Love in the Time of Darkness (1984 Pt 1 Ch 8- Pt 2 Ch 5)

(In which Winston finds love...or at least sex...or at worst sex and someone who makes him feel differently than he normally does)

This next section of the novel begins with more detail in regard to the society's "values", as they may be loosely termed.

Leftover from previous chapters:  I still find the differences between the two castes to be fascinating.  The Party is kept under strict rules at all times.  The Proles are given few, if any, rules as long as they maintain their patriotism.  The Party is given exclusive rights to the possession and consumption of alcohol which is manufactured by Big Brother.  The Proles are given exclusive rights to possession and consumption of pornography which is manufactured by big brother.  I suppose that both are made to keep each caste compliant.  That alcohol "cheers" the members of the Party so they don't feel as closed in and oppressed, I suppose.  The pornography, I guess, keeps the Proles titillated and encourages breeding which creates more workers.

Chapter eight begins with the information that the Party is pretty much required to be engaging in communal activities when not working, eating or sleeping.  "Enforced" community participation is ultimately another way to figure out who is loyal and who is not.

"...to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous.  There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity."

Ownlife would generally bring out the Thought Police after you...as would walking home by a different route.

Another way the Proles were pacified was by the institution of "The Lottery", which is rather identical to our own lottery systems.  In the world of Big Brother the prizes were imaginary, but kept the potentially unruly Proles happy by thinking of how one day they'd be living the good life.  Sounds very familiar.  Not that I'm saying the Lotteries in our world are imaginary, but I do wonder if they serve a very similar purpose among the lower class.  When I was at my poorest, for all intents and purposes homeless, a lot of people I knew spend about as much money on scratch tickets and Powerball as they did on food.  One guy who worked at the same pizza place that I washed dishes for would take home a whole pizza every night so that he wouldn't have to buy food and thereby "increase" his chances of winning.  Yeah.

Winston goes among the Proles, not expressly forbidden because, you know, there are no laws to break only imprisonment or execution to fear, in order to possibly find an old timer who might remember the days before the glorious revolution.  Every man avoids his direct questioning.  Winston then moves on and finds himself in front of the very shop where he purchased the journal.  He goes in cautiously, looks around, and finds a glass paperweight with a piece of coral in it.  It fascinates him because of its absolute uselessness.  He then discovers a second floor with a bed and a picture of a seashore.

Upon departing the store he notices a girl with a red sash about her waist pass him.  He'd seen her before, shouting the loudest at the 2 minute Hate.  Worried he would be found out, that she might have been following him as a spy, he considers strangling her or bashing her head in with a rock.

Fortunately he did neither of these things (Well, I say "fortunately" not knowing how it will end).  Days later she trips right in front of him.  When he reaches down to help her up she slips him a note that says "I love you".  The notion rocks his entire world.  It takes days for them to be able to meet to discuss this because romantic love is supremely frowned upon by Big Brother.  Weeks later they are finally able to meet in a wooded area where they have sex.

As it turns out she is a "rebel from the waist down" named Julia.  She was born after the revolution and so has known nothing else.  She pushes the party line in public and works hard in the community centers and then uses sex as her rebellion.  Winston was certainly not her first.  In many ways, provided that she isn't a spy for Big Brother, she's exactly the sort of the person that is a threat to Big Brother.  She will pay lip service to all but secretly hold no convictions.  The generation after her will be the one to revolt.

Winston analyses his feelings for Julia and can't bring himself to regard it as Pure Love or Pure Lust.

"No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred.  Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory.  It was a blow struck against the Party.  It was a political act."

I'm not sure that this has any more redeeming value than Winston's wife who only has sex with him because it is her "duty to the Party".  To the modern perception they should be lauded for doing "Something...anything that makes them feel like they are moving forward".  Personally...I'm not so sure.  In the end this little act of "rebellion" doesn't actually strike a blow against anyone in any way...except perhaps in their minds.

Orwell does a great job of showing just how love or even infatuation can change someone's perception of life.  Everything seems brighter, happier; the food tastes better (or in this case less bad), the flowers (were there any) smell sweeter.  Everything is more bearable with those precious hormones pumping through our systems.

Orwell also does a good job of describing what the side effects of a sexually repressed society are.

"What was more was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship."  Huh.  Hadn't thought of it that way.

Julia explains, "All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour.  If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minute Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot."

Sex does inevitably lead to children, generally speaking.

"The family could not be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children in almost the old-fashioned way.  The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations.  The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police.  It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately."

Yeesh.  Totalitarian systems always, always, distort traditional systems to their own purposes.

The two move their love affair, quite dangerously, into the room above the junk shop where Winston bought the journal.  Whereas before they would take extra precautions and never meet in the same place twice, they meet at the room above frequently.

"Both of them knew it was lunacy.  It was as thought they were intentionally stepping nearer to their graves."

My favorite part of the entire book so far has been those moments in the room.  He's not very descriptive of what goes on there.  The before and after he is, but not the during of course.

I've spent the last 15 years feeling something very similar.  Not the passion of "new love" but the bits that stay as you move through the years.  No matter what I am doing, if it's with my love the whole thing is at least 10 times better.  I've given up going to movies that only I want to see.  All experiences without her are shades dimmer.  For a long time I was even planning a trip to all the cities that I ever lived in so that I could "redeem" them with her.  A silly notion, but I want to show her every place I ever went or ever explored.  Sadly I mostly lived on military bases so I can't ever truly fulfill that, but the point remains.  When the couple notice bugs and rats in the room it doesn't matter as much as it would otherwise.  There's this feeling I get with my wife that sounds crazy to explain.  When we are together, side by side, it's like that little area is all that exists in the world.  Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being called it "A Nation of Two".  That's close.  The space traveling sphere from The Fountain is closer.   It feels as if nothing else exists or matters or even could ever matter.  I swear I think that's why God has created children as a consequence of sex.  They move us beyond our comfortable little zone by necessity and draw us out into a broader world.

