Book #20: Anna Karenina

Book #20: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

May 20, 2013


Obviously, it took me a while to get through this monster of a text. I don't think that a month and a half is too bad, considering that Anna Karenina was published as a series of chapters in newspapers, over the course of about four years (the actual timeframe of the book is about half that). The edition that I read has 817 pages, and it is a large book...with considerably small text. I got into it, whenever I did have the chance to sit down and read it, but lately I have been working more than usual (fingers crossed: a sub assignment could lead to a permanent one...will know for sure on that one in just a few days!), and finishing up my semester (only a month-long break from school now until my summer classes!). I have been busy, so I'm glad that I've made at least some time to get some reading done (which is really the whole point of this whole exercise). And for the most part, I really enjoyed reading what Tolstoy referred to as his "first real novel."

A note on the translation: apparently, this husband-and-wife duo (he from the US, she Russian) have won awards for this edition, and I think I can understand why. I found the language to be accessible, but the characters were certainly portrayed with the complexity that I think Tolstoy had in mind. This story is full of interesting characters, and the title character's story is only one of many stories interwoven here...and one of two main stories.

I admit, besides viewing it through a feminist frame, I didn't find Anna's story to be quite as interesting as others. If anything, I was more interested in her scorned husband, Karenin. I'll note here that in Russian society at that time, people referred to one another typically by their first names and their middle names, which are some derivation of their father's first names (feminized for women). I was watching a marathon of Freaks and Geeks on IFC this past weekend, and a 9th grade student, Sam, had been assigned to read War and Peace for his English class (psychotic). When his dad asked him how it was, he said something like, "All their names are really long and weird." That's about the extent of it, and I had to refer to the character guide that the translators kindly provided frequently for about the first third of the book, especially since Tolstoy switches up how he references them. For simplicity's sake, I'll refer to men by their last names, and women by their first names (or titles).

Of note on titles: princes and princesses were much more common in Russian at this time than in more Western monarchies. Remember that the czar was the ruler, before the revolution (is that the revolution that is hinted at in the text? I don't know...), and communism and all that. Princes and princesses were as common as, say, lords and ladies in England. The title did mean certain social privileges, but not necessarily wealth (Oblonsky and his wife Dolly, who have many children and are in terrible debt due to his irresponsible spending and their vast expenses, are a good example of this). When reading about the sharp divide in the classes (muzhiks seem to be the common workers, probably the former serfs of Russia, who live and work and just exist while the upper class, be they wealthy or in terrible debt, live comfortable lives of leisure), it's understandable that a revolution would happen there. At one point, Levin, a character who interested me probably more than any of the others, questions his own place in the upper class, though, as someone with whom he is debating points out, he is not eager to give up his wealth and join them. I like Levin for the most part, but his frequent contradictions grew frustrating (though I guess that was Tolstoy's build-up to what was ultimately his spiritual clarity at the end of the novel).

Okay, so here's an overview of Anna's plot. At the start of the book, she is the wife of a successful government official, Karenin. She has a son whom she loves very much (or at least claims to). She is very popular in society, and is very charming; Kitty, who is infatuated with Vronsky at this time, quickly becomes enamored with the slightly older woman. But then, Anna falls in love with Vronsky, and they begin an affair; when Vronsky follows Anna back to St. Petersburg (or Moscow, I had a hard time keeping track of which city the characters were in some of the time), and they have the affair in a way that is obvious to the people around them. Karenin is humiliated, but I felt that he was genuinely hurt by his wife's betrayal. His inner dialogue conveyed an effort to mask his hurt with indignation. The affair soon comes out in the open, and Anna, pregnant with Vronsky's child, runs off with him. Her husband does become a laughing-stock in society, but her situation seems to be worse; she is isolated. Vronsky is not; though he is the other half of the liaison, he was not married, and he had not abandoned a family. When he continues to live the social life of a bachelor, while leaving her at home, she becomes more and more jealous. Anna's jealousy of Vronsky tears her apart; she begins using opium to calm her nerves (she's an addict; she lies about how often she uses it), and picks fights with her lover constantly. He wants her to get a divorce from her husband so that they can be married, but her cuckolded husband, by the influence of a hypocritical Christian noblewoman and a false seer, refuses. Anna, believing that Vronsky plans to leave her all alone, and feeling guilt-ridden over abandoning her son (and knowing that she does not love her baby daughter, Vronsky's child), she kills herself by throwing herself under a train.

About half of Anna's story is the downfall of the relationship. Of course it was meant to be doomed. Not that the characters necessarily deserved it, in my opinion. Had they all been allowed to move on, they would have come out all right. I especially felt for Karenin, who was so easily swayed by the repulsive Countess Lydia, who preaches gospel to others and is constantly passing judgement, and is the chief instigator of the separation of Anna from her son. She cruelly tells the boy that her mother is dead, but he sees her again once after that...talk about traumatizing. Anna had been disgusted by her husband's weakness, and he certainly does seem to be weak. He is determined in his work, and proud of his accomplishments and titles, but when it comes to his personal life, he's pretty pathetic. And Anna becomes pathetic as well.

In the end, Anna and Vronsky's child goes to live with Karenin, since, by Russian law, his wife's child is legally his as well. Vronsky, in grief, did not fight it, and was gearing up to go to war against the Turks, in retaliation for a genocide against the Slavic peoples. His fate is left to be pondered by the reader. Does he die? Does he return home a decorated hero, and marry a woman whom his mother has chosen for him? He really loved Anna, and though his weariness of her accusations was expressed  in his thoughts, he never seriously considered breaking things off with her. She wanted him to admire and worship her like he had been they'd first became lovers, but that's not how relationships work. In the end, Anna was basically a spoiled brat who didn't know how to deal.

