Colonialism and Postcolonialism, Civilization and Barbarians, Male and Female Roles… Juxtaposition is Having a Heyday

This article, “Three Ways of Going Wrong” by Douglas Kerr, really helped me to understand more about how to compare Heart of Darkness and Waiting for the Barbarians. I had already drawn the most obvious conclusions; both are books about the effects an empire has on both the “civilizers” and the “barbarians.” Both books, also, have a figure of law and the strict codes of the Empire encountering a figure representing a collusion with the lawlessness of the barbarian hordes. Both books also seem to, in some respects, comment on the negative effects that the Empire has on the land it tries to civilize. Both are the personal journey of a man through an extended contact with the barbarian world. However, after reading this article, the different perspectives of the two books are much clearer to me.
We had already discussed several times in class how Waiting for the Barbarians had several modern elements to it, including the namelessness of the particular Empire that the Magistrate and Joll live in, the inability of the characters to connect, and the many similarities to George Orwell’s 1984. This article gave me the word “postcolonialism,” which appears to sum up everything we were trying to discover through our discussions about the novel. Heart of Darkness shows the barbarians as seen by the uncontaminated conqueror, the colonialist; Waiting for the Barbarians is the empire as seen by a conflicted man who sympathizes with the barbarians. The article brings up the point that both books have these two types of characters in them; in Heart of Darkness, Marlow is the first and Kurtz is the second; in Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate is the second and Joll is the first. These two types of men provide two different ways to view the situation of the barbarian-civilizer relationship.
After reading this article, I also thought about the article I read in regards to Heart of Darkness. This article, while providing several points I did not agree with regarding the homosexual nature of the book, did bring up some interesting ideas about the importance of the barbarian woman that Kurtz takes as a lover. She represents the unnamed mysteries of the barbarian lands; in Heart of Darkness, knowledge and the known are represented by male figures and the unknown and ignorant by women. Similarly, in Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate (the man contaminated by the Barbarian culture, Kurtz’s mirror) is obsessed with understanding a Barbarian woman. Until he actually goes into the wilderness, he is not interested in her sexually – instead, he longs to make an impression on her. His interest in her and the girl herself, like much of the rest of the book, can be viewed as a larger allegory for more abstract notions: the girl for all the Barbarians and his obsession with her as the futile attempt of any man of the Empire to own or understand the wilderness.
Clearly, these books are very complex. I would like to read some more criticism as well as more about the actual events of colonialism before I can feel that I completely understand all the topics presented in these intricate works.
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I Am Too Tired to Think of a Clever Title

I am always a sucker for extending literary criticism methods to everyday realities. It is for this reason that I am truly enjoying reading Waiting for the Barbarians back to back with Heart of Darkness; I love the perfect juxtaposition of style with the parallelism of theme. Heart of Darkness, as discussed in many of the articles brought up last week, is a book much dictated by the time it was written. For today’s readers, is limited by its own verbosity, its familiar narrative structure, and perhaps even its unknowing racism or sexism. These lenses (normal for the time it was written) detract from the book’s meaning for a modern interpreter. Waiting for the Barbarians, on the other hand, is a book perfectly fitted to our times. The kind of modernist edge apparent throughout the book makes it appealing to modern readers. These details are apparent in the author’s tone and style and even in the details of plot and setting.
Whereas Heart of Darkness is set in a very concrete time and place (it masquerades as a true story, with all the details in place to make it a believable true-life experience), Waiting for the Barbarians is very deliberately not placed in any concrete time or place. This serves, in a rather blatant way, to make the lessons available to be learned from the book even more apparently universal. Although it is easy to apply the book to the same colonialism as in Heart of Darkness, the author wishes us to perhaps keep a broader mindset. This same universality is set in place for the characters as well; not many have names. The characters are not really all good or all bad, but they are very human. Everything that happens seems kind of bumbling and awkward; there are no real heroes (so far, at least). The narrator does not even really know what he wants! His interest in the barbarian girl seems a little too sick to be either altruistic or truly romantic, but at the same time he is not really a bad guy.
So far, this story set in no place and no time has been rather interesting. I hope that the plain prose, modern style of writing, and interesting plot will continue to develop throughout the rest of the book.
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A Homosexual Heart of Darkness?

