Atonement

Having finally finished Atonement, I can say that I am very impressed with McEwan’s ability to tell a story. I was left shocked and satisfied because though the story does not end with a “happily ever after” tone, it does complete itself. I was perplexed because I felt certain ways about the entire situation before I knew the real truth, and the ending caused me to challenge my initial thoughts.

After finishing Part 3, I was interested by my own lack of sympathy for Cecelia and Robbie in the last few scenes. For some reason I find it too hard to place all of the blame on Briony. The circumstances were too influential to make this only her crime. It wasn’t her fault that she was only a young naive girl, Robbie and Cecelia could have picked a more appropriate time and place to have sex, Emily could have been a more attentive parent… the blame is endless. The last interaction seems to justify Cecelia and Robbie’s anger, though I just cannot agree that Cecelia and Robbie are complete victims. I ended the chapter feeling sorry for Briony and fed up with Cecelia and Robbie.

Though, I am not sure where to place my own thoughts knowing that the emotions shown are all through the lens of Briony. All of the anger held by Cecelia and Robbie are merely perceived by Briony who has a guilty conscious, and she is also assuming this is how they felt because she never did get to meet with them. I was left asking, what would their accurate emotions have been? Would Cecelia have been more understanding if Briony had really met her?

Finally, was McEwan planning on adding the last chapter from the beginning, or does Brinoy in the sense of her being an author, reflect McEwan’s own inability to perfect his story? I feel that he might have written the last chapter on a whim after the story was complete, or at the very least used Briony’s frustrations as a storyteller as a method of expressing his own challenges creating the story.

Atonement: Many questions, few answers

Atonement feels, very appropriately, like a culmination of all the ideas and puzzles contained in the previous books we have read, from Northanger Abbey, to Cloud Atlas, to Tristram Shandy, to Frankenstein, and Pale Fire. Like Catherine Moreland, its heroine has a severely wrong-headed perception of the how the world works. Like Cloud Atlas, each of its four parts has its own flavor, whether it is the romanticist feel of part one or the historical war fiction of part two. Like Frankenstein's story-within-a-story style, Atonement's events occur through various sources, such as the letters between Cecilia and Robbie and Nettle's account. Finally, like Tristram Shandy and Pale Fire, the narrator of the novel toys with our trust by reaching into the story and manipulating events to suit her personal agenda. All of these ideas are contained within the veneer of a linear, conventionally told narrative that makes Atonement a surprisingly digestible and emotional read like Frankenstein, but with the literary intricacies of Pale Fire.

Something that turned my mind inside out is the fact that Briony chooses to reveal at the end that the reunion between Robbie and Cecelia was made up. She claims to have done this for two particular reasons: firstly, had she written the novel with complete accuracy, its readers would be disappointed that Rob and Cee's story ended on such a grim note, after the avoidable and crushing event that takes place at the end of part one. Secondly, she wishes to atone for her crime by using her talents to unite the two in fiction. The thing is, Briony's shocking revelation is part of the overall narrative of Atonement. It is not some sort of afterword by the author; that would only be the case if this novel was non fiction. But Atonement is a fictional story, and because of that part four is an integral piece of the narrative that completely changes the entire nature of the story.

Now we have to start asking ourselves, just how accurate exactly is the story of Atonement? Briony claims to not just have had many, many versions of the story over the course of several decades, but to also be suffering from vascular dementia, a disease that wreaks havoc on one's mind. When we look within the story that Briony tells, we see how her youthfully warped sense of reality has an effect on those that would listen to her. When we look outside the story Briony tells and into the larger frame of the fourth part, we pick up on small clues that she drops, namely her mental illness and her having written many versions, and realize that for all we know, as we read Atonement we are in a very similar situation that the police, Emily Tallis, Lola and so on were put in when Briony falsely accused Robbie of rape. Of course, the consequences are nowhere as dire; this is a work of fiction after all. But it does point out the unbelievable power the author has over its readers. The author can grant readers a sense of comfort in knowing that they are reading a reliable narrative, or it can take away that comfort and stamp its identity all over the story, as is the case in Pale Fire. Most pertinently, however, it can reach beyond the page and manipulate the reader's perceptions of reality. Just look at some of the high profile criminal cases, such as OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony, or even the Iraq War, which was driven by politicians and their supporters who bought into the narrative of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of WMDs.

