Go home Meursault--you're drunk

I think that one of the reasons why there is so much conflict in the sixth chapter of The Stranger is because Meursault is drunk, and this impairs his ability to think clearly about what he is doing. He is no longer the passive, nonchalant character from the first few chapters but instead displays emotion as he forgets to put on his apathetic act. 

Aside from the fact that Meursault tells us that he drank tons of wine during their beach picnic, there are other hints that Meursault is not in his usual state of mind as he has been before.

In this chapter, for the first time we see Meursualt taking sides in an argument instead of just passively watching and calling things "interesting." Perhaps being drunk makes Meursault forget the fact that he's supposed to be "emotionless." Not reacting to things emotionally must take a great deal of thought and effort, and in his sober state Meursault is used to being able to filter out his emotions completely. But, once he is drunk he is no longer able to filter things normally.

This is evidenced through the fights with the men who follow Raymond and Meursault to the beach. Meursault seems to have some sort of emotional investment in the fights because instead of standing back and not fighting he takes a side with Raymond. This is a first, because in other conflicts he has never really intervened but merely watched (e.g. when Raymond beats his girlfriend and when the old man beats his dog). In the beach fights, though, Meursault looks out for Raymond by yelling "Look out, he's got a knife!". This not only shows that he was on Raymond's side, but that he was somehow emotionally invested enough to want to warn Raymond of the weapon.

Also, the way Meursault describes the beach and the hot summer day is very surreal and almost dream-like. This is because he was drunk and not seeing the world as clearly as before. He comments on the fact that he has a piercing headache and can't stand the hot sunlight. Maybe this was because he was dehydrated and the alcohol in his system also caused him to get sick. (I looked this up, and apparently drinking too much on a hot summer day makes you more likely to get heat illnesses.) 

Perhaps Meursault's drunkenness is the reason why he chooses to shoot the man four more times than necessary. This is also an example of Meursault feeling emotion because he says that the four shots created unhappy emotions for him: "Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. "

All the same, I don't think that the fact that he was drunk makes his crime any less serious. It would be false to say "Oh, well. He was drunk so he didn't actually mean to kill anybody." What I do think is interesting, though, is seeing this second side to Meursault where he shows at least a small bit of emotion (fear/judgement/unhappiness). 

Reading books to read minds

I was listening to NPR a week or so ago and I heard a Story of the Day podcast that was about the study that found that reading literature makes you more socially adept by enhancing your ability to perceive the thoughts and feelings of people around you. I thought immediately of The Sun Also Rises.

The study compared what they called popular fiction novels, books with predictable plots and common tropes, and literary fiction which tends to be more focused on complex character development and hidden meanings. Many times, readers have to infer what's going on in literary novels. 

The scientists found that the people who read literary fiction did better on tests of mind reading, and the group who read popular fiction did about as well as people who hadn't read anything at all. The explanation for this was that reading books is like immersing yourself in a new world of social interaction, and that even though it is a fictional one you still go through some of the same analysis and thinking when reading literary fiction that you do when interacting in real life.

I think Ernest Hemingway is a good example of this kind of literary fiction that makes you think critically about human interaction. The Sun Also Rises is a great example of a book that requires much inference to be fully understood.  The iceberg effect that Hemingway uses means that you almost have to read the book twice to get all the references and small details that are important to how the story unfolds.

The Sun Also Rises is a book that revolves completely around social interaction with ironic subtext that the reader has to decipher.  Jake's narration gives more background understanding and also interprets the conversations that he has with the people around him. One good example of this is all of the meaning behind Jake's last words of the novel: "Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?". Throughout the entire book, the reader has to interpret Jake's narration to figure out how exactly his judgements and biases influence the story. 

Perhaps this was one of the reasons why I didn't like the book very much when we first began reading. I didn't pick up on all of the small details, and I couldn't understand how a story like this would be interesting. It seemed to have little plot aside from various relationship conflicts and drinking at bars. After all the class discussions, though, the book became more interesting as we made connections and inferred what was going on in the story.

I personally think that it's cool to think that after reading literary fiction we're better at mind reading. It almost makes me want to go out and read a bunch of literary fiction just so that I can be a mind reader and (if I may reference Mrs. Dalloway just once more) be able to know people by instinct like Clarissa Dalloway felt she could.

