Understand with Ryland

     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...

     During these first few chapters of the Plague , one character has stood out to me: the old asthmatic Spaniard who sits in his room moving dried peas around. Dr. Rieux visits the old Spaniard a couple times in these chapters as he is one of his regular patients. In these scenes, we get some strange moments with the character that make him stand out from the rest of the cast thus far. In the first scene, we get the first inklings that the rats may be a widespread problem, but not in a presentation that the reader may expect.      The wealthier people who live downtown and the newspaper reporters do not catch on to the rat problem as quickly as those living on the outskirts of town. The rats are what everyone is gossiping about in the outskirts. What attracts Dr. Rieux’s attention to the problem is the old Spaniard evidently quite pleased with the increase in rat appearances, saying, “‘They're coming out’” multiple times with a grin. This is certainly a d...

In The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Bill Gorton tells a story about his four days spent in Vienna. It involves a black fighter and brings into question Bill’s feelings and prejudice towards black people. This is no doubt a complicated aspect of Bill as this was a changing period of social justice and general societal attitudes. Bill tells what he can remember about going around with “the local Harvard man” and the fighter after the match in Vienna. The man won the fight, knocking out his opponent (a local white man). Everyone at the fight except Bill began throwing things at him. The fighter went home in Bill’s car and Bill loaned him clothes, saving the fighter from a potentially dangerous situation. Bill then attempted to get him his money and clothes, only being successful in attaining the latter and loaning him the former to make it home. This is a story that clearly shows Bill as compassionate and helpful when the rest of Vienna was rude and disrespectful to the fighter. E...

Richard Dalloway is pretty cool. He stands out as a character in the novel Mrs. Dalloway, not because he is awful but because he is really the only character who isn’t. He is compassionate and genuinely thinks about the ways he can do good. Richard was genuine and reading his pages did not make me feel resentment towards him as the other character’s did. All other characters seem to have traits that make them unlikeable, if not to you as a reader, to other characters in the book.  He appears to have the universal love of everyone but Sally but even she seems to dislike him solely because of his conservative politics. Miss Kilman who expresses her hatred for all those who are wealthy and especially Mrs. Dalloway makes an exception for Richard. Lady Bruton and Milly Brush both thought that they prefer Richard to Hugh when they came to brunch. Even Peter, the man who was in love with his wife does not feel any resentment towards Richard and they talk like like old friends when they se...

Clarissa Dalloway is an upper class older woman who has easily moved past the events that shook Europe in the early 20th century. She is oblivious to those around her who continue to suffer as a result of it. She is wealthy, older than the generation involved in the fighting, and has no sons that were sent off to fight. She is altogether disconnected from the events except through her husband Richard who is a part of the British Parliament and would therefore likely have played some part in the government’s actions during the war. Despite this, she displays a lack of understanding of how much damage this war has done to the rest of her community. Mrs. Dalloway is out of touch with the rest of the city.  Just in this short morning walk, she has been in the company of two deeply hurt beneath the surface by this war. A wealthy woman she encounters in the upper class part of town was grieved over a telegram she just received saying that she had lost her only son John and the family man...

  A s I was reading the Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, one passage toward the end of the book stood out to me. On page 114, Howie says “Was there really any need to study the historical past of Chandragupta of Pataliputra, or Harsha of Kanauj, the rise of the Chola kings of Tanjore and the fall of the Pallava kings of Kanchi, who once built the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram, or the final desolation and ruin of the great metropolis of Vijayanagar, when we had dynastic shifts, turbulence, and plenty of lather in the last twenty years of that great Hindu inheritance, shampoo?” This is a somewhat odd analogy but like many other passages in the book, you can kind of see where he is coming from. I don’t think this observation is limited to shampoos, many consumer items share in this similar change in name brands similar to that of the changing of the ruling class. The constant advertisement of various brands trying to gain an edge on the competition means you can’t help but know a thing...