5.05.2008
Online Reader's Log Entry #3 (final entry).
Post your third online Reader's Log entry here (it should be your eleventh overall in quarter three and your final entry on your current text). Again, be sure to include your name and the book you are reading prior to your entry. To avoid losing unsaved work, type your entry first in a Word document and then copy and paste into your comment.
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In our final discussion, we talked about how our perceptions of Chris McCandless had changed. Before, we thought he was merely a fool who made stupid decisions that ended up killing him. In the final chapter, though, a lot of new information was revealed. Chris hadn’t starved to death. He had eaten seeds that had a lethal mold on them and he didn’t any longer have the body mass or immune system to recover. As Krakauer’s friend Roman puts it “subsisting on nothing except what you hunt and gather- most people have no idea how hard that actually is. And McCandless almost pulled it off” (185). And as Krakauer says, “Roman’s observation underscores how difficult it is for those of us preoccupied with the humdrum concerns of adulthood to recall how forcefully we were once buffeted by the passions and longing of youth” (186). I’ve been harsh on McCandless but what I didn’t realize is that he was just trying to live a pure life. He was trying to be happy and he managed to die in peace and in happiness. McCandless was fairly successful in his attempt to live off the land. Where he went wrong was in not trying harder to cross the river. “If McCandless had possessed a U.S. Geological Survey topographic map, it would have alerted him to the existence of a Park Service cabin on the upper Sushana River, six miles due south of the bus, a distance he might have been able to cover even in his severely weakened state” (196). McCandless made some crucial mistakes, but he wasn’t stupid. He almost made it.
War trauma, seems like an all too common theme from many of the novels I’ve read throughout high school. However the trauma of “Seymour” is very severe. I don’t understand whether Sybil is his daughter, or what a bananafish is, or what emotions were plaguing this man to take his own life. He seemed relatively fine, which I suppose can indicate some of the worst depression there is, all manifested internally.
The woman however, Seymour’s wife, seems very realistic, and very easy to relate to. She reminded me very much of my own mother, a smoker, does her nails often, talks on the phone often, and often receives extraordinarily annoying, aggravating, phone calls from her own mother, my grandmother. So this character to me was extremely well developed. This author really employed the method of showing, not telling.
There is heavy forshadowing when Seymour’s wife was on the phone with her mother. Her mother told her at any moment, Seymour could snap, assumingly from post traumatic stress disorder, from combat. Seymour seemed completely deranged. Is Sybil his daughter? And if so, why does he communicate with her the way a stranger would? And if she is a stranger, why the hell is Seymour talking and playing in the water with her? These were all difficult circumstances for me to grapple and make sense of. It is evident that some sort of combat drained the sane ideas out of Seymour. He questioned a woman about her staring at his feet which is completely absurd, only to return to his hotel room to look at his wife and kill himself. This left me feeling like absolute garbage. Here is this woman that waited for Seymour to get out of combat and how does he repay her for what little sanity he has, by killing himself. Although that might be his plan, cutting his leash so she would never have to deal with it again.
-George
I thought one of the most interesting aspects of this supposedly “anti-war” book was its focus on the fact that we can’t do much to change the course of events or actions of other people so we should do our best to focus on the “good” in life. The first place I noticed this was in the very beginning when the narrator points out, “there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers” (3). This is so interesting because wars, which are caused by humans, are being compared to a natural phenomenon of which we have absolutely no control over. It seems ironic that something completely contrived by people is unstoppable simply because conflict is inherent in human nature.
If this perspective on war isn’t interesting enough, the book goes even further to say that if we can’t change or stop wars, than why dwell on them. The silver locket wrapped around Montana Wildhack’s neck contains an inscription that reads, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference” (209). Though some may see this as a realistic viewpoint, I interpreted it as a bleak outlook on life. Following the evidence from above, war is something we cannot change therefore we should not even bother to try. If the book is supposedly criticizing the frivolities of war efforts, why is it suggesting that we should do nothing to try to stop something so wrong?
I believe that while war may not be in the power of one individual to stop, we as a country can learn from past mistakes, like the burning of Dresden, and ensure that lives are never lost like that again. Though we may not be putting an end to fighting and violence altogether, we have both the ability and responsibility to make an effort to do what we think is right.
