Pride and Prejudice 3/3

See, the problem I always had with classics was, it took forever to get to the plot. When I read a book, I want to keep reading it for its plot, and no matter how much imagery or what vocabulary the author uses, I don’t generally enjoy the book if it doesn’t have a good plot. Pride and Prejudice had a plot that slowly reeled me in, and at the end, BOOM. It was full of surprises, and it completely met the reader’s expectations.

SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON.

First “surprise” was Mr. Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth. Darcy was a man Elizabeth loathed from the moment she met him. Although Elizabeth doesn’t, the reader is aware of Darcy’s fondness towards her. The proposal itself isn’t a surprise, but rather how it happens. He proposes when Elizabeth isn’t physically well, and it happened to be the day after she met a colonel who appealed to her. Before she met the colonel, the reader was given numerous chapters to ponder what Elizabeth will do with the many men she met who could have formed relationships with her. The colonel seems ideal to both the readers and Elizabeth, but at the same time Darcy’s affection towards Elizabeth is still at the back of the reader’s mind. The readers didn’t really expect him to propose that exact moment. Darcy, by proposing, completely erased the colonel off of Elizabeth and everyone else’s minds. The climax that everyone was waiting for happened when we were anticipating something else. It was a complete flip – a man that seems likeable comes in the book, but suddenly a man that seems evil comes in and steals the game.

Second “surprise” was when Elizabeth finds about the truth about Mr. Darcy. She had hated him because of his pride and evil acts toward a man that Elizabeth found as a gentleman. After Darcy was rejected by Elizabeth, he wrote a letter to Elizabeth explaining every move that seemed hateful to Elizabeth. It turned out the gentleman that was harmed by Darcy had actually eloped with Darcy’s brother because of their money. When they ended up not marrying, the “gentleman” spread vicious rumors about Darcy to cover up his acts. Elizabeth had stubborn prejudices against Darcy because of the pride he had of his class, and now she was proved wrong. When she read the letter, the author says she “put it hastily away, protesting that she would not regard it, that she would never look in it again. In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter was unfolded again” (Austen 202). She must have thought, “My life is a lie!” She was very stubborn about it because Darcy, even while proposing, had emphasized his upper class-ness and Elizabeth’s class that was lower than his. Elizabeth thought that it was purely out of pride and not sincerity. What Darcy said was basically “You’re lower class and I should consider you disgusting but will you marry me?” If the reader looks at its deep roots, he’s saying “Society tells me that I should care about your wealth. But I love you too much to even care about your class.” Even more condensed, “I love you even if you’re poor.”

At the end basically everyone ends up happily marrying, except for one couple, who married out of wealth and not pure love. People who married with true love ended up enjoying their lives together, overcoming pride and prejudice. (I can just imagine all the happy couples standing in a line, clapping to “All you Need is Love” by the Beatles) The last words on the book was “THE END.” I felt like I just read a happy fairy tale that overcame villains of true life.

Remedies? You don’t need, that. You need LOVE, LLOOVVEE, LOVE. LOVE, LLOOVVEE, LOVE. All you need is love…(bop-bah bah-dah-boo) All you need is love…(bop-bah bah-dah-boo) All you need is love, love. Love is all you need…

Pride reads Prejudice (2/3)

I said in my earlier post that around the time of my book, a woman's job was to just marry a man and serve him in the house. There's a million different ways to look at that - and Jane Austen included a lot of them.

Feminism is one obvious way one can look at that "norm" from the past. There were two different types of "feminism" I spotted so far, although I don't think everyone might agree with me. One was the main character, Elizabeth Bennet. She was an intelligent girl who knew how society was shaped and she was aware of what rights women had or didn't have. But she didn't allow herself to mold herself into what was expected of her. Elizabeth knew that a lot of women often tried to please men or made themselves look more "elegant" with their pretentious ways, but she was flat-out honest with her motivations and thoughts instead of trying to impress others. Her cousin, who was to have Elizabeth's father's estate after her father died, proposed to Elizabeth. There were a lot of advantages that came along with the marriage. Elizabeth still refused because she knew that her cousin wasn't the man for her, and she couldn't force herself to marry a man like him, even if her cousin was socially superior to her.

