Does Coming-of-Age fit as a concept......

When do you come of age? Coming of age is a very diluted concept in that one can never really understand it. Life comes across many paths and to fit into one particular one, that just never happens. If we take Stephen, his journey in the book is a complete rollercoaster (although that implies that it ends where it begins, which is false). He begins as a shrugged kid, unable to fit into society. But when Stephen goes to the Rector, his life changes completely. Although the kids don’t cheer for him exactly, he still recognizes that he has done something which none of the other children wouldn’t have ever dreamt of doing, which makes him think that he is not only different but also above the rest of the children. He feels he is superior. And while he stands full of pride, the music dims at the end of chapter 1, the audience shrugging at Stephen’s “achievement”. Although his superiority complex resides over the rest of the book, his actions vastly differ. In Chapter 2, we see him indulging in not so good acts and continuing doing so into Chapter 3. Towards the middle of Chapter 3, however, due to the priest's’ sermon, he realizes what a grave mistake he has committed. What is interesting however, is that we see a completely changed man in a relatively short time (while the time isn’t specified, we can easily estimate that it hasn't been that long). Does this all of sudden change mean that Stephen has come of age, or that he has improved for the better? Most certainly not. While he has changed himself, that change still reflects his previous personality. Interestingly enough, women still drive the future of his life. He still thinks of how the women will be saying their dirty secrets and he will get to hear them. He keeps watching a woman (albeit not in a necessary “bad” way, but still)... He still writes a poem for Emma and denies the opportunity of becoming a priest, a job that his parents basically paid a lot of money for him to do.

So, what does all this mean? This means that even almost towards the end of the book, Stephen is still coming of age, and that he will likely continue to do so (in the fictional world of Stephen Dedalus) well after the book (unless he dies :D). But the best example would probably be me, because I kind of know myself the best. I wouldn’t say that I have ever “come of age”, but I have definitely grown and adapted. Having lived in three different continents and each for a significant part of my life, I have learned much about cultures and people. The central part of my childhood was spent in France, which also happen to be some of the worst years of my life. I can relate to Stephen’s experience in Chapter 1 because that was me for four years. I was unable to play with the others. Due to that, similar things occurred in 5th and 6th grade in the U.S (everybody already knew each other, so I wasn’t able to fit in). 6 years of private life really change me significantly. I became more open and more adjusting to the people around me. This wasn’t a OMG I have just come of age, YEEEES. No. It was a gradual change. Similarly, I have had multiple gradual changes throughout my life. I am a completely different person than what I was when I was a subbie (ok, I am adding this about 2 hours after I have written this blogpost. I’m not COMPLETELY diffrent, but I am significantly different to say that I am a better [and more knowledgeable] person). In a few months, I will most likely be in college and that will be a different experience than one I have ever been in. By the end of college, I will probably be a much different guy than what I am now. What I’m trying to get at is the fact that there is no passage or chapter that we can point to and say that AH HA, look, this is where Stephen has come of age. Same thing with LITERALLY every book. Humans change as time goes by.    

Wednesday, January 28th

SNEAK PEAK!

A sneak peak to my project had been prepared! I am deeply sorry to all of my readers that have long awaited this great moment. A special shout out to Alice Hu for pushing me to get this done!

Jack: hero or not?

After seeing a couple of blogs on this, as well as different views on this topic, I decided to address it, even though, I know I know, this is pretty old. So, when Jack comes out of the house and escapes, is he a hero, or not? To answer this question, I will list out all of the possible reasons from both sides and then provide my own reasoning.

First, the positives. What does Jack do that could make him conceivable as a hero? First and foremost, Jack acts sick and then dead. For someone who hasn’t ever “acted” before, and doing it on such short notice, he does a pretty believable job. If he would’ve messed this up at the beginning, then all would have been finished. Jack leaves Room and has the courage to go Outside. He really doesn’t have any idea of what he’s getting himself into, but he’s willing to take up the challenge. Although it hurts him (and as we learn later, it isn’t just a small injury) when Old Nick drops him in the back of the pickup truck, he remains quiet for the sake of the mission. He makes the right decisions without Ma being around when he runs away from Old Nick. He eventually gets his Mom freed and Old Nick captured.

 
Now for the not exactly heroish thingys. He’s just following orders. Ma tells him what to do and he does it. Sure he makes a couple of decisions on his own, but they were kind of the only options he had, and he acknowledged that. In this notion, Jack is but a “pawn” in Ma’s crafty maneuver of intelligence (Quintin). Also, Jack doesn’t really help the Police While they do figure it out in the end, Jack could have very easily told them.

While it is true that Jack could have told the police, we have to understand that he hasn’t met any other human being apart from Ma and Old Nick, He is unaware of their existence and it creeps him out. We can cut him some slack on that one. On the topic of Jack being a pawn, I agree, Jack is a pawn in the whole scheme of things. But the heroic part in that is that he’s doing everything that he should do, as well as making the right decisions when needed. He remains silent even when he is hurt. He talks when he feels safe and does get Ma out and Old Nick captured. Sure there was luck involved in that, and it is true that Jack isn’t a marvelous hero in this. But there are many heroic aspects seen in this whole escape. And don’t forget, he’s only five.

