One of the most popular in class discussion that I have seen is about Brett: you either hate her or you love her. However, my situation is sort of in the middle(ish?) because there are some things about her personality which I wasn’t too fond of while on the other end of the spectrum, some things I do like about her character. One of the things which I don’t like about her is how she takes Jakes’ advantage. Towards the ending of the book, when Brett runs out of money she knows that Jake will always listen to her and so she ‘forces’ Jake, in a way, to come there. Perhaps a better word to forces might be pressures. It is rather interesting because during the course of the book, towards the middle, I started to become slightly sympathetic to Brett, but from the beginning I didn’t like her. When she is first introduced to us, she gets drunk and starts shouting in the street at Jake. Although it was in its position a bit funny, it also made me not like Brett.
On the other side of the coin, Brett was, at times, a rather kind person. In one of the scenes towards the end, Jake starts to want to get drunk because he didn’t know what to do. At that time, Brett was right next to him hugging and urging him that ‘Jake, please don’t get drunk’.
To sum up, I will say that Brett has a good side to her. She really does, but that side of her is hidden deep after her personal ego and attitude. 
It probably sounds bad (a lot of things we might want to say in Brett's defense sound bad), but in terms of her "kindness," she does seem to view her affair with Cohn as an act of "kindness" (remember Jake's bitter response about "social service"). Taken at face value, as absurd as it might seem, it does seem like Brett is feeling bad for Cohn and trying to help him in some way.
ReplyDeleteFor me, it's this ambiguity that makes Brett so interesting as a character: she's not easy to entirely endorse or entirely denounce; she's messed up, like a lot of us, and there are good reasons she's messed up. She doesn't always behave in an ideal manner (again, like many of us), and her external persona works well to cover up the loneliness inside. But she is, fundamentally, a lonely, "miserable" person, and Jake seems to be her only real friend and confidant. If he is "forced" or "pressured" to come to her aid, it's the pressure of a friend feeling a responsibility to a friend (i.e. self-imposed pressure).
I think that it is good to consider both sides of Brett, because like Mr. Mitchell said, she does have some good qualities. But I don't think you can say that she is just like all the rest of us, all of us are a little messed up. Brett's "messed-up-ness" is significantly more serious than most people's--you don't meet a lot of people who go off with any man they meet, whether out of lust or kindness, nor do you find a huge number of people who tear themselves and the many lovers that they take apart by their actions. Brett, by choice, does not live a happy or normal life, and she doesn't make it easy for other people to be around. I do think that this gives her merit as a character; there would be no story if Brett was not the way she is. So I guess that even though I don't like Brett's choices and cannot relate to her personality, I can see the value that she has in the story.
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