"Mrs. Dalloway"

Vriginia Woolf added quite a few characters that we follow throughout the novel. I wanted to discuss Clarissa and Peter together and figure out from which perspective, hers or his, are we better able to see reality from.

I want to start with Clarissa because she in the protagonist in the story. I classify her as the person everyone loves to hate but still socializes with. She has superficiality oozing out of every pore of her body; she is a cold, loveless woman who lives in a dream rather than reality. There are so many instances within the novel which will back up this characterization. One such example would be when she was in the flower shop and the car passed by the window. The car held some unknown important figure and when it passed by the flower shop she immediately stood up straighter and gave herself a look of importance and nobility. Her social status was so important to her that she felt it necessary to make herself look important to whoever was in the car. Another example would be when someone brought up the death of Septimus at her party she was extremely disgruntled. She couldn't understand why someone would bring that up! She even went as far as to think that his death was a statement about her party! Any normal person wouldn't have this train of thought but she did! Getting on to the subject of being loveless, Clarissa hasn't been truly in love since she was with Sally. Sally was the only person Clarissa loved with enthusiasm and since then Clarissa has only been living a lie. She and her husband barely see each other and she is okay with this; she would rather spend her time alone with her past thoughts and memories of happiness. Her poor husband tried everything to please her yet it never works. So this, to me, is being so loveless and cold towards the person you are meant to love and cherish. Clarissa has only a few true friends and Peter happens to be one of them.

Peter is one of only two characters who we can actually trust in the novel. When we see the world through his eyes his interpretation of everything is unclouded by illusions, unlike Clarissa's. He is the one character that Clarissa feels vulnerable around which brings out a side of Clarissa which shows how weak and unhappy she is. He is the exact opposite of her in every possible way, he is perceptive, honest, and he doesn't hold his society in high regard. I would classify him as the character everyone wants to know more about due to his likeable personality.

So from this alone it should be really easy to figure out that Peter is the one character we can trust. He states things the way they are and doesn't fuss around with trying to be proper. I feel that he is one of the few characters that we can feel any emotion over since he is, for a lack of a better word, normal. So, I'll wrap this up by saying that spotting the person to trust in the novel is simple and almost from the get go you can tell it's Peter

"Mrs. Dalloway"

This was one of the more complex reads I had to get through! The whole novel takes place in a single day!! It blew my mind that a person could actually write that much about one day that leads up to a party. As soon as I started reading it though I understood how Virginia Woolf could pull this feat off.

The writing style of this novel caught me off guard at first because I felt like it was hard to follow, but then after a few pages I got the hang of it. Everything is described with so much detail that it is easy to lose track of who is narrating and what is going on. There was literally quite a few pages about a plane writing words in the sky. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal to us, but back then it was this brand new thing that captured everyone's attention and the novel allows us to realize this. Before the plane captured the attention of everyone, a car had! Yes, a car, it was described as being a very fancy car that might have held one of the royal family within it!! It had everyone speculating and acting different. I felt that the car was described and brought up so many times within a few pages; it actually got annoying after a little bit. But that's Virginia Woolf's writing style I guess, it might also be the fact that she was suffering from mental illness and she thought that this was a work of pure art.

Having insight into what the various characters were thinking was interesting. You'd be looking at everything through the view of one person and then it would switch to someone else completely different! One example of that would be in the park when the little girl ran into Rezia's leg. We first saw it from Peter's point of view as an onlooker and then it switched to Rezia's point of view. It allowed us to see how both people assessed the situation and how they reacted. It is a good way to understand the characters a bit more when you are able to look at them through the eyes and/or thoughts of someone else. Even though sometimes you can become confused as to who is the narrator at a given point in time.

I personally felt that reading this novel once is enough! I love reading novels but I don't want to try and sit through this novel with its extreme description of everything that is going on. Don't get me wrong, I sort of enjoyed reading this novel, it's just not a piece of literature I would have chosen myself. But I feel grateful for having the opportunity to be able to broaden my literature scope and read something I normally wouldn't have!

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Okay, so I've spent the past couple of days trying to type up another post about this novel. At first I was going to do something about the asylums back in the 1960's but then I decided not to, then I tried to write about Bromden's ride to power but I felt I kept wondering in so many directions with it, then tonight I sat down and I was determined to write about how this Kesey wanted the asylum to be like a microcosm but I didn't feel like this was what I wanted to write on. Now, I have come to the conclusion that all I've wanted to do the whole time is write about two of the more memorable characters and how they fit into the novel. The topic is so general so I'll be able to branch off or get more specific depending on which character I am talking about.