It's like that paperweight with the coral inside it.

Pax,

W

The Harrowing ("1984" Part 1 Ch. 1-7 )

(harrowing:  adj,  acutely distressing)

Before I get started on what very well may be my most epic post (in size...I don't guarantee epic quality of content) I want to point out that with this post I am sure to go over one thousand pageviews.  The fact that anyone looks at my blog at all makes me happy.  When there are enough people looking at it that it has been viewed one thousand times...while I may not sure how to process that stimulation I do, however, know how to appropriately respond.

Thank You.

Now that we've had a puppy validate you with positivity and cuteness, it's time for the bleakness.

The world that George Orwell creates is not frightening because of its substance or structure.  If he set it on some alien planet populated by Zygons then it would be an amusing entertainment.  It is so frightening because it is so close to not only the world we live in but the world we are becoming.  Every technological step along the way, every change in how we consume information propels us closer to 1984.  There's a sort of vertigo that I feel, that fear as we get closer and closer to the edge and we can see Oceania below.

The story itself is not the point of the book.  It is quite rightly seen as a warning rather than entertainment.  Normally I try to give a sense of the overall storyline in my blog.  With this novel, there are so many more ideas than actual story.  I haven't marked up a book like this since Atlas Shrugged.  I openly wondered to my wife if this book would change me in a similar way as Ayn Rand's prescient masterpiece.  She shrugged and said, "Probably not".  Now that we are both reading 1984 together it's clear that it will change us both.

The basic story is that of a man, Winston Smith, who goes about his day and life as a member of the Party.  In this world there are two castes.  There are the Proles, the working class stiffs, who are pretty much anyone middle class and lower.  Proles make up 85% of the population and are essentially "slave" labor for the Party.  The Party is the government, the intelligentsia, and the media.  They are the college graduates, the blessed, the smart ones who are controlled and indoctrinated by the ubiquitous and mustachioed Big Brother.  It's fairly strange to think, but the Party is more indoctrinated and has more confining laws placed on them than the Proles.

Winston has strange feelings that there is something missing in life.  He has noticed for ages that Big Brother and the Party manipulate facts and even create them out of whole cloth.  The past, which he can barely remember, has been erased and changed in so many ways that he can't be sure what is true.  Truth, in itself, could just be another lie.

Without realizing why, Winston purchases a diary at a shop and takes it home.  He discovered a blind spot in his apartment where the all seeing Teleplate cannot observe him and takes up writing in it.  He's gripped with an exhilarating fear as he goes to write in it.

"The thing he was about to do was open a diary.  This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp."

And that is our first taste of the great paradox of living in the world of Big Brother.  Sure, their slogans routinely pumped into them are:

"WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

But that can be readily discarded as party propaganda.  This fear is how they actually live on a day to day basis.  It is the substance of their thoughts which is, after all, Big Brother's goal.  Dominance of thought.  ELIMINATION of thought, actually.  This is how they think.  It's not illegal because there are no laws, but I could be punished for it.  Insane?  Just wait.

Winston works as one who "corrects" the past.  He adjusts news articles so that Big Brother appears to be all knowing, non-contradictory, and perfect in all his words.  He sort of sees a problem with this but his indoctrination is so deep that it is easier not to think.  A good member of the party always chooses not to think.  There are things he can't not think on though.  For instance:

"Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia.  In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines.  Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia.  But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control.  Officially the change of partners had never happened"..."The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible."

Winston viewed it as HIS fault for remembering anything other than the way the Party said it. 

"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture or death."

"Reality Control".

This serves as a primer to doublethink: "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies...to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it."

One only needs to turn on the TV, read a newspaper, or just pay attention to what is going on in the world to see all of this in action.  

The world we live in, this digitally predominant world, makes the past so easily malleable.  If we don't have hard copy then any administration could change something of the past.  People have been rightly worried about how easy it is to edit things like Wikipedia.  People look at it and believe its contents are truth.  However, if enough people agree that something should be changed it will be.  Our past could easily be destroyed.  I remember being in a discussion with someone about how my daughter was being taught that this leftist Union Leader in America was a hero.   They shrugged, said they didn't see anything wrong with it.  I mentioned, well except for the fact that he used violence, physical and financial retribution to achieve his goals.  If that was true, they reasoned, then they wouldn't teach about him to children.  We rationalize before we even dare to look it up.  It was not something that was included in the Wikipedia article and so what use was there in still looking?  Less than 5 minutes of doing a different search yielded proof.  With just ideology and a keyboard it has been wiped from the popular consciousness.

Recently I watched a TED talk where the speaker actually said the words "The era of knowing is over.  We don't need to actually have knowledge anymore.  If we need information we can look it up and then should forget it when we don't need it anymore."  

Creeping closer.

There are so many political issues on both sides of the spectrum that frighten me.  I have met so few people who even question their own party's line.  They'll give a pass on anything because it's "their guy".  They'll ignore blatant lies, forgive "readjustments" of their candidates history, and not bat an eye when he/she lies to them again, and again, and again.  If the other side does it then they are, quite naturally, scumbags bent on destroying the country.  We aren't that far from a single party in all but name anyway.  There is no consistency and no principles.  "Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think.  Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."  That, as far as Orwell's warning, is already here in many ways.