Her brother might be described the same way, though he does not wallow in despair. On the contrary, Oblonsky is a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. People like him...women like him quite a bit. He is a frequent adulterer, and not at all repentant. He gets to go on living his life, socializing and loving and being with his wife and children, he can have it all because he's a man. His sister suffers for the same crime (though with one man, out of something like love, rather than with many out of lust). Oblonsky is a despicable character in many ways, with his irresponsible behavior and his neglect of his wife and many children, and his philandering ways. Dolly, his long-suffering wife, was threatening to leave him at the beginning of the book, and Anna, who would not long after begin her own affair, had come to talk her out of it. Dolly again considers leaving her husband closer to the end of the book, but she doesn't do it...at least, she hasn't by the time the story ends. She probably won't, since she could see how much suffering leaving her husband had caused her sister-in-law.

Kitty and Levin's story, which I found the more interesting of the two main stories, was interwoven loosely with Anna's story throughout the novel. At the beginning of the book, Levin, a somewhat wealthy farm owner and member of high society, is eager for Kitty's hand in marriage. Kitty is Dolly's sister. Kitty is in love with Vronsky, and Levin is humiliated when Kitty refuses his proposal. But then, Vronsky runs after Anna and leaves Kitty scorned and humiliated. Apparently Kitty can't deal with it, and her health suffers, forcing her to go abroad (her encounters with other characters are noted; she comes across Levin's own terminally ill brother, a curmudgeon without his brother's sense of direction). Though Levin lives purposefully (running his farm more or less successfully, along with his household, and maintaining his social connections and acting as a sort of local leader for the muzhik workers in the area), he does feel aimless, particularly after the death of this brother (who died not long after Levin and Kitty's reunion and subsequent marriage). Levin is often insecure, very proud, intelligent, but he definitely has his own interests (for example, though he has many opinions about farming that are learned and practiced, he does not take enough interest in politics to understand the nuances of it). I found myself connecting more with him than with any other character in the book, though as I previously noted, I could not agree with some of his often contradictory opinions.

Tolstoy shows the thoughts of his characters, and sometimes (particularly for Anna or Levin), in a stream-of-consciousness sort of style. That can be hard to follow sometimes, although Anna's thoughts tended to become repetitive: he doesn't love me anymore, blah blah blah. Levin suffers from an existential crisis after the death of his brother, even as he gets married to the woman he's loved for so long, and has a lovely little child (whom he first pities more than loves). At the end of the book, he has a kind of spiritual reawakening or something. I can't get too much into religious stuff; Levin begins stacking up the teachings of the Church (in his case, Eastern Orthodox) with his new understanding of God and the necessity of good in humanity, and he finds that they match up. I don't believe that about organized religion nowadays. I don't think that I suffer from any sort of spiritual crisis. I know what I believe, I know what I have faith in, and it certainly has nothing to do with any man-made conventions. But for Levin, his realizations, along with the fact that he has a pretty damn good life to begin with, brings him inner peace, and that's good. Anna didn't have inner peace, obviously. Perhaps Tolstoy was trying to get a religious message across; as I write this, I haven't really looked up much on the author himself, so I don't know how uber-religious he was. That's kind of how it comes across. I do applaud his portrayal of Countess Lydia as a hypocritical Christian...what kind of Christian believes a "clairvoyant," anyway? Hello, isn't that, like, witchcraft or something? She was just an idiot...and startlingly, a very powerful person in society.

Levin realizes, with his new spiritual realizations, that he hasn't fully developed as a person. He still has his faults, but he has a lot of good things going on as well. But what I think is most important is, he is moving on from the sadness of his past, the loss of his brother, and his mother before. He is focusing on what's important: his family, whom  he loves very much and is faithful to (he refuses to go cavorting among young farm girls with Oblonsky and another guest when they are on a hunting trip, and he soon after kicks the guy out of his house); his work, which is important to him; helping Dolly and his wife's family, whom he has come to embrace, even though they crowded in on his quiet country life. Levin was always the example of an upstanding man, even before he embraced the teachings of the Church.

Anna, in contrast, could not move on from the past, nor could her husband, and that is what made them tragic figures. Oblonsky, though he makes many mistakes, always looks ahead (or at least, lives in the present), and so he avoids tragedy...at least, for the time being. That's one powerful message that I'm taking away from many of the books I've read so far, that allowing the past to dictate what you do or how you feel is a deadly mistake, and that the only way to be happy is to forgive yourself, forgive others, and move on. Levin got over his pride at avoiding Kitty after she rejected him, and they eventually got back together. Just goes to show...

A picture meant to represent the title character. Kiera Knightly recently played Anna in a film version, but I didn't hear great things about that one...

9th graders don't like reading Tolstoy.

Book #19: Things Fall Apart

Book #19: Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

April 2, 2013


This is yet another book that I had started at a previous point, but had never had the chance to finish. I had actually read about half of this book during my student teaching assignment in a Phoenix suburb. It was at this giant high school, and just for the sake of putting it into perspective, Arizona is one of many states that has mandated high-stakes testing for its students. It's a controversial issue, really not something I want to get into (especially after proctoring another state assessment today during my substitute assignment), but suffice it to say, there was this chunk of two or three days where I had about half of the day to just...sit. So I found this book on my mentor's shelf. The title drew me to it; I remembered seeing the quote from Yates, "Things fall apart/the center cannot hold," on a course syllabus from, I don't know, one of my sophomore year literature classes. That was the instructor's way of saying that our syllabus was tentative, I guess. But I picked up the book, got about half-way through it...then other things came up and I just didn't pick it up again.

I remember being really interested in the story, and its main character, Okonkwo. But I viewed his mindset, his culture, as being really backward, and it made me somewhat uncomfortable (or maybe moreso the fact that I thought it to be backward made me uncomfortable...I like to think of myself as open-minded). At the time, I had just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (which still sits on my shelf), and I had sympathized with the characters in her book, the zealot missionaries daughters who are stuck in an often-hostile African village. I remember being shocked maybe more by the natural hostilities of Africa, like the storms and the bugs and the wild animals, and the way that Africa just tore their family apart. Still, for some reason I couldn't quite stomach Okonkwo during my first go at reading this.

Well, obviously I was much more successful this time. Maybe my perspective has somehow changed in the last three years that I'm better able to appreciate, or at the least understand, this book. You see, Okonkwo is a tragic hero, of almost mythological proportions. All of his adventures and misadventures in the book are laid out almost like the stories of a Greek hero. He is a tragic hero in the classic sense because he has a clear flaw: he is quick to anger, and he is not quick to show love or mercy. This leads, as you might guess, to his own tragic demise.