If there is one very important message to be taken away from the works we have read, it is to be wary of the presence of the author, whether it is a non fiction writer, a literary critic, or a journalist.

The Dichotomy Between Adolescence and Adulthood

In reading through the first section of Atonement, I was struck by the dichotomy between adolescence and adulthood.  It seems as though all the characters are fumbling somewhere in the middle of childhood and actually growing up.  It appears as though several of the main characters are all dealing with childhood but in several different ways. 

First there are the twins, Jackson and Pierrot who are obviously children.  Their concerns are playing and eating and not being punished for wetting the bed or coming down to dinner without socks.  Because they don’t understand what is going on with their parents, they are blaming Lola for their situation and decide to run away.

Lola herself is also dealing with that precarious balance between being a child and a woman.  At fifteen years old, she is highly concerned with her appearance and making herself look older and more mature (which, of course, is to her detriment).  Although only a young teen, she is tasked with the responsibility of playing the role of mother to the twins but readily accepts the lead role in Briony’s play. 

Obviously the clearest example of the dichotomy between an adult and a child is seen in the character Briony because she is, of course, is teetering on the brink of adulthood herself.  I thought it was interesting that Robbie himself, who also seems to be stuck in a form of adolescence, imagined at the dinner table how Briony was unreadable and prone to swing between maturity and childishness.  Even Emily, Briony’s mother mused on how things will be when Briony was fully grown.  However, what Emily doesn’t understand at the time is that in one evening, Briony matures from a little girl to a young lady.  She abandons her play, seeing the juvenile nature of her writing and tears down her poster.  However, in her pouting, she comes across Robbie and accepts the letter meant for Cecilia.  Because of her youth, she reads the letter and discovers the word which changes everything.  She is still too immature to see that Robbie was not attacking Cecilia in the library and decided with her underdeveloped mind that it is now her adult task to protect Cecilia.  Because of her lack of maturity and understanding the one word from Robbie’s letter becomes the foundation of her evidence against him and leads her to make a terrible accusation. 

Then there are the three young adults of the story who are all suffering from a debilitating case of refusing to grow up.  Leon seems like a classic example of a young man, given all the advantages of a wealthy family, who refuses to take the leg up his father offers him in order to continue to play and enjoy life.  It seems that Leon is responsible enough to eventually cede to his father but for the moment he seems to be more interested in hanging out with his rich friends.  Cecilia is also stuck in a rut because she is finished with school but refuses to move on from her family home, fearing she would miss out on something.  Perhaps she felt it was her responsibility to take the mother role over Briony or perhaps she couldn’t leave, secretly being in love with Robbie but that so far is only speculation.  Finally, there is Robbie who seems like the guy we all know.  He is smart and has the aptitude to do anything he sets his mind to but he can’t seem to find a way to finish anything.  He seems to flounder with how his life is meant to be and can’t ever make the decision.  I the meantime, Robbie just remains at the house, handling the landscaping and wasting his mind. 

 I think it will be interesting to see how the characters mature, if at all, as the story progresses.

Pale Fire: Fantastic Story, Strange Metafiction, or Ravings of a Madman?

Pale Fire has many similar elements from Tristram Shandy, but takes these elements to a whole new level of mind-numbing. As discussed in class, there is virtually an infinite number of ways to approach this work, which plays very conveniently into the critical essays from Falling Into Theory. No one person's path through Pale Fire has more credence than another person's, and each path reveals something different about the work, like using different types of light to bring out different qualities of an object. In my case, I for the most part read Pale Fire linearly, though as Kinbote's rantings wore on into the fourth Canto, I tried reading it backwards to see if it would make a difference. It did not.

