I found it most important to realize that, in the trial, the victim is in no way present. I didn’t realize until it came up in discussion, but the existence of the Arab man and major role as the victim in the trial is never mentioned once. Knowing this, it feels like the courtroom is in no way interested in justice for the Arab man. Rather, the prosecution makes a case th...

In The Sun Also Rises, we see a lot of dynamics between characters and settings that affect the attitude of the book's main character Jake. In terms of location there are clear differences in the way he acts from place to place. The place changes how much emotion he is willing to show and makes his behavior more or less genuine. The two main locations in the book are Paris and the Spanish countryside, which both bring out different sides of Jake. The situation tends to be worse for Jake when he is in Paris and his personality generally seems more closed off and even depressed. The Spanish environment brings out a side of Jake that the reader doesn't see till much later in the book when he gets to Spain with Bill but it features a version that I think is the calmer and best version of Jake. The drastic change in atmosphere from Paris to Spain eases his sadness with city life, and helps us realize that Jake is not as disconnected from his emotions as we think he is. In Paris Jake...

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...