Okonkwo lives in the large village of Umuofia. Only in the very last lines of the book was I able to figure out that this is meant to be located in what we know as Nigeria. His people, in his own village and in the many vastly populated ones, have a very traditional culture. There are very clearly defined roles for men and women. The man rules the household; he can have multiple wives, and the more he has, the higher his status among his people. Okonkwo has three. Women are property; a man pays her family to marry her, though there are incidents described in the book of women leaving their abusive or unsatisfying husbands. Men are expected to be tough. Okonkwo especially values these traits, and though his aggression as a wrestler and his strength as a farmer and businessman have gotten him a good reputation among his people, he's also kind of seen as a bully, particularly among his wives.

His first wife is never named throughout the book. She has four of his children, including a son named Nwoye. Okonkwo is ashamed of his son, feeling like he never strong or tough enough. He reminds him too much of his own father, who was a debtor. Oknokwo is ashamed of his father, and all of his aggression seems to stem back to that relationship, and his determination that he will be nothing like him. But he threw the baby out with the bath water, as it were; though his father was lazy, he was also good-hearted and kindly, and so Oknokwo will not be those things, either. Oknokwo does love his children; he is especially attached to his daughter Ezinma, his only child with his second wife Ekwefi. Ekwefi's difficulties, first with her first marriage and then with her bad luck in having sick children who died on her, are described in detail, as are the various ceremonies that she and her people would perform to appease their gods.

Knowing that Achebe, the author, grew up in Africa when European missionaries were taking over and changing everything, I would say that his point in including all of the side stories, not directly related to Okonkwo's story but describing various ceremonies and laws and beliefs of their village and people, would be to show how deeply rooted their culture was. And the Europeans, the British missionaries and tradesmen and others, swept in and dismissed it. It's evil. They didn't understand it. They didn't want to understand it; the book describes how, in Okonkwo's home village and in the village where he stays amongst his mother's family when he is in exile for accidently killing a young man during a funeral ceremony, the missionaries came in and began aggressively preaching, using African interpreters who had a shaky understanding of the native language and not much of an understanding of their customs, to aid them. But while their ways are, at times, overly brutal (such as holding the leaders of  Umuofia hostage until a ransom was paid, and having the African guards beat them up and threaten them in the meantime, and refuse them food, water, or bathroom), Achebe presents the dark side of their culture, the things that would make someone like Nwoye go and join them, and change his name to Isaac.

One belief is that twins are evil, so twin babies are left in the woods (often in a place called "The Evil Forest" or thereabouts, where dead bodies that are deemed dirty can be safely dumped without ruining their good earth or displeasing their earth goddess) to die. Obviously, in our culture, this would be considered wrong. When twins are born, we go out and buy them cutesy little matching baby outfits (but please God, don't let them have alliterative names). We don't abandon them. Nwoye, soft-hearted in some ways, always questioned this custom.

Another event, earlier in the book, that had a profound effect on both Nwoye and Okonkwo involved a young man named Ikemefuna. This boy came to stay with Okonkwo from a neighboring village, after one of the women from Umuofia (a man's wife, at that) was killed there. The boy, and a virgin girl for the partially widowed husband, are retribution from the neighboring village to avoid war. Warring between villages (resulting in maybe a dozen or two deaths) seemed to be common, and Okonkwo was not afraid of fighting, to say the least. He fancied his village the toughest around, and himself the biggest badass on the block, to put it simply. When things fell apart...well, so did he.

Anyway, Ikemefuna became close with both Okonkwo and Nwoye. He was a tough young man, and Okonkwo looked on him as a son, and Nwoye looked up to him as a brother, an older brother who treated him like a friend. But because the fate of the boy was in the hands of the village as a whole, and not Okonkwo, they had to consult the priestess of their god. Chielo, who, outside of her priestess role is just another woman in the village, a widow who is friends with Ekwefi and is attached to young Ezinma, is believed to channel the god and pass down messages from him. Among other things, she declares that this boy must die. Though Okonkwo is advised not to make the trip, he not only accompanies the party that will kill him, but is the one to take off the young boy's head, just to prove...what? That he's tough...but his companions do not look on him favorable for this.

Okonkwo has a violent temper. He'd gotten in trouble once for beating his third wife (her name is mentioned, at least a couple of times, but I can't remember where to look for it) for being late with his lunch, during the village's week of peace to, I don't know, appease the gods before the harvest or something. I can't keep all of their customs, as described in the book, completely straight, but most of them revolve around the harvest. Okonkwo is a yam farmer, and a good one at that, and proud of it. He's a simple man in some ways, but he grapples with holding down his feelings. But he's never unable to lash out in anger, and it just continues to get him into trouble.

Although the sudden takeover of the white missionaries in his home village are what send Okonkwo over the edge when he first comes home from exile, he was already on the brink. His son had left the family, and though it's clear that he was very hurt by this, he keeps insisting that he has disowned the boy, and he'll do the same to the other sons (and haunt them when he's dead) if they do the same. He's no longer a big shot; his mistake (not even caused by his own temper, but by his gun inadvertently exploding while everyone was firing off rounds during the rowdy funeral ceremony) had cost him his status in the village, his fine barn and his homes for himself and his wife, and the nice wall around his large compound. He doesn't feel like a man without his titles, his status, his possessions. He's been taught that these are what is important in life. He is ready to fight.

But his neighbors aren't so much. After the injustice of the leaders being imprisoned and treated badly, the men meet and claim that they are ready to fight. African messengers of the white missionaries come to break up the meeting, and Okonkwo, ready to light the powder keg, steps up and challenges him, and literally does not hesitate to cut him down with his machete. The fact that his neighbors do not fall upon the remaining messengers proves to him that they will not fight, and that things really will fall apart, and he simply cannot handle that. He goes home and hangs himself, a kind of mortal sin in their religion. A man once honored among his people, and they won't even bury him.