Personally I find the notion of Newspeak as particularly offensive.  It is the new language of Oceania, always being refined.  As a colleague of Winston's declares, "You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words.  But not a bit of it!  We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day.  We're cutting the language down to the bone."  Later her justifies, "After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words?...If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'?  'Ungood' will do just as well..."  

With some zealousness he later explains, "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?  In the end we shall make thoughcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it...Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller."  

So, what would be the fall out?  "Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they use to be."

There is so much here that my mind is all abuzz with multiple ideas all firing at the same time.  Let's see if I can organize them and tease them into some sort coherent mess.

Firstly, language is so extremely important.  Their goal of controlling the people through language is not as far fetched as it seems.  When I first learned about rhetoric my mind was completely blown.  Rhetoric is how people use language in order to effectively state their position on something.  Well, that's the Light Side of rhetoric.  The Dark Side of rhetoric is choosing carefully the words you use in order to manipulate the listener/reader.  It's one thing to have a news report with the headline "Fifteen soldiers killed in a firefight with the Taliban" and completely another to say "Fifteen soldiers slaughtered in a firefight with the Taliban".  Which one grips you more emotionally?  The second one clearly sells more papers and, intended or not, makes you feel more negatively about the Taliban, or on the other hand may predispose you negatively toward the war.

Every day, language is used to manipulate.  Your emotions are being toyed with in order to achieve a desired result.  Now, in the world of advertising we can just go "Oh, look, they're using sex to sell blue jeans again" and discard it if we want.  Language is more tricky.  Reading and hearing automatically sets up residence in our minds and few are trained, let alone have the desire, to put it in a holding tank to consider it and either hold it or jettison.

I learned this and paid attention on my own over the years and then one day took a high level philosophy course as an elective.  (Yes...I took philosophy for fun.)  I get bored fairly easily, and so one of my ways to fend off boredom is to play with language and ideas.  I squish them, stretch them, spin them on their head just to see what happens.  I like to hold two contradictory thoughts in my head at one time and then watch as they play Texas Hold'em...to the death.  It was during one of these 'bouts that I realized that the teacher was manipulating the whole class.  He had taught about rhetoric only from the perspective of "the enemy" as perpetrator.  There wasn't a single bit about how our own "party" our own "allies" manipulate us.  I watched as he manipulated the class from one side of the issue to the other side of the issue and every one of them followed like obedient little ducklings and agreed wholeheartedly without even considering that just five minutes ago they were agreeing wholeheartedly with the complete opposite.  I started chuckling and the teacher turned and gave me a wink, knowing that I'd caught it.  He asked me, for the benefit of the class, to tell what I was chuckling at.  I explained and watched as each person in that 30 seat classroom couldn't figure it out.  They defended each side, as they had heard from the teacher, and some people even managing to argue the validity both contradictory views at the same time.  

So, what does this have to do with 1984?  We're not so far from it.  The enemy is the one trying to manipulate you, they will tell you, while deliberately and blatantly manipulating you just as well.  It's the Democrats.  It's the Republicans.  It's the Libertarians.  It's Greenpeace.  It's Big Oil.  It's the church.  It's Atheism.  Language and loyalty are the blinders every institution uses.  Not every institution is bad.  Not every use of rhetoric is bad, but we need to be aware of it or we may as well be sidling up to Big Brother.  If your emotions are engage by those you trust in order to sway your opinion then remember the "Two Minute Hate" from this book.  I am immediately suspicious of anything that engages my emotions in an argument of ideas because that tends to mean logic won't win them their argument.

Pax,

Will Arbaugh

WIKA "1984"

What I know about 1984:

Pretty much everything I know about 1984 I know from osmosis.  It is literally everywhere in entertainment.  Whether it's Hodgins on Bones saying he's worried about Big Brother listening in the on the conversation or watching Minority Report and worry about the Thought Police, we cannot help but know this novel without having actually read it.   It directly informs THX1138, George Lucas' student film which is world the reading, and even my favorite novel of all time which I've never actually finished reading, Lanark by Alisdair Grey.  All of Phillip K. Dick's paranoid sci-fi fantasies find their root there.

One of the most acclaimed commercials of all time was a spot for the first Macintosh from Apple.  It's tagline declared that the Macintosh was the reason "1984 won't be like 1984", an endearing moment of marketing hubris that clearly wasn't the case.  Even our most recent scandal, the NSA spying on American citizens, is reported on by using buzzwords from George Orwell's work.  It has so fully permeated the culture that I believe that anyone could tell you the basic storyline without ever having actually read it.

George Orwell was, of course, the man who wrote Animal Farm which I also haven't yet read.  I can feel the judgmental glares now, stop.  I was homeschooled half my life.  I was reading Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Robinson Crusoe, and Pilgrim's Progress instead and they've done well enough.  I regret nothing.

I often get George Orwell and H. G. Wells mixed up in my head.  I'm not sure why.

I'm really looking forward to this one.  A dark novel about a totalitarian society is probably just what I need after Wuthering Heights.  At least it might be a bit of a decent comedown before I get to the next novel,  Little Women.

Pax,

W

A Good End to Bad Things (Wuthering Heights CH 22-34)

I'm in a strange mental space upon finishing this book, so forgive me if that is reflected in this blog.  I had intended to give a fiery denouncement of this book, and I still may, but it is less likely now.  It's rather like attending a funeral of someone who had done you ill in the past.  Death puts this weird perspective on things.  Even the prospect of someone dying makes so much forgivable and we see that person in a rosier light than we did when they were healthy and seemed to have all the time in the world.

Given that, I think it would be best to section this post on Wuthering Heights into certain themes.

