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Faulkner Relaxing after his AP Lang & Comp Exam
Faulkner Relaxing after his AP Lang & Comp Exam
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/books/review/Thomas-t.html?pagewanted=print
ReplyDeleteWhile exploring some New York Times Articles (the one I chose is the link above) I stumbled across a really interesting way to describe the novel Megan, Rebecca, and myself chose to read: "There’s nothing mawkish or cheap here [in the novel Olive Kitteridge]. There’s simply the honest recognition that we need to try to understand people, even if we can’t stand them" (Thomas 1). From our short conversation today in APLC, I feel this quote aptly sums up all that we were saying. Even though "Olive did mind" that her son Christopher's lunatic wife smoked "while Christopher's baby was in there, trying to develop its own respitory system" or the fact that "day after day was unconsciously squandered" because before the death of her husband, their love was slowly slipping away, Olive still has such a strong sense of empathy throughout the entire novel (Strout 210-270). Some questions I think it would be GREAT for our group to address tomorrow in discussion could be what is the purpose of the entire scene where Olive and Henry are held hostage in the hospital...how does Olive's short conversations with the boy who is holding her hostage reveal empthy/lack of empathy (pages 118-121). Look closely at the relationship between Olive and her son; in what moments in the beginning of the novel foreshadow the broken relationship between Olive and Christopher at the end of the novel?
We began to talk about this in maybe the last 30 seconds of class, but I really think it is important to look at the 'understanding' that was achieved in the marriage of Olive and Henry. The idea that Henry knew that "Olive had loved Jim O'Casey...though Henry never asked her and she never told him, just as he did not tell her of the gripping, sickening pneed he felt for Denise until the day she came to him to report Jerry's proposal" (29). So did they love one another, or were they just bound in a marriage that was bound by their son Christopher and the fear that neither of them wanted to be alone in their old age?
Claire, it looks like we have a lot to cover in the next few days! Great ideas! While I definitely want to discuss your new ideas tomorrow, I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between Olive and Henry. I am torn between characterizing their relationship as one of pure love, or one of commitment as a result of marraige. On one hand, Olive's undying and unspoken of love for Jim O'Casey and Henry's "sickening need he felt for Denise" to comfort and protect her suggests that Olive and Henry are not in love. However, on the other, Olive is a very stubborn and individual character-she keeps a lot wrapped up inside and disregards showing her stress to the outside world. For example, her hatred for Christopher's first wife, Suzanne, and her longing for her son to love her again and need her. Henry simply wants to be needed, so Olive's pent up turmoil does not allow for this to happen. This may suggest a solution as to why Henry did not feel compelled at all to cheat on Olive with Denise, but rather to comfort her in a time of need.
ReplyDeleteI just realized something: Olive continually gave to others. From her life as a teacher until the end, Olive gave to others continually. She gave to each character (of main focus in his/her chapter) a small momento of advice, or played a stronger role, like her helping of Nina or relationship with Bunny, her neighbor. Until the last pages of the novel, Olive never really allowed herself to submit herself to someone else. When she closes her eyes in the bed of Jim (why am I spacing...it is another Jim, right?) it shows that she has finally allowed herself to embrace love and life, which she was incapable of doing before. Perhaps this also says something about her compatibility with Henry?
* Sorry for the lack of quotes and confusion with some details, I (of course, right?) left my book at school in my locker so I am working off of memory!
As Marjorie Kehe discusses in her short essay "Olive Kitteridge takes 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction", Elizabeth Strout (author of Olive Kitteridge) manages to craft Olive in a way that she can be loving and as I discussed in my previous blog post, empathetic, while still maintaining her "prickliness" and stubbornness (Kehe 1). A great example of this can be seen in the scene where Olive and Henry are held hostage in the hospital-the section we did a close passage analysis on today in class. Amidst her and her husband and the doctor and nurse being nearly "shot execution style," she was able to look at the boy holding them hostage and examine his "pale blue [eyes], and his eyelashes almost colorless" and see her son in him (117-118). It would appear as though she was trying to divert the boy's attention from killing them by telling him, "I bought by son a ski mask like that" but I feel as though she wasn't saying that as a distraction, she was able to connect to this poor lost soul who in all actuality could have just as likely been her son. The love and prickliness, though, is seen in that she loves this boy, but is prickly and almost crude to her husband stating, "You're the one who can't stand these Hail-Mary Catholics! Your mother taught you that! Pauline was the only real Christian in the world, as far as Pauline was concerned" completeley and utterly insulting Henry's mother throughout all of this (121). How can it be that Olive can love a boy who she barely knows, who is threatening to take her LIFE, but cannot even stand to be kind to her own husband at such a critical point? Even further, how can it be that after the whole ordeal is over, she still worries about this red-headed boy, "weeping from a private faucet inside her, unable to keep her thoughts from his blemished, frightened face...picturing him in the prison garden" (124). Can Olive or any person for that matter be empathetic, but not be loving?
ReplyDeleteOH, just thought of this -- I am DETERMINED to get to the bottom of what "paint"/"pain splotches" are a symbol for in the chapter "A Different Road".
ReplyDelete-the author never pinpoints a certain color of paint when saying "like someone had pressed a paint-wet spong to the inside of her mind"
-These are the instances of 'paint' that I have found tonight...pgs. 113 (2 instances), 114 (2 instances), 115 (1 instance), 116 (1 instance). WHY? I may be reading way too far into this, but I feel like Elizabeth Strout is trying desperately to convey something to the reader, but at this moment I don't know what! Let's maybe discuss this in class tomorrow?