The story ends very abruptly, but while I would be curious to see what happens to Nwoyke (or Isaac) or to the newly-married Ezinma, this was Okonkwo's story, the story of a tragic hero. And so it had an appropriately tragic ending. And not just for him, for we know what happens in Africa, and what's been happening since. Nigeria itself has had a tumultuous history, but today it's not considered a third world country anymore, so it has that going for it. It's sometimes difficult to remember that different parts of Africa have very different histories, and are going through very different things right now. While African history isn't always pretty to read about, I would like to know more about it. I mean, according to scientists or whatever, it is our motherland or something. I blame my lack of knowledge about Africa on the public schools, and all that time wasted on those damn tests...

A modern-day Nigerian woman in some traditional tribal dress. In the book, it was described how, for certain festivals, children's hair would be shaved into intricate patterns and designs. Women would have their hair plaited. I think this women is gorgeous (though her expression is a little strange in this picture); Ezinma is described as being the prettiest young woman in her village by the time she's old enough to marry, and many men are eager to purchase her.

A missionary school in Africa. In the book, it describes how the missionaries started a school, not just for children but for adults as well. Nwoyne got his education there, and was later sent to teacher college. These are good things, and yet, why were the missionaries doing it? To "spread the word of God," as a tool for manipulating the people. It all came down to power. Okonkwo, foolish and rash as he was, knew that. But he wasn't able to see some of the good things that the missionaries might have been able to offer.

Book #18: Catching Fire

Book #18: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

March 31, 2013


I've always enjoyed reading. I am a licensed English teacher, after all, and going to graduate school to become a licensed Reading Specialist. I will admit, when I was in high school, I slacked off on reading for fun. But when I did, I wasn't really interested in Young Adult literature. I don't know, I think I was kind of a snob or elitist (or a wannabe snob or elitist), and I thought that if I wasn't reading the "classics," then I was wasting my time or something.

I took a class in my undergraduate years, in which we had to read dozens of Young Adult novels. My attitude turned right around; I am a huge fan of quality Young Adult literature, which is a good thing, because in my first two years of teaching I was actually able to have conversations with my students (all about ten years younger than myself) about the books that they enjoyed (and that I genuinely enjoyed, too).

I intended to read this book, second in the trilogy, quite a while ago. I had gotten all three in a set, around Christmas 2011, and I read the first one and got into it. Well, when gathering all of my personal books from my classroom last May, I realized that I still had my first and third ones...but not my second. So, it went on my "to-read" list, and here we are.

For anyone who might be reading this who is not familiar with the premise of The Hunger Games, here's a brief recap. It takes place in a futuristic America called Panem. This is what would be called a dystopian society. I like introducing adolescents to this genre, because it gives them a chance to generate and discuss essential questions about their own society and culture (eg, "could it really come to this?"). Panem is divided into thirteen official territories, the Capitol and Districts 1-12. These places are all spread far and wide throughout the continent, and from some of Collins descriptions in the book, you get an idea where some of these places are supposed to be (like, I would guess District 3 to be in Maine, or perhaps in Louisiana, while District 12 is clearly meant to be in West Virginia or thereabouts). The districts are more or less heavily guarded, to keep people from going in and out. People can not move between districts. Life in the districts is abysmal for most, who live in crippling poverty and must work hours every day in the various industries of their district (coal-mining for District 12). There's hardly enough food to go around. And they live in fear of the powerful President Snow and the people of the Capitol.

The Capitol is a stark contrast to the districts. It is a flashy urban utopia, where people live for pleasure, blindly following the newest trends and not seeming to care about much else. They certainly don't seem to care about the plight of their fellow countrymen. In a way, I think the people of the Capitol are also manipulated; rather than being left to starve to death or work themselves to the bone, they are instead distracted by the commercialism promoted and valued in the Capitol.

Life in Panem has been this way for decades. After an unsuccessful uprising 75 years before, a law was passed to punish the districts for generations to come, to make them pay for the deaths of people in the Capitol. Every year, two children (ages 12 to 18, I think) are selected from each district to compete in the Hunger Games. The winner will be rich for the rest of his or her life, will live in luxury in his or her own district, and will provide food for the people in their district for the year after their victory. The other 23 kids...die. It is a battle to the death, in a high-tech arena created by people at the Capitol. The arenas always have their own nasty surprises; in the first book, for example, mutated wolves attacked Katniss and the other kids.

There's also a lot of publicity around the Games. The contestants are dressed up and paraded around the Capitol, and questioned in televised interviews that are mandatory viewing in all of Panem. The winner, months after, goes on a Victory Tour to all of the districts, and is again paraded around for the entertainment of the Capitol...and as a reminder to the districts that they are powerless to save their children from the Games.

But in the first book, Katniss changes everything. In a desperate bid to save herself and Peeta, the boy from her district who is in love with her, she threatened to commit suicide unless they both could survive, pretending to return his feelings of love. Most of the people in the Capitol view them as star-crossed lovers, and undoubtedly, the demands of the viewers forced the man in charge of the Games, Seneca Crane, to allow this breech of the rules. But some people in the districts saw it as a defiance, and the evil President Snow himself threatens Katniss, knowing much better than she does the influence that she has in all of Panem.

Katniss, as always, is only looking to live her life and survive. Winning the Games has complicated her life a little, but the situation with Peeta is the worst. She cares for him, but she also cares for Gale, her oldest friend who has helped her to survive in the worst of times. I felt like the personalities of these two characters were fleshed out a bit more in this book. I found myself not liking Peeta much in the first book; in the second, he's become a favorite. He genuinely cares for Katniss, though he does play her game of manipulation in his efforts to save her (such as telling the people in the Capitol that she is pregnant with his child). Because Katniss and Peeta aren't safe after winning the Games. The 75th games, a Quarter Quell, have a cruel twist to them. This was supposedly written years ago, before the Games even started, that in the 75th, only former victors would be going in. Katniss is convinced that the Capitol is trying to kill her off, even though she is a public darling, because of her influence in the growing district uprisings. So, she goes into the arena determined to save Peeta's life, believing that he will be a better leader in an uprising than herself.

