locally locaylee 3

Below is a summary of my thoughts on the first part of "The Plague," by Albert Camus. In the opening scenes of "The Plague," we are introduced to a narrator by the name of Dr. Rieux. He describes the town of Oran from his perspective. In this description, we find that the people of Oran are very habitual. People work during the week, to make the most money they can, and party on the weekends (when it is acceptable). Therefore, they do not take immediate action when the rats begin to die. Instead, they make up false realities. For example, the concierge claims the dead rats were brought into his building by pranksters. Then, when the deaths increase, he is more worried about being at "the same level" as the rest of the town than the implications of the mass amounts of rat deaths. Everyone just assumes it's someone else's job to care about the rats that nothing is done about it for a long while. The reporters even refuse to publish on it, at first. O...

Throughout my time reading this book, I've realized that the characters seem extraordinarily modern. It's a wonder to think how they must've come across in the time period that the book debuted in 1925. Take Brett for example: In 1925, even though it was in a progressive time period for women's rights--specifically in the suffrage movement--women were still very much the victim of oppression and suppression in their everyday lives. I wonder if it was hard to accept a character such as Brett, headstrong, and tomboyish as she was. I could very well see her character existing in today's world, which makes me wonder how much the times have actually changed in the last century.  Other parts of Brett's persona make me wonder about this as well. For example, her obvious relationship issues and, I believe, slight pistanthrophobia (fear of getting hurt in a romantic relationship). Throughout the book, we see Brett go from relationship to relationship--never settling--and...

 Today, we got a notebook assignment prompting us to think about Septimus and Clarissa's plotlines with Woolf's original plans for the book in mind. I thought this was a very interesting topic so I will expand on my thoughts here: Firstly I'd like to address the part of the prompt that says the Clarissa never heard anything about Septimus. I disagree completely with that statement because she did hear about him at her party. I think this scene is relevant because it reveals such a fascinating part of Clarissa's mind. She envies him. Besides how little she knows of him, she recognizes that he took his own life to preserve his soul. With all of her thoughts, dwellings in the past, leading up to this moment, she finally expresses that she feels she has lost not only her passion but her soul in marrying Richard. She feels ashamed of who shes turned out to be and the way she let go of herself to climb the social ladder. News of Septimus's death, in combination with seein...

 Since the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway is portrayed as a lover of life. For example, she is happy to do choose that are "below her" on a social level, such as fetching flowers. She also seems to know what she wants out of life. For example, the constant back and forth contemplation of her past refusals to Peter's marriage proposals. She knows that she would have "fun" with Peter, however, she wouldn't have any freedom. Overall, she comes back to the fact that Mr. Dalloway can give her the life that she wants. In this way, she is very objective and aware of herself and her surroundings. There are many points in the book where she looks inward to examine her wants, morals, and even mortality. On one hand, one can take her cheery and direct appearance at face value and determine her to be a happy housewife--content with her house parties to be her only gift to the world. But what if there was more? Mrs. Dalloway  is set in 1924, a time when women had j...

 Throughout "The Mezzanine," the character known as "L" was mentioned in passing many times. However, we--the readers--know almost nothing about her. I find this unsettling because we know just about every detail of Howie's thoughts pertaining to just about everything in the story, except L.  It seems to me that one of the main goals of Nicholson Baker in writing "The Mezzanine" was to encourage "stopping to smell the roses" so-to-speak. I fully understood this to be one of his goals with this novel when I read his reaction to Aurelius's view on life: " Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice and ashes." Howie was very disapproving of Aurelius's point of view and outwardly disagreed with it. He was angry that someone would even say that. This outrage shows me how significant life is to Howie. In combination with all of his tangents on seemingly ...