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...

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...