The Peculiar Relationship Between Love and Growing Up

In Song of Solomon, it seems like love is what makes people grow up, both giving and receiving love. That is why some characters, namely Milkman, but also Ruth and Corinthians and Lena, do not seem to have grown up entirely.

Milkman is not "serious", so he is not grown up. He doesn't care about anythin but parties and running around with different girls, and he still lives with his family. It seems like love figures prominently in his life because he doesn't feel love towards anyone, including his parents and Hagar, and he has no direction like Guitar because he doesn't feel a lot of love towards a certain group of people (on a side note, it seems like Guitar's love for his people is what made him grow up--when he got involved in the Seven Days and in civil rights, he began to become more serious and felt he had a purpose in his life). However, he knows that he is not really living his life in a meaningful way--he says "his life was pointless, aimless, and it was true that he didn't concern himself an awful lot about other people. There was nothing he wanted bad enough to risk anything for, to inconvenience himself for"--and he wants to change that, so perhaps he is on the edge of becoming more adult (107).

One character who doesn't seem child-like at first glance but who had some child-like elements about her is Ruth. She loved her father desperately, and was not able to allow him to die, even when he wanted to. She loves Milkman, and is unable to let him live his own life and leave her. In this way she seems immature, because she clings to people who she is supposed to be able to let go eventually. Perhaps this is because she never received love from Macon. Macon is supposed to be her life partner--they are supposed to travel through life together, and even when their parents die and their children grow up they are supposed to have each other. But Ruth doesn't have that. She only receives coldness and hostility from Macon, and maybe the fact that she doesn't receive any love makes her unable to maturely accept that some of those whom she loves must leave her. In a way, this stops her from growing up.

One final interesting example of this is Corinthians. Corinthians was such a minor character that we didn;t really know whether or not she was invested in anythingin her life, or whether or not she loved anything, but since she wnet to college and came back and did nothing, and she never married, we can assume she never felt a great deal of love. She seems somewhat immature before she meets Henry Porter; she works as a maid, but she doesn't want her father to know because she is still afraid of him. She is unable to stand up for herself. After she meets Porter, though, she seems braver. After being at his house for the night, she walks back into the house with her hair loose, not caring if her family sees. She is more confident and content in her life, and thus more grown-up and less adolescent.

This idea is not supported by all of the characters in the novel, but it will be interesting to see whether or not Milkman grows up, and whether, when he does, if it was partially because he grew to love someone or something.

Milkman: The Eternal Adolescent

Milkman is an unusual protagonist because nothing in his own life seems to be a result of his own actions. Milkman does not really do things, things just happen to him. In a way, Milkman is a blank canvas where other people can paint their stories, and all of these stories come together to depict Milkman's life. After all, there are very few events. Milkman is born when the man jumps off the roof of No Mercy Hospital, presumably because his mother was so disturbed by the man's suicide that she went into labor (Even Milkman's birth seems to be a result of someone else's actions). There are few other events in which Milkman actually does anything. There is the scene when Freddie finds Ruth nursing Milkman, a scene that obviously made an impression on him, but since he was so small he was a something of a bystander. Milkman meets Pilate, Reba, and Hagar, but since he is with Guitar, he is a bystander in that interaction too. He hit his father, and that does seem to have some significance for him, but even then he doesn't seem to be central to the scene because the back-story between his father and his mother is so much more important.

Backstory makes up most the of the most interesting parts of the book. There is Macon's story about his relationship with Ruth and with Doctor Foster, and even though it is disturbing and may not be entirely true (since Macon probably tweaked it to make himself seem guiltless), it is certainly very interesting. Ruth's version of the story may even be more interesting because you can compare it to Macon's story and look at the discrepancies between them to understand the characters better. And Pilate's story is much more exciting that Milkman's. So, as we asked in class, why does Morrison tell Milkman's story rather than telling the stories of Macon, Ruth, and Pilate as if  they were actually happening rather than in the past? That would undoubtably make a great book. But Morrison seems interested not just in the stories, but also in how stories from the past affect the present, and how we are all caught up in an intricate web made up of the relationships of those who came before us.