“Masculinity, Modernity, and Homosexual Desire”
by Andrew Michael Roberts
p.455-462

A discourse concerning the contrast between male and female roles regarding power and knowledge runs through Conrad’s works.
- themes of “knowledge, truth, and ignorance” (455)
- men: “empowering knowledge”
- women: “symbolic, psychic, and social exploitation of women;” women as “symbols of a mysterious truth” but not the everyday, important one; “concept of femininity constructed as the Other of male knowledge” (455)
- this view is maintained by ignoring the clear counterexamples of certain women
- Conrad also uses some criticisms of this view by “inviting the reader to empathize with women characters” at certain points (455)

The pair of women and pair of men in Heart of Darkness are complementary figures.
- Kurtz, Marlow
- the African woman, the fiancée
- the men represent “the powerful, knowing, speaking male subject of knowledge” (456)
- the women represent “1. The ignorant; 2. The known, the object of knowledge; 3. The unknowable”
- the African woman does not talk
- the Intended is excluded from knowledge my Marlow

The author of this article does not think that the book is about colonialism; instead, he argues, the vague and never-specified truth at the center of the novel is an “empty signifier … representationally vacant.” (456) This means that the novel is actually about something never clearly stated – such as the “homophobic discourse which treats same-sex desire as something which cannot be spoken of.” (457)

Is there more meaning to the lie that Marlow makes to the Intended at the end of the story?
- Yes, according to “the linguistic, symbolic, and emotional excesses of the passage” (457)
- by telling her a lie, Marlow excludes the Intended from some important knowledge that seems almost a secret society
- “desire between men which excludes women from a secret knowledge” (458)
- further: the hierarchy of male-male and male-female relationships has functioned “through the setting up of powerful barriers between sexual and other forms of inter-male relationships” (458)
- women are “objects of exchange” that maintain the barrier mentioned above by channeling male desire (458)
- descriptions of Kurtz’s fiancée place her at the same level as Kurtz’s ivory, effectively making her an object and part of “an economy of repressed same-sex desire” (462)
- another argument: Marlow projects his love for Kurtz onto the Intended:
- “women are used to deny, distort, and censor men’s passionate love for one another” (457)

A homosexual interpretation of Heart of Darkness can be seen through the intense relationship between Kurtz and Marlow.
- Marlow thinks they share a “secret knowledge” (458)
- “metaphors of transgressing a boundary” (458)
- Marlow’s obsession with Kurtz and his “‘unspeakable rites’” (458); see quotes p. 459
- Kurtz’s actions are described in “distinctively sexual overtones.” (459)
- Kurtz is described with many adjectives and phrases that connote mystery, evil, hunger, lust, and finally horror.
- What is it that he has done that is so terrible? Most of his murdering and brutality can be written off as normal behavior for those colonizing Africa.
- Marlow is willing to discuss cannibalism, human sacrifice, and witch magic, but still leaves some mystery around Kurtz that implies things to horrible to discuss.
- “what Kurtz has done is precisely the non-specified or unspeakable” (460)
- In addition, Marlow’s description of “horror” towards dark Africa is masked horror for “Marlow’s own feelings for Kurtz” (460).

The entire story is centered on the bonds between men.
- Marlow tells the story to a group of trusted male friends.
- The story is about an “enduring intimacy” with another man and the “sharing of a disgraceful yet exciting knowledge” with that man that even his fiancée cannot know about (460).

The author of the article says that the text is not completely dominated by these homosexual themes; to ignore them, however, would be to oversimplify the book and take it merely at face value.
- idea of “doubling” (461)
- Marlow thinks he has almost become Kurtz
- seen especially in sections about how Kurtz has given everything up (see quotes p.461)


The author concludes that the homosexual undertones can be seen through the lens of the time’s horror of homosexuality and focus on staid, conservative values.