If Bill Gorton was a taxidermist

Bill Gorton would probably make ridiculously ironic stuffed animals if he ever decided to become a taxidermist. He would also probably come up with most of these ideas while drunk. (Picture taken on the Uni German trip)

We walked down the St. Martin Strasse on a chilly June evening. The road split into two. One road was surrounded by small shops. The other had mostly hotels and restaurants. 

"We are smack dab in the middle of tourist central."  Brigitte pointed to the shops. "Better pull out your wallet because we're expected to pay some big bucks here. Garmisch doesn't pull anything over on me."

We walked on.

"Here's a fun tourist shop," Brigitte said. "Want to buy anything? Perhaps a stuffed hare?" 
"Come on," I said, "You can't seriously be buying into that tourist trap."
"Suppose they're hiding drugs in in it," Brigitte joked.
"Whoever made it was probably on those drugs," I said. 
"I want one," said Brigitte, "Just one winged bunny. And it even smokes!"
"For 50 euros? Hell no."
"Think of what it'd mean to have one though. You pay for their drug addiction. They give you a centerpiece to scare the neighbors." 
"It'd probably scare customs more than your neighbors."
"Fine. Have it your way. Doomed to a life of mediocre decor. Don't say I didn't warn you."

We walked on. 

Woolf Withdrawal

I'm going through Woolf withdrawal.

It's painful.

For the time being, I have to tear myself away my love for Mrs. Dalloway and Virginia Woolf, because if I don't then I will never be able to enjoy Hemingway's writing. My brain still wants to read in "Virginia Woolf" mode and hasn't yet adjusted to the simpler "Ernest Hemingway" mode.

This mostly manifests itself when reading Hemingway's short short sentences. After reading the long and beautifully metaphoric Woolf sentences, Hemingway's seem abrupt and choppy. It doesn't read the same. It takes almost more concentration to get used to these short sentences, which is ironic seeing as it should be easier to read because of its simplicity. 

But I think the thing I miss most about Woolf is the way she wrote her characters. She wrote the book almost from their point of view. We were privy to the innermost thoughts of all the characters, even some random Londoners walking down the street with Mrs. Dalloway. The story switches perspectives many times, giving us a vast amount of information on what the characters thought about the world, their place in it, and the people around them. 

The one thing that I find interesting about Hemingway versus Woolf is that Woolf used hardly any talking in her novel, and if there was it sometimes wasn't obvious at first glance who was having the conversation. In The Sun Also Rises, the majority of the book is either conversation between characters or thoughts from Jake.

These thoughts from Jake, a highly sarcastic and ironic narrator whose cynicism can be quite annoying at times, are interesting. But I want to know what Brett's thinking. I think Brett's thoughts would be fascinating to read because she has such a flamboyant public personality, and I wonder what her private self would look like. There are also so many other characters who would be interesting to read about from their perspective--characters like Robert Cohn, Frances, and Bill. Maybe even the policeman who smiled at Jake in the bar would have an interesting tidbit to add to the story, much like Scrope Pervis in Mrs. Dalloway.

I find Hemingway's writing style and his "iceberg principle" to be annoying after reading a book like Mrs. Dalloway. I don't just want to know about the surface interactions like the chit chat at the bar. I want to know what's beneath all that--what's going on in their heads at the bar (although, perhaps it's nothing coherent anyway if they're drunk). 

Mrs. Dalloway is a puzzle in book form. All the pieces of the story are laid out for us--scrambled around on the pages. It's up to us to piece them together as we read through each character's thoughts. The Sun Also Rises, on the other hand, is a riddle where a small amount of important information is available, and the reader must interpret and figure out a meaning for themselves by using what's present in the text. 

I really want to be able to like The Sun Also Rises, but so far I think I prefer the puzzle to the riddle. Hopefully as I get used to not reading Virginia Woolf I'll be able to appreciate Hemingway more than I do now.

Relationship status: It's complicated

The relationships between the characters in "The Hours" and Mrs. Dalloway are complicated but fascinating. 
(Click to enlarge and get a better picture)

The one thing that I thought the movie "The Hours" did an amazing job with was connecting all the characters to create both a new story while still alluding to the themes and ideas from Mrs. Dalloway. The story was so interesting because it took bits and pieces from many different characters and then melded them all together to make a powerful story.