Because Katniss has always been so intent on survival, she often takes things at face-value. She has a hard time understanding jokes sometimes. And she has trouble "reading between the lines." For example, it took her a longer time than I felt it should have to realize that her mockingjay pin, a present from her friend Madge, was a symbol of rebellion against the Capitol, even though I'm pretty sure it was mentioned somewhere in the first book. And that Plutarch Heavensbee having a mockingjay on his watch was significant in that regard (I saw his involvement in the pending uprising from a mile away after that little clue). Her point-of-view almost allows for some dramatic irony; even though the story is told in the first person, completely from her perspective, the reader has some insight and perspective that she does not.

Collins created such a vivid, horrifying society in this trilogy. As I kept reading, I kept trying to imagine ways that I would get out of various situations...but none of my solutions were viable in Katniss's world. She really was completely trapped, first in District 12 (especially after the strict new Peacekeeper had the electrical fence fixed), then in the arena. Knowing that Katniss was helpless, yet knowing that somehow she would get out of the situation, made this a constantly tense read. I think I got into this one much more than the first, perhaps because Collins were able to really jump right into the story and not have to spend as much time setting up the world of Panem for the reader. But I am a little skeptical about the ending, and how it will lead into the third book. See, at the end of the Games, after Katniss shot an arrow attached to a wire and, though electrocution, destroyed the force field around the arena, she and a couple of other tributes who had been part of their alliance were rescued by Heavensbee and Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta's mentor. They were whisked away in a hovercraft, and are headed to District 13, the district that was supposedly destroyed long ago...but is actually thriving, and looking to overthrow the Capitol. But Katniss's former home has been destroyed, and Peeta has been arrested by the Capitol. Collins only has one more book to bring down an entire corrupt government, and have Katniss choose between her two loves (because not saving Peeta is simply not an option). I have heard some fans of the trilogy complain about the ending, so while I can't wait to read it...well, I will simply add it to the list for now, and when I do pick it up, I will approach it with some caution.

Jennifer Lawrence, the actress who plays Katniss in The Hunger Games films. She basically came out of nowhere when she got the part, and since the first film was released (the second is out later this year, I think?), she's won an Oscar (for Silver Linings Playbook) and is a freaking superstar. Talk about a girl on fire!

The famous mockingjay symbol from the trilogy. The story behind the mockingjays is that they were the offspring of the ordinary mockingbird and the jabberjay, a mutated bird created by the Capitol to spy on people in the Districts. The people turned this weapon against them, and when the jabberjays were abandoned, the mockingjays came into being. For the longest time it was a sort of symbol of defiance against the Capitol...this combined with Katniss's popularity has made it more prominent than ever as unrest really begins.

Book #17: The Art of War

Book #17: The Art of War by Sun Tzu (translated by Lin Wusun)

March 27, 2013


When I was in my undergraduate days, I used to love watching reruns of the show Gilmore Girls with my roommates (sometimes playing beer drinking games for the duration of hour). I was a big fan of the show; some days when I'm not subbing, I still watch an episode, but I've basically seen them all at this point. I've gotten into Amy Sherman-Palladino's newest show (on ABC Family), Bunheads, which basically has the same fast-paced and often silly humor of my old favorite, with some of the same acting talent (such as Kelly Bishop, who is fabulous, and Liza Weil, who is outrageous). It doesn't get as much promotion as certain other shows on the channel, but I've gotten to be a fan and will be looking forward to next season.

Okay, what was my point here? So on both of the shows, characters often make references to things in culture: popular culture, celebrities, literature. It's usually pretty smart humor. Both of the shows made similar references to The Art of War, in somewhat similar situations. On Gilmore Girls, main character Rory (here's how big of a fan of the show I am: that's what I named my dog), when having a confrontation with a bullying classmate who was messing with her and Weil's character, states that she's read The Art of War, to indicate that she knows how to deal with her. On Bunheads, Sasha's part in The Nutcracker is being threatened by a psychotic "ringer" ballerina, and Sasha tells her that she's read The Art of War. (Okay, seriously, that episode is completely amazing...seriously, watch it sometime).

Therefore, I had it in my head that this book would reveal some profound method of handling opponents. I guess that for its time, it did. After all, it was first written more than 2000 years ago. According to the introduction of the text, this was a time of turmoil in China, so warfare was common. Sun Tzu was a highly honored commander at this time. In this text, he introduces ideas about strategy that were highly relevant in his time, but the principals of which can still be applied to "warfare" (or really, any sort of competition) today.

I can basically sum up the important messages that I take away from the book with the following:

-Know your "enemy." Be able to anticipate how he/she/they will act or move next. This is the reason why, for example, football coaches and teams watch footage of their opponents. They get a feel for their moves, so that they're better able to call their own plays. Also...
-Make sure that they cannot anticipate your next move. Be stealthy; catch them by surprise.
-Know yourself, so that you're able to be aware of your tendencies, your weaknesses, and you can compensate for these and still have the upper-hand.
-Always act calmly. Sun Tzu refers to commanders acting by strategy, not out of emotion (which, of course, rarely ever works out) to ensure victory, and respect from their troops. The chapters on commanding of troops applied most to my life, I guess, because I could see how a lot of that would apply to teachers gaining respect from their students (ie, not being too lenient, always acting fairly and consistently, caring genuinely about them, rewarding them appropriately)
-Think before you act. That's a life lesson for everyone. Be aware of your surroundings. Don't act if it could be you in danger or negative consequence of some sort. Weigh the pros and cons of every action.
-When faced with a dangerous situation and no way out...fight for your life.
-Be prepared. Anticipate your needs.

I think that basically sums up the important life lessons to draw away from the text (and the book itself was much shorter than I imagined...according to the introduction, only about 6000 characters in the ancient Chinese it which it was written). There were certainly many details that were no longer applicable to warfare of any kind, but those bigger lessons, about poise and preparedness and intelligent action, will always be relevant. A lot of those things almost seemed too obvious as I was reading them, but I'm sure that this sort of organized thinking and logic was fairly innovative for its time. Again, according to the introduction, this text came out around the same time that Confucius and other Chinese philosophers were first influencing society. This is ancient stuff here, older than the New Testament. I personally think it's pretty amazing that this book is being read and translated and studied to this very day.

