The Namesake, Chapters 4-6
I really enjoyed the first three chapters of this book. It allowed me to see what it is like to be a foreigner in America. The author also does a great job making her characters seem real. Like Saturday, the characters often drift into a flashback while thinking about a present day experience and we get to know these characters and understand them better because we get to see what has happened in the past. I mention this because at first I didn't like chapters 4-6 of this book. As Gogol becomes the main character, the story switches gears and becomes a story about growing up instead of being a foreigner. Instead of being something new, the story turned into something that I personally have experienced – I know what it's like to grow from an adolescent into a young adult. What makes this book interesting, but is something I really didn't notice until Chapter 6, is that Gogol distances himself from his family not only because he wants to be independent, but because he doesn't want to be different – he doesn't want to be Indian.
At the beginning of Chapter 4, Gogol's parents (who now seem strange and distant to the reader, as Gogol seems them) are throwing him a birthday party, but the attendees are all of his parent's Bengali friends. On page 92 he is horrified as Mr. Lawson, his English teacher is telling the life story of Nikolai Gogol. He is so embarrassed by his odd name and its association with the strange author that he covers his ears. Events such as these convince him to change his name to Nikhil before he goes to college, where he is away from his parents for the first time. While he's in college he falls in love, goes to parties, chooses a career, and slowly distances himself from his parent and his heritage.
That is the aspect of the story that captured my interest. He acts like an average college student trying to be an adult, but that isn't how he was raised. He goes against almost everything his parents ask him to do, but the author presents Gogol's decision as a regular kid trying to get away from his parents. The best part about this is that Gogol himself doesn't realize he is really distancing himself from everything that makes him different. This becomes especially apparent after he meets Maxine and lives with her family. They are so different than his family that he immediately falls in love with them and how they live their lives. He wants to be just like them. He wants to go to the lake every summer. On page 155 he thinks, “He feels no nostalgia for the vacations he's spent with his family, and he realizes now that hey were never really true vacations at all. Instead they were overwhelming, disorienting expeditions, either going to Calcutta, or sightseeing in places they did not belong to and intended never to see again.” Those trips were very important to his parents as they tried to hang onto their culture and expose their children to it. It made me sad to see Gogol so eager to dismiss it and to interpret everything cultural his parent have done as strange and troublesome. I think Gogol will have a change of heart though. At some point he might realize that in an effort to fit in, he has pushed away everything that his parents once loved. The fact that the narrator still refers to him as Gogol makes me think that is how “Nikhil” thinks of himself too.
A Farewell to Arms, Book Four
One of the most notable changes in Book 4 is the general attitude of Henry, which has gone from playful and charming to serious and depressed. After experiencing the events of the war, he no longer has his care-free attitude and becomes strangely dependant on Catherine. He feels he loves her very much, but I’m not sure I’m convinced and I think he’s clinging to her because she is the only thing he really has. He even admits this on page 257 when he says, “My life used to be full of everything… Now if you aren’t with me I haven’t anything in the world.” The ironic part is the things he has now are the same as before he went to the front. He still has many “friends” that are willing to do him favors. We are even introduced to three new friends in this book: the barman, Count Greffi, and Simmons. All of these men actually knew him before the war and are more his friends than any of the other people that would do him favors. The only thing that has changed is himself. He’s come back hating the war and he looks at everything a little differently.
One of the more interesting parts of Book 4 was on page 249. This part is interesting to me because it is one of the only parts of the book where Henry exposes his thoughts and emotions. He goes on for quite a while about what it means to be lonely. He reveals here that he doesn’t feel lonely with Catherine at night like he has with other girls in the past. He then says, “If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them.” I’m not sure if I’m interpreting this correctly, but I think he is saying the cruelty of the world eventually gets to you and you have to live with it, if you don’t – if you resist it, then it kills you. I feel this sums up Henry’s change quiet nicely. He used to ignore the real world and used his charm to get what he wanted and brushed everything off. After his experience in the war, he realized he could no longer do that. He couldn’t get what he wanted when people with guns were hunting him down. Now that he is hiding from the army, he realizes that he has to deal with the world he has hidden from for so long. This also explains Henry’s change in behavior. It’s like he has given up on his old way of life and now has to cling on to Catherine for a chance at happiness.