At any rate, Pale Fire, at least in a single reading, seems best absorbed with the same awareness as Tristram Shandy. One must not fall into the trap of becoming a reader within the world of Pale Fire, but must instead act as a reader within the real world, the world of Vladimir Nabokov and not Charles Kinbote. From the perspective of a reader within Pale Fire, the entire work is a crudely Frankensteined being: two different creatures, one an eloquent poem, the other an obscenely bloated commentary, surgically attached to one another at the hip.

As Jennifer mentioned in her post, the actual poem of Pale Fire is a remarkable work itself, with plenty of depth and revelations that are uncovered with each reading. The problems begin when we move into Kinbote's commentary. The commentary sometimes does give behind the scenes insight and opinion on various lines of the poem, but for the most part one can go through all 230-something pages of it without having to read the poem at all. Kinbote goes into excruciating detail in his many anecdotes about the King of Zembla, his conversations with John Shade, and the assassin Gradus who bumbles his way into accidentally killing Shade. These have very little, if any, relevance or importance to the poem itself. Had I read this as someone within the world of Pale Fire, this work would have been a terrible constructed read, because that is exactly what it is within the world of Pale Fire. Charles Kinbote has taken Shade's poem and tried to claim it for his own, adding 230 pages of meaningless commentary to a poem that he himself has made all kinds of alterations to. Many times throughout the commentary we discover that Kinbote has dramatically altered various lines of the poem, which makes me ask, if the Pale Fire we read is not truly John Shade's work, is it still a great work? The answer is yes, but only if you read it as a reader in the world of Nabokov, aka the real world.

As a more detached reader, you go from asking questions like "Why is Kinbote such an arrogant jerk? What is the deal with the commentary?" to questions like "Who is really narrating the story? The King of Zembla or a madman who thinks he is the King?" You perceive Pale Fire not as a well written poem with an overblown commentary attached to it, but as a puzzle box. The kind of box you must think outside of.    

The Construction of a Piece of Art – When a Poem Becomes a Novel

Probably the most intriguing thing I find about Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” is the construction of the piece.  For as long as I can remember, and even at the beginning of class when we started talking about the literary canon and what it meant, I was never really able to wrap my brain around why a piece of literature was considered great.  I’ve been pondering what greatness in literature meant and that has led me to think about all the art forms.  Just because I like a particular piece of work certainly doesn’t make it great.  Sometimes my favorite song is despised by others as garbage.  I’ve read literary works that have bored me to tears and they are considered some of the greatest achievements in literature by others.

It seems as though I’ve had a breakthrough in my understanding of literary greatness after reading part of Nabokov’s “Pale Fire.”  At the beginning of the reading, I read it as poetry, understanding the stanzas and recognizing the meter and rhyme.  I was having difficulty understanding what was happening as I read it this way.  I decided just to start over and eliminate the rhyme and meter and just read the words using the punctuation as it was written and glossing over the poetic elements of it.  Then the story just started to appear in my head and I was intrigued.  Learning about the wife Sybil and the daughter he adored and eventually terrible tragedy that occurred when his poor, unfortunate daughter stepped through the ice on the lake and drown.

What started to happen to me as I read the story, it occurred to me, or my brain actually reminded me that it was in fact a poem!  In class, it was stated that this novel is something that is meant to be re-read and I certainly didn’t understand what that meant at the time.  Now I do.  I am in absolute awe at the construction of this piece of literature.  It doesn’t seem possible that someone would have the acumen to be able to sit down and construct something like this piece.  Make an entire story, give it depth, mood and make it interesting while incorporating it and constructing it into the stanzas and rhyme of a poem.  It doesn’t seem possible or at the very least a major undertaking.  I’m inspired by this work because of the sheer effort it must have taken to put it all together to make it work.  Just like I’m in awe of someone who can solve the mysteries of science and math, I’m in awe of Nabokov because of this achievement.  I haven’t even finished the piece yet but I’m intrigued, inspired and reminded that poetry takes on all forms in life…even novels.  Just because of this achievement, I understand somewhat how a piece becomes part of the literary canon and in my opinion Nabokov sealed his place on the list of greatness with “Pale Fire.”  Now I understand why a book like this was written to be re-read considering I’m already planning on another reading just to see what I’ve missed so far.  It’s almost like a good mystery now too. 