However, I don't feel like I'd be any more prepared to take on any bitches who try to get up in my grill.

This is apparently an image of Sun Tzu. I studied Chinese history very, very briefly on a study abroad trip there (and Tibet) in my undergrad days. In those three weeks, we barely scratched the surface, its history is so rich. Damn, in American public schools we can't even properly get through less than 500 years of history, and the Chinese have thousands of years to cover.

My Rory. She knows nothing of the art of war, but she is a scrappy little shit.

Book #16: The Namesake

Book #16: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

March 21, 2013


I read Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, as part of a course on multicultural literature during my undergraduate days. A common theme in her writing involves children of Indian immigrants, and assimilation into American culture, which is, to say the least, quite different from the culture of India. I've always been a little fascinated by Indian culture. There is a surprisingly large population of Indian and Middle Eastern people in my small Midwestern city, and when I used to teach swimming lessons in high school, I taught some little kids whose mothers came on the pool deck in absolutely gorgeous saris. I thought some of the younger mothers were the most beautiful women I'd ever seen (the picture of Lahiri on the back flap of this book shows her to be really beautiful as well, with huge, piercing eyes). The Indian children were cute, too, and I seem to recall that they gave me less problems than some of the other kids (not to stereotype, that's just how I remember it). I quite imagined that these women, so traditionally dressed (just as Ashima, one of the main characters, is described in the book), kept within their own little community of Indian immigrants (I wasn't familiar with terms like 'Bengali' at that point), as I saw them do on the pool deck, in their own way resisting assimilation as much as possible.

That's basically how Ashima and her husband Ashoke cope with life in America. Ashoke had already been a student at MIT when their marriage was arranged, and she returned with him. The story follows Ashima, and the lives of her husband and their only son, until Ashima leaves to stay with her brother in Calcutta a few years after her husband's death. Ashima never really imagined spending her life in America, and it took her a long time to even find some sense of belonging there. It was her husband's near-death experience, years before they met, that led them to a strange new country, and that also gave their son his accidental name.

Names are another big theme in this book. Names are purposeful; everyone is given their name for some reason, even if it's as simply as their parents liking it for some reason. There's a story behind the strange spelling of my first name (though with some digging, I've found that it's a more common spelling in the UK...not that my parents are British). Though their son was named "accidentally" (according to tradition, they were going to wait for a letter from Ashima's grandmother, with her name for the baby in it, which never arrived before she died), his name had a real meaning. He wasn't just named for one of his father's favorite authors, Nikolai V. Gogol (though he "only" read English translations, he didn't seem to feel like this was cheating), but for the circumstances that saved his life after a horrific train wreck. Ashoke had been reading "The Overcoat" (which I reread this afternoon after completing the book) when the train crashed, and when rescuers were searching for survivors in the wreckage, he'd been able to get their attention by waving a page of the book, thus being rescued, and ultimately surviving.

Ashoke had met a man on the train, who had advised him to travel far and wide, to see the world and go west, specifically to America. Ashoke had shaken the man off at the time, claiming to be content in the world as it was presented in his beloved books. But knowing that the man had died without getting to go to England again, that he perhaps would not have died if he had not given in to his wife's demands to return to India, affected him; thus, he transferred to the U.S., and spent the rest of his life there. He has what would be considered a successful life there. He has a nice home in suburban Massachusetts, and a job as a professor of engineering at a local university. But he and his wife live between their two worlds, clinging to their Bengali friends throughout New England, getting together with them as often as possible and dragging along their Americanized children.

Gogol and his sister Sonia (her real name Sonja) aren't bad kids in the least, but they rebel a bit against their parents. The story mostly follows Gogol, as well as his parents, as he comes into his own between two cultures, in a way. His American friends aren't interested in his Indian culture, though it is so much a part of him; every few years, he goes and spends months in India (a remember the same thing happening with a kid in middle school, who left in the middle of 7th grade and wasn't back from India until the next school year). He goes to college at Yale to put some distance between himself and his parents. He even changes his name, resenting how strange it is. I can't help but wonder how "strange" he would think a Bengali name would be if he'd had to grow up with it among his American classmates, but it makes it even stranger (in his view) that his first name is Russian...and a surname, at that. He's also humiliated in high school literature class, when his teacher gives a lecture on Gogol, revealing the author to have been a disturbed fellow.

I read some Gogol in another undergraduate course (the same one in which I was exposed to the poetry of Baudelaire), "The Overcoat" being one story that we focused on in class. I had written a paper on the story, and one point that I'd focused on was the main character's name. Akaky Akakyevich can be taken from its Greek roots to mean something like "innocence" or "guilelessness," which would be appropriate to describe the character, who really is just an innocent, pathetic sort of creature. According to Wikipedia, when his name is pronounced correctly in Russian, it kinda sounds like their word for "poop," which, again, would be appropriate for a guy who gets shit on all of his life. Ashoke was fascinated by story, because it is just such a senselessly tragic story, about this guy who has a pathetic job, who saves for months just to have this nice new coat made for him, and its stolen off his back on a cold Russian night, and he later dies from getting a fever in the wintry streets. And nobody wants to help this guy! It's just too pathetic, and yet it says so much about the state of the world, even today.

I haven't read many other Russian authors, but Ashoke, as a young and literate man, loved them. His grandfather was a professor of Russian literature, or something like that. But Ashoke still grew up in poverty (it doesn't seem that Ashima suffered quite the hardships that he did), and the luxuries of life in America offer him some relief, though he is still very watchful of even the smallest signs of wastefulness. This is something that causes a divide between himself and his son, who, like many Americans, has a collection of things that he gets no use out of (books he doesn't read, records that don't catch his interest). I was frustrated that Ashoke had not tried to share the real story of Gogol's name with his son when he was still a teenager, before Gogol had the chance to change his name. I think he underestimated his son's ability to understand the significance of it.

