A part of the 20th century (born in 1996)

When it comes to Antoinette, Christophine seems like the only thing in the world that actually cares about her. Whenever Antoinette has no one to turn to, she's always there for her. She organizes play dates for her, helps her out with her issues with ex-slaves, tries to protect her from other white people, and serves as her defacto mother. Christophine as a motherly figure is probably the most telling about her relationship with Antoinette. When Antoinette's mother started actively pushing herself away from Antoinette and focused more on her little brother Pierre, Christophine stepped in to replace her. This relationship between Christophine and Antoinette even continues all the way into Antoinette's marriage. Once Antoinette is married to Rochester, Christophine immediately knows that he only married her for the money and as such, shows contempt for him and tries to save Antoinette from her marriage by trying to persuade her to leave him. Whenever Antoinette is having t...

Meursault in The Stranger is one of the weirdest protagonists we've read about (other than Gregor) so far and that is mostly due to Meursault's lack of emotion in all situations. If the book was written in third person, then the lack of emotion would seem a bit more plausible, but Camus writes the book in first person, a point of view that is supposed to give us the most insight of the protagonist, yet all we get from Meursault are his physical reactions to various stimuli in the world. The only "emotion" we get from his is detachment as can be seen in various situations like at his mother's funeral, when he kills the Arab, etc. Maybe the reason for this detachment is because of Meursault's attempt to conform to his own interpretation of society. Meursault's interpretation and maybe even Camus's is that detachment is a symptom of the modern world and that everyone who lives in it, practices it. Throughout the story, character's are i...

When Gregor first wakes up in his insect body, the first thing he thinks about is work. He completely disregards his disgusting form and tries to get ready for work. This shows that work is very important to Gregor and is a huge part of his identity as the money-earner for the family. This might be a stretch, but I think that the reason Gregor had such a minimal reaction to his transformation is because he had already lost all dignity and self-respect for himself and as such, he is okay with seeing himself as a cockroach considering how he already saw himself as such a lowlife. This lowlife attitude can be seen when he thinks about himself when he talks about his family. Even though his dad is a lazy bum who leeches off Gregor's paycheck despite being healthy, Gregor seemingly has no qualms with him. Even when Grete starts treating Gregor like a pet cockroach, feeding him moldy foods, he still appreciates her greatly. No matter how horribly his family treats him, he always v...

Through class discussions, I can tell that the overall opinion of Brett is overwhelmingly negative, for good reasons. She has been an asshole treating men throughout the story poorly by leashing them along without fulling committing to either one. In the middle of a fling with one guy, she easily moves on to another person. By today's standards, this type of relationship is immoral as every one of Brett's relationships are one sided. The men are deeply in love and stay faithful while Brett shows no commitment leading the men to act like tortured souls. It is perfectly reasonable to find aversion to this because a lot of people are taught to stay faithful to their partner. But in defense of Brett, I think its the men who pursue Brett at more fault than Brett herself when it comes to her dysfunctional relationships because Brett loves being non-exclusive while all the other men just want her for themselves. I think open relationships are perfectly fine as long as b...

When Robert Cohn was first introduced by Jake in the first chapter, it seemed as if Jake disliked Robert. In the first paragraph, Jake outright downplays Cohn's middleweight boxing champion status and even goes as far to say that he was suspicious that Cohn had even got the title. He also described Cohn as a pushover who was easily controlled by women that were nice and showed him attention. But even with these negative descriptions of Cohn, he is still Jake's "Tennis friend" with the two of them interacting quite a bit in the book so far, seemingly cordially. But I think there is a characteristic of Cohn that stops his and Jake's relationship at the acquaintance line, without ever passing into the true friendship zone. That characteristic is Cohn's un-manliness. Jake tries to be as manly as possible. Having fought through WWI, he was left with no choice by his peers but to turn away all feminine qualities and tough everything out. Tragically, he left the wa...

When she was young, Clarissa Dalloway seemed to have a pretty active romantic life where two men where trying to marry her, Richard Dalloway and Peter Walsh. In the book, Clarissa revisits her past a lot, often thinking about all the choices she made and if she had made the right ones, especially choices regarding the choice of marrying Richard or Peter. Each man serve a different role. Peter is the guy she seems genuinely happy to talk to since he is always able to give her something interesting to talk and think about. To me there seems to be a sort of deeper understanding and passion between the two characters, as can be seen in the way Peter keeps thinking back at Clarissa. But the two of them were a bit too close and Clarissa felt that she would feel suffocated if she married Peter. Richard on the other hand is someone who doesn't seem like he's able to stimulate Clarissa in any way. He seems like an awkward teenager on a first date whenever he is around her and so a deep ...