care.a.line's blog

pancakesOn a Friday afternoon, Sara came home from theatre, a club reserved for the school odd balls who dressed in far too many bright colors and traipsed around saying things like “alas” and throwing the back of the hand against their foreheads in a mock-faint. Sara called out for her mother as she shut the back door, only to be greeted by silence. The kitchen was empty. No note occupied the refrigerator door and dinner wasn’t started on the stove. The emptiness began to close around Sara’s throat, waves of tense unease coming over her.

“Mom?” She tried again.

Even though she tried to shake free, Sara saw the scene of five months before invade her vision: Sara coming home expecting to find her father asleep on the couch, napping before his night shift as usual, Sara calling out for her parents, informing them that she was home from school, Sara walking into the kitchen and slipping, slipping on something red and falling beside the limp body of her father and Sara screaming, crying, pleading, begging.

Sara pushed the bad thoughts out of her head and inched towards the kitchen counter. She peered over the linoleum like a fish ready to dart away at the first sign of danger. Nothing. Before fear could grip her again, Sara made a quick loop through the downstairs of her house, allowing herself only a necessary, but quick, search of each room, before returning to the kitchen.

East Asia: China, Korea, JapanOne of my favorite parts from the novel is on page 128 when Z is having her birthday party and some friends from her school come. They’re each from a different Asian country; Japan, Korea, and China, and all speak different languages. Z starts to talk about how odd it is that people from these feuding countries can get along. Her friends Yoko and Kim both make very simple, grammatically incorrect statements and Z says “I like that. I like people speak that way. So we understand each other easily.” The fact that they are all in a foreign country trying to learn the same language brings them together, and diminishes any previous allegiance they held with their home countries.

Language first presents Z and the other girls with an obstacle. They are all living in a foreign country where they can barely speak the tongue. Communication becomes muffled and incomprehensible at times, and overwhelmingly frustrating. There is a huge hindrance that they are all trying to climb up, as they become more and more fluent. In this case, language separates them from everyone else in the country. Language is a blockade, and the women are affected negatively by the consequences of not understanding or speaking English. But this is not the only role language plays in their lives.

Influences

As Algerina Neri discusses in the essay “Ripening in the Sun: Shirley Hazzard’s Heroines in Italy” Shirley Hazzard puts a huge emphasis on setting and characters’ relationships with their surroundings in The Evening of the Holiday rather than on the interactions the share with each other. Because Hazzard places her characters in Italy, Sophie, the heroine, is allowed to experience the nontraditional and uninhibited life of the carefree Italians. Sophie’s character development is attributed more to her ability to be in a place where nothing holds her back. Because Sophie is in Italy, Tancredi becomes even more alluring to her because he is concerned with that of the typical Italian male. Tancredi’s attraction is in his Italian ways because Sophie connects with the relaxed and nonconforming atmosphere.

Everything rides on the fact that they’re set in Italy, but this also effects the reader’s ability to understand the characters relationship with each other. The emphasis becomes each separate character’s relationship with Italy and it’s customs and then in turn how they cross paths because of this. We get no sense of how each character is feeling, and it becomes hard to determine exactly how they feel about each other.

“He took hold of the ball and, showing her his bunched fist, punched it high in the air. The girl nodded and smiled. She refused her turn, but the ape persisted and she obliged by knocking the ball a few feet into the air. The ape applauded as he ran after the ball.”
Abusive Ape

As Colin and Mary lounge on the beach observing a large group of children, McEwan introduces two extremely minor characters as Colin watches the interactions between a young boy and girl. McEwan paints this scene in an obscured innocent light, but it can easily be compared to the brutal sadomasochism we encounter later with Robert and Caroline. It is through Colin’s eyes that the young boy is interpreted as an ape. He parades around, idiotically “flirting” with the young girl, but takes things too far by physically touching her in a sexual manner. It started as “a friendly punch on the shoulder” and evolved into slap on the bottom. He claims his territory with these abuses, and proceeds to take control of her. Insisting that she hit the ball like he showed her, the ape boy’s persistence parallels that of Robert’s dominance over Caroline.

VeniceThomas Mann’s protagonist, Aschenbach, from his novel Death in Venice not only takes a physical journey from Germany to Venice, but also an emotional transition from a bridled and controlled man to a wildly passionate individual. The stories setting in Venice holds significance in that Venice embodies the seductive south which is in total opposition to Aschenbach’s harsh homeland of Germany. It can even be said that Venice is a representation of Aschenbach himself, and vise versa.

Venice stands out for its ability to reside over a lagoon, built and preserved by the mere will of man against the power of nature. Similar to Venice’s strength, Aschenbach believes that art is the victory of the determination over physical necessities and reverting to natural human instincts. Aschenbach explains that within both his life and his writing, powerful things are only able to be in existence if they defy hardship, fragility, distress,and fraudulence. For Aschenbach, art triumphs over all of these torments, just as Venice maintains itself over the wavering instability of nature below it. Aschenbach believes that he has achieved such successes with his writing.