But Gogol does change his name, to the Bengali Nikhil, the "good name" that his parents had wanted him to start using when he started kindergarten. But at that young age, Gogol only knew himself as Gogol, and wouldn't go along with it. Besides, it was the name on his birth certificate, the name that his parents had put down, because they had to put down something before they left the hospital. This new name gives him confidence. From there, his life as a young adult seems pretty ordinary. He becomes an architect, and he dates American girls. He has two serious relationships, and those are pretty ordinary, too...except that he never introduces one to his parents, and the other, he feels embarrassed the couple of times that she is around them. He and his serious girlfriend Maxine, a pretentious, wealthy Upper East Side girl who has moved back in with her parents and stays with "Nick" in her swank private floor, break up after his father's death. After Ashoke has a sudden heart attack while living briefly in Ohio for a research grant or something, Gogol feels guilty for separating himself from his family, and spends as much time with his sister and mother as possible.

Now, Gogol does not go so far into his mourning in the book that he shaves his head after his father's death (which, if I remember right, Gogol in the film version does, as depicted by Kal Penn), but he doesn't back away from his parents' culture so much. He even takes his mother's suggestion to look up an old family friend, a young woman around his age. He and Moushumi, with their shared childhood experiences, quickly fall in the love and marry, but their hasty union proves disastrous. In the end, Gogol is successful in his work, but he now wonders if he'll ever find someone to marry for life, to have a family with. His sister is going to marry a man who is not Bengali, and they seem happily in love, and Ashima is happy for them (though they will be having their wedding in India to please her). Ashima, widowed for a few years, is going home, and feels some regret at leaving the life she has built in America behind, though she'll return annually to see her children.

Besides Ashoke's early near-death experience, the events and circumstances of the lives of the Ganguli family are not in any way extraordinary. Lahiri wrote a story about realistic, likable but flawed (read: real) people. She presented a point-of-view that is important for her, one that, I imagine, has had an effect on her own life, and is certainly not one that is represented in today's mainstream culture. I mean, the US has a substantial population of people from India, but they're one underrepresented minority group. Besides Kal Penn (best known as Kumar from those very silly movies...again, NPH is hysterical), the only other American actor of Indian descent that I can think of is Aziz Ansari, the really loud comedian. Um, Gus is dating a woman of Indian descent (by way of England, like Moushumi in the book) on Psych. Is he still dating her? I've missed the last couple of episodes.

Anyway, my point is, though the characters in this story were fairly average people, I really enjoyed this book. Maybe for the fact that they were just ordinary people, and that Lahiri wrote so intimately about their lives, about their fears (like for Ashima, of losing touch with her ever-shrinking family in India, or for Gogol, who seems to fear the negative effects that his name would have on his life, as unclear as they are to him), and their desires, but mostly in just the details of their day-to-day existence. The details that Lahiri gives about her characters carefully illustrate not just what they look like, but who they are. She does the same thing with their surroundings, particularly their homes or personal working spaces. And, of course, their names.

It's pointed out a couple of times in the book that Ashima and Ashoke never address each other by their names. The reader isn't told what names they use for each other, their private pet names I guess you could say, which makes these names all the more powerful. Ashima and Ashoke, after being forced to name their son officially before learning her grandmother's choice, reflect on how naming in their culture is so different from America, and are frustrated when no one understands the concept of pet names and good names. For them, Gogol was supposed to be the pet name, and it becomes a family joke of sorts that their son carries it for life. But the story of how he got it, with his father's survival of the train wreck...it's a hell of a story, making it a hell of a significant name, which Gogol reflects on in the end. He will, forevermore, be known as Nikhil, the name that was supposed to be his good name all along, but he is sad that the people who call him "Gogol" are so few and far between. It is not until it is too late that Gogol realizes the real meaning of his name. But there is hope, of course: he is still fairly young, though divorced, and can still find a wife and have children, and perhaps pass the name and its significance on.

Jhumpa Lahiri. Apparently, "Jhumpa" is her "pet name." She hasn't published any other novels, but I may add her other short story collection to my list.

Harold and Kumar. You know, Kumar is a little bit like Gogol in some ways. He, too, is the son of immigrants, and is being pressured by his father, a doctor, to follow in his footsteps. But Kumar, very Americanized, would rather hang out with his non-Indian friends and get stoned. In that way, he's much more typical than the Ivy League-educated Gogol.

Book #15: Wuthering Heights

Book #15: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

March 14, 2013


After reading up a bit (via Wikipedia, mainly) about the Brontë sisters, I have found that Wuthering Heights was Emily's only novel. She, like her siblings, died fairly young. Well, I'd say that she made her one book count, because she really told one hell of a story. It's clear to me why it's a classic of English literature. I found the story to be entertaining, and the characters to be complex and interesting, if not altogether likable.

The story centers around Heathcliff (that is his given name, and he goes by only this), who was found as an abandoned orphan in Liverpool by Mr. Earnshaw, a country gentleman who takes the boy home and raises him alongside his own children, Hindley and Catherine. This is not uncharacteristic of the man, as he had also taken the young Ellen Dean (known as Nelly or Mrs. Dean, though I have no idea who the hell Mr. Dean is supposed to be...am I missing something here?) under his wing. She is the main narrator of the story, as she tells Heathcliff and the Earnshaw and Linton's story to Mr. Lockwood, the first narrator of the story. The story isn't really about him at all; all that's really known of him is that he is a young gentleman, who, on a whim, rented out Thrushcross Grange from Mr. Heathcliff, in order to get away from his hard-partying lifestyle, I think. Or maybe to escape a heartbreak...I was still kind of getting used to Brontë's writing style at that point, so I may have missed some details that were mentioned in passing. It doesn't really matter.

Anyway, Lockwood makes his way up to Wuthering Heights, the old country house at which Heathcliff resides with his widowed daughter-in-law, a very lovely but cold young woman, and a young farmhand named Hareton Earnshaw, who is not entirely friendly himself. Heathcliff is an imposing and unwelcoming man, and Lockwood, though not desiring to spend much time with his landlord, becomes fascinated by the unhappy household, especially after finding a few scrawled diary entries from a young woman named Catherine Earnshaw.