Another person with a bit of feminism seemed to be Mrs. Bennet, although I don't think she is a true feminist. Mrs. Bennet is upset over the fact that women don't have the right to own property, because if her husband dies, she knows she would be kicked out of her house by Mr. Bennet's cousin. When Mrs. Bennet complains about it, her daughters try explaining how property works to her. The author writes, "Jane and Elizabeth attempted to explain to her the nature of an entail. They had often attempted it before: but it was a subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason; an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favor of a man whom nobody cared any thing about" (Austen 63). She is uneducated in the rules enforced on women, nor does she understands it when her daughter explains the laws to her. I think that she thinks that she is trying to protect herself and her daughters from getting kicked out of a home. But her actions are derived from plainly wanting to keep her money and estate, and she isn't even aware why some rules exist. Elizabeth is well aware why, and Elizabeth is more focused on her plain rights to live honestly. Mrs. Bennet is more focused on the wealth and doesn't even understand what topic she's arguing against.

There was also indifference towards the topic. Elizabeth's older sister Jane seemed to be educated in the rights and women and their gender roles in society. She did not mold herself into the expectation of women pleasing men, and it wasn't that she cared nothing about it. She just didn't spend the time arguing against it. She just built self-respect and civilized character to earn respect of others. She falls in love with her neighbor, and although others approach her with the simple idea of marrying a rich man, she allows herself to attach to her neighbor out of love instead of for just marriage and acceptance in society. In a way she is like Elizabeth, except she has more acceptance to it while Elizabeth is more hard-headed about it.

Pride and Prejudice uses a lot older English, which sounds more formal and slow. So although the language sounds stiff, the plot behind it is intriguing. I think it's the first time in a classic where I actually really wanted to know what happens next, so I'll have fun reading!

Paper and Prejudice (1/3)

Okay, so The Great Gatsby wasn't that bad. I was going to read something easier for my free choice book, but I chose to read another classic I'd probably want to read sometime in my life. Most of my friends told me that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was a good book, so Pride and Prejudice it is.

Here is my version of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Pride and Prejudice is a love story published in the 1800s, and I've heard that Jane Austen often includes feminist elements in her works. In the 1800s, society was male-dominated and gender roles were prevalent. Men were the head of the house, women weren't allowed to own property, and women couldn't have certain jobs that men could have. All a woman's job was to marry a man and give him all of her inheritance, and a single woman was often ridiculed. Marriage is going to be an inevitable topic in the book, because in the 1800s people got married, not dated when it came to love (did most people even marry out of love? Not often). The cover of the book has a very fancy place, possibly a ballroom or some hall, so the main character would probably be rich. Rich people will obviously have a bit of pride unless they're very humble, and possibly be prejudiced against lower classes, or against women if they're male.

I'm going to be looking for a lot of feminist characters, and see how the romance happens. A dramatic romance in this era would be if a female doesn't just "serve" the male of the relationship, and if that does happen, that should be interesting.

I don't have a link for a remedy today. But I know that if you freeze aloe vera, you can put it on your skin for instant pain relief! Brace yourselves, Summer's coming!

The Great Gatsread (3/3)

(3/3), as you can tell, tells you that this is my last post for this book, which means all spoilers are free from this point (cough Alycia). There are major spoilers underneath, so if you hadn't read the book, please don't proceed. I would hope you find out yourself by reading the book...but it's a free country. Do whatever you please.

Jay Gatsby, like I said in the last post, is stuck in the past when he was with his ex-girlfriend Daisy, now married to a man named Tom. Gatsby's neighbor, the narrator, tries to help him. He narrates, "He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: 'I never loved you'...after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house - just as if it was five years go...I venture, 'You can't repeat the past.' 'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!' He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. 'I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before,' he said" (Fitzgerald 110). In the climax of the book, Tom and Gatsby end up getting into an argument in a hotel next to Daisy and the narrator. Gatsby demands that Daisy tell Tom that she never loved him. When Daisy reluctantly admits it, Tom starts to remind her of the memories they've had together, which causes her to take back what she said. Later in the night Gatsby drops Daisy off at home, but he hides in the bushes, thinking Tom might attack her. The narrator goes into the house and finds the couple reconciled. He tries informing Gatsby, but he doesn't believe it and continues to hide until the lights are turned off. Gatsby had tried numerous times to get Daisy off of Tom to return things to how it used to be, but it obviously doesn't work. However he still tries again and again.

Here's another famous character from a classic novel.

One name kept popping up inside my head: Holden Caulfield. Teenager Holden from the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is well-known in literature for not being able to escape from the past. For the entire book except the very last section, he desperately wants to go back to the past and become innocent again. When he was little, he went to the Nation Museum of History extremely often, and he loved it because it never changed. He loved the fact that it stayed frozen in time, and he himself wanted to be frozen in time and never grow up. He was delusional in the way that he actually thought it was possible, or kept on telling himself it was possible. When he visits his younger sister's elementary school, he sees a derogatory word written on the wall. He's determined an evil adult wrote it, trying to ruin children's innocence, but readers can infer that it was probably an elementary student that wrote the word. He also wants to catch children in a rye field from falling off of a cliff, implying that he thinks that he can save children's innocence. He keeps telling himself and his sister over and over that he can do it, and that's the only thing he cares about.