-Steph
Greg Gorence: Slaughter-House-Five
War is something that Billy Pilgrim has grown quite accustomed to, having fought in one himself and having a son fight in Vietnam, Billy is no stranger to the reality of war. What puzzles me is that during his stay on Tralfamador, Billy at one point assumes that Tralfamadorians live in absolute peace and cooperation with one another. Even as advanced beings capable of seeing the fourth dimension and knowing the past, present, and future of all things in the universe, Tralfamadorians are no better than human beings in that they do engage in war with one another. Tralafamadorians are a powerful commentary on what humans would most likely be, even if as humans we were privy to the same information Tralfamadorians have access to. If we knew the past, present and future of all things but there was still oil, land and money to be had in the present, the knowledge of time would change nothing. If we as a human population were to become “unstuck” in time and travel to and from Tralfamador freely, would we, like Billy Pilgrim become passive and simply onlook as our life walked by? I myself would be content with what I was doing, knowing well that that was what I was supposed to at that moment in time, knowing already full well the outcome of my own story. For multiple characters in the book, Vonnegut releases information of their demise long before it actually occurs. In doing so, Vonnegut removes the element of surprise and instead leaves us with a sense of near-anticipation, waiting for he “so it goes” at the end of each passing away. We the readers knew that Edgar Derby would be executed in Dresden, Billy Pilgrim would be one of the two survivors of a plane crash, and Billy would become a widower after Valencia’s death. And we knew this before the events actually occurred in the text. This is Vonnegut’s attempt at detaching the reader from time, and we actually become less engaged in a character’s life when we already know the outcome in the end. My detachment from life in the novel is supplemented by Vonnegut’s use of “so it goes” after each death, desensitizing me to death completely. Vonnegut, through the text, taught me to become a Tralfamadorian, knowing that life will at some point end in one dimension, but keep on going in another place.
The ending of Slaughterhouse Five revealed and brought a conclusion to many of the major reoccurring themes throughout the story. The final chapter very much correlated to the first chapter of the book and how not much cannot be said when talking about war. I found the birds Poo-tee-weet at the very end to link to this idea that certain things in life just happen and there is not always an explanation to why. The “So it goes” is echoed again in the final chapter this time more in the future with people like Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Like what we talked about in our circle groups, by this point in the story I just expected to see “so it goes” after any type of death or hardship that was mentioned. Vonnegut did a very effective job across the entire story to enforce the idea that death has become an ordinary thing. This phrase for me was the most striking idea in the book. I also found the death of Edgar Derby to very anti-climatic. There seemed to be a build up with him throughout the story and looking back to the beginning of the book when the Vonnegut said, “I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby” (6), I find it interesting that his death just comes as a short little section at the end. Also in the final chapter I found the section where O’Hare was talking about the number of people on the earth to be very revealing of certain attitudes that exist in the book. Vonnegut said, “I suppose they all want dignity” (271), but with the way in which the facts are read as well as O’Hare’s response to the statement, makes it seem as though not everyone is able to achieve it. I thought that this could be seen as a reason for Billy’s time travel, and for his desire to explore other periods of life. He is attempting to achieve something or gain something that he cannot obtain in the present. In the end, I found the idea of time travel to be ineffective for the reasons in which Billy was using it. I think that memories can never be erased, and this is because of time. Even if you focus on the happy moments in your life there will always be the bad ones that are in way just as important in shaping who you are. Such memories and moments can never be escaped and I don’t think one should necessarily try and escape them either.
Although the shortest of all the stories, I find The Arbus Factor to be one of the most intriguing and subtly poignant. We are given a brief history of Hope and Jack that, “ they had lived together before marrying two other people.” but we never know much detail about what ended their relationship- only that then meet up for lunch. One element that is apparent throughout the story is nostalgia and the element of age. Jack asks if Hope would ever go back to Paris and he wonders “ What’s to keep us” from returning back- perhaps to recapture the old love now that both of them are single or widowed again. The author hints at the fact that if they do in fact go back to Paris, it will not be the same as the old Paris- their life is much more cluttered. Jack’s son must “ get back to the office” and Hop’s daughter is busy playing with her screaming baby. This image painted in a small café seems chaotic- a sharp contrast from, “. An old, old garden. Did we walk under century-old trees? Did we lie down in the grass and look into tree crowns in France” The images of the Paris thirty something years ago seems peaceful and serene- Hope and Jack only had each other- and now in the café we see them surrounded by problems nearing the end of their lives both subconsciously knowing that they will never get back to Paris again- never achieve the serenity they once had. Instead of looking forward to the trip- a simple lunch is scheduled again. The way that the author wraps up with a lunch and has screaming babies destroy the talks of Paris makes the readers believe that the reunion trip will never happen- and that Jack and Hope will be left with coffee shops simply to reminisce.