Like all of us, Milkman is born into other people's worlds, and his character is partially defined by his parent's stories. He is a bystander in his own life as a child, because there are too many undercurrents that everyone else understands but that he does not. That is inevitable for children--they cannot understand their parent's relationships, and they are oblivious of the difficulties that their parents have faced in their relationship. Sometimes someone says something, and they can tell that what they said meant more that the actual meaning of the words, but they can't understand what that meaning is. When Milkman is nursing and Freddie comes in, he knows that something was shameful, but he doesn't really understand. This is a part of life. The interesting thing though, is that even though Milkman is now in his thirties, he never seems to be able to grow out of this. He is unable to take control of his life, and instead continues to act like an adolescent, living with his family, partying, having girlfriends but intention of marriage, and wasting his time working in a job he doesn't really enjoy because that was what was expected of him by his father. He has not created his own stories.

It's difficult to see how this will play out in the second part of the novel. If Morrison decides to make Milkman choose to create his own life, Milkman will not longer be a blank canvas--she will no longer able to show how stories of the past affect people's lives as easily as she has in the first chapters, and there will be less room in the story for the past anyway. But it would be nice to see Milkman take control of his life, to actually do something, and to grow up a little bit.

Antoinette in Eden

There are quite a few episodes in part one of Wide Sargasso Sea that seem to symbolize a kind of Eden that shelters Antoinette from the outside world. One is the out-of-the-way place that Antoinette plays in with Tia, and another is the garden at Coulibri. There is also the convent where she is given refuge after the family is driven out of Coulibri. All are isolated from society, and in these places race and class become less important issues, allowing people to focus on emotions.

The description of Antoinette's and Tia's friendship seems to fit the idea of a safe haven, or a kind of Eden, very closely. The girls meet at a bathing pool--"deep and dark green under the trees, brown-green if it had rained, but a bright sparkling green in the sun. The water was so clear hat you could see the pebbles at the bottom of the shallow part. Blue and white and striped red" (21). This setting is very beautiful, even magical, much like the garden at Coulibri where Antoinette also goes to seek refuge, which has a wall "covered in green moss soft as velvet" and was "large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible" (a specific reference to the actual garden of Eden) (20; 17). By the pool, Antoinette and Tia cook bananas and Tia sleeps. Antoinette sits in quiet contemplation, much as she does when she escapes to the garden to be by herself. She says "when I was safely home I sat close to the old wall at the end of the garden...and I never wanted to move again. Everything would be worse if I moved. Christophine found me there when it was almost dark, and I was so stiff she had to help me to get up" (21). Obviously, both places are places where she can think and be comforted. 

Unlike in the garden, however, the pool is also a playful place where Antoinette sometimes engages in childish competition with Tia. They are sheltered from the constraints of their society--in fact, neither of them every goes to the other's house, but at the pool they are able to be playmates. However, playful as this was initially, it becomes less fun once Antoinette calls Tia a "cheating nigger", bringing race, and serious and adult concept, into the conversation. Once this has been brought into their safe space, their backgrounds and their families close in on them and the safety of the place is ruined. This is similar to the time when Tia throws the rock at Antoinette; when both girls literally have their families and the entire cultural clash between the two races behind them, they are not friends.

The convent is not an Eden in its natural beauty, but it provides the same sort of refuge from cultural constraints, and it is interesting that while in the convent, race is hardly mentioned. Antoinette says that the first nuns that she met at the convent were "coloured women", but after that it is not clear who is colored and who is not. Even though it seems like most of the girls at the convent are white Creole, they seem to respect the black nuns and there is no distinction between white nuns and black nuns. At the convent she is able to have fun, even though she says that it was a "place of sunshine and death" (51). She describes the convent as such: "Everything was brightness, or dark. The walls, the blazing colours of the flowers in the garden, the nuns' habits were bright, but their veils, the Crucifix hanging from their waists, the shadow of the trees, were black. Thatwas how it was, light and dark, sun and shadow, Heaven and Hell..." (52). Although this seems like it would not really make a good refuge, it is actually similar to the other two places. In the garden at Coulibri Antoinette often felt sad and it was overgrown and wild. At the pool, darkness sometimes broke in when the outer world invaded. And yet all three places were refuges, and Antoinette was always hesitant to leave them. In fact, leaving them often meant going into a more uncomfortable place, like when she must leave the pool to go home in Tia's dress and meet the visitors, or when she must leave the convent and is inexplicably sad.