The two of them are similar in the way that they're delusional and stubborn of the past. In their minds, their pasts seem so beautiful now that psychologically I think their past is overly signified. Gatsby talks about Daisy and their past relationship as if they were as beautiful as flowers, but to be honest Gatsby cared a lot about her looks and money than he did her personality and identity. Holden remembers the time in his past when he was extremely close to a lovely girl. There are events in the book that imply that the girl isn't the pure darling that Holden remembers, but he still believes that she hasn't changed at all. The only difference is that Holden accepted it more than Gatsby did at the end of the book. Holden got tuberculosis but Gatsby got shot...maybe acceptance is good for your health?

**SPOLIER-FREE FROM HERE. IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO READ THIS BOOK, THEN READ THIS PART.**

I wasn't extremely interested in the book and the plot in the beginning. I was counting the whole time, "18 pages...I'm 1/10 there...19 pages...Wait I thought I just read ten pages...ughh". But the climax made up for it, I think. The climax was what everyone was waiting for: confrontation. I wouldn't specify what confrontation, but confrontations are always the parts that make you most nervous. Fitzgerald does a nice job in putting together the dialogue and actions of the characters that make it seem very dramatic like a scene in a TV show. Afterwards it goes downhill but you think, "Wow, it was worth reading those 100-some pages so that I really understood that part of the book." I don't think it was terrible in other parts, so I think my fright for classics has slightly decreased. Thanks Gatsby!

Oh yeah, if you ever get headaches from reading or from school or from a lack of chocolate, you can try to relieve it by sort of massaging yourself. Enjoy the current Spring that's probably going to turn either back to freezing or to melting hot! :)

Ze Great Gatsby (2/3)

Criticize me (without hate) all you want, but "Ze Great Gatsby" sounded a lot better then "Read Great Gatsby" or "Book Great Gatsby" (I hate short titles). I actually considered "Ye Olde Great Gatsby," but I was able to contain myself. By the way, if you're not a newcomer, I hope you enjoy the background change! Food, such as chocolate, is always a panacea to me (emotionally. Physically it seems to be destroying my health...)

Some of you might think this light is pretty. So does Gatsby.

I've managed to go past only comprehending what's the ink and what's the paper, which is a good start. When I read the first chapter probably the fifteenth time, I started to actually understand the content. I think I just had to keep telling myself, "Focus! Focus! Words! Chocolate...Focus!" Before, when I had only read the first chapter, I thought the "great" Gatsby would be a very secretive, mysterious, wondrous, amazing character that seemed to be one of the "greatest" people on Earth. Well, that wasn't really the case. SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE. John Green actually did a video for his crash courses debating whether or not Gatsby was actually "great" after all. Besides all of the deep analytical things that doesn't make Gatsby great, one thing that sort of creeped me out about Gatsby. There were many rumors about how he did numerous illegal things, including murder. That didn't creep me out - I think rumors are stupid. But what did creep me out was the fact that Gatsby had bought his fancy mansion and held parties every week so that he can lure his former girlfriend to reuniting with him. That woman, already married to another man, lives near him. Everyday Gatsby stares out the window and stares at a green light, which is his ex-girlfriend's house. The woman isn't aware of this at first, so he sort of seemed like a stalker to me. Later, he confront his ex and tells her, "If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay...You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock" (Fitzgerald 92). The funny thing is, green is the color of spring, and spring is usually symbolic for rebirth. Gatsby stares at the green light every day, wanting a new life with his former lover along with rebirth. It seems to readers, though, that Gatsby is simply stuck in the past. The appropriate "rebirth" for Gatsby could have been giving up the desire for wealth, forgetting about his married ex, and leading an honest life instead of trying to create love affairs.

So apparently you can heal sore throats by eating marshmallows. You're welcome for giving you an excuse to stuff your face with marshmallows.

