The Man Who Wasn't There

On of my most favorite lines from the movie, The Man Who Wasn’t There would probably be the barber shop scene where Ed Crane(I think?) says to his brother-in-law(don’t remember the guy’s name) if he knows about hair. It keeps growing and we just cut it off and throw it away. But it never leaves us, and keeps coming back. I thought that this was one of the strangest things in the movie. Of course, the movie was full of strange things ranging from the court cases to the UFOs (I really don’t know what they were about). What was stranger (ah get it!) was when he continued saying that he was gonna take the hair and mingle it with dirt, common house dirt. Something along those lines. Even if we look at this scene, for a moment avoiding the rest, we can still get a pretty good idea that there are a few loose screws on this guy. This can be seen again and again, with him from the office to Walter’s house. There is certainly something that is not right. And this leads into the fact that the world isn’t the right place for Ed, it is not made for a guy like Ed. On top of that, his actions only make the situation worse. We can, as an example, take the dry cleaning incident. Ed at first is interested in it, but cannot get his mind around whether it would be a good thing or is it a hoax. When he finally does invest his money, all it does is come and bite him back in the end. He is punished for a crime which he didn’t really commit at all: the death of that entrepreneur. Similarly, Mersault is punished for a crime he didn’t really commit: not having any emotions when his mother died and his place in society, specifically, how he does not fit in. This would probably be one of the biggest differences between the book and the movie, and we should expect differences, as this movie never took any copyright permissions to make a movie of The Stranger. But I feel, that although he could have protected himself, like Mersault, he was too tired of life, the society in which he resides (not even resides, maybe a better word would be stuck), and how he has nobody or nothing to look forward to in life.   

Rochester’s Confusion and the latter’s effect on Antoinette

Ever since Rochester has appeared in the novel, starting in part 2, I have felt that he is an emotionally confused character. I am not saying that he is sick (mentally, not physically), but rather confused. Confused because he doesn’t know what is going on in his life. In a primogeniture society, Rochester is the second son, and thus will not be inheriting any of the family estate/money (interestingly enough, primogeniture is still active, even as of today, in the case of the British Crown Hierarchy). Rochester comes to the society in which Antoinette has been residing for so long as a completely new person. Although he does feel superior and does have some self-confidence, it is not anywhere near the confidence of Mr. Mason. Rochester doesn’t understand the terms of the society and the ways that the society resides in. I guess that in this manner he is almost similar to Mr. Mason as he doesn’t understand the black community like Antoinette does. This is another way he is confused: why is Antoinette so close to these people (not sure he considers them people, but anyways), why does she feel o.k. around the company of these people? Because of his ripe and inexperienced age, he isn’t able to answer these questions, that look so easy to answer by the reader. This puts him in utmost dilemma. This dilemma, is causing issues with Antoinette. It appears that Antoinette is unhappy with the way her marriage is going. She is unable to cope up with this and is not understanding what to do with this. I feel sad because her life is just constantly full of tragedies: her real father died when she is really small, leaving the family in disgrace, her house is burned down in the fire, she loses one of her ‘best friends’ upon the burning of the fire, she loses her disabled brother in the fire, and her mother after being proclaimed mad by society is put in an asylum where she later dies. Its full of tragedies, and what's left to see is where the story takes us? Will the marriage between Antoinette and Rochester turn out in a lovey-dovey relationship or will it take a sharp Stranger/Metamorphosis tragic turn? We can only find out in a couple of days.