I don’t necessarily like the change Book 4 has brought to the story, but I appreciate it in the sense that it has greatly developed not only his relationship with Catherine, but it has also made him a much stronger and real character. The past two books have greatly changed the story and I can’t wait to see how the book ends.
A Farewell To Arms, Book One
Although I've never read a Hemingway novel before, I am familiar with his famous style of using short, concise sentences to tell his story. This style works particularly well with this book because of the contrast between his emotionally detached writing and the serious subject of war. Since the sentences are so abrupt and to the point, they lack emotion from the character and makes him seem distant and detached from his surroundings. Events seem to suddenly happen and traumatic events are described with the same detail and excitement as his description of breakfast. At first I didn't like the lack of detail and emotion, but after a few chapters I found that the bluntness of Hemingway's language adds some shock value to the content. For example, on page 44 the main character tells us, “I felt him in his metal box against my chest while we drove. Then I forgot about him. After I was wounded I never found him again. Some one probably got it at one of the dressing stations.” We are told in this section that the main character will be wounded, but it is told so “matter of factly” and so suddenly that it surprised me and got me more interested in the story.
In stark contrast to this is the use of dialog. While some characters have the same dry tone as the narration, others, such as the priest and Rinaldi, are very animated and their dialog tells a lot about their character. For example, on page 63, Rinaldi goes to visit the main character and says, “Because you are gravely wounded. They say if you can prove you did any heroic act you can get the silver. Otherwise it will be the bronze. Tell me exactly what happened. Did you do any heroic act?” There are still short sentences, but in this instance these sentences create a frantic pace with the dialog and you can tell that Rinaldi is excitable and his mind is all over the place. The priest also speaks in short sentences, but his voice is kind and serious which is given away only by the word choice and the use of proper grammar.
The ability to convey such a variety of emotions such as fear, hate, and love with such few words is truly remarkable. Hemingway's short sentences do create distance, but it may have been intentional. With such serious subject matter as war, it seems fitting that the main character distances himself from it and tells the story as if it's no big deal. When the camp is attacked and the main character watches his soldier die, it is told only as facts, there is no emotion in the narrative. That scene seemed very real to me because of the blunt way it was described. I imagine that is how the main character would have experienced it – without emotion attachment. Most traumatic experiences are remembered like that. Any additional description would have ruined this effect. While the story itself is interesting enough, it's the style that makes me want to keep reading.
Saturday. Pages 81 - 155
I feel the strongest aspect of this book is the style in which it is written. The author is able to write in a way that resembles the human thought process by breaking up long narrative with flashbacks or sudden changes in focus. A prime example of this is when Henry is playing squash with his friend Jay on page 106 and his concentration is interrupted by the memory of his encounter with Baxter earlier that day. “But as the ball floats off the front wall towards him, unwanted thoughts are shaking at his concentration. He sees the pathetic figure of Baxter in the rear-view mirror. This is precisely the moment he should have stepped forwards for a back-hand volley…” We can all relate to distractions caused by uncomfortable or traumatic events, and the author does a very nice job of recreating how a memory can interfere with the real world. Another example of this is on page 129 when he is walking to the car from the fish monger and his mind wonders and he begins to think of random thoughts that eventually leads to a story about his father-in-law which then leads to a story about how his daughter, Daisy, had a falling out with her grandfather. When the story is over, Henry is stuck in traffic where is mind starts to wonder again. We are given no information about his trip home and the time is passed only by his somewhat random thoughts. I thought these segments were the best in the pages we read because it portrays a man that is running on “autopilot” and is lost in his thoughts. These segments may have been a little long, but when I was looking back through the book, I realized just how random Henry’s thoughts were. He didn’t start talking about his daughter, but the smell of the air triggered a cascade of memories that eventually led there. This is a very realistic view of how a person thinks and I have never been exposed to this type of writing before. This style is applied through the entire book and I feel it is a very unique way to get to know the main character. Because we get to see inside Henry’s head and how he views the world, I felt like he was a real person. Although not much happens as far as plot is concerned, I feel worried or even anxious when Henry is put into different situations and I almost know exactly how he will react to them, which is a credit to the way the author has developed his character.