I felt it is only right to start with the protagonist Chief Bromden. The whole novel is through this man's eyes and we are able to see his transformation to becoming free again. One thing that I found very interesting would be the fact the Kesey made this man mute for most of the novel and I have to say that this adds to Bromden's characterization. He did this to not only allow us a better insight into the whole asylum, it was also symbolic of how the native people were ignored and treated unfairly by the government (Bromden is Native American). I personally rooted for him to get better during the whole novel! Bromden is just one of those characters that you can get attached to and truly sympathize for! This poor man hasn't talked in 20 years because people underestimated him and he decided to allow these people to win. I also thought the addition of Bromden's thoughts of the combine ( symbolic of government power) and the fog (what happens to him after EST) added to the complexity of the novel. Then being able to watch his transformation slowly but surely, due to McMurphy, was something that I enjoyed thoroughly, even though this positive change in Bromden meant a negative change in McMurphy.



Now I want to talk about the infamous Randle Patrick McMurphy. This man is the typical macho guy who wants everyone to know who he is. When first introduced into the novel you can tell that he is going to cause trouble one way or another. Sure enough he does cause a bunch of trouble and issues for the ward; but this isn't what I want to talk about in regards to McMurphy. I want to talk about the way the other guys in the ward looked up to him, to them he was a Christ-like figure who was going to save them from the hell that they called the ward. He was their hero and on an even more personal level he was like a father. If you look past the rough and tumble exterior you are able to see what a softy this man really is. He helped all the men on the ward in some way, shape or form and most of them appreciated him. He did and said things that they wanted to do and say but were too afraid to. McMurphy was a "martyr to them" and they never forgot that even during the tough times. The person he helped out most of all, though, would be Bromden. McMurphy was the only one that got Bromden to talk and soon after that he helped Bromden regain his power and strength (even though his own was diminishing). Bromden actually compared him with his father and held McMurphy in such high regard.

Though Bromden's story has a happy ending, unfortunately, McMurhpy's doesn't. As Bromden regained his strength, McMurphy was losing his. The ward was slowly breaking him down and his sudden violent out lash at Nurse Racthed sealed his fate. McMurphy had a lobotomy and never recovered from it because Bromden, after McMurphy was returned to the ward, smothered him with a pillow until he died. In Bromden's eyes it was a mercy killing and I have to agree with this. The wild, women loving, Nurse Racthed hating, mischievous McMurphy was never going to return.

So I feel as though I have rambled on quite a bit about these two diverse characters, and yes I know I left out various bits of information. I wanted to focus on certain aspects of the character instead of the whole picture, if I had gotten into more detail you'd be here forever trying to read what I had to say about them. I'm going to end off this post by saying that I hope everyone will get a chance to read this amazing book someday!






McMurphy and Bromden portrayed in the movie of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

This novel, written by Ken Kesey, is a good read, though I feel like sexism against women is extremely prevalent. It might be the fact that this book was written during the women's movement and Kesey was expressing his views on the subject. I feel it is necessary to get some background on the feminist movement to try and dive into the time period this novel was written in and see what exactly was going on.


What I uncovered was that the 1960's was when the second wave of the feminist movement was in full swing. Women were fighting for political and cultural equality that was being denied to them by the rest of the population; they wanted discrimination to end so that they could live their lives the same as men did. Protests and lawsuits were two of the ways that they got their message out. Many women fought long and hard so that their voices could be heard and something could actually be done. So with this in mind I want to discuss the sexism within this book and tie it into Kesey's possible views on the subject.


In the novel we are handed a bunch of male characters, that are in an insane asylum for various reasons, and only a few females characters (with most of them being in positions of power). It becomes clear that the women who are in power are characterized as being "mental castrators" who belittle the men into thinking that they are powerless against women. One such woman would be the infamous nurse Ratched, all of the men on her ward are afraid of her and her ability to "mentally castrate" the men. We, the readers, immediately cast her as the antagonist and hold negative views against her the whole time. Whereas the prostitutes that enter the book are cast as dumb, easy women who can't think for themselves. These opposing views of women can be interpreted as Kesey's personal view on the feminist movement. We, the readers, can take this and branch of into a bunch of different assumptions as to what the juxtaposition of these two types of women, present within the novel, symbolize. The way that I want to run with it would be that Kesey was telling us that there can only be two types of females; the ones that are in power and hurt the male ego or the ones that are so dumb they'll believe anything you tell them.


Personally, it feels like Kesey was probably afraid of women gaining the same rights and equality he possessed. There was so much talk about mental castration within the novel that I have come to believe that he felt that his manhood would be threatened by women who would gain power during this time. Many people would have been in agreement as well. A lot of men felt that women should stay in their traditional role of staying at home and dealing with the kids. Now-a-days this way of thinking isn't so prevalent within our society, but traces of this view are still around.


To sum everything up, I would have to say that Kesey had injected his own views on the feminist movement into this novel while writing it. While the novel is a very good read, the readers have to have background information on the time period it was written so that they will be able to understand the symbolism behind it all. I would recommend this novel to anyone who has the time to actually enjoy the novel as I have.