The End
The final third of the novel was actually more interesting than the rest of the novel.  Cathy's father died and Heathcliff forced her to live under his roof and began to torture her especially after Linton died leaving everything to him rather than her...which of course was the plan all along.

There's this very subtle shift that occurs after Linton dies and Heathcliff wins.  It's so subtle that I almost wonder if I'm making it up.  There are moments and beats, shades of ways Heathcliff says things that seem to show that deep down he realizes how very hollow his victory is.  He's fought, railed, abused, and tormented everyone his entire life.  Now that everyone he could have been victorious against is dead and he's "won" there's nothing left.  His life's actually without any sort of meaning.  Certainly he continues to abuse Cathy and Hareton, but there are moments where he stops himself in the middle because he sees the dead looking right back at him through the eyes of the children.  He's won...and nobody could care less.  Indeed, the children have gotten to the point where they are just waiting him out.  They don't say as much, but it's clear they can see an end to their torture, and so are less fearful of him.

Cathy's situation is particularly interesting to me.  Here she was an intelligent and empathetic creature always trying to do right even if she got confused by romance, and once under Heathcliff's thumb she began to shift into this terrible creature.  She causes discord for fun, delights in mocking Hareton for bettering himself by learning to read, and is generally spiteful to all.  Here we go again, I thought, the apple isn't falling far from the tree.  I was genuinely surprised to find what resistance there was in both of their hearts to this darkening.  There were a few genuinely hopeful moments in the last third that indicated that these children (well, I say children but they were 23 and 18 years of age) would not make the same mistakes as their parents.

Heathcliff tells her that he will torment her as payment for living under her roof.  She boldly looks at him with the eyes of her namesake and says "Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and however miserable you makes us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery.  You are  miserable, are you not?  Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him?  Nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you when you die!  I wouldn't be you!"

Right next to that piece is my notation in black ink, "Daaaang, sister!"

Later Hareton and Cathy start to fall in love when both realize their toxic ways are less than beneficial and apologize to each other.  They begin to show kindness and tenderness in a house of abuse and naturally they are drawn to it.  They decide to make a little flower garden to please each other.  Unfortunately Hareton digs up the wrong bushes.  They explain and Heathcliff turns on Cathy.

'"And who the devil gave you leave to touch a stick about the place?...And who ordered you to obey her?" he added, turning to Hareton.

The Latter was speechless; his cousin replied - "You shouldn't grudge a few yards of earth for me to ornaments, when you have taken all my land!"  (Oh, snap!)

"Your land, insolent slut! You never had any," said Heathcliff.'

He goes to hit her, Hareton stands by her side and he pales.  It's as if they're saying, "We're just waiting you out old man.  You won't be able to torment us forever".

For Earnshaw, Catherine, Edgar, Isabella, and even Linton, to a lesser degree, Heathcliff was something they had to endure in one form or another for the rest of their lives.  His obsession and abuse shaped them and there was little hope of a reprieve.  For the kids, they can swallow it down and not be permanently shaped by it.  With Linton dead, he realizes, he leaves nothing of his own behind.  Neither of the titles or lands were ever truly his.  He was a foundling replacement in the stead of a child who died at birth.

Any remorse he may have had fades quickly at the prospect of being reunited in death with Catherine...which was pretty weak in my estimation.

The book does end happily and I was quite pleased with the ending, but it is not even remotely a book I would read through again just for that ending.  I'll but the book on my "100 Books" bookcase and it will travel with me wherever I go, but it will never be opened again.  It's too infuriating and it's main characters too vile.  Most of my favorite books I return to in order to welcome my "friends" with open arms.  This book I'd only be capable of returning to with a clenched fist.

Love and Obsession/Passion
Much is made of the "Love Story" supposedly found within these pages.  I've looked at so many reviews that say "Oh, how I wish I had a man who loved me like Heathcliff" and I can't help but wonder what they mean by that.  He was abusive to every woman in his life including Catherine and terrible in general to every one else.  If you want a man to beat you about the face and neck, threaten your relatives, and attempt to murder your pets then I'm pretty sure that your average psych ward could grant you some prospects.

Now, naturally, no one wants those terrible things.  So, what could they possibly mean by that?

To my mind what they are saying is that they want someone who feels strongly, passionately, about them, and I get that.  I know so many people who say, "Man, if the fireworks aren't there then there's no point at all."  The problem with that is that fireworks inevitably fade.  They HAVE to.  The proverbial "fireworks" are nothing more than chemicals in the brain.  "Love" shoots us up with a crazy cocktail of hormones that are not unlike a drug.  It is AMAZING to feel that way for weeks or even months.  We easily become addicted to it.  Just like any drug our bodies necessarily acclimate to it and need more in order to just feel buzzed.  Instead of taking more hits we escalate situations in order to get the high.  This leads to fighting, and abuse.  As someone who was once the victim in an abusive relationship I can tell you that this happened to me and I stayed.  Why?  The mental and physical abuse was hell, but the makeup time was just the dose I needed to get high.  One of my friends at the time described it perfectly.  He said, "Imagine being in a cold, black box.  You're in there for weeks at a time and then she opens the lid letting in the warm sunshine.  You hope she'll take you out of the box, and she swears she will.  You believe it every time because it feels so good."  When you are addicted to passion you make the other person your "dealer" and you'll bow to nearly any whim for another high.

What Heathcliff and Catherine have is not love in any way shape or form.  It can be loosely described as "passion".  It is a wind storm devastating everything in its path leading to nothing in the end.  There's nothing tangible or real about their "love".  It's abusive to one another and everyone around them.