Wednesday, December 3

Changes in Jake and Ma + Extra News!

Before I start, I would like to mention the fact that I have completed reading the fourth chapter of the book, After.

I want to talk about the major changes in Jack’s life. Because of this escape which just works by sheer luck, Jack’s life has been changed completely. I feel bad for him because all of a sudden he’s been taken out of one place and placed in an other which he can’t wrap his head around, and for good reasons. But all of this is made worse when Ma throws upon him all the things such as the baby monkeys story, the truth about Santa, the death of the Easter bunny, and the unemployed Tooth Fairy. This must be a psychological disaster for a five year old, whose entire life has been spent in a prison. But more than that, it’s also a disaster for Ma, and the paparazzi, the interview, and telling Jack all of this must have been very hard on her too.

The problem here is this all of a sudden change. Early on into the novel, I had stated in a class discussion that Ma should slowly start to open up to Jack things about the real world. Although she tries it to somewhat of a degree, it’s nowhere as close as she could have gotten. I understand the limitation on time which she had, however, if she would have told Jack the truth and slowly changed his aspect on the world while in Room, it might not have as much of a disaster as it is now. When the Allies defeated the Nazis and saw all the concentration camps, there method to approach it was the following: they gave little amounts of food and slowly started to give more to these hungry people. If they had just put all the food out which they could (which they did do at one point -- it didn’t help because all the captives just lashed out at the food and their bodies couldn’t take it, and they died) it would killed the captives. And this is what we are seeing here-- Jack is being exposed to this horrific change in literally a second and that is why he is not able to fit into society.

Another thing I noticed in this chapter was the change in Jack. He’s becoming much more of a bad boy -- some of it isn’t his fault but…still. For example, he realizes that he can chose to shower when he wants to. Also, Ma lets jack keep five toys but he takes an extra and doesn’t tell Ma. When we read it, it doesn’t seem like a big thing-- but this is pretty huge. Since Jack has lived in this small room without many things for his entire life, Ma would have immediately known if Jack had something extra. But now, since they are “Outside” he finally has “secrets”. There’s also that time when Jack has that “incident” with Bronwyn (now that’s not his fault, he’s never really been taught about those things yet). And last but not least, Jack steals a copy of Dylan the Digger (once again, this isn’t his fault, he thinks that it is his, and since only one of everything exists in his mind…). What I’m trying to get at is the fact that Jack has changed a lot in a short amount of time.

We obviously can’t forget Ma. Ma grew up in this society so she understands what the paparazzi are doing. But it’s too much for her. Let’s not forget that when she got into this mess, she was just a 19 year old girl (and she is still just in her late 20s). But in this span of time, she has gone through something which no human should have to go through. It was very selfish, disgusting, and inhumane on the part of Old Nick. But ever since she has come out, everyone is judging her (thanks to the paparazzi) for how she survived in Room and how she grew up Jake (particularly the breast-feeding). While I am doing that to some extent too, I recognize that she did what she thought was right at the time. But the way she is reacting right now is wrong. It seems that she has just lost all hope and succumed to temptation -- the temptation saying the ultimate screw you to life and bidding adieu to all the problems. I understand that she has been in a weird place psychologically as well as something that will taunt her the rest of her life. I understand that you can’t just forget these things. But, if she hadn’t given up hope for 7 YEARS, why give up hope now?  

In other news, I have completed my open-genre creative project. Having a run time of 9 minutes and 25 seconds, it contains over 600 different pieces I had to put together. After spending over 50 hours on it, I hope that I can amuse you all with it during finals! There will be a teaser attached to my next blogpost!

Friday, November 28th

Smithy as a hero and Final Thoughts about Memory of Running

So, is Smithy a hero? Well, he most certainly is, in his own little (unrealistic) world. Smithy goes from a drunk 279 pound smoker to a new man in three months who has given up drinking, smoking, and lost a lot of weight, as well as picked up healthy habits such as eating bananas and drinking water (which I must tell you, is a very bad route to take: you should never drink water while eating non-citrus fruits). Smithy is patient, devoted, and has a clean heart and lives his life with an optimistic view. Smithy’s life changes, ironically, due to his drinking habit: he sees his bike while he is drunk and starts biking (drunk biking). He wakes up in the morning and decides to continue on his journey (now whether that is naive or not, I can’t say).

As many of you have probably noted by now, I have a very skeptical view towards this book. While it is meant as something which could happen, I find it highly improbable. Smithy could have died very easily during his journey four times (once by the car crash, then by the policeman beating him up while he is already in “acute” pain, then almost shot by Bill’s son, and lastly shot by the other policeman) and many more times in the war (very close, too close, once). As Darrian recently stated in one of her blog posts “Seriously, did they NOT notice that Smithy wasn’t even driving the car? Plus, all the doctors treat him like shit, and then yell at him about Carl and then send them on their way. Then the doctor threatens Smithy. She also brings an officer with her that beats Smithy up, with the intention of only scaring him, and he ends up even worse before they realize, and by realize I mean Carl has to TELL THEM, that he’d hit him with his truck and that he wasn’t the bad guy.” This just goes to show some of the most insanely boundary line that McLarty tries to pull off. But even if throw these things aside, we still have to deal with Smithy’s zen-like behaviour towards each of these events. While it is unrealistic, it is most certainly a heroic quality. So in the end, Smithy is a hero for the transformations he goes through and his clean hearted determination, but the author’s goal to picture him as a possible hero in real life, turns short. 