Together, these places seem to show that getting away from society is the way that Antoinette copes with the world and its difficulties. It also sets up problems for the next section. What will happen to Antoinette when she leaves her last available place of refuge, the convent, and must go out into society to find husband and a place in the "aristocracy" of the island or of England? 

The Joys of Ambiguities

The Stranger is the most interesting book that we have read so far in this class (for me at least), but for some reason I have been reluctant to write on it. Maybe it was simply because I was busy and didn't have any time to think about what I wanted to write about, but I think it was also partially because I didn't know what to think about it. But I think that that is why I enjoyed the book so much. I didn't know what to think, but the issues seemed to apply to our justice system and our choices about judgement, and so there were so many questions, so many different opinions that could be formed.

The Stranger is so interesting to me because it seems so current. The other books had issues that are still very relevant today; The Mezzanine showed that it is important to pay attention to the little things in life, Virginia Woolf's commentary on veterans and "shell shock" is obviously relevant to today's problems with post traumatic stress disorder, and The Metamorphosis gave insight into work and family relationships. Most of the books seem to have focused more on "matters of the soul" than on issues that have to do with the way society works. On second thought, though, that statement seems inaccurate. After all, the issues of shell shock and the problems that arose when people did not recognize it were very relevant to that time period, and they related to society and politics. Mrs. Dalloway also touched on social class and women's roles. But none of the other books were as modern as The Stranger. I read the other books with their context in mind, and the political issues that were presented were primarily issues of the time period in which the books were set. It was easy to forget that The Stranger was not set in the modern day. There were, of course, indicators--Algeria was still occupied by the French, and the legal system's emphasis on Christianity would probably not be acceptable today. Still, the issues in the book feel more current: we always have to judge people for crimes that they cannot explain satisfactorily, and whether or not we figure their morality in their own private lives into our judgement is a very important issue. In a way, thinking about The Stranger was like preparing for a debate on current issues. First you have to understand the issue, then you have to fight for one side.

The polarizing aspect of the book was the main thing that made it so interesting. We talked in class about how we mostly agreed on everything for the rest of the books, but that the issues in The Stranger were so ambiguous that lots of people had different opinions. Sometimes in class it was truly like a debate, and that was exciting. It also makes you think a lot more; when the "right" reaction to a certain character in a book is not clear, you have to spend a lot more time puzzling over it. This reminds me of the time when our Model UN team went to a conference on campus. I was part of the Human Rights Committee, and we were debating about human trafficking. At the beginning, the discussions were interesting, and there were some good insights, but the conversation eventually became dull because every one agrees that human trafficking is bad. There was no debate. There were no questions to be asked. Our discussions about the other books have been interesting, but not as interesting as this one because The Stranger is so confusing. To some people, it doesn't matter that Meursault doesn't cry at his mother's funeral, or that he doesn't appear to show any remorse about the Arab--these qualities are just part of his personality, and it is not an innately immoral personality. For others, Meursault is completely without morals or emotions, and that is not okay. In any case, it makes for an interesting debate, whether in class or while reading and thinking about the book, and a debate is always more fun.

Gregor's Disappearing Humanity

I like Kafka. I think he is the most interesting and humorous writer that we have read so far, even though his books are laden with dark themes. I like the strange surrealist nature of the book; the very first line brings you into a world where nothing is completely logical by our standards. The way that Kafka puts his sentences together is both humorous and surreal--he just gives you facts, and some of Gregor's thoughts, but the facts and thoughts are so bizarre that the sentences become humorous even though they aren't really. "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." There it is. It is a fact, and no one seems very interested in questioning it. So this makes it fun to read, but there are also deeper elements of the book that make it more thoughtful. One of the most interesting to me is Gregor's humanity.