 The film also did this through the way it was filmed and edited to make jumps in time between the stories. I loved the opening sequence where you see all the characters waking up and getting ready for the day with parallels such as the vases of flowers and washing their faces.

After today's fascinating discussion about characters in "The Hours" and Mrs. Dalloway and how they relate to each other, I drew up this weird diagram to illustrate the various connections going on between the film and the book. (Yeah, I'm that nerd that has to color-code everything educational.)

The circles are the four stories that are woven together by the movie "The Hours," and the main characters of these stories are placed around their respective circles (check the key for the color coding). The arrows drawn all over the diagram look messy at first glance, but they actually do mean something. The arrows connect the characters from the different stories based on how the characters are variations of the original Mrs. Dalloway characters. 

For example, the arrows coming from Virginia Woolf point to both Septimus and Clarissa Dalloway. This is because Woolf was similar to Septimus in that she had mental problems and struggled with depression--eventually taking her own life like Septimus did. She's also connected to Clarissa Dalloway because Clarissa's character's thoughts could be similar to how Woolf thinks when she isn't struggling with mental issues like Septimus. Also, Woolf's marriage with Leonard is much like Clarissa and Richard's relationship. 

I'll spare you the long-winded explanation of each and every character's connections, and instead I'll just give you explanations of the ones I find most interesting.

Laura --> Rezia 

Laura connects to Rezia because they are both trophies from the war. In both cases, their husbands married them immediately after the war, and it seems that they weren't necessarily wed out of love for each other but instead out of a desperation to return to civilian life. Septimus marries Rezia because he's trying to get back the human emotions that he lost when he got PTSD in WWI. Dan married Laura because the thought of having the perfect little wife and a perfect middle class life had haunted him all throughout the war, and Laura was the first woman to come to his mind after the war. 

Dan Brown --> Holmes

Dan is similar to Holmes in the way that they both have no clue what depression is. Both are just happily leading their lives, and if anyone is struggling with issues such as depression they don't understand it. In Mrs. Dalloway this leads to Holmes giving Septimus some bad advice on how to cope with PTSD, and in "The Hours" Dan can't even tell that his own wife is extremely depressed.

Vanessa Bell --> Holmes

Vanessa Bell is clueless about her sister's depression--like Holmes was clueless about Septimus--and is almost scared of her sister. Instead of letting Virginia talk about her problems, Vanessa ignores her and skirts around the subject of Virginia's mental issues until she is finally confronted in the dramatic kissing scene. 

Louis --> Peter

The scene between Louis and Clarissa Vaughn has many parallels to the scene in Mrs. Dalloway between Peter and Clarissa Dalloway. Louis barges in way too early for the party, and when Clarissa V. is asking about his life he says that he has found true love once more. Later, Clarissa breaks down crying once they start talking about Richard. This is very similar to the scene in Mrs. Dalloway where Peter comes in declaring his love for someone in India, and then he starts crying as Clarissa D. awkwardly sits next to him fixing her dress. 

A playlist for Mrs. Dalloway

A film's soundtrack is essential to the quality of the movie. For example, I would consider The Great Gatsby to be only an "ok" movie because of the disappointing soundtrack (I don't want to hear rap in a film set in the 1920s--I want jazz.), whereas I love the How To Train Your Dragon movie because its soundtrack is amazing.

Thus, I think one of the reasons why I found The Hours to be such a moving film was because of the soundtrack. I loved the cello and the piano solos with the orchestra in the background. It was beautiful melancholy music, and the tone it set was perfect for the film's plot. 

I do listen to more than just soundtracks, though. To feed my taste for music I always have the radio on, and yesterday as I was driving home the song "Summertime Sadness" was playing. I listened to the lyrics and I thought that it would be a perfect song to describe Clarissa Dalloway at her party. Then I started thinking about what the theme songs for the other characters in the novel would be, and eventually I came up with the playlist below. 

What songs would you have in your Mrs. Dalloway playlist?

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Clarissa -- "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey

"Summertime Sadness" starts with the singer preparing for a party by fixing her dress and hair, but afterwards the song quickly turns almost suicidal--much like Clarissa did at her party in Mrs. Dalloway. Also, the lines "I just wanted you to know, that, baby you're the best," are eerily similar to Virginia's suicide note in the film The Hours.