A False Finality

The final section of The Sound and the Fury wraps up the novel in several ways. Most important to me, however, is the fact that Faulkner really does not wrap up the novel at all. At the end of the last section, we do not know what has happened to Caddie; we do not know what will happen to Quentin. The mirrored uncertainty of mother and daughter serve to highlight the also unresolved fate of the characters left behind. Jason has not developed as a character; he is the same selfish, mean-spirited child he was as a boy. Benjy is incapable of change; he is stuck forever in a whirling miasma of time and loss. Mrs. Compson, too, languishes away waiting for something to happen to her. None of the characters are active; they passively saunter through life, adding nothing to and gaining nothing from the world around them. Dilsey only is a beacon of hope and positivity; her constancy is a good thing instead of a handicap. The final section sums up the experiences portrayed in the other sections of the novel to show that there are no true happy endings in the new world of the twentieth century, only small hints of change. In this way, Faulkner clearly makes his point about the degeneration of modern life and the inability of most people in modern-day life to find a wholesome center or make true meaning out of their actions. (242)

Methods of Innocence in The Sound and the Fury

“Faulkner and the Theme of Innocence”
by Lawrence E. Bowling
The Kenyon Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer, 1958), pp. 466-487
Published by: Kenyon College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333892
In this fascinating article, Bowling explores the importance of the idea of innocence both to the novel’s creator, Faulkner, and to its important characters, Benjy, Quentin, Jason, Caddy, and on a smaller lever Miss Quentin and Mrs. Compson. The premise of the article is that Faulkner writes with a “point of view of a Christian feeling under the Southern experience,” and that he “presents his materials…in the form of a metaphor, which conveys its own kind of truth” (466). In this arena, Faulkner explores the “idea of innocence,” specifically “two traditional views of innocence which are in conflict with each other” (466). Bowling states that the two visions of innocence are the puritan view, which sees innocence as untainted moral purity and virtue, and the humanist view, which sees innocence as simplicity and silliness, a “neutral state before knowledge” (467). Both see the “opposite of innocence is knowledge:” but to puritan views knowledge is evil; to humanists, it is “ordinary knowledge and intelligence” (467). To Bowling, Faulkner is a humanist, and so his novel serves to illustrate the pointlessness of the puritan view of innocence and the failure of life when one cannot achieve the humanist view of knowledge.
Benjy is literally an innocent. “He cannot know…the world does not make sense but only sensation” (468). Benjy cannot distinguish between the present and the past. Although he can sense some things (death, Caddy’s actions), he cannot logically learn from and grow from his encounters. He experiences the past and the present all at the same time; he has no coherent knowledge of good and evil; he is unable to live life because of his complete and utter ignorance. In fact, he is trapped forever in personifying the humanist view of innocence; a being completely free of knowledge and experience.
Quentin, on the other hand, personifies the puritan view of innocence. He is “obsessed with the idea that the perfect state which one should strive to preserve or achieve is absolute purity” (468). This melancholy and futile mania of perfection shows up over and over again in Quentin’s section. He doesn’t like roses because they have a tint of color; he prefers the “virginal” white dogwood; he refuses the money that Herbert offers him because he sees it as tainted (469). Purity on a moral level is in fact reflected on the physical level for Quentin; this is displayed when he tries to stop Caddy from literally dirtying her clothes while they play in the stream and when he tries to stop Herbert, whom he sees as dirtying the family, from letting his cigar leave a mark on the mantel. He makes sure to remove the spots from his clothing; when he is preparing to commit suicide, he makes sure to brush his teeth.
