Pip, the Narrator

So far in Great Expectations, I love Pip as a narrator. He recalls specific events and characters in his childhood with clarity and humor. Although I can't relate to his circumstances, including his encounter with two convicts, I can relate to his childhood fears--fears of the authority figures around him and of their exaggerated threats.

I think that Pip is the ideal narrator because he is reliable, relatable, and funny. I would not be bored reading a book where Pip described how to tie his shoes. I have a lot farther to go in Pip's journey, but this is just a quick update on my thoughts of the book so far.

Hamlet ends with the arrival of Fortinbras. If someone suggested that Fortinbras be cut from the play, what reasons would you offer for his inclusion?

Nearly all of the problems in Hamlet stem from the problems of the royal family. Claudius poisons the king, then marries the queen. The prince seeks retribution, etc, etc. I think the biggest reason for Fortinbras's inclusion in the play is that he brings a hope to the situation. At the end of Act V, Hamlet articulates his wish for Fortinbras to be King of Denmark. Since he is from a different country and not caught up in the "drama" and troubles of the royal family of Denmark, he offers a fresh perspective and a chance for change for the country of Denmark.

The fact that Hamlet requests that Fortibras be king also contributes to Hamlet's character. Throughout the play, Hamlet has experienced a spectrum of emotions including sorrow, anger, self-pity, and a desire for revenge. But, as in the end of most tragedies, Hamlet has fallen and has been somewhat humbled. Fortinbras's father was killed by Hamlet's father, but Hamlet moves ignores family "obligation" to realize that Fortinbras is needed. It seems that Fortinbras is also able to move past this fact when he calls for Hamlet to have a soldier's burial. Fortinbras is a small character and the reader doesn't get to know him well, but he is a vital part to the resolution of the play. (219)

Tragedy: Finding the Relatable in the Unrelatable

Tragedy is reality magnified and intensified. It arouses feelings of confusion, pity, sadness, fear, and even delight.

Why do we feel these things after reading tragedies like Oedipus the King? We feel confusion because a certain character does not deserve such a horrible fate. We feel pity for the hopelessness of the situation. We are saddened for the same reason. We are afraid, perhaps, because if something so wretched could happen to this guy, something similar could happen to us, right? We are delighted because a man, a man with his tragic flaw—his pride, his fatal error in life, whatever it may be—is being punished, being put in his place, “getting what he deserves.”
So, our reactions to the play are seemingly justified. But then what is the point of the play? Can we relate to it?

Oedipus’s situation is completely unfamiliar to us. He is a king. When he was born, his parents tied his feet together and left him to die in order to avoid the fulfillment of prophesy. But the prophecies were fulfilled, as they always are, and Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. And Oedipus did not realize he did these things until much later in life. Then, he blinded himself out of self-disgust and sent himself into exile. Can you relate to this? It probably seems like you can’t.

But his prideful and selfish nature, which is evident throughout much of the play, is very relatable. We have all put our concerns before the concerns of others. We have been too proud about our accomplishments. We have been selfish. Oedipus is self-serving. He suffers from hubris. He is self-centered and self-adoring. There are countless examples of his selfishness in the play. One is after learning about the murder of King Laios from Creon, Oedipus immediately worries about himself and says, “Whoever killed King Laios might—who knows?—decided at any moment to kill me as well. By avenging the murdered king I protect myself” (prologue, lines 141-143). These selfish human sentiments are what help us relate to the seemingly unrelatable king.

However, if it seems too impossible to relate to such a tormented man, there is still something valuable to take from Oedipus. This is the ending: the first look at the effects of the tragedy and the reactions of the characters involved. What happens after tragedy/after a tragic flaw or wrongdoing in real life is discovered? Tears, depression, revenge, suicide? Is there ever a “bright side” to the situation or a light at the end of the tunnel? Most certainly. Sometimes such a tragedy is necessary for enlightenment, even if the enlightenment is nearly “terrible,” as described in “Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy.” At the end of the play, Oedipus is at rock bottom. But his fall humbled him. He is still discouraged and devastated, but there is the slightest glimmer of hope. After his realization that he had, indeed, fulfilled the prophecies, he blinds himself. Through this blinding, he is able to truly see things as they are. A tragedy, but a much-need enlightenment. Sometimes we need to fall—really hard—to go forward.

Because Oedipus’s life is so severely tragic and unlike ours in nearly every way, the messages—the ways we can relate it to our own lives—are not obvious. But once discovered, they are powerful. (559)

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too I got up early
to make things warmer than I found them.
The darkness discouraged
but I learned, well, I fought (it was, indeed, a struggle)
to overcome it.