The real tragedy is that Catherine had love and didn't want it.  Edgar Linton treated Catherine with dignity, respect, and doted on her in every way he could.  Even to the end he was at her bedside refusing to leave or even sleep.  It wasn't loud, it wasn't exciting, but it was healthy, wholesome and, if she had let it, it would have nurtured her.  Genuine love is recognized not by how it feels but, rather, by what it does.  Passion will get you high, but love will sustain you when you are in the depths.  The fireworks do not last, and I thank God that they don't.  When you're high on endorphins you can be the blindest you've ever been.  You'll drink poison and swear it tastes like champagne.  When the passion fades you can see things rightly.  You can see what the two of you need to work on and how best to be each other's helpmate.  Getting high on passion is always self centered and genuine love is other centered.  Without some sort of morality healthy love cannot exist.  It's merely passionate, self centered obsession.

Why, Emily?  Why?
I've scanned a few articles on the net as to why Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights and have discovered that there is nothing on the subject directly from Emily or any of her sisters.  We are left with, as I declared in the first place, a terrible story about terrible people who do terrible things to each other.  Now I am compelled to add, "with a little hope at the end."

I do not believe that Emily Bronte wrote this book in order to celebrate this abusive "love".  It's much in the same way that Trainspotting was not, as many moral people believed and declared loudly, a book/movie that glorifies heroine usage.  Seriously, all you have to do is watch the first fifteen minutes of the movie to get that it's about the horrors of heroine usage.

All we need do is to look at who the "hero" of the book actually is; Nelly.  She is our perspective through 90% of the novel (the other 10% being made up of the unnecessary Mr. Lockwood).  Nelly endures the sufferings, celebrates the joys, and accurately predicts the demise of every character.  She's the only one throughout who cares about the others.  She's the only one who holds any hope of redemption for anyone.  Even Heathcliff she calls a Goblin or a Devil from the moment she sees him as a child and still keeps hoping she can nudge him into some sort of morality.

Charlotte Bronte, in speaking of the novel after it was published...sadly after the death of Emily, stated that it was the most accurate portrayal of life in those obscure manors that were such a distance from town.  Isolation from the rest of the "herd" produces these strange abuses and odd behaviors.

Once I realized that it is a critique of such people and life then it became infinitely more tolerable.  Still...not tolerable enough to read again.  How this book is on the top 100 of all time is still a mystery to me, but then again so is Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

Thank you one and all for sticking through this lengthy process of reviewing this book.  I appreciate how frustrating it must have been to wait so long between posts, but I just couldn't handle it all at once as I normally try to do them.

Next is George Orwell's 1984 which I expect will be a read that delights me.  Sadly, I will only be able to get a copy sometime after the first of next month.  Until then I'll be reading classic sci-fi magazines from the 60's in order to recover from this 100 Brontes on the Austen/Bronte scale...which only goes up to 10.

Pax,

W

A Case To Be Made (Wuthering Heights Ch 11-21)

Gentle ladies and, to a lesser extent, gentlemen of the jury, if you will indulge me, I would like to present my case.

There have been many love stories written over the eight millenia or so since human beings invented written language.  From those first chicken scratch cuneiform syllables to the garish modern implementation of Comic Sans and even upon entering into the all forgiving, healing light of Helvetica there has been much debate on the subject of what does and does not constitute a love story.  Certainly it can take many forms.

Some would have us believe that for a tale to truly be a love story it must end happily.  Romeo and Juliet, arguably the greatest of all love stories, would then be out of the running entirely.  Indeed, the modern romantic classic Possession by A. S. Byatt would only count because the modern couple gets together though the past couple does not.

I submit to you that for a love story to truly be that in name, it must actually show the protagonist couple in love and doing loving things to and for each other.  At it's very base element this must be present.

I further submit, therefore, that Wuthering Heights is the furthest thing from a love story since Machiavelli's The Prince or perhaps Mein Kampf.  I don't use these comparisons lightly at all.  When we look at Wuthering Heights what do we see between Catherine and Heathcliff?  Only passion; animalistic and self serving passion.  I do believe that I could excuse the novel as merely a tawdry little work if it was just animalistic passion.  Tawdry but not nearly a love story.

Seriously, though, what am I supposed to think about this Heathcliff?  A brute from the moment we meet him, cast into a family of brutes and selfish prigs, who has a certain amount of passion for a beautiful, sniping, selfish, conniving...wench.  All he knows is beating people into submission and all she knows is manipulating people for her own uses.  Why am I supposed to cheer for this couple?  At all?

I last left these people with Heathcliff having returned to find Catherine married Linton, who is now one of two people who actually seem virtuous.  It seems that Linton actually loves Catherine though her standards of "passion" are clearly not met in that relationship.  She teases and taunts Heathcliff with the marriage and disrespects her new husband in many respects by allowing/demanding that Heathcliff be allowed to visit whenever he likes.

Heathcliff reveals his plan to destroy Earnshaw through the son he neglects, Hareton, and then gets the bright idea to revenge himself on Linton, for marrying Catherine, by taking up with his little sister, Isabella.  Catherine correctly sees what Heathcliff is up to and says, not considering for a second that the same might be said of her, "Your bliss, like his (Satan's), lies in inflicting misery."  The husband overhears all, steps in, Heathcliff threatens to beat him, she says it's all his (Linton's) fault and how dare he accuse Heathcliff of being horrible...Seriously.  She declares "If Edgar will be mean and jealous then I will break their hearts by breaking my own."  Yes...she's intentionally going to pitch fits because her husband won't allow her to see a man who is passionately in love with her and has threatened to beat her husband bloody.  And this is love?  She spends the next few chapters being not so much a Drama Queen as a freaking Drama Empress.   She claims she'll kill herself and it's only out of selfishness that Linton wants her around.