The most obvious part of Quentin’s obsession with purity is embodied in Caddy. Quentin is constantly preoccupied with the “moral stain on Caddy’s character,” while he himself remains a virgin (470). He is desperate to erase the smirch on the family provided by Caddy’s promiscuity; he suggests that they both kill themselves or that they pretend to have committed incest. Quentin has trouble understanding that the real world will never live up to his moral expectations; this is shown through his obsession with shadows. These perhaps also show another layer of association with impurity; he watches shadows everywhere. This also connects with the passage in Macbeth that Faulkner draws the novel’s title and themes from; Shakespeare mentions that “life’s but a walking shadow” (473). Herbert provides a good parallel for Quentin’s character by calling him a “half-baked Galahad,” the “noblest and purest knight of the round table” (468). Galahad saw his duty as retrieving the Holy Grail, an almost impossible task, just as Quentin thinks it is his fate to “retrieve the family honor” (469). However, just as Galahad has no place in the modern world, neither does Quentin’s old-fashioned morality.
These attributes combine to place Quentin firmly in a useless state of innocence; the innocence of puritan morality. He cannot learn because he does nothing except live in fear of more stains on the family honor. Instead of working towards a better life or a more honorable future, he decides to kill himself. He has a “dedication to passivity” that does not allow him to grow or change, but to remain forever in a state of useless innocence (472).
The other characters in the sound and the fury also show the futility of innocence. Caddy, the obsession of all her brothers and arguably the most important character in the book, remains an innocent in Bowling’s eyes because she “acquires no spiritual depth” (478). Although she is a spirited, kindly girl who loves her brothers and attempts to help raise them, she never takes her place as the matriarch of the Compson clan. Caddy is clearly not an innocent to the puritan view. However, she is not guilty in the humanist sense even though she loses her virginity, becomes pregnant, and has an illegitimate daughter because she does not take many lessons away from her life. Jason is both guilty and innocent because he “willfully commits innumerable actions which he knows to be immoral and vicious; but he is innocent in the sense that he remains ignorant of basic human principles” (475). Although Jason certainly seems to think he has suffered and experienced, he has derived no knowledge from his life. He has no aspirations, no goals other than being an opportunist. He remains innocent of reality and goodness. Because of Jason, the Compson family has no future and he will constantly drag the family down. Mrs. Compson, too, is much like her son. She “holds the puritan view of innocence as virtue” and in fact thinks she is a perfect mother because she has never been sexually promiscuous and therefore has held by puritan virtue (478). Clearly, this is not true – Mrs. Compson is a horrible mother “thoroughly absorbed in petty bickering” and complaining (477). Because of her, the Compson family “has no center, no mother, no love” (478). Clearly, Faulkner does not support the puritan view of innocence.
The only character that Faulkner sees as having surpassed innocence through experience and reached knowledge is Dilsey. Instead of being passive and complaining, Dilsey faces her problems and searches for solutions; she is calm in the face of life’s difficulties and draws deep understanding from the world around her. Through her, Bowling believes, Faulkner shows “his conception of innocence [which] may be stated in the formula: Life is action, inaction is death” (480).
This article really served to help me understand more of the book as a whole, drawing together many small and confusing details to a broader picture. Although I believe that Faulkner’s message has a greater significance than simply a comment on the nature of innocence, the analysis of this concept was very helpful in classifying characters and drawing conclusions about different actions and results
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Sophistication and Separation in “Shiloh”

Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh” is a story not only about the dissolution of a marriage, but also about the evolution of two people. Leroy and Norma Jean, the main characters, have to maneuver through new territory to redefine their relationship after Leroy’s trucking accident. With their traditional roles upset, “he has the feeling that they are waking up out of a dream together – that they must create a new marriage” (9). As Leroy is now unable to pursue his former job and therefore maintain their status quo, the couple must reevaluate their bond and their goals and come to the conclusion that they are no longer compatible.
As Terry Thomspon noted, much of Leo’s characterization centers on his obsession with log cabins. His wish to build one for Norma Jean manifests in a very infantile way. His first log cabin is built from “notched Popsicle sticks” (6). From these humble beginnings, Leroy moves on to the slightly more sophisticated Lincoln Log cabins. Finally, his coveted blueprints arrive for the house that will never be built. Both Norma Jean and her mother react negatively to these attempts: Norma Jean reminds Leroy that a log cabin would not be allowed in a subdivision; Mabel easily and derisively takes the roof off of his model cabin and sets her coffee cup on his blueprints. When he and Norma Jean finally drive by a real and really unattractive log cabin in Shiloh, Leroy feels the need to explain “apologetically” that this is not the kind of house he meant (126). To Leroy, the cabins represent a home, a place where his marriage can be fixed. At the very least, the cabins are associated with the past (ie, the historic cabin at Shiloh), and Leroy would like to return to the couple’s state when they were first married. Leroy’s plans for a cabin are a dream, a child-like fantasy manifested in a rather appropriately immature way.
Interestingly, only one of the main characters truly changes throughout the course of the story. Leroy stays pretty much the same: incompetent and unsure how to best put his life back together. It is Norma Jean and her new interests that move the story along. Although through several reminisces we learn that once Leroy and Norma Jean were content, the same does not appear to be true now. Norma Jean undergoes a gradual sophistication as Leroy goes through a corresponding descent into apathy. This transformation, finally leading to Norma Jean leaving Leroy to go out in the world on her own two feet, is exemplified through her musical acumen (as shown by Blythe and Sweet). When Leroy first gives her the piano, she can barely pick out “Chopsticks.” Later, she moves on to rock music and even Latin interpretations of modern songs, showing a change and growth that Leroy does not echo. Eventually she moves beyond playing music altogether and instead focuses on her new passion: writing. This step, too, represents Norma Jean’s ascent into intellectual thought and her steps away from Leroy.
Leroy sees these changes in Norma Jean; he notes inspiredly that “something is happening” (86). However, he feels paralyzed; having been physically crippled by his accident, he is now emotionally crippled by his wife’s intellectual mobility. In fact, as several critics have noted, it is also possible to notice a distinct reversal of male/female roles as the story progresses and the rift between the couple grows wider and wider. As he becomes more and more home-bound, Leroy clings more and more to his plans for a log cabin, as if their staid tradition will keep everything the way it should be. Instead, everything is topsy-turvy: Norma Jean lifts weight, while Leroy is physically incapacitated; Norma Jean attempts to ameliorate her marketable abilities, such as writing, while Leroy pursues such traditionally female pastimes as needlepoint; Norma Jean goes out for most of the day, while Leroy stays at home. These changes help lead up to the final breaking point; when it finally comes, Leroy is not surprised, as he has known the whole time that she will leave him and has merely been “waiting for time to pass” (94).
The final acknowledgement of the dissolution of the now hopeless marriage occurs, appropriately, in a graveyard. Norma Jean rather blatantly tells Leroy that she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. In addition to the factors mentioned above, there are other reasons that Leroy and Norma Jean could not stay together. Most important of these was the death of their baby, Randy, which left a deep scar on their emotional bonds. Furthermore, Leroy and Norma Jean simply have nothing in common anymore. Neither Leroy nor the reader is surprised when Norma Jean confirms their separation; instead, the overwhelming feeling at the end of the tale is that of sadness and regret for the time spent in the wrong relationship.
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Articles I read to spark inspiration:
Mason's Shiloh
Terry Thompson, The Explicator(Washington) , Fall 1995, Vol. 54, Iss. 1, pg. 54
Mason's Shiloh
Hal Blythe, Charlie Sweet, The Explicator(Washington) , Fall 2001, Vol. 60, Iss. 1, pg. 52


