Understand with Ryland

At the end of Black Swan Green , Jason sees a swan despite his claim throughout the book that “Black Swan Green hasn’t got any swans. That’s the village joke.” Swans have long been a symbol of transformation, a classic example of this is the story of the ugly duckling. Jason’s coming of age is tied in with the idea of the swan and more specifically that his coming of age was inevitable. Firstly, the swan in literature has a relation to transformation. Jason has completed his own transformation at the end of the book, he has come of age as it were. Throughout the year, he has put up with immense bullying and has changed and become a different person than he was at the beginning of the book. He sees the swan in the exact same place that the book began a year ago, on the frozen lake in the woods. This all goes to signify the internal change that has occurred and that Jason has grown up, becoming a beautiful swan himself.  The Goose fair is a moment that defines his coming of age. He h...

In Fun Home , Bechdel draws a parallel between Oscar Wilde’s trial and her father’s own trial. She compares and contrasts the bizarre public trial of Wilde’s homosexuality and the quiet hush-hush of her father’s trial. This is an interesting story to parallel but Bechdel seems to also be comparing her father’s trial to another event: Watergate. This second parallel is not one that Bechdel ever seems to elaborate on unlike Wilde’s but the thought is there. Nixon is ever present in this chapter. Watergate is first mentioned by Bechdel early in the chapter on page 154 when she is recounting how hectic the summer was for her. This is immediately following a scene in which her father talks about his own trial and how he must go to counseling on page 153. Bechdel mentions them both at the same time to loosely show that they were both happening in her life in the summer of 1973. As the chapter goes on, Bechdel makes reference to Watergate a few times. She talks about how it reached a point of...

I cannot say I completely understand what happened in The Bell Jar . I understand the basic plot: there was a woman who was in New York on an all expenses paid fashion trip and began succumbing to depression. She goes to see a doctor who is not good at his job. She gets worse and makes an attempt at suicide and is moved to a mental health institution where she eventually gets better. I understand it on a broad scope but the narration was confusing and made this unenjoyable. Similar to Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar was a somewhat mundane retelling of events of a young adult spiraling out of control. Catcher in the Rye may not really have had a story but at least it was linear, the same cannot be said for this book. The way this writing style was approached was a major factor in my dislike of this book. I could not tell when some events were happening. The constant stories from her past intermixed with the current timeline was a jumbled mess for me; I did not enjoy it. If so much pre...

Why does Holden care so much where the ducks of central park go in winter? They are birds with the power of flight which leads one to the obvious conclusion that they migrate. Why is he so fixated on these ducks? He has a weird fascination with this topic and it even leads him into an argument about the fishes of central park with Horwitz, the second taxi driver. I don’t understand why he dawdles on this topic and why he does not ever consider migration. Holden expects the ducks to be there for him. He first thinks about the ducks while he is on autopilot talking to his history teacher, Spencer. Holden is showing the reader how easy it is to talk to teachers and still think about other topics. The idea of the ducks pops into his head as he is wondering if the central park lake is frozen. After that, the ducks repeatedly come up in the story. He asks both cab drivers and even wanders into the park late at night, very drunk, to see if he can solve the mystery himself.  Well from a qu...

Coming of age is different for everyone and does not follow a uniform pattern. It is not about achieving anyone else’s definition of adulthood, only yours. In Fandango, a 1985 movie about five friends, called the Groovers, three of these men come of age in a different way demonstrating this idea. The men have a final road trip after they have learned that Gardener, Waggener, and Phil have each been drafted for the military. Gardener, a carefree man who claims he has never cared about a woman in his life while also dreaming about woman he used to date. Waggener has called off his wedding and considers fleeing to Mexico with Gardener to flee his adult responsibilities. Phil is an ROTC colonel who owns the car the men are sing for the road trip and yet he gets no respect from his friends. This farewell fandango gives these three men the chance to grow up and realize what they want from their lives. For the most part, they don’t take things too seriously, tying the car to a train to get a ...

     Rambert is a character that has annoyed me for a variety of reasons but he is also the character who has kept me engaged while reading. Since the lockdown, he has put himself first and pestered all the officials into seeing how they could help him out. He believes that he is special because he does not actually live in the town of Oran and he was only there coincidentally when the plague broke out. He does not seem to grasp that he is not the only person that is trapped in the town nor that the lockdown is supposed to protect the rest of the world from the plague. This is just our introduction to the character, already painting as this somewhat self interested individual.      With that introduction, you may be able to empathize with him but he has been painted as an annoying character in the novel. Despite this, his story has arguably been the most interesting portions of this book. Since he decided to escape, he has been at the center of the best par...