Grant's blog

     One of the panel presentations briefly mentioned connections between Rumpelstiltskin and the story of Antoinette. In Rumpelstiltskin Antoinette would be the millers daughter. The story of Rumpelstiltskin goes that there is a miller who tells the king his daughter can spin straw into gold. the king then locks her up and for I think three nights where she is forced to spin straw into gold, Rumpelstiltskin comes and offers to help in exchange for her necklace and other things that she owns. Eventually she becomes queen and keeps promising stuff. Rumpelstiltskin comes for her first child, she doesn't want to give it up and so he says that if she can guess his name the Queen could keep her child. She gets it wrong but then someone over hears Rumpelstiltskin say his name then the queen gets to keep her child the end.      In the book Antoinette mentions liking a painting "The Millers Daughter". This could be a reference to...

     We had a panel presentation on Thursday that brought up  the idea of a world full of Meursaults so I'm going to talk about it more because its interesting. The Stranger poses a fundamental question: can we really judge people. The courts problem with meursault is they don't understand him, and they pass judgment on him based on this misunderstanding. To pass judgment on meursault or a society seems to miss the point that the book tries to make. The book  makes you think about how your judgments of people are based on the terms of our society which is why meursault was put to death. That being said its still an interesting thought so I don't really care and i'm going to do it anyway.      One question to think about first is "What do we judge as good" by are societies ideals its one where everyone is free, able to provide for basic needs, and pursue happiness. A society of cold blooded killers obviously doesn't fit this model....

     While the primary focus of the metamorphosis is on Gregor's change there are many other changes that take place. Gregor’s role as the primary breadwinner of the house is vacated and it ends up being filled by most of his family. The most interesting, in my opinion at least, is the transformation of Gregor’s father. He moves from being the super lazy person who doesn’t work and lounges around all day and leaches off he sun to the breadwinner who is leached of off by his insect son.             Gregor’s father spends his days focused on breakfast before the transition. After words he becomes the diligent worker who doesn’t take his uniform off. This transition is the opposite of the transition of Gregor who goes from the super dedicated employee to someone focused on garbage, which is his food, all day.             The main difference is that Gregor’...

       Brett and Jake have a very strange relationship that is very hard to understand. The last lines of the book are very revealing. They are very similar to the first passage, they are in a cab together lamenting how they can't be together but the tones of the scenes share some similarities but also differences. In both scenes Jake's sadness is very apparent in the first scene they skrt around the topic of Jake's injury. Jake is begging to be together with Brett trying desperately pleading and barganing but she says no. His injury is too limiting for the relationship to work.      Brett continues to rely on Jake emotionally. He sacrifcies time and puts in a lot of effort despite being told it won't work. Despite trying to be hard boiled he continues to try to help her. He seems to be slowly realizing that he is more and more like Cohn and the other guys he sees as unmasculine. To me it seems like Jake is losing his grasp on his facade. Near the ...

     Ms. Dalloway has very few characters. There are main characters: Clarissa, Richard, Peter, Lucricia, Septimus, and Sally and there are more supporting characters like Elizabeth and Ms. Kilman and then there are the one off characters like the guy who observes Clarissa on the corner and gives us a general description of her. For all of these characters we spend time in their head and hear their inner thoughts and get there view on the world. One character we meet in this book that doesn't fit this central aspect of the novel is Hugh. unlike most characters we spend this much time with and hearing about we don't get to see things from his perspective.          We don't even know that much about Hugh. For other characters that seem flat like Richard we get insight that makes him much more interesting and three dimensional. For Hugh all we get is this impression of an arrogant self obsessed wealthy English man. When reading I kept expecting a...

      In class we talked about Woolf's essays from the early 20th century on what she thinks fiction should be and, we read the Mezzanine which is a book of fiction from the late 20th century. The mezzanine has many aspects mentioned by Woolf some it follows very well and some points are changed and modified slightly which is reflected in the differences between Ms. Dalloway and the Mezzanine.      One key concept of Woolf's essays is that the character is far more important than the plot or setting in novels and that novels should be focused on the characters and make them seem human. In Ms. Dalloway this is achieved by staying in characters heads the whole book and almost never describing the facts but only how they are seen and interpreted by the character. In the Mezzanine there is even less plot than in Ms. Dalloway but the entire novel is told by a single character who is aware of the readers. To me this makes the character of Howie more relatable...