Septimus -- "Believe" by The Bravery

The lyrics of "Believe" by The Bravery almost perfectly match Septimus' thoughts throughout the book. The speaker in the song "Believe" is questioning why he's alive if he has nothing to believe and is "living just to breathe." Similarly, Septimus struggled with articulating exactly why he had given up hope for humanity, and in the end it ate away at him so much that he saw suicide as his only option. (Arcade Fire's Wake Up also applies to Septimus' situation.)

Peter -- "Back Then" by Julian Smith

There are countless songs about regrets and wishing to relive the past, but I think this one in particular fits with Peter's situation and his obsession with Clarissa.

Ms. Kilman -- "Kiss with a Fist" by Florence + The Machine

Ms. Kilman doesn't have any true friends--even Elizabeth isn't much of a friend to her. Instead, she has Clarissa as an enemy, and I think that she thrives off of her hate for Clarissa just like Clarissa loves to hate Kilman (for an interesting argument on this see Chas' blog post). If Clarissa can love to hate Kilman, then perhaps Kilman can love to hate Clarissa. In fact, Kilman defines her self-worth by comparing herself to the ungodly sinner of Clarissa Dalloway. Perhaps Clarissa and Kilman see their interactions like this song--mentally bouncing insults off each other until something explodes. Because perhaps a kiss with a fist is better than none, and an enemy is better than being alone.

Richard -- "San Francisco" by The Mowgli's

When we read about Richard declaring his life to be a miracle, I think I imagined Richard skipping along extremely happy at the thought of going home to tell Clarissa he loved her. Of course Richard is much too dignified to skip, but I like to think that if he had known this song then he would have, out of his excitement to tell Clarissa he loved her, at least whistled the tune as he walked home from Lady Bruton's.

A lesson in happiness

Last week, an episode of "This American Life" concluded with a quote about happiness that I think can be applied to the lives and thoughts of many of the characters in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. 

"Now, there is no obvious connection between a person's happiness and the way he tells stories about himself. But I think there's a not-so-obvious one. When you insist [...] that you're both lucky and indebted to other people, well, you're sort of prepared to see life as a happy accident, aren't you? 

It's just very different than if you tell yourself that you simply deserve all the good stuff that happens to you. Because you happened to be born a genius or suffered so much or worked so hard-- that way of telling the story-- well, it's what you hear from every miserable bond trader at Goldman Sachs, or for that matter, every other a-hole who ever walked the earth."

Obviously, one can connect the second half of the quote to a certain "intolerable ass" in Mrs. Dalloway--Hugh Whitbread--who all characters see as an annoyance because he acts superior to everyone. 

But I think that the first half of the quote is an accurate description of why Richard Dalloway is the happiest character of the entire novel. Richard is content, and he considers himself lucky to be living like he is. Richard has everything he ever wanted, and in one particular point in the book is he in awe of the fact that his life turned out so well and that he was able to marry Clarissa.

"Indeed, his own life was a miracle; let him make no mistake about it; here he was, in the prime of life, walking to his house in Westminster to tell Clarissa that he loved her. Happiness is this, he thought." (114) 

Richard is also happy because he loves and is very proud of his daughter Elizabeth. "But he had his Elizabeth; he adored his Elizabeth." (111)

Richard's happiness and contentment spills over into his relationships with the people around him. Richard--unlike Clarissa, Sally, and Peter--is never described as self-centered or egotistical. Instead, his interactions with others are almost always genuinely friendly (with the exception of Hugh). For example, when Peter is brought up at Lady Bruton's lunch Richard immediately thinks about how much he likes Peter instead of hating him for being in love with Clarissa (104). 

In contrast to Richard, I don't think that the other characters of Peter, Clarissa, and Ms. Kilman are truly happy or content. They may have their small moments of happiness, but in the end they're all just judging each other and comparing themselves to the people around them. Peter judges Clarissa for being shallow, Clarissa is mad at Peter for being so critical, and Ms. Kilman hates Clarissa for flaunting her wealth. 

None of them are content either. Clarissa is obsessed with hosting parties to distract her from her depression and thinking about what her life would have been like had she chosen Peter, Peter is still not over Clarissa, and Ms. Kilman hates herself because she sees herself as poor and unattractive. They all think that they deserve more than they have, or that they aren't living life they way they wish they could--they're left feeling sorry for themselves and wondering if it's all really worth it. It's no wonder that they're unhappy.