Questions for Discussion:
How does the paragraph about Norma Jean’s personality as recently discovered by Leroy help us understand their separation?
How do you feel about Leroy’s passive attitude – ie, how he knows that Norma Jean will leave him but does nothing? Why do you think he is not more proactive?
To what extent did the death of their baby hurt their relationship? Should they have tried again? Look closely at the hospital passage – does Leroy’s inability to recognize Norma Jean count as foreshadowing?
What role does Mabel play?

A Good Man? Try a Good Pair of Jeans.

The larger portion of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” showcases a day-to-day snapshot of a rather annoying family (Bailey, the children, the wife, and the grandmother), exploring just how manipulative and secretive the grandmother can be to get her way. Most of the story is peopled with these unlikeable, rather one-dimensional characters – that is, until the disconcerting and troubled Misfit saunters in and brings the action to a close. In the same way, religion does not seem to play a large role in the majority of the story until the very (upsetting) end. However, it is this discussion of religion that occurs between the bewildered and in shock grandmother as she argues for her life and the skewed, irrational logic of the Misfit that I wished to explore further.
The Misfit seems to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of liturgy, in keeping with his strange appearance as a bespectacled, scholarly killer. He reveals his unhealthy and distorted state of mind when he lays out his black-and-white thinking: he claims that either the stories of Jesus are true, in which case one should devote one’s entire life to him, or the stories are completely not true. Although the reasoning thus far does not seem out of the ordinary, it is the next conclusion that the Misfit draws that illustrates so clearly how sick he is: he says, “it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody” (135). He becomes more and more agitated, striking the ground and letting his voice spiral higher with his emotions. The grandmother, destroyed by the off-screen death of her entire family, is so muddled that she does not even know anymore what she thinks. Finally, the grandmother and the Misfit’s tortured conversation comes to a close as she is finally pushed over the edge and sees the Misfit in a whole new light. In a gesture reminiscent of a forgiving God reaching towards Adam with a divine touch on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, she reaches towards the Misfit. Calling him “one of [her] babies…one of [her] own children!” she touches him on the shoulder, trying to forge a bridge of humanity and last hope between her and the tortured madman (137). Just as many in the Christian faith believe in the laying on of hands as a path to health, the grandmother attempts to save the man she finally recognizes as a lost soul, not just an evil madman. The Misfit, however, cannot bear to be faced with this reaching out; he reacts as if instead of making a very human and almost divine act, the grandmother had been a “snake” trying to harm him – he shoots her dead and attempts to carry on his life with as it nothing had changed (137).
The Misfit’s skewed view of the world makes up some of the most confusing paragraphs of the story; while the earlier parts of the family’s journey had been narrated by plot, this section seems to be a sickening whirlwind of rather one-sided dialogue and illogical rhetoric. However, these portions are an important insight into the Misfit, the most significant character (besides the grandmother) in the whole story. While the discussion of religion draws out the deaths of the family and the sickness of the Misfit into a wider significance (Is there a meaning beyond the ugly reality of death? Is the Misfit all evil or just misunderstood?), it also serves to make the reader feel uncomfortable and wanting to cringe away. That final moment, when the grandmother becomes something more, is one of the most significant of the story. There is something dirty about the way the Misfit talks about Jesus, and it is this inherent wrongness that leaves the reader with a lasting impression after the story has been finished with no good man to be found.
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Sicknesses and Saviors

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” presents two families that, although they are from different cultures and countries, share a lack of center. The Das family, which we are introduced to as characters, is crude, immature, and hides a dark secret. Mr. Kapiri’s family, which we learn about through Mr. Kapiri’s inner thoughts, is sad and based on a sense of obligation and tradition, rather than truth or love. The families have in common a spouse dissatisfied with a counterpart, regardless of whether the marriage came to be through a parent’s direct arrangement (Mr. Kapiri) or a parent’s gentle expectation (the Das family). However, the characters differing viewpoints on how to deal with their similarly disappointing situations, based on inherent differences in upbringing, are most interesting to me.
To Mr. Kapiri, the Das family looks Indian but “dresse[s] as foreigners [do]” (2). Mrs. Das’s has tried to solve the problem of not loving her husband by being unfaithful and searching for an outside vitality, which she attempts to excuse through her unhappiness. Mr. Kapasi, on the other hand, has spent his entire life finding different jobs and “the countless other ways he tried to console his wife,” working hard to appease his sense of duty (77). Mrs. Das is imaginative and creative, seeing “a big responsibility” in what Mr. Kapasi had always thought of as “a thankless occupation” (74, 76). Mrs. Das confesses her dark secrets to Mr. Kapasi because she thinks of his job on a higher level; instead of a literal interpreter of patient’s words, he is a metaphorical instructor, a guru-translator that can find her a spiritual “remedy” for all her moral ills (160). Mr. Kapasi, the solid, hard-working, straightforward man, is confused by her beliefs. Although he is flattered at first by her attention, he eventually realizes that she is crude, selfish, and almost repulsive, as evidenced by her blatant disregard of his instructions not to let the monkeys have food that leads to Bobby’s near dismemberment.
In contrast to Mrs. Das, whom he at first admires and is dazzled by, Mr. Kapasi has traditional values and a straightforward mindset. He does his job and he does it well; he is of the old country whereas Mrs. Das is of the selfish new generation. Mr. Kapasi’s sadness is based off of a sense of unfulfilled potential; when he was young, he reminisces, he knew nine languages and an intense intellectual curiosity. Over the years, due to familial stresses and the day-to-day grind, his knowledge has disintegrated to “only a handful of European phrases” (77). Mrs. Das, on the other hand, has never really worked for intellectual advancement; she spent all her time in college with Mr. Das, to the point of having little to no friends. She is incurious and not intellectual. Eventually, Mr. Kapasi realizes that he has merely been hoping for Mrs. Das to be the different type of woman he needs; the one with whom he can exchange letters and have an affair of the mind. Finally, however, when the slip of paper with Mr. Kapasi’s address “flutter[s] away in the wind,” he does not protest because he has recognized his complete incompatibility with Mrs. Das (179). In the end, “Interpreter of Maladies” is a story about two lost souls, ailing in similar ways but needing different cures.
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Summer Reading and Shakespeare