Gregor's humanity is called into question from the very first page of the book, when he turns into a giant bug. This is a pretty big deal, but Gregor is still undeniably human. He has human thoughts an human worries about his family, his job, and how he can get out of bed. It does seem a bit weird that he doesn't worry more about becoming a giant bug, because most humans would be pretty disturbed, but he still just seems to have a little problem. It reminds me of the quote from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when Lupin says that "[James] called it my little furry problem" when speaking about his transformations into a werewolf. At the very beginning of the book, I feel like Gregor just has a "little furry problem", and under that he is still fully human.

Slowly, his situation becomes a little murkier. We can see that Gregor, even as a human, had some very insect-like qualities. He is focused on his job to the extreme, and is willing to work long hours for the benefit of his company and his family. He doesn't seem to have is own goals and desires, and is submissive to all those around him. He is also very isolated from human emotion; he is not isolated from human contact at all, since he is a traveling salesman, but even though he spends much of his time talking to strangers on his job, he spends his free time at his house reading a paper or studying train timetables. There is little evidence of family discussions during those times, and none of his family seem to really understand his except his sister. He also keeps his door locked when he sleeps, which seems an odd thing to do when staying in your own home with your own family. This isolation will increase once he turns into a bug, but it was already there before. These qualities are not inhuman, but they are not really normal either.

Additionally, Gregor stops being able to speak like a human over time--he is degenerating more a more into a bug. At first his family doesn't notice that there is anything wrong, but by the end of the first part no one can understand him anymore. This puts the reader in an interesting position; for us, Gregor's thoughts are perfectly understandable, but Gregor's family cannot tell that it is really him. So we see Gregor sympathetically, and it is more difficult to understand why his family is reacting by beating him back into his room.

Which brings up another interesting question. Does Gregor's family know that the bug is Gregor, or do they think that it is not Gregor and that it may very well have killed or eaten Gregor? It doesn't seem that they think he is Gregor; either they think that he is so far gone after his transformation that he no longer has any of Gregor's thoughts or feelings, or they think that the bug was never Gregor at all, because it would be difficult to beat your own child and treat him like an animal if you thought he could still be cured.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out later in the book. It seems like in every sentence, there is something that makes Gregor less and less human (for example, he finds it easier not to walk upright anymore), but what would Kafka be saying about life if he let Gregor degenerate into an insect psychologically? I don't think that theme would be a very positive one.

To Hell with Brett

I haven't posted anything about Hemingway in general yet, but I'm just going to dive into Brett. Oh, she is so confusing, pitiful, powerful, arrogant, immoral, annoying, funny, and most of all contradictory. I have a feeling that she is much more attractive to men than she is to women; it seems like most of the boys in class found her to be sympathetic, while the girls found her obnoxious. There is much more to her than meets the eye, as is typical with Hemingway's writing, but of course it is never revealed and so we never really understand her. I decided to flip through some webpages on her to see what I could find. So these aren't really cohesive arguments. They're just observations that helped me to understand her a little better.