Question About the Death of Humanity

After reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I find there are so many areas in which to delve so I’ve decided to touch on two that were striking to me.  The first of which is how one’s soul or even one’s heart can change.  We’ve all had occasions to change our minds about people.  One we thought was a friend surprised us, changed from someone we trusted, and became an enemy.  I am also intrigued with how the very nature of a person can sometimes change so drastically.  It reminds me of the questions I have regarding the Nazi soldiers in World War II.  These barbaric torturers were men that once led very normal lives.  They had wives, children, mothers and fathers and probably would never have even conceived of harming another person in the course of their day to day activities.  However, the war happened upon Europe and they were thrust into a situation that opened the door to their depravity.  They became blood-thirsty murders responsible for the deaths of millions of people for the crime of being Jewish.  When and how this switch occurs from regular human to murderous evil has always been a query of mine.

In reading Frankenstein, at the end of the story when the monster is standing over Victor’s dead body and speaking to Walton I was struck with this same question.  The monster stated he was created good and became the murderous monster he looked to be on the outside.  When he was created, he “felt the cheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of the leaves and the chirping of the birds” but because of the crimes he believed committed against him, he abandoned the beauty he perceived in the world and committed his existence to revenge, death and destruction.  I wonder if the same could be true of the Nazi’s or any other.  It made me think if perhaps Mary Shelley herself was commenting on how our own human nature can abandon us in the heat of rage and we forever leave behind the beautiful and surround ourselves with misery.

Another aspect of the story that I found interesting is that the creature, created by Victor, was a nameless demonic wretch throughout the novel.  The named character Victor was at the onset, a brilliant scientist, completely dedicated to creating the being and bringing life to dead tissue.  Surely his success would have resulted in recognition and ceaseless notoriety.  However, in the end, Victor dies alone and his brilliance dies along with him.  Ironic in that the nameless creature now lives on in the story as described by Walton to his sister who we can assume would have perpetuated the tale.  Even today, although it is only the media’s portrayal of the monster, when we think Frankenstein, we imagine the monster.  We imagine the creature even though the moniker Frankenstein belonged to Victor.  The monster who had no name, assumes the identity, and Victor disappears only to join the others who passed before him at the hand of his own creation.  Perhaps this could even be considered the creature’s final torment, essentially stealing both his life name and humanity.         

Where Ladies Fit Into Frankenstein

I wanted to attempt to find my own feminist reading of Frankenstein before I began researching what others have to say about the topic. I was first perplexed by the fact that the females in the story are rarely the focus of the tale, but ultimately the story lands into the hands of Margaret Seville. We never hear from this woman, but the message Shelley is sending is quite powerful. It is as if Shelley is saying here is my revolutionary work and it is for you (women) to really take hold of and own. Presumably, if Margret does not receive the letters from her brother the entire story disappears, and that seems to easily reflect how Frankenstein also functions. If women don’t get the message of the story, then the message will be lost. Once this is realized by the reader, it really helps build the idea that Shelly has in fact inserted feminist plots, and that she needs women to decipher them.

Shelly also seems to send the message that women who are traditionally beautiful and non confrontational meet a tragic fate. The women we get to know best are Victor’s mother, Elizabeth, and Justine and each woman meets a tragic end. While alive they are painted as pictures of perfection (pretty, patient, and not threatening to the men) and Shelley kills all of them. It could be that Shelley is asserting that being a traditionally proper pretty lady will only lead to a tragic end.

When it comes to the monster being a representation of a women I feel that it then makes Victor a representation of God because he is also a creator. When the monster asks for someone to be equal with, it would be the same as a female asking God to create a humble man who could appreciate women for their company not for their beauty. The monster’s cry for love would equate to the female’s plea for appreciation and the ugly monster companion would equate to a female getting a companion who seeks company not domination.  Though, I am not quite sure where to place the belligerent nature of the beast once he learns that he will not gain a companion. I believe this Shelley saying that if women cannot be respected that we should begin raising hell until men begin to respect us.

