Lucas' 20th Century Lit Blog

Throughout my time reading The Plague I have noticed the realistic depictions of many key characters. Rambert in particular struck me as a highly human character. In saying that, I found his dilemma to be strikingly realistic and heartbreaking in a novel which doesn't delve into emotions too deeply. He stood out in a town of people who seemingly had nothing to live for. In contrast to the other characters who also often find themselves in tough situations, Rambert agonizes over the decision. He is consistently wrestling with the morality of his current and potential future action. Rieux also has a partner outside of Oran, but he seems less bothered. Rambert is unique in his desire to leave, but also his desire later to help out. Rambert is extremely human in that humans are complicated and unpredictable, they can change their minds and make decisions that seemingly go directly against one another. Rambert approaches an uncertain life in an uncertain manner, making him seem more rea...

 Existentialism is something I've heard a lot about, however, it is not until our discussion of this novel ( The Plague) that I have actually come upon an explicit definition. It was quite shocking for me to find (based on the explanation) that I am in fact an existentialist, but that's a topic for another blog post. Leaving that aside, I struggled to connect existentialism to part 1 of The Plague.  However, upon further inspection, the novel has decidedly existential elements.  The plague is much like existence itself and the overwhelming certainty of death. Many are reluctant to acknowledge its reality and go about their daily lives without sparing a thought for the ends of their own lives or those of others. Others, like Rieux acknowledge the approach of death, but find ways to carve out meaning and value in their day to day lives. In the context of this novel, fighting against the plague. I'm sure as we continue through the pages of this novel we will encounter many m...

     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...

The goal of Mrs. Dalloway, at least from my perspective,  is to capture real human, thought, interaction and character within one day in 1923. In order to achieve this, Woolf displays a variety of techniques and strategies. Instead of focusing on the overall arc and message of the work she is creating, she meticulously constructs individuals and the interactions they share with one another.  Clarissa herself is not a person who I would find compelling in real life. However, Woolf puts her up to a magnifying glass in a way that would make any character compelling. Human sociality, thought and emotionality are inherently interesting. So, when Woolf takes a closer look at an upper-class socialite, it appears not humdrum, but like an exciting window of opportunity into a previously unseen life. Similarly with the other characters, an in-depth introduction to any person that is not ourselves can prove enlightening and entertaining.  I suppose the author's final goal is to help...

  The Mezzanine is a novel which reminds us to stop and smell the roses. As busy individuals it is easy to finds oneself caught up in large problems and obstacles, when the most beautiful and enjoyable part of life might be in the details. Baker expertly conveys this throughout this book. His character is as relatable as he is unique and as compelling as he is pedestrian.  It is easy to be drawn to Howie as he is able to articulate a large part of the human thought process in ways that we ourselves might not be capable of. In my mind at least, I find myself often engaging in the speculation and h y pothesization that Howie so clearly maps out throughout the pages of his work. I find it extremely attention-grabbing, therefore, that an author was able to put my thoughts to paper in some respect.  Overall we can take a lot of inspiration from Howie. While he is lucky in that his life is unobstructed by obstacles, he has also managed to achieve a level of contentment that mos...

 This will be a 20th century literature blog. 

Introduction Ok, so if you know me, you know that my main obsession in life is pop culture. So, when given the opportunity to write a short story about anything of a historical nature I immediately jumped at the Beatles. A lot of my initial ideas I ended up scrapping, but I finished something that I quite like. Even though it’s not what I originally intended. For historical reference, before the Beatles were internationally famous they went to Hamburg in Germany for a residency in clubs there. I tried to use this setting to create this anecdote. Enjoy! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLhh7pil-0e_URGaZAKbakuXcnUdxXcgf0iHXvYWo9A/edit?usp=sharing

In  Kindred, our main character Dana is subject to horrors that we find unimaginable and frankly even impossible. It is obvious that over the course of her journey these events begin to take a psychological toll on both her and her husband Kevin. She notices it in Kevin, that his time as a white "slave-owner" pre-civil war, has changed his mannerisms and even speech ever so slightly. She also notices herself slipping in the mentality of a slave. When Kevin wants to go out for fireworks she stays home because she feels that she is still entrapped by the past she keeps returning to. She is always on edge awaiting a return to a horrible nightmare. This nightmare even leaves physical marks on both of them, Kevin acquiring an unknown scar and Dana eventually losing her arm. In this novel we are introduced to a level of trauma that we can't comprehend ourselves. In doing this, Butler shows us the true damage of slavery and the effect it had on people then as well as now. In...