• Brett Ashley was not modeled on Hemingway's current wife, Hadley Richardson. Instead, she was based on Lady Duff Twysden and Pauline Pfeiffer, who Hemingway would later go on to marry after divorcing Hadley. This creates a curious parallel between Brett and Hemingway himself. In The Sun Also Rises, Brett had already been married twice and was going to marry Mike as her third husband. She was also extremely unfaithful, going off with many different men. Hemingway married four women within a twenty-five year span, and was infatuated with others. Both characters fell in love easily, then fell in love again and felt bad that they had left whomever they loved first. Brett felt guilty about her many "conquests", and Hemingway said about Hadley, "I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her." An odd parallel for a man who cared so much about masculinity.
• The independence-loneliness paradox: Brett is extremely independent for her time. In the twenties, women were beginning to have more opportunities, but Brett takes this to the extreme. Of course, she doesn't work, so she is dependent on either her parents, an inherited fortune, or her husband, but she lives away from her husband, travels Europe, and seems to keep everyone under her control. Nevertheless, she is not happy being alone--she is almost afraid of loneliness. Her relationships with numerous men do not give her any lasting satisfaction or happiness. Jake says that she "cannot go anywhere alone." Her lifestyle is the epitome of the wandering lifestyle of the expatriates. She wanders from man to man as Jake and his friends wander from bar to bar and country to country.
• Brett is dangerous to men. She makes men wild about her, and does it even without trying. This poses a threat to the men of the story. They do not necessarily want to fall in love with her; Cohn calls her Circe, while Jake has many moments of feeling like it would be much easier for him if he was not in love with her. He says things like "To hell with Brett. To hell with you, Lady Ashley." Brett is also liberated and semi-androgynous, with masculine manners and vocabulary (chap) and a boyish haircut. It is interesting that Hemingway should combine these two aspects. Hemingway's presentation of Brett has led critics to describe her as a "bitch-goddess", a "woman who made castration her hobby", and a nymphomaniac. Clearly, his presentation of her is not particularly positive, and it is possible to conclude that Hemingway was an anti-feminist who saw danger in women gaining liberation. However, there are hints in the book that it is not quite this simple.

There are many more things to be said and understood about Brett, but that is as far as I am going to go right now. Brett and her relationships with Jake, Mike, Cohn, and Romero are so complicated that I'm sure you could write a book about her. Overall, I would say that though I don't personally like Brett, she adds a lot to the book and reveals interesting things about what Hemingway may have thought about the role of women in the twenties.

The Hours

I found that the movie The Hours was interesting, but not easy to watch. In one part, it was constantly switching between the three stories, making connections that you had to follow. This wasn't that hard to grasp and the way that the movie makers did it (with the different bouquets of flowers, for example) was creative and artistic. My main difficulty with the movie was how dark it was. As we discussed in class, the tone of the movie was significantly more depressing, starting from the very beginning where we see Virginia Woolf kill herself. As a whole , I think the reasons for this difference in tone are three-fold: first is the New York City setting as the backdrop for the Mrs. Dalloway story instead of the London backdrop of the book; second is the character of Richard, who seems to be a combined Peter, Septimus, etc; and third is the general depression and lack of zest for life of the characters as a whole.

So, the New York setting. I am a person who doesn't really like cities anyway, and in this movie New York was especially hostile and sad. The apartment building that Clarissa lived in was not as nice as Mrs. Dalloway's in the book, or even as nice as Clarissa's in The Hours. I pictured Mrs. Dalloway living in a kind of fancy hotel environment, and in the first scene you can see the grafitti on the walls of the builing and the iron gates that you have to open to get out of it. Because the filmakers set the movie in the winter, the harshness of the city is amplified. It is quite dark, with a blue tint rather than a gold one, making it seem sadder. The gray snow and the darkness of the interiors of the buildings, even the flower shop, also add to this feeling. The king of depressing settings is Richard's apartment. Frankly, it made me kind of queasy to see all of the piled up dishes and the shuttered windows and Richard in his robe and beanie cap just sitting there...Even though the book acknowledges that Septimus is deeply troubled and often thinks about death and other violent, dark things, his external environment is light and well-taken care of by his caring wife. Their walks in St. James's Park have a springlike quality to them, with children playing and women knitting. Their home, especially in the last scene before Septimus's suicide, seems warm and cozy. Richard's environment is much darker.