FINAL READER'S LOG ENTRY!!!! Into the Wild
My perceptions of Chris McCandless definitely changed after finishing this book. It really brought closure to these lingering thoughts that I had about how stupid he was. Up until this point, we were under the conviction that he had starved to death, in my mind the result of bringing a 10 pound bag of rice to the Alaskan wilderness where game is scarce and you cant kill anything bigger than house cat with the gun you have. It turns out that I was wrong. He was killing animals consistently. He even got a moose. He also used that book to study plants and make sure that he knew which ones to pick and eat after being inspired by that quote from Dr. Zhivago. He happened upon some seeds with an undetectable mold that occurs in the early spring time and couldn’t fight it off. He really was surviving and fulfilling his dream of living off the land. As a harsh critic of McCandless throughout this entire novel, I can now honestly say that he knew what he was doing and was doing it pretty well. I was, however, left with a bitter taste in my mouth when I found out that his “Wild” was only six miles away from a Park Service cabin where he could have gotten saved. Because of the initial part of his journey, where he was abandoning everything, including maps, he died in such a mishap as eating mold instead of the death that we expected of him all along. Had he not been so hell-bent in the first place, he could have lived to tell his tale like Krakauer and not been judged so harshly. For this reason I ended the book feeling bad for him.
In chapter fifteen of Invisible Man, our narrator seems to have a nearly crazy episode in the apartment. In the middle of the night, people were banging on the pipes to try to get the heat to turn back on. The narrator starts to judge these people much like he’s been judged before, telling them to act like “civilized people of the 20th century.” Is this how our narrator is going to act now that he’s defined himself and shed his invisibility? He seems to have changed dynamically, not telling Mary about the statue head he broke or the the money inside it, and judging the people for banging on the pipes just because they wanted heat for their apartment (not an unfair request). He meets with Mary, but is unwilling to tell her the truth about what happened with the statue or the money he found. Instead, he gives it to her as if it’s his own. Later, while going down a street, he’s confronted by a woman who yells at him and insults him after he throws trash away in her garbage can. He apologizes and acts like the old narrator, until the woman says something else to him, and then he acts like the new narrator would, questioning his environment and the social structure around him. Is the narrator still transitioning between these two states of being, invisible and not? Or was this just because he didn’t want to be caught by the police? Either way, this transitional period seems to be very difficult for the narrator, and is turning him into a dynamically different person.
Final Readers Log
After finishing Into the Wild a lot has been learned about Chris including what motivated him and also about his preparation for the trip. In the beginning Chris is painted as an unprepared adventurous who goes on a suicide mission. From the beginning I have found everything about Chris to be disturbing, however, the book as revealed many aspects that make me reevaluate my first opinion of Chris. I think there is something said for Chris’s determination and desire. One misconception I had was that he was unprepared. This seems less likely after learning about all his “training.” I don’t agree with Chris’s motivation. I feel like his actions were selfish which is ironic coming from the person who to charity to an extreme. I also feel that Chris wouldn’t have ever found what he was looking for. At the end of the day he left everything traveled the country and died. I think Billie puts it best, “Many people told me they admire Chris for what he was trying to do. If he lived, I would agree with him. But he didn’t” (203).
Jack Barnes
(Invisible Man). Though we haven't finished the book, I did learn more about it from our group project. Because we did a project based on images and their connection to the book, it seems pretty obvious that I would start thinking about the book as more a collection of pictures, descriptions and images. Basically, what I realized by doing this project was how somewhat unnecessary a lot of the dialog in the book is. Though we learn a lot about secondary characters through their speeches and we gain more perspective on the time in which this book was written, we really don't need it. Many times when dialog starts up the book it almost seems like an interruption to the authors descriptions and observations about Invy's thoughts and surroundings. That really isn't something I noticed until I started looking for images in the book and realized how prevalent they were. I think this is significant because it shows us how much our opinion of Invy is based on image and thought as opposed to what he actually says outright.
“Cathedral”
I thought that this story revealed a type of relationship that is rather unusual: though a man and another man who is blind initially don’t connect, they are brought together by the simple act of drawing a cathedral together. The first man, who is forced to spend time with the blind man by his wife, who knew the blind man several years before, initially doesn’t like him at all. However, this all changes when he realizes that the blind man cannot perceive things that he has never seen. He tries, without success, to describe a cathedral to him that is on TV, but realizes that this is hopeless. At last, the blind man suggests that they draw the cathedral together, and as they do so, they finally connect in a unique way. Though this story is somewhat unusual, it teaches us that initial perceptions of people can be very deceiving, and that we can all connect in ways that we might not have initially expected.
- Senta
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