locally locaylee 3

 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 ...