Lucas' 20th Century Lit Blog

     One of my favorite movie is 500 Days of Summer starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel. This film is famous for subverting the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and the main characters have a similar relationship to that of Brett and Jake in The Sun Also Rises. If you have not seen the film here is a short and very entertaining summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVbaYT_We2o.  I think the comparison is very insightful. Although, Brett makes it clear to Jake that she could never settle down with him, Jake still seems to think that Brett is the one for him and in someway feels as though she has some sort of obligation to him, at least to date the right type of guy. In that way, the question must be asked. Is Jake's suffering really all Brett's fault? Or is his failure to accept the obvious reality Brett has outlined, merely his own shortcoming.  This is obviously a messy and difficult situation. There is really no clearcut answer as to who is in...

 While on the surface it seems as though Septimus and Clarissa are extremely different. When you dive deeper into their respective lives it is not difficult to find a common thread. They both struggle to move on from an extremely impactful past. While Clarissa's memories are much more positive and contain a time she wished to return to, and Septimus' are of death and destruction they both loom over their current lives like ghosts.  Clarissa is constantly referring back to her time as an 18 year old with Sally Seaton at Bourton. She seems to spend less time enjoying the present than she does imagining herself back as a young woman. Although, she doesn't seem necessarily content with her current life, she can't seem to shake the past. Septimus' struggles are much more obvious. The horrors of war and the death of his friend have left him unfeeling and confused. Creating a cycle of despair eventually resulting in his death. It seems as though Woolfe's goal in this w...