Perceptions and Expectations in Frankenstein

Despite having read Frankenstein before, revisiting this story on the back of Tristram Shandy, Cloud Atlas, and Northanger Abbey has unearthed some previously ignored aspects of the novel that are quite illuminating. Chief among them is this whole concept of the narrator. In the case of the previous three novels read in class, the narrator is (mostly) an actual person who is relating a story to a reader, who is either a specific person or anyone in general. Tristram Shandy, in particular, took this concept to a whole new level, with a narrator who does a terrible job at telling his life story, calling on the reader to read the book not as an autobiography, but as a story of someone who tries but fails at telling a proper autobiography.

Going into Frankenstein, a novel celebrated primarily for its horror themed plot, one expects the narrative to simply tell the story as it is. This is a story, after all, about a scientist who creates a monstrosity by dabbling into the forbidden sciences, and is thrown into a harrowing ordeal as he is tormented by his creation. What more could one ask for in a story to be drawn in? Alas, this is not necessarily the whole picture of Frankenstein.

It becomes increasingly clear within the first third of the story that there is another aspect to this story: that of one's perception of events and expectations of what lies beyond those perceptions. The monster is a scary hodgepodge of organic parts and as such Victor and the reader assume that it is inherently evil. In Chapter 7, the monster strangles William to death. A horrible thing to be sure, but is it really befitting the horrific nature of the creature? Most human beings are capable of strangling others to death. Why didn't the monster do something more grisly, like eat William and leave his mutilated remains on display? The story plays on our expectations of a monster to artificially inflate our perception of it as an unbelievably evil thing, even if its chosen manner of killing William isn't particularly monstrous.

However, on an even more implicit level, the actual narration of the story comes into question when the letters from Elizabeth and Alphonso start showing up. Throughout the narration, it is evident that Victor is narrating the events to Waldon, and not the reader. He frequently makes pauses in the middle of the story to directly address him before resuming. Therefore, as we read the story of Frankenstein, we are to assume at the same time that Victor is sitting there telling that very story to Walden as we read it. The problem is, how is it, then, that Victor can accurately recount what is said in these letters? It is hardly plausible that Victor, in his physically weakened state, is somehow able to recall every word of those letters with accuracy. As readers, we thus have to call Victor's reliability as a narrator into question, and this compromises the entire narrative as a result. Are we simply reading a story, or are we listening to a physically and mentally disheveled man recounting a story with no guarantee that his words aren't tainted by his biased perception of what actually happened?  

Frankenstein

While I was reading the first volume of Frankenstein, I was most captivated with Shelley’s romantic style. I was first tipped off when I read through the Letters section and the narrator, Robert Walton, really emphasizes his emotions. Walton wants so badly to connect with someone intellectually and spiritually, which are keys to the male figure during the Romantic Era. Furthermore, romanticism is also revealed through Frankenstein’s commentary about connecting with nature, as he says, “When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled with ecstasy.” (last page of ch.6) Though the story has several other functions, it certainly does emphasize how the natural world directly impacts man’s life. It is important to take note of this style because it really jumpstarts the emphasis of the narrator and looking inward at one’s emotions and inner feelings.

Because of this romanticism, the primary men in the story are taking on what is seen to be a much more feminine role. The men express emotion and voice their love for nature and beauty, and this is traditionally something women would do. Walton and Frankenstein don’t always fit the previous eras’ characteristics of what it takes to be a man, but both men are suitable men for the romantic age. This new ideology helps build the idea that emotion does not necessarily equate to lack of strength or intelligence.

I can’t help but ponder the idea that maybe one of the reasons women were able to gain more and more respect in society after the nineteenth-century is not because women were perceived to be stronger and more evolved, but because authors like Shelley reveal how men actually have many stereotypically female traits. Instead of lifting women up to meet men’s expectations, men were subconsciously brought down to the female level making it harder to argue natural superiority.