Richard's impact on the darkness of the story goes much further than his environment. He is called Richard (like Richard Dalloway), which brings to mind the stable, content husband of Mrs. Dalloway, who takes care of her and loves his daughter very much. However there are major parts of his character that belong to Septimus--namely the depression and the jumping out the window. There are also parts of his character that belong to Peter Walsh; he keeps up a steady stream of banter with Clarissa, yet he also seems to reveal to her parts of his character that he reveals to no one else. This character combination not only creates confusion, but also removes many of the characters who lightened the story from the scene. There is no Mr. Vaughn because he died, so there is no husband to take care of Clarissa and her daughter and to add an element of stability to the character's lives. There is also none of the serious playfulness (I know that's an oxymoron, but his attitude is difficult to describe) of Peter; no "Musing among the vegetables?", no impetuous declarations of love. In the movie there is just Richard, and some other male characters who don't seem to fit in quite anywhere. Virginia's husband might be considered a Richard figure, but I'll have to think about that one more.

Finally, there is the overall dysfunctional quality of all of the main characters. In a nutshell, all of them seem to be falling apart. Clarissa is freaking out about her party, about Richard, and about how everything in her life is trivial. Laura is completely depressed, can't even manage to make a cake, and then goes off to kill herself in a hotel room (although she never ends up doing it). Virginia is preoccupied with writing and her dark thoughts, and eventually ends up killing herself. It may not be nice, but I find it very difficult to be entirely sympathetic to people who are letting their lives go and who do not realize the value of it. I know that depression is a legitimate disease, but I still just want to say "pull it together and move on"! At various points in the movie, you could see the women and their lives just careening towards a breaking point...and it's not particularly fun to watch three train wrecks.

Overall, I feel that the movie took the darkness in the women's lives a little too far, by the end of the movie there was hope for them in their lives, and for others who sometimes feel as they did, but not much.

Septimus and Clarissa

Having just finished the part of the book where Septimus commits suicide, I’m having difficulty understanding where he fits into the story, and I wonder whether or not Rezia will reappear before the end of the book. His story seems unfinished and his place in the world that Woolf has created is unexplained. So why does Woolf include Septimus?

One reason we touched on in class is that Woolf included Septimus to provide a sane-insane comparison. This is too simplistic a reason; Woolf’s characters are too complex to be one thing or another--we cannot say that one character is “this”, and the other is “that”, to paraphrase Clarissa.

Other possible reason is that Woolf is trying to show how serious shell shock, or PTSD, actually was. Perhaps she believed that shell-shock was a real phenomenon that could entirely alter the lives of soldiers who come home from the war, despite the fact that most medical authorities of her generation dismissed the symptoms as weakness or cowardice. 

But what is the connection between Clarissa and Septimus? It seems like the two main characters should be connected in some way. Otherwise, why would you have two main characters? It’s possible that Woolf is making the point that Clarissa and Septimus are actually much more similar than they seem. Both of them feel trapped and oppressed: Clarissa by the disappearance of her own identity and her place in society, and Septimus by his memories of the war and his hallucinations. Clarissa questions the choices she has made in her life throughout the book. She wonders whether she has married the right man, or whether she could have lived her life in a more fulfilling way if she had tried. Septimus, meanwhile, questions the meaning of life in general. Finally, both are not fully engaged in the world at present. Clarissa is constantly reminiscing about her youth at Bourton and Septimus is caught up in his memories of Evans and the war. Perhaps Woolf is drawing a connection between the two characters to show the vestiges of insanity in the normal, respectable Mrs. Dalloway and the underlying sanity in Septimus. Perhaps she is blurring the borders of consciousness simply to show that borders are always blurred.

I hope Woolf ties up the loose ends of Septimus’s and Rezia’s story, and connects them concretely to Clarissa in some way. I can understand why she wouldn’t though, because then it would be more true to life. In life, suicide is almost never explained in full, and the stories of people who commit suicide are often never fully understood; perhaps Woolf will take this route and leave us all waiting for an explanation that will never be provided.