Winter nights I came home, dirt under my fingernails,
my cheeks chapped from the cold winter wind,
beer on my breath, my soul fatigued.
I felt alone.
And worried…for we had not near enough money,
or food for the cold months to come.
Sorrow… was that what I felt?
Well, it grew to discouragement, which blossomed
into anger
and force. My son’s eyes widened
with fright.

Those winter mornings,
I did it for my son, my wife: the family.
Love, not greed or rage, became my motive,
It became the force that pulled me
out of bed and into the cold.
For what is life
but to try to give more than you take away?

First Impressions

Waiting for the Barbarians: A Quest for Truth?

So far in Waiting for the Barbarians, I have found the magistrate to be an interesting and somewhat perplexing character. He is extremely relatable for several reasons including the fact that I find myself also pitying the fisher folk that are living in the barracks. But more interestingly, my first impressions of the magistrate include those of admiration. He is constantly seeking truth and the existence a higher moral ground to be present in everything around him.

His pursuit of truth is apparent in his conversations with the colonel, in his conversations with the prisoners, and in his thoughts throughout the first section. For example, he asks the colonel on the subject of torture, “What if your prisoner is telling the truth yet finds he is not believed?...How do you ever know when a man has told you the truth?” (5). He continues stressing the importance of truth when he marvels at the colonel’s statement of the tone present in truth-speaking people when he says with a hint of sarcastic humor, “The tone of truth! Can you pick up this tone in everyday speech? Can you hear whether I am telling the truth?” (5). He gathers from this conversation an interesting idea: “Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt” (5).

The theme of truth appears several more times in this section. Once is when the magistrate is asking the boy about the confession he had made saying “Are you telling the truth?” (10) when he had previously told the boy that he “must tell the officer the truth. That is all he wants to hear—the truth” (7).

With his search for truth, the magistrate is simultaneously aspiring for a higher level of morality to be present around him. He clearly dislikes the colonel’s use of torture and the fact that the colonel brought in a bunch of fisher folk who were clearly not “barbarians” the magistrate had in mind. The magistrate also helps the first two prisoners by taking care of the boy’s wounds and making sure the father was disposed of properly.

In the first section, truth is an undeniably important theme. However, as the story progresses, is this quest for truth muddled up by other things?

And can the magistrate really be described as a seeker of truth? Or was that simply a quick interpretation of his character that can be proved inaccurate?

I am also curious whether or not the magistrate is really to create a higher moral ground in the things around him? Or is that also one of his characteristics only present in the first section? (440)

Selected Letters en Route to the Congo

· Starts with Conrad remembering his initial desire to explore the unmapped lands of Africa

· He recalls looking at a map of Africa when he was about nine and telling himself “with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity” that he would go there when he grew up

· Then admits to having lost that eagerness and confidence

· Writes to his uncle of his desire to see him next time they both are in Brussels

· Thanks his uncle for his kindness in Cracow (where Conrad lived at teenager after his father died)

· Conrad regards his aunt as both a relative and a close friend and writes to her often

· Conrad experiences a lack of faith in the future, but continues to have an optimism and persistence that is necessary in the “wicked world” of Africa. This is shown in a letter to his aunt when he writes, “One doubts the future. For indeed—I ask myself—why should anyone believe in it? A little illusion, many dreams, a rare flash of happiness followed by disillusionment, a little anger and much suffering, and then the end. Peace! That is the programme, and we must see this tragi-comedy to the end. One must play one’s part in it.”

· Reveals his uneasiness about the fact that 60% of the Company’s employees return to Europe before they completed six months’ service. Others, still, are sent home so that they shouldn’t die in the Congo and ruin the “excellent” statistics. Only 7% complete their three years’ service.

· Feels grateful for the letters from his aunt that make his existence “slightly bearable” and begs for more letters

· Refers to himself as a “humble servant”

(287)

Darkness

Within the first part of Heart of Darkness, we are able to get a clear look into the “darkness” of Africa. Marlow describes men dying amongst the trees, “they were dying slowly…nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom” (17). He also alludes to a different kind of darkness—the darkness and accompanying corruption of the white staff—when, soon after arriving, he says “I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly” (16). Marlow meets the Company’s chief accountant, a “pretending, weak-eyed devil,” who initially appears as a “sort of vision” and “miracle” to Marlow (18). However, Marlow becomes less infatuated with the chief accountant after an exchange the two have about a sick man. Marlow expresses his grave concern that the sick man is dead while the chief accountant, “with great composure,” responds, “No, not yet" and later adds, "When one has to make correct entries one comes to hate those savages—hate them to death” (19).

Toward the end of Part 1, after losing his steam boat, Marlow says, “being hungry…and kept on my feet too, I was getting savage” (23). After spending time in Africa, is Marlow, like the native men and the white staff, doomed to darkness and corruption? If so, what makes this environment so detrimental?