We have definitely talked a lot about (or at least I have) Olive's ability and one can go as far to say her talent at empathy, but at the end of the novel we have not yet addressed the fact that she uses other people's pain to escape her own sorrow of Henry's stroke and then death. Olive goes to Marlene's husband's funeral, hoping that seeing Marlene suffer may help relieve the pain of Henry's current comatose state. Olive quickly realizes that all she wants to do is "tell Marlene how she and Henry talked about the grandchildren they would have, the happy Christmases with their nice daughter-in-law...she would like to rest a hand on Marlene's head, but this is not the kind of thing Olive is especially able to do" (180). Well, I feel like Olive before Henry's stroke would have been able to rest her hand on Marlene, but the empathetic nature of Olive becomes stagnant once she is trying to console her own pain. And then when she goes to visit Louise Larkin, the very much disturbed woman who's son stabbed a woman to death. This woman, although crazy, recognizes that Olive "came [to her house] for a nice dose of schhadenfreude, and it didn't work" (156). It certaintly did not help the pain of Henry slowly slipping away from her. All the visit achieved was Olive worrying more about Henry and the truth that her husband "will marry a beast and love her...will have a son and love him...will be endlessly kind ot townspeople...will end your days blind and mute...that will be your life" and that may be Olive's life too (161). The perspective of this entire passage is truly captivating, beautiful--Olive summing up her husband's life inadvertedly forces her to look at her own life, her own choices, mistakes, regrets, and triumphs (it seems the regrets outweigh the triumphs).
I thought it was really interesting what was brought up in our group today about the setting of Olive Kitteridge, in a very small town in Maine, and how that setting is reflected in the structure of the novel. The fact that a novel comprised of short-stories on many different people that can all in some odd and beautiful way create a novel exemplifies that in Crosby, Maine, the same goes for the citizens. They all are interconnected through tragedies, through happiness, and just through experience. For instance, Marlene Bonney who "years ago it was Olive who taught Marlene math in the seventh grade" and now Olive attends the funeral of her husband Eddie, is an example of the connections in this town and how the interconnected community is inescapable (170). Even Christopher, Olive's own son cannot escape the town when he moves into an apartment in New York City. The tenant of Christopher and his wife Ann was said "his father was the one who drove into a tree in Crosby, Maine one night"...making him the son of Jim O'Casey who Olive had loved so dearly (214). All of these people are connected in some way or another with Olive serving as the "planetary body, exerting a strong gravitational pull" (Thomas 1). This novel's form and content, as we have been studying this entire year, are united.
ReplyDeleteThis just popped into my mind the second I hit post, but we have yet to look deeply at this passage:
ReplyDelete... Olive finished the doughnut, wiped the sugar from her fingers, sat back and said, "You're starving." The girl didn't move, only said, "Ugh--duh." "I'm starving, too," Olive said. The girl looked over at her "I am" Olive said. "Why do you think I eat every doughnut in sight?" "You're not starving," Nina said with disgust. "Sure I am. We all are." ... Olive shook her head again, blew her nose. She looked at Nina, and said quietly, "I don't know who you are, but young lady, you're breaking my heart."
(Strout 95-96).
I think this passage is one of the very seldom times we see raw emotion out of Olive. Of course she isn't really starving for food, but she is starving for love and companionship, something her and Henry have lost. Olive "understands that life is lonely and unfair, that only the greatest luck will bring blessings like a long marriage and a quick death" and even further than understanding, I think she begins to recognize that her own life is lonely and unfair and if she does not make a change, it will be that way until her hopefully quick death. I know we are writing tomorrow in class, but maybe tonight on the blog if anyone catches this comment we could discuss the idea of the characters in this novel who may be "starving" as well and what Strout is trying to convey in crafting characters in that way? Do you think that Strout's characters make this novel one that is realistic/has a realistic structure?
I think that the idea of all of the characters "starving" in some way is very interesting. It also coincides with the idea of a small town like Crosby, Maine, and how everyone is connected, is similar in some way; perhaps they are all collectively starving. For instance, we have yet to discuss Angie, the alcoholic (presumably) piano player in the beginning of the novel. Strout writes how "It was the case with Angie that people knew very little about her, assuming at the same time that other people knew her moderately well...she had years ago learned to begin swallowing bodka at five fifteen, so that by the time she left her room half and hour later, she had to hold the wall as she went down the hall stairs...leaving her with enough confidence to make her way to the piano" (50). I think it is somewhat ironic that in the town in which everyone seems to know everyone, nobody actually knows the true feelings of a person. And while Nina cried to Oliva, "I dont want to be like this...it's not that I want to give up" no one, no one! knew exactly what that girl was thinking (96-97). Olive and Daisy tried, but eventually, Nina's sickness took over, despite positive signs.
ReplyDeleteI think this goes to show in general how each character in the novel, at least for me, felt very personal. The way Strout writes makes the reader feel very connected to the stories and struggles of each person. In fact, it is very easy to get emotional, like we all said we did, at some parts because most things are very real to us, as well. Perhaps the structure of the novel forces us to step back and realize that all of these stories are fragmented to create a whole. We do not know everything about everyone, even though we are thrown into very intimate settings and stories. Perhaps Strout is trying to convey to allow "waves of gratitude-and regret" to wash through us and, in referenece to dying, to "not want to leave yet" (270). Olive realizes that to just live and love is the key success, instead of trying to solve all of the unsolvable issues of the world, like we witnessed Olive do for so long.