One would have to say, that Slaughterhouse 5  is a novel about Billy Pilgrim. Billy is Vonnegut's vehicle in which he shares his experience over the firebombing of Dresden. However, Billy himself doesn't do a lot of thinking or, really anything. He could best be described as apathetic and disinterested. This begs the question: is he a compelling and effective main character? I personally believe that this can only be decided individually by each reader. Personally, I do not like Billy as a main character. The leads in novels which I find most interesting are much more introspective, and charismatic, and just overall compelling. I know the whole point is that Billy is supposed to be kind of a clown, but he's a little bit boring, and while his struggles are profoundly sad and he has obviously been through a lot, as a character he is not someone that ropes me in. I don't find myself being interested in him, because he seems sort of like a blank slate. Also, the time tra...

Recently while attending an Illinois basketball game, I was seated in front of an older white couple, probably in their 60's or late 50's. Throughout they game they launched a barrage of attacks on the completely black Illinois players after every little mistake or play they deemed unacceptable. I found these white people's relentless criticism of the extremely talented black athletes uncomfortable at best, and downright bigoted at worst. Besides calling the ref a "communist" on multiple occasions, and criticizing him by saying "he probably voted for Bernie Sanders," they displayed beliefs that were definitively Atonist. Anytime, an Illinois player tried anything flamboyant or flashy, they immediately let out cries of "keep it simple," or "that's just reckless." I couldn't help but draw connections between this and the clash between Atonism and Jes Grew in Mumbo Jumbo. A distaste for fun or creativity, and a strict complianc...

Coalhouse Walker Jr is an upstanding gentleman with unquestionable class, style, and sophistication. So many things about him set him apart from those around him, however his most undeniably unique trait is his burning sense of pride. In a time in American history in which black people were expected to "ingratiate themselves" and put their dignity aside for the sake of the white man, Coalhouse refuses to do so. The matter in which he stands his ground, may be considered fairly small in a larger context of hate crimes, but his decision to fight is far from insignificant. What Coalhouse demands is to simply be treated with basic human decency. The crime committed against him, while not violent is disgusting, Coalhouse was treated as if he were not a man worthy of respect. The profoundness of Coalhouse's movement lies in the simplicity of his requests. So much damage is caused over the destruction of a car. A crime that the fire chief and his crew are most certainly guilty...

While Evelyn Nesbit left the pages of ragtime a few chapters ago and she may never return to the novel, I found the time we spent with her character thought provoking, compelling, and emotionally stirring. A little research into the real person Evelyn Nesbit will show that almost every shocking thing about her life actually happened. She was actually assaulted by famed architect Stanford White at 15, abused by oil scion Harry K Thaw in Europe, and witnessed her former assaulter/lover shot by her current husband atop Madison Square Garden. It should also be noted that Nesbit did in fact donate to Emma Goldman's magazine, at least according to her wikipedia article. Now if that wasn't enough for you Doctorow adds his own spice to her story: her obsession with a little poor girl from the southeast side. All of these elements not only make for interesting plot but also an extremely complex character. It is obvious that Evelyn Nesbit is looking for a fulfilling place and purpose i...

From henceforth this blog will be fully dedicated to History as Fiction.

While the general outline of HBO's Native Son and Richard Wright's original novel is the same, there are extremely noticeable differences between their plots and structure. The most striking of which in my opinion is their separate main characters. Bigger Thomas from the novel is a cold and not very sympathetic character, whereas the one from the movie with his punk style is much more likable and seems to have decidedly less violent tendencies. The relationships between Jan, Mary, and Bigger seem much more positive in the modern rendition. While Bigger states on multiple occasions that he felt hatred towards both of them, the movie Bigger seems to form something of an actual connection with them. Even securing them narcotics in return for music gifted to him by Mary. It is much easier to see Mary's death as accidental in the film because of this. In addition, his relationship with Bessie has marked differences. In the film they seem to actually care about one another an...