Cloud Atlas: A Celebration of Storytelling

Having (initially) suffered through the indecipherable gobbledygook of Sloosha's Crossin' and having commenced on the descent of the novel's story arc, it became clearer and clearer to me that Cloud Atlas isn't so much an actual story as it is a celebration of the art of fiction writing. As the various chapters wrap themselves up, a sense of familarity starts to settle in, as if these formerly curious strangers were slowly revealing themselves to actually be old friends. Heroes arise and band together. Villains make themselves known. Nefarious plots  and hidden truths are revealed in a pattern not unlike the various books and movies we've engaged in.

To illustrate, in all the chapters, the ambiguous nature of the various characters slowly sharpen to set apart the good guys from the bad guys, often in various dramatic ways. In Sonmi 451, what was initially a conversation between an ascended fabricant and an archivist gradually turns into a battle of wits between a freedom revolutionary and an evil corporation's pawn. Sonmi becomes more flagrant in expressing her opinions and her revolutionary ideas to the archivist, rather than just telling her story. In turn, the archivist becomes more expressive himself, protesting Sonmi's heretical ideas. In the Pacific Journal, Henry Goose suddenly makes himself known as a real villain, poisoning Henry in an effort to steal his livelihood.

If I had read these stories as simply stories, then I would have been a bit disappointed. Nothing happens here that is particularly surprising. I've seen all of this before. However, one has to read Cloud Atlas as a whole. One of its major thematic points is that regardless of the circumstances of the world, whether it is ruled by corporations or annihilated in nuclear fire, and regardless of how people speak or look or think, there will always be people who are good and bad. There will always be people looking to exploit one another, people looking to simply get by, people who want to do the right thing, and numerous combinations of all of the above.

In making this point through its unique structure, Cloud Atlas also becomes a kind of love letter to storytelling. Its chapters stand wildly apart from one another in terms of setting, characters, plot, and voice. The abrupt shifts between these elements from chapter to chapter were difficult to not be annoyed by. Yet I think the reason I kept reading, and I think this is the same reason most people kept reading, was the element of storytelling that has compelled people to engage in stories since the beginning of the human race; this element of the human spirit, and the interplay and the battle between those that are good and those that are evil, and our eagerness to see which triumphs over the other. We have even made terms for these things: protagonist, antagonist, rising action, climax, falling action. The very existence of these terms revolves around the idea that stories are conflicts between something that is good and something that is evil, and these conflicts must be encased in a journey of sorts, and I think this is what Cloud Atlas is celebrating.

Mitchell's Style

David Mitchell worked incredibly hard to create a book filled with innovative literary techniques, but throughout the entire story I found myself wondering what his real intentions are. Obviously he wants to challenge the reader as he changes plots and syntax so abruptly, but is he as concerned with the actual substance of the novel as he is with creating all of his twists and connections?  Quite often during many of the stories, especially the Sonmi and Adam Ewing tales, I found myself reading without absorbing anything because I didn’t find the story to be very enticing. Now, I am not denying that I am probably just really missing the point here, but for some reason I feel something is absent from the novel.

Mitchell is extremely concerned with showing off his abilities to manipulate the plot with his changes in style, but the book would be even more enjoyable if he had fewer characters and a more developed narrative. Considering how many pages each story uses, it is pretty easy to sum up their entire tale in just a couple paragraphs. It seems to me that Mitchell is more concerned with his own mastery of each genera and language, than the actual substance of the story.

Furthermore, it took at least a few pages in each story for me to regain the ability to really understand what the characters were saying, and for an author that’s really risky. For example, Sloosha’s Crossin’ is my favorite story, but if I were reading it for leisure I would have set the book down after the 2^nd page, never to pick it up again. But, if Mitchell had cut back on some of the syntax, then his story becomes clearer, and he opens up more room to create an even more interesting storyline.

Now that Cloud Atlas is nearly 10 years old, I am curious to see how Mitchell would change the story, if at all. As the concept of having really twisty plots has popularized, I believe the book could become irrelevant because the storyline is not strong enough to hold its own against similar novels.