It's about this time that Heathcliff comes around, scoops up Isabella to elope and, as any lover would do, hangs a dog by the neck so that it should die.  It would be belong to his new wife, Isabella.

When news reaches Catherine then she predictable falls into a brain fever.

This section is where I pretty much lose it.  Before, at Wuthering Heights, it was terrible people doing terrible things to other terrible people.  Now they are leaving a trail of broken hearts and damaged psyches in their wake because they insist on involving decent people.  Linton attends to Catherine and dotes on her before, during, and after the illness.  Sure, he's not the most passionate guy, I mean her prefers books to strangling puppies to death, but he cares.  Isabella warmly invited Catherine into their lives and she ends up repaid with abuse, physical and mental.

Isabella writes a letter to Nelly and asks if Heathcliffe is a man.  If not is he insane or a devil?  Seriously, honey, if you have to ask...you're in deep Bantha poodoo.  Upon Nelly pressing Heathcliff for an explanation he declares it was all Isabella's fault.  Hanging up her dog, beating her, no brutality had any effect on her so he continued to be brutal.

Gosh, he's dreamy.

Catherine takes ill even more.  Apparently her fake tantrums took their toll especially in light of her pregnancy (surprise) and near to giving birth Heathcliff gets wind of her illness and stands outside the house, hidden.  He's lurking, waiting until the husband isn't home and the door is accidentally left unlocked.  (So freaking gallant and not at all creepy!)

"Oh, Cathy!  Oh, My life!  how can I bear it?" he says upon forcing his way in.

"'What now?' said Catherine, leaning back and returning his look with a suddenly clouded brow:  Her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices.  'You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff!  And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if you were the people to be pitied...(ain't she a gem?) You have killed me-and thriven on it, I think....How many years do you mean to live after I'm gone?'"

Chapter sixteen begins with the fact of Catherine's death in childbirth...to which I could only manage to say, "Then why is there so much freaking book left?!?!".

Loving, chivalrous Heathcliff responds as anyone would expect a caring individual who just lost the love of his life would.

"May she wake in torment!...Why she's a liar to the end!...haunt me...only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you!"  Yeah, cause you treated each other so well when she was alive.  I mean, she must be in hell not being abused by you or be able to watch you tormenting her sister in law with a freaking KNIFE shoved between her teeth (actually happened).  She must be missing you something fierce.

As ever Nelly has the right of it when she says, "Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies."

We fast forward...Isabella escapes Heathcliff and Earnshaw to London, pregnant but more than happy to make it on her own than around those two.  She gives birth and names the child Linton, hoping that will disuade Heathcliff who only declares, as a good father would, "When I want it, I will have it."  Edgar Linton has named his child Catherine, after her mother, and sixteen years pass.  During that time Earnshaw died leaving Heathcliff with Hareton.  Isabella dies and Edgar goes off to fulfill his sister's wish of having Linton live with him.  Heathcliff objects and the poor, sickly child is brought into his care.  And why would he want him?  One simple reason; to have the ultimate in pathetic revenges; Linton to marry Cathy and then when Linton dies, because of the language of the law, Heathcliff would rule over both estates.  Of course he can't help but encourage Hareton to try for Cathy and thereby cause even more discord.  It's not enough to play with and ruin the lives of adults, but now he has to destroy the lives of children.

The worst part of it all?  There is still one hundred pages to go, and we already know how this ends because the beginning is the end; Heathcliff abusing both Hareton and Cathy around a fire.

I could spill all of my feelings about this book, what all it's taught me, and that sort of thing, but I think it's best left for the final entry.

I will say, however, that I got on multiple sites and read reviews for this book by many people.  The one thing that amazed me was how many people think that this is such a good love story, and how amazing Heathcliff is.  Seriously?

Renee commented on my last post about how there's a sort of Heathcliff arc in fiction.  Edward Cullen, Four, Christian Gray and all these guys who are dark, brooding, abusive types are so lapped up by readers as so dreamy.  I'd even go so far as to put Lestat in that category.  I guess it's likely human nature on some level.  When I was in high school who did all the girls want?  That guy who was no good for them at ALL...but gosh they want them.  They give their bodies and their lives to them and then when they are used up, abandoned with kids, past their "prime" they wonder where all the good guys are.

Now the interesting question, of course, is what would Charlotte Bronte think of her sister's work and does Rochester apply as the dark, brooding, abusive type?

I'll leave that to your gentle hands, dear jury, to type out into the comments below.  :)

Pax,

W

Everything Wrong With Disney's "Into the Woods"

Yesterday I was quite overjoyed to find my copy of the Into the Woods Blu-ray in my mailbox from the Disney Movie Club. I had purchased it not having seen the big screen adaptation.  How could they get it wrong, I thought.  Who could make that musical anything but magic especially given that it's from freaking Disney, the home of magic.

I'll admit upfront that the title is...somewhat misleading.  I fully acknowledge that any movie adaptation of a thing (book, musical, video game, or even an adaptation of a previous film) is going to be "wrong" in many aspects to those who love the original.  There can't help but be changes and favorite moments all screwed up to fit a director's vision and things cut to fit the time constraints.  The Hobbit films being the proportional opposite shows that the reverse can also ruin an adaptation.  What I cover here is not necessarily nit picky, but I suppose I'm the least qualified to judge that.  If you've only seen the Disney adaptation and not the original Broadway Cast performance that came out a decade ago...then you're safe for the most part.  If you've seen neither then this is going to be all sorts of spoilery.  You've been warned and my obligation is satisfied in accordance with the ancient rites and thusly shall not carry the sin of spoilering into the next life.  May it be on your head now.