This summer, I only managed to work through a small portion of the books that I wanted to read. This list included: Le Petit Nicolas et Les Copains, for AP French, Was ist Liebe? to accompany the German lessons I took this summer, Postmodernism for Beginners by Jim Powell, and King Lear (one of Shakespeare's tragedies) in preparation for viewing said play at the Globe Theatre in London. Finally, I reread Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (an old favorite) and chose Life of Pi by Yann Martel as my additional reading.

My favorite Shakespearean works will always be those that involve love, or, at least, an interesting relationship or two (ie, the now stereotypical star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet; the comedic antics that occur in the woods of A Midsummer Night's Dream; or the sick and twisted relationships of Macbeth and Othello). King Lear, although involving neither a central couple nor comedy nor magic nor Scottish accents, was one of my favorite reads of the summer.

The basic synopsis of King Lear is rather basic and almost fairy-tale like: an old king has three daughters; the youngest is the nicest and most clever and truthful, while the older two are nasty and deceitful. The themes of Lear as well as the subplots were, to me, much more interesting than the basic and straightforward plot. The intrigues of the Gloucester family, for example, with the twists and turns provided by the evil Edmund and his brother, the far more righteous but confusingly similarly named Edgar, were particularly captivating.

From Edgar's first speech, in which he asserts that man should be judged on his personal qualities and capabilities instead of such uncontrollable limitations as legitimate conception or relative age to siblings (both issues that stop Edgar from getting an inheritance), I was drawn to his character. Especially as a modern American, believing in the country of the self-made man and in the land of second chances, I identified with Edgar's frustration. However, as the play goes on, it becomes clear that Edgar is actually the bad guy.

As one wronged by appearance and superficial values (ie, the state of his birth, his status as a second son), Edgar sees no wrong in using deceit and flattery to right these injustices for himself. His scorn for some people's belief in the ability of the stars to tell the future (he calls these superstitions "the excellent foppery of the world" (Act 1, Sc. 2, Ln 125) ) echoes his opinion that things and people should be judged only on plain, straightforward merits. This idea is ironic, considering that Edgar spends most of the play lying to his brother, his father, and his two potential mistresses.

Furthermore, Edgar drags the upright brother Edmund into this theme by convincing their father that Edmund is evil. Consequently, until Edmund can persuade the world of the truth of his innocence, he is forced to live in disguise as a dirty, crazy, homeless madman. Others in the play are forced unfairly to take disguises as well; Kent, the reliable advisor that Lear banishes, changes his dress and manner of speaking in order to continue helping the king he loves. This theme of appearance versus reality, of deception and the inability of the main characters to see the truth is compounded by many other elements: the Fool, who is supposed to be silly and dimwitted, speaks truths that Lear, the wise king, is loath to understand; the awful, immoral Regan and Goneril gain Lear's love and possessions through deceitful exclamations of love, whereas Cornelia, the true and honest daughter, is banished. Gloucester, father of Edgar and Edmund, is, ironically, only revealed the truth of which son is actually good after his eyes have been blinded. He can only see when he cannot see. Other themes are also bounced back and forth between the plots; for example, in both storylines siblings try to kill each other and in both a foolish father misplaces his trust. In these ways, I found the themes of King Lear fascinating.

As with any Shakespeare play, the story is much easier to understand and appreciate after reading when it is also seen performed. Seeing King Lear at the Globe Theatre was a very amazing experience. Many intricacies and subtleties lost in my struggles to understand the very vocab of the text were brought out through the performance.

King Lear was certainly different from any other Shakespeare play I had read before. I greatly enjoyed my high-brow theatrical experience of the summer.

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