On the contrary, despite its outer appearance of strength, Venice is sinking slowly into the murky marshes. One may also argue that the same is happening to Aschenbach as he falls prey to his sexual feelings toward Tadzio. As he tries to convince himself that his feelings toward Tadzio are purely intellectual, Aschenbach finally surrenders to his passion for the boy. Aschenbach releases all of his morals and his dignity, and gives in to desire.

FightingWhat is it that people are seeking when they move to another country? Paul Theroux touches on the idea of “swapping countries.” The Fox family travel to Honduras to live, and the Hondurans move to the United States for work. Does each side desire something different from each other? Do their home countries actually posses what they are looking for?

Allie Fox is frustrated with the way America has began to dissolve and adopt many foreign markets. As he rants to his son, Allie explains his frustration with America, “But what kind of country is it that turns shoppers into traitors and honest men into liars? (6)” Believing in buying local, Allie doesn’t like that everywhere he turns things are being made by foreign countries. He is disillusioned with the way America throws its money across the waters. Allie doesn’t feel as if he family is “going to ruins so much as [they’re] leaving them. (75)” as they move to Honduras. He views America as the corrupt and broken country.

The Hondurans that travel to America have dreams of a better place. Home in Honduras to them is a poor and broken place. The slow development of industry and jobs leaves many of them in grave poor condition. The Hondurans are seeking that which Allie wants to flee far from. They see all of the material goods and production as positive, and want to work where they have better opportunities. In foreign countries, America is portrayed as the land of opportunities.

Heart of Darkness“Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn’t go for us...amazes me now when I think of it...I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play here... Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear- or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you my call principles, they are less than chaff in breeze. Don’t you know the devilry of lingering starvation...It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly (99).”

I have a different copy of Heart of Darkness than most of you probably do, but this passage is extracted from the second chapter as Marlow describes the cannibals reaction to the lack of food available to them while on board the steamboat. Conrad introduces the theme of restraint into his story to juxtapose the negative views presented in the novel of the native people.

BullfighterThe entry on authenticity in the Encyclopedia of Tourism, presents us with five approaches to how authenticity is experienced. The first method of cognitive objectivism treats authenticity as an embodiment of the originals or origins of a place which includes culture and people. Defining authenticity as the individuals and traditions that were first established in an area, cognitive objectivism requires that tourists posses a desire to interact with genuine aspects and people of a culture. Tourists must seek out the beating heart within a body of culture. Ernest Hemingway utilizes the identity of Romero in his novel The Sun Also Rises as the representative for authenticity in the eyes of his main characters Jake and Brett who aspire to experience and understand new spiritual centers through their interactions with the bullfighter.

Roots

When I travel alone, my identity is known only by myself. Everyone I come across sees my face and knows physically what I look like, but they can’t be sure of anything beyond that. There are so many opportunities to create stories about who I am because no one abroad can disprove me. They don’t know me. One aspect I never mess with is where I come from. I feel pressured to pledge allegiance to my home country, my home state, my home city. When I say “I’m from Austin, Texas” people can place me in a geographical place, and then force all the preconceptions and prejudices on me. This gives me the opportunity to prove them wrong.

Keroauc touches on the idea of identifying characters solely by where they come from. The scene in which Sal and Sledge are on duty and have to confront a group of rambunctious men describes the rowdy individuals as “the Alabaman” and “that Tex-as sonofabitch.” We learn nothing about these characters except where they’re from. Cresting a sense of distance, Keroauc extracts the two men from the actual setting and places them in their pasts. Keroauc ties them to their roots to emphasize the distance between Sal and the minor characters.

Traveling Couple: body language

My mom and I used to watch the show Amazing Race, in which 10 or 12 couples from all over America participate in a competition that takes them all over the world. Some couples are married, some parent- child, some dating, others friends, and some are siblings. The only significant idea that I pulled from the show stemmed from the transformation the relationships endured throughout their journeys. Just as Kit and Port, the pairs on the show grew to appreciate each others presence greater while traveling.

Bowles embeds evidence of the rift between Kit and Port from the beginning to emphasize a strain in their relationship. Port is willing to send Kit off on a train for eleven hours with Tunner while he rides in a car, they sleep in separate rooms, and they constantly squabble about the simplest of matters. After their separate journeys to Boussif, Kit and Port share in a revealing experience. When they go off on a bike ride to see the sunset off the top of a ridge, Bowles utilizes this rendezvous to argue the necessity of Kit and Port’s relocation to save their relationship. Port expresses of the sunset scene that, “It was such a place as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life; she knew that, and she also knew that he loved them more if she could be there to experience them with him (75).”