First and foremost, my biggest issue is the complete absence of the Narrator.  In the original the Narrator is an actual character.  While I understand that having a proper Narrator as a character wouldn't quite work in a movie setting (and I admit the looping it so that the tale being told at the beginning is the baker telling his son for the first time is cool...but not nearly as cool) it rips out some of the play's supports.  It would be like surgically removing ribs and vertebrae and expecting a body to function at the same capacity.  When the characters turn on the Narrator and feed him to the giantess that is a pivotal moment.  There is a very Meta thing going on where the Narrator is almost a godlike figure who is keeping the story going.  With the Narrator we are sure of a happy ending and yet the characters see him just as another character.  The Narrator begs saying "But you'd be lost without me.  I'm telling the story." The Witch replies, "Well, maybe we don't like the way you're telling it."  The metaphor here is ejecting God from the world and expecting everyone to play nice and life to actually be better than a world with him.  The cast willingly sacrifice the narrator to save their own skins but this is pointedly the moment when the whole story goes to hell.  Before there was sure to be a happy ending no matter what challenges were faced.  Cinderella's wicked step sisters were a trial to be endured on her way to becoming a queen.  Little Red left the path and was eaten by a wolf but saved and learned a greater lesson.  After the Narrator is gone Jack's mother dies needlessly, the Baker's Wife is killed just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (under a giantess' foot), and Granny is killed when her house is knocked flat.  Suddenly chaos rips everything from them for no reason.  The case could, and likely should, be made that without the Narrator/God their life goes from fairy tale to reality and that's a good thing.

As a companion to this I felt that the Witch's role was somewhat diminished.  While no one could do as good a job as Bernadette Peters, I thought Meryl Streep did a wonderful job.  In the play the viewer gets the sense that the Witch is really the only adult in the room surrounded by children.  The curse that her mother placed on the beans is only revealed in "The Last Midnight" and even then it's just the barest of winks, not meant to be a major plot point.  I've said many times that I find it amazing that by the end of the play I find myself being entirely on the Witch's side.  As she said, "I'm not good, I'm not nice.  I'm just right."  Of all she has the clearest view.  When she leaves them all she has had it, like any parent would, and decides that everyone needs to grow up.  It's very similar to the scene in Practical Magic where the aunts figure out what is going on, the two used magic very foolishly and were being haunted by the ghost of an abusive boyfriend, and pack up the kids to leave the sisters to deal with it on their own.  Yes, people were likely to get hurt, perhaps even die, but some day children must grow up and deal with the consequences of their actions.

A third issue is with the age of Jack and Red.  Naturally, to legally face a grueling play schedule, in the original production Jack and Red were played by adults and played pretty much as teenagers.  This changes what you can do with the characters and the subtlety of certain lines in the song.  The two each have stories that encounter some sort of sexual undertones, Jack with the Giantess and Red with the Wolf, and they come away "knowing things they never new before".  With these two as children the dynamic gets skewed.  Instead of the Wolf wanting something young and pure and legal, he comes off as a pedophile.  Both versions are pretty creepy and pervy, but the Disney one is much more disturbing.  As two over teenage years they can learn lessons, under that they would be more traumatized and the events more tragic.  With Jack it makes more sense as a teenager due to how his mom reacts to him.  If he's under ten then there's little reason to think him much of a fool for trading the cow for magic beans.  How do you expect a child to be able to accurately place value anyway?  If he's a later teenager then, yes, cuffing him about the ears for being a fool makes more sense.

When we came to "You Are Not Alone" this is where the stage production truly shines out far better.  With the stage production you realize that this is a crystallizing moment. Everyone has to grow up because this is the darkest moment they've ever faced.  Red's Granny is dead, the Baker's Wife is Dead, Jack's Mum is dead, Cinderella is very alone, mother and father dead already and she's just rejected the philandering Prince Charming (charming...not sincere).  This is as bad as it gets for each character.  No Narrator or Witch to guide them they reach out to each other.  If the plan doesn't work and they die then at least they will not die alone.  That is a huge moment.  And in the Disney version it falls flat.  There's not urgency or darkness or desperation needed for that to be the bonding moment it needs to be.

As to the Princes...I liked the actors they got for them, however there was an "Agony" with no "Agony Reprise"?  That's cheating the audience.  To not show them at their most ridiculous and least honorable is pretty unsatisfying for those who know the play.  Much in the way that in productions of Peter Pan the actor who plays Mr. Darling also plays Captain Hook the tradition for this play was Cinderella's Prince also plays the Wolf.  This doubling up adds commentary and depth of meaning to the material that you just don't get by wasting Johnny Depp for 5 minutes onscreen.

Speaking of double roles, the Narrator usually also played the Baker's Father.  I thoroughly missed his song.  Sure they got the essence across in the lines in the Baker's head, but that wasn't sufficient in my view.

As a final point, there was much lost just in the fact that this wasn't an acting company with months of prep and decades on the road.  I don't blame Disney for this much really.  This part was completely out of their control.  Nothing can replace actors that haven't just played the characters, they've LIVED them.  The tension between the Baker and the Baker's Wife has brewed for years.  The two actors in the original company probably know the history of every argument they've ever had that never appeared on stage.  Red has been a sassy little thing for a decade and so when the "You talk to birds" line comes it's said with a "Seriously?! Crazy much?" attitude in the play rather than the "Huh" in the movie.  The Princes are far more smarmy because they've spent year after year competing and chasing princesses rather than just petty pretty boys.  This experience simply can't be translated to film unless you get the original cast, and I know very well that no movie studio wants that to happen for very good reasons.