Sunday, November 16

The killer (literally) ending

When I read the ending I was shocked. But not in the good way. Until Norma comes in, all was good. But then, she came in. I expected much more from the author on this.

Mr. Mitchell mentioned in class that you guys are blaming the author for this and you aren’t into the story. T he thing is, I was into the story until this happened. When I read that somebody called out “Smithy” I got worried: “Oh my god, if it’s Norma… IT’S NORMA! NOO..” This scene reminded me of an art project I did in elementary school in France. We had to draw a bunch of concentric circles and then color them. Apart from I drew too many and it was taking me too long and everybody else had moved on to working with clay so I quickly colored everything in purple and black, essentially destroying all the hard work. This last scene just goes to show how hard it is to build something very eloquent and how easy it is to destroy it (you build a huge lego building and spend a lot of time on it and your sibling just knocks it down). The anger was strongly built inside of me when I read this because the author just ruined a book that I was going to categorize as one of my favorites.

But let’s analyse this in a more professional way (now that I have established that scene was one of the cheesiest and dumbest ideas on the part of the author). “You’re not into the story”. Of course I’m not, it’s unrealistic. As Erik said in class “Is Smithy immortal?” Because the amount of times the guy’s been shot and the places where he has been shot (and his quick healing) and the amount of patience and saint-like zen quality which Smithy posses are all unrealistic. But I pardoned the author for that.  I pardoned the author for creating a character who loves smoking and quits smoking just like that. I pardon the author for saying that Smithy survives on tuna fish and bananas for 4 months. BUT, Norma coming in was unacceptable. First off, let’s look at this happening realistically. Norma stirs up the courage (and the cash, a lot which she has already spent on Smithy, put I guess that doesn’t matter if they get married) to go out of her house and board (in a wheelchair) on an at least 18 hour journey to L.A. just to go up to Smithy while he is saying his final goodbyes to his sister at the freezing smelly morgue and say “Oh baby, I love you” and kiss him. Uh, no. Sorry author, can’t give you this one. It’s not impossible but it is so highly improbable that it is impossible: 0.0 repeated 1 is equal to 0 for a reason.

It’s like those scenes in movies where the villain can easily kill the hero but no, they've got to give a speech about everything and give away their entire plan and the hero narrowly escapes and wins in the end. Everytime I see it, it pisses me off. That’s why I like A Song of Ice and Fire so much: you never know what is going to happen because there isn’t one hero’s journey-- it’s the journey of every character and as soon as you get attached to one particular character, they’re dead. Needless to say I did enjoy the book while reading it, but the whole ending killed it for me. Mr. Mitchell said in class “It seems that Smithy is hurrying towards the end of his journey”. Smithy isn’t hurrying towards the end,  it is McLarty who rushed the ending into a typical happy ever after ending which this book didn’t deserve. It deserved more. What an ending: cutting off the nose to spite the face.   

Saturday, November 15

Is Smithy on a quest?

No, he is not. What does quest mean? Well, it means “a long or arduous search for something” but with a connotation that the search will have multiple obstacles and a treacherous path in the way. While the search for Bethany is a “long” one, he has the place where he needs to go on a sheet of paper. So the only aspect that is “quest-like” is him traveling across the country on his bike. But that in itself is not a quest. That is a challenge, one which numerous people do each year. For example, the Tour de France consists of 2277 miles (while his trip from consists of approximately 2800 miles) and hundreds participate. So let’s summarize this: he is going on a bike across the country without a treacherous path in the way (riding on high quality roads with people that obey traffic laws) and is doing something which many people do every year.  I don’t see a quest in this.

What is interesting, however, is when Norma times this idea of his journey being a quest. We can now kind of see it as a quest because Smithy is rediscovering himself, as well as discovering new things. He is going outside to see the real world (something humans should do in the first place!) instead of watching television all day long and getting fat and drunk. He is recalling memories of the past as well as experiencing life in a new manner (while losing weight as well as his appreciation for smoking and drinking). These are all very nice things but are they really akin to a quest? The answer is no, once again. You see, quest indicates that there is goal planned and you have to reach that goal. When Smithy set out on his trip, he hadn’t planned for all these memories to come back (he still doesn’t plan to seek out more memories) -- they just did.

While I agree this trip has now shaped Smithy’s clean and healthy life for the future, I still believe that this “revelation” isn’t part of a quest. There is a certain aspect to the whole idea of a quest involved, however, it is important to keep in mind that when Smithy decided to do his trip, he didn’t really have anything planned -- he was drunk and just went with it.

Thursday, November 13