At a glance, the characters of Gunnar Kaufman and Bigger may not seem to share a multitude of characteristics, however upon closer inspection their stories are a lot more similar than they may appear. They are both characters in coming-of-age stories with twists, whose lives are presumably cut short. While they also share many differences, they are at their core disenfranchised young men, who are pushed into bubbles based on their racial identity, restricting their ability to live full lives. Gunnar is certainly much more educated and I dare say intelligent than Bigger, in addition to being more outwardly rebellious. However, he too finds himself surrounded by white people who all seem to want something from him. He is praised by white people for his talents, whereas Bigger is hated. However, is that really so different, neither of them are seen as individuals, merely as men defined by a few actions and accomplishments, or in Bigger's case crimes. Neither lives a satisfactory lif...

In Beloved everything seems to come back to one thing: Sethe's time at, and escape from Sweet Home. She doesn't enjoy the memories she has from her time there. She certainly doesn't want them to dictate her life, but her rememory will not let her forget the trauma. Throughout the course of Beloved , characters cannot seem to shake their past, and it all plays into a larger metaphor for the effects of slavery on American society. The most obvious instance of this, besides Sethe's time at sweet home. Is the death and murder of her baby, which has literally manifested itself in her life as a ghost haunting her. Beloved the character is quite probably Sethe's murdered child, an even more glaring instance of the past never truly going away. Sethe buys into the idea that "nothing ever dies" and even though sweet home is long gone, she will never let Denver return, because of the power she believes it holds. Paul D is similarly haunted by his time at Sweet H...

As we progressed throughout TEWWG, the main focus of the novel became the relationship between Janie and Tea Cake. As we explored their connection and interactions deeper I personally felt as though this novel became a tragic love story. Janie and Tea Cake's love is undoubtedly strong and even after his death she feels as though he still lives on within her. So much of this novel is dedicated to their romantic journey that I feel this novel is mainly and most importantly a love story. The narrative of  her other two marriages were not anywhere near as romantic or strikingly powerful as her time with Tea Cake. Logan is decidedly bland in the romance department, and while Jody initially provides some excitement, he is far from the knight in shining armor that he tries to portray himself as.  Both of these relationships mostly just provide context and background for her final and most important marriage to Teak Cake. Janie struggles to find a man who she truly loves and wishe...

It's pretty easy as a reader to group Janie's first two husbands Logan and Joe, but in reality they were very different, and grouping them together gives Logan in particular a bad rap. Let me start by clarifying, I have no sympathy for Logan, it's not Janie's fault she doesn't love him and she is obliged to leave. However, he was not abusive or manipulative as Jody came to be. He was merely a simple farmer, who proved incompatible with his much younger and much more adventurous wife. So while Janie was justified in leaving him, he didn't exactly do much wrong. In the case of Jody, he did a lot of things that were legitimately abusive, so ironically Janie leaves Logan for a worse man. Jody is a minsogynst who believes Janie's only purpose should be to sit still and look pretty. He doesn't really even allow her to work inside her own store. When he claims upon first meeting her, that working the farm is no place for a woman, he didn't mean it in a mi...

       The Brotherhood obviously plays a significant role in the narrator's journey, giving him an opportunity to lead and use his talents for a cause he believes in. This starts all well and dandy, but as we see throughout the progression of the novel, the brotherhood appears more and more problematic with even the narrator coming to question and even directly disagree with them. We start by seeing a few small clues towards the brotherhood's close minded and controlling nature, but eventually Tod Clifton's death broke the camel's back for both me as a reader and the narrator, in terms of perception of the brotherhood.       We first notice the brotherhood's objections to individuality. Even Brother Tarp, who tries to share his impactful story with the narrator, is criticized for highlighting their differences instead of focusing on what makes them the same. This same blindness of the brotherhood, is especially evident after Tod Clifton's death, where...