The Grade (A) Gatsby (1/3)

New book! Yay!...yay...yah...ugh. Even though I'm not always excited by books, I'm usually not terribly bitter about them. But classics? I can't. I've attempted many times, but have not yet succeeded. I was able to enjoy some of the "later" classics like Animal Farm. When I attempted Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, the only thing that my brain was able to process was that the black stuff was the ink and the tan-ish white stuff was the paper. Maybe I have the not-able-to-process-what-famous-sisters-write curse. When I was told to choose a classic, I had two choices: a) read a "later" classic like 1984 that I can probably be easily interested in, or b) choose a classic I would probably not enjoy, but I'd have to read it eventually for another English class anyways. I chose B. The classic that's going to haunt me? The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Here is my copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I have read about the first ten pages of this book at least four times. I still don't know what's going on. I thought it would be better to do some background research then, which we're supposed to do anyways (there's a reason why English teachers make us do tedious things). Fitzgerald was brought up in an upper-middle class environment and went to two Catholic schools. He worked in Hollywood and made a lot of money at one point in his life, and died from heavy drinking. Although I don't want to judge, he probably lived a superficial life for at least half of his life. There might have been a point in his life where he realized money and drinking wasn't everything. If he did I think there would be a superficial setting in the book and one character realizing that there's more to life than that.

Well, I don't think this book is going to be a panacea because I probably have to do a lot of analyses in order to actually understand the book. I hope though, if I don't understand it well this time around, I'll at least understand it better the second time and go "ohhhh."

A simple remedy (but not a panacea) to a cold or just feeling cold, you can try some barley tea. It smells nice and if you put it in the fridge to make it cold, it's a great beverage when it's super hot outside.

I've Read Why the Caged Bird Sings (3/3)

So, I've finished this book. Just like I said in the last post, she included a lot of horrible things that happened in her life, except in this book she mixed a lot of problems regarding her personal family life and other topics like sexism rather than just problems regarding racism.

Yes, all of the events she included were some horrible things that a person should not have to go through (call me redundant, but they're just so horribly horrible I don't know what other word would be appropriate). But I don't think it would have sounded half as terrible to me if she didn't express her words like this. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is of Maya Angelou's life from when she was three to when she was sixteen. This book was published when she was 41, so she couldn't have possibly remembered every single detail of the exact emotions and happenings of all the events she wrote in this book (she actually might remember most stuff because she's super brilliant at memorizing but that's not the point). Her use of imagery must have stressed or exaggerated some parts. But when she was telling the readers these stories, I found myself believing every single detail she was saying. It was like a suspension of disbelief, except it was mostly true. It made me feel that way because it works both as nonfiction and fiction. If someone had told me, "This is fiction," I would have believed it. If someone had told me, "This is nonfiction," I still would have believed it. This book is someone's life reincarnated into a story. For example, there was a descriptive part in the middle of the book where she told the readers about her graduation with excitement. She narrates, "In the Store I was the person of the moment. The birthday girl. The center... My class was wearing butter-yellow pique dresses, and Momma launched out on mine. She mocked the yoke into tiny crisscrossing puckers, then shirred the rest of the bodice. Her dark fingers ducked in and out of the lemony cloth as she embroidered raised daisies around the hem" (Angelou 171). It was as descriptive as a novel but still a true story.

Of this true story of Marguerite, a strong figure of her life is Momma, her grandmother. She had been raised by Momma since she was three. Momma was a strong and influential figure to not only Marguerite but her entire community. Angelou recalls, "I saw only her power and strength. She was taller than any woman in my personal world...In church, when she was called upon to sing, she seemed to pull out plugs from behind her jaws and the huge sound would pour over the listeners and throb in the air...She was the only Negro woman in Stamps referred to once as Mrs" (Angelou 46-47). These traits of Momma are similar to other female activists, but the figure that reminded me most of Momma was Cleopatra. Just like Momma was the only woman in her area to be called Mrs., Cleopatra was one of the only female pharaohs of Egypt. They were both married at a certain point, but remained single at the end, and by doing so I think that it helped them maintain their sense of power. They were both determined to protect their sons, although they never seemed to directly shows true love for anyone. They're both people of inspiration.

Cleopatra was a significant woman leader, just like Maya Angelou's grandmother.

That felt like a short but long read. I'd feel like I absorbed a ton of interesting information, but it would only have been about five pages past where I started. It was never tedious nor hard but I felt like I had to devote a lot of time into it. I guess that part blocked me from enjoying it 100%, so it wasn't a panacea. I did enjoy it though, and it felt like it left a mark inside of me.

Oh, and by the way, I've noticed that a lot of people put fun things at the end of their blogs. Yeah, I guess I'm acting "mainstream" but I think that's better than letting readers fall asleep with only literature-related stuff. The only thing close to a panacea I've ever found was chocolate. So enjoy a chocolate truffle recipe.