I do give it props for putting Sondheim's work out there.  He is a national treasure and the more people that can see that the better.  My daughter is now obsessed with two musicals (this and Phantom of the Opera which I didn't find to be terrible.  They kept the bones and joints in tact for which I am grateful.) and that can't be bad.  I do, however, wonder how the inevitable movie adaptation of a book adaptation that is Wicked will do.  I've never seen it live so I may not be as picky about it.

Pax,

W

Terrible People (Wuthering Heights Ch 1-10)

From the outset I want to be clear.  Twelve chapters in I am NOT a fan of this book at all and am currently questioning its place on the the 100BYSRBYD.  The reason it has taken me weeks to write a blog post on it is because it has taken weeks for me too get through the first one hundred and eleven pages.  I sit down, read a few paragraphs and then I'm seized with an urge to do something else, anything else.

My lovely, long suffering wife has asked me multiple times why I don't just chuck the book and move onto the next one.  In response I cite the necessity to report it back to you, dear reader, on the blog.  She scoffs affectionately and becomes a bit more resistant to my whining and complaining.  Indeed, I have questioned the choice to continue on.  More than once I've wanted to use the book as starter for a fire...though I'm not in possession of an actual fire place.  I have read worse...(Twilight...ok I can't honestly say I've read the WHOLE thing.  Two paragraphs are enough) and I would chuck it but for one thing.  I've been told that I'm ten times as entertaining when talking about something I dislike.  I used to have a friend who would bate me into topics just to watch me go off.  I may have said this before but, if you want to watch someone explode then in person ask me my feelings on Star Wars Episode III.  Hopefully blood won't shoot from my eyes the next time I give a dissertation on that topic.

I think it is wholly appropriate that Wuthering Heights is being turned into a high school drama on the Lifetime channel.  The drama is pretty much Gossip Girl level so far, but that comparison will be further explained later.

From the first page I had this image of young Emily Bronte watching how successful her older sister was and decided to just give it a go.  The scenes where Lockwood, our spy glass into the lives and history of the denizens of Wuthering Heights, narrates are thoroughly intolerable.  I was predisposed to liking him at the beginning when he describes himself as a lonely sort who was as much of a grumpy bugger as I can tend to be, but there seem to be two distinct authors at work here.  The Lockwood perspective is ridiculously written.  Honestly, it's as if Ms. Bronte wrote out the chapter in a normal voice and then took a thesaurus and upgraded all the words to an unnecessary level.  I spent the first fifty pages thinking, "These are some pretty awful people" and I have yet to think otherwise.

When Nelly begins to tell the back story of the strange little group of interrelated figures then the verbiage eases up and we are able to relax into the story.  Sadly the story of the past is no better than the present.  It's a story of terrible people treating other terrible people terribly by doing terrible things.

If I was to compare Emily's work to her elder sister's I would say that Charlotte's is superior.  Primarily this is because there is at least a ray of hope in Jane Eyre.  In that novel terrible things happen to decent people who remain decent and even treat terrible people decently.  There are no redeeming qualities in any of these characters save Nelly who is simply a bystander and storyteller.  Earnshaw, Catherine's elder brother, is so abominable and abusive that he thinks nothing to threatening Nelly by forcing a knife between her teeth.  Heathcliff is a savage child with no thought for anyone but Catherine.  Catherine is the same but a "socially presentable" version and a complete idiot.

Catherine marries their neighbor, Mr. Linton, after Heathcliff has gone away for three years.  Heathcliff returns and reinserts himself into Catherine's life.  This quite naturally pisses off Linton to the point that he is crying about it and our "heroine" of the novel can't figure out why her husband is acting that way.  Linton has been a bit of an idiot himself, doting on Catherine and appeasing her in all things to keep her "happy".  It's so bad that when Nelly tells Catherine that she shouldn't test or push Mr. Linton like this she replies, "I have such faith in Linton's love, that I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn't wish to retaliate."

It was at this point that I realized I may not be reading just a book about horrible people...that may just be the point.  It took nearly one hundred pages for me to go, "Wait a minute...maybe Emily Bronte is mocking the rich.  She might just be pointing out to the rest of the world how horrible these people in estates far away from normal humanity are."  If this is so then it doesn't make me love it any more.  Unredeemable people being unredeemable doesn't exactly make for a redeemable book.  We've seen into their future, miserable around an estate that is falling apart, so from the outset we see that this doesn't end happily.

The moment it gets all Gossip Girl is when Catherine's sister-in-law, Isabella, declares that she is interested in Heathcliff.  Heathcliff gets all Charles Bass and smiles at how much damage he could do there.  To wit; To marry Isabella which would piss of Catherine who still loves him and in order to get the fortune of Linton which settles one score and meanwhile Isabella is little more than collateral damage. Gossip Girl walked a fine line of glamorizing and viciously criticizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous.  As a species we are never so vicious as when the stakes are so small...unfortunately their small stakes were people's emotions and reputations.  My complaint with Wuthering Heights is exactly the same as I had with Gossip Girl...what's the point?  I get the same feeling from both of those as when I read a graphic novel called Everyone Dies and Nobody Learns Anything.  From the glimpse of the inevitable end I really don't see a point.  Catherine and Heathcliff are pretty much Ross and Rachel to me.  I don't even want to see them together.  So wherein cometh the hero?  What is the point of the novel?  A cautionary tale to not be an egotistical abusive jerk?

I'm truly hoping the novel takes an unexpected turn and delights me, but one third of the way in I can't imagine that it will.

Pax,

W