Mrs. Dalloway vs The Mezzanine

At the very beginning of our class discussions of Mrs. Dalloway, we discussed whether it was more or less difficult to read than The Mezzanine. My first impression was that it was far easier. Mrs. Dalloway flows in a way that The Mezzanine doesn’t; even though the sentences in Mrs. Dalloway jump from one idea to the next confusingly, and throw you into the story without giving you backstory, they seem less complex. The absence of footnotes also makes Mrs. Dalloway flow better—although the tangential footnotes in The Mezzanine are an important part of the book as a whole, they do interrupt the story itself.

As I have continued to read Mrs. Dalloway, I have found that it is more difficult to follow at some points than I thought when I first began. The first few pages were easy compared to the section on pages 55-57 about the solitary traveler.  The passage begins with the nurse who Peter Walsh sits by in the park: In her grey dress, her hands indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of sky and branches.” This part works for me. I can even see what Woolf means, so she is succeeding in giving me a better idea of character. Woolf continues “The solitary traveler, haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of great hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the ride.” Woolf drifts off into a lengthy an philosophical description of “the solitary traveler”, and I am lost. This section is just as tangential as Baker’s footnotes; it interrupts from the main story, but probably gives some in depth examination of life, character, or plot that is difficult to understand. In a way, Virginia Woolf’s story can be even more difficult to understand than Baker’s.

Nevertheless, I find that Woolf’s story is much more enjoyable. I look forward to reading it, while pushing through The Mezzanine was a struggle. Neither style of writing can be considered easy to read. Mrs. Dalloway is in no way less philosophical than The Mezzanine; if anything, it is more so. However, Woolf addresses character as if she is providing you with little snapshots of people, and this makes all the difference. Although it seems strange to liken a famous literary novel to a tabloid magazine, the tiny descriptions of characters like Scrope Purvis, Mr. Bowley, and Maisie Johnson are very similar to the photographs of stars going about their daily lives that are found on the first few pages of magazines like People and OK!. These magazines are not high literature, but they are interesting (at least for a little while) because people like to know about other people.  We all like to know how other people are doing in their lives, and most people like gossip.  Virginia Woolf is onto something with her idea that character is more important, and the snapshots of character that she provides make Mrs. Dalloway far more interesting, despite the lack of action or excitement.

What Makes Art?

In The Mezzanine, Baker is clearly making the point that the trivial things in life are important, that they make up the bulk of everyday experience. To do this, he makes Howie ponder many of the objects that he encounters in the course of his lunch hour. Of course, Howie wouldn’t have the time to ponder all of the experiences that make up his lunch hour in such depth as he rides up an escalator. He would not have been able to take everyday objects out of context (straws, ties, shoelaces) to think about how they were invented and their particular attributes that he likes or dislikes. However, in his book, Baker can take the objects out of context and make the point that even though they are things that are around us everyday, they are art. Baker not only suggests that trivial things matter, but art is all around us all the time even though we don’t usually notice it.

    So, my question is, are trivial objects taken out of context really art? The Oxford dictionary’s first definition of art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”. The objects that Baker talks about are not paintings or sculptures, but they are human inventions that required skill and imagination to create. If people appreciated these seemingly unartful objects for their beauty and emotional power, then perhaps they are art (which is the point that Baker makes). For most of us, everyday objects probably aren’t art, and maybe we would feel happier about our lives if we saw every little thing as a creative effort worthy of our attention.

    But then, the idea of taking objects out of context brings to mind modern art. For me at least, much of modern art is very obscure. It requires time and effort to understand modern art (any art actually, but modern art is notoriously difficult to decipher). Modern art is an experiment. So is all art valuable? To paraphrase Mr. Mitchell, people hang a urinal on the wall and call it art. According to Baker’s ideas, it is art, and should be appreciated for its beauty and functionality. But I don’t know. There are many ways to justify the idea that all art is valuable; people are trying new things, making you think about things a different way, taking you out of your comfort zone. But I still have reconciling the ideas of art and everyday items. I do not think I could see the beauty of a urinal, even if it was hanging on a solid white wall in a gallery, just as I do not see the beauty and usefulness of a spatula every time I make a fried egg. Maybe I should look closer, but really, there are other things I'd rather spend my time on.