As Lockwood is laid up from an illness (I've commented on this before, but I'll say it again: English people of certain means really spent a lot of time on their asses back in the day), Nelly entertains him with the story of Heathcliff and the others. Though Heathcliff was raised beside the Earnshaw children, and was close with young Catherine, he was ill-treated by an older Hindley, and to some extent by Nelly herself (though it seems, throughout the book, that she is the only person in whom Heathcliff feels comfortable confiding). Catherine herself is a brat, as described by Nelly, though it would seem by my point-of-view that she was merely high-spirited, but over-indulged by her widower father. Hindley, home from school and newly wed, takes over Wuthering Heights, and proceeds to treat Heathcliff like a servant, keeping him separated from Catherine as much as possible.

Catherine, though "wild" and willful, eventually comes under the influence of the Linton family, who live at Thrushcross Grange. She never quite loses her ill manners, but when she is around Edgar Linton, she is better behaved. Even after he gets a glimpse at her temper (after she'd had an argument with Heathcliff; their sexual and emotional tension was to the breaking point, as  he was very jealous of her relationship with Linton and she certainly knew it), he desires to marry her. Now, as told from Nelly's perspective, it's clear that Catherine shares Heathcliff's feelings. Their feelings for each other are passionate; if they lived in more contemporary times, they would have run away together. But Catherine was from a respectable (if isolated...they were painfully isolated in their country manors) family, and Heathcliff literally had no name, nothing. To her, the only practical thing to do was to marry Linton.

At some point, Heathcliff goes off and makes a bunch of money. Nelly can never explain how this happened, and it is disappointing not to have found that part out. But he comes back and takes up residence at Wuthering Heights with the now-widower Hindley, who has gambled and drank away all of his money, and Hindley's neglected young son Hareton. As Heathcliff haunts Catherine's home, to the chagrin of her husband, Isabella Linton falls in love with him. You see, she interprets his brooding manner and devotion to Catherine to speak of his romantic heart (Catherine, who knows what a scoundrel he is, and perhaps this is the reason why she could not be with him, laughs at this and warns her off). I bet there are some fans of this book who might even take the same view...I can only imagine the plethora of fan fiction stories out there, written about some lady or another, from the story or imagined anew, who warms Heathcliff's icy heart.

I call bullshit on that one. Heathcliff comes from a strange, somewhat tragic, background, to be sure, but he's an asshole. Certainly, he had his pride abused by a child...so the bullied kid grows up to be a bully of children, it would seem. Though he does attack Hindley  while he's still  living (through his dirty dealings and financing the mortgage on Wuthering Heights and the land surrounding), he doesn't dare go after Edgar Linton until he's lying on his death bed (years after Catherine died in childbirth, bearing her namesake). He exacts his revenge against his enemies on the children, Hareton and Catherine themselves, and to some extent his own children through Isabella, the weakling Linton. He tricks young Catherine into marrying his spoiled, sickly son in order to have access to Thrushcross Grange, a finer property than Wuthering Heights. And once Edgar Linton is dead, what does Heathcliff do? He rents it out, rather than lording over his triumph.

Some triumph. It's more like misery loves company. Heathcliff is a miserable man, and he creates a miserable household. Poor young Catherine, who had been isolated herself but fairly happy as a child, is miserable in her new home, and is physically abused by Heathcliff (and to some extent by Hareton, her own cousin, though they become very friendly later on). Yeah, Catherine keeps it on both sides of the family, as she goes from marrying one cousin to the other (an improved Hareton and she are engaged at the end of the book). But they're much better suited for each other, as Hareton grows more gentle under her influence and education, and he can check her brief but violent tempers. 

Hareton was the most tragic character through much of the book. He came to love and trust Heathcliff, his guardian, though he was emotionally neglected, and was left uneducated and made to work on the farm. Heathcliff revealed to Nelly, in one of his wicked monologues, that he'd planned it this way on purpose, giving Hareton the same treatment that the boy's father had given to him. Really spiteful, especially considering that Hareton was his own beloved's flesh and blood. Bullying his own son and his daughter-in-law as well...but none of it brought him any joy. 

So really, I see Heathcliff as nothing more than a villian in this book, and I was glad when he died at the end. At the very least, he was finally happy, to be laid to rest beside his Catherine (even as her husband lay on the other side of her). The people around Wuthering Heights claimed that Heathcliff and Catherine's spirits haunted the area, and even the level-headed Nelly somewhat believed it. The household was happier after this, when Lockwood came to visit them briefly after some time away, and the couple were planning to move to Thrushcross Grange, leaving the bitter old servant Joseph, a classic Christian hypocrite) behind to tend to the abandoned (haunted?) Wuthering Heights.

I had heard this book described as being "violent," but I was surprised by the uncouth conduct of the characters. People nowadays often think back on those Victorian-era English times as being a time of proper society and manners and social hierarchies and all that stuff. But the characters in this book were basically English country bumpkins (with some money). I think I was expecting something more like a Jane Austen novel, but this story was much darker, though there was some glimmer of hope at the end. This book was surprising, in a good way.

Heath Ledger (RIP). I read once that he was named after the character Heathcliff. Uh, seriously? I take that to mean that his parents took the view that the character was some sort of brooding romantic hero. Once again, bullshit IMO.

A drawing of Emily Brontë, done by her sister Charlotte, who was also a writer (I've read Jane Eyre, which is pretty dark like Wuthering Heights). All of the family had artistic inclinations; the brother was an artist, too, and sister Anne published a couple of novels, in addition to the book of poems that the sisters had published together under their (male) pen names.

Book #14: Maus

Book #14: Maus by Art Spiegelman

March 1, 2013


Just so there's no confusion, I'll just point out that I read "The Complete" Maus, consisting of two parts that were originally published separately. It's one book that has been on my "to read" list, but I bumped it up because I will be teaching this book as part of a long-term sub assignment, starting sometime in April. The library (the small library annex in the mall was moved to a larger location nearby) didn't have a copy available, so I got it from the teacher I will be subbing for. Both parts took Art Spiegelman approximately 13 years to work on, from gathering the information (mainly through interviews with his father, which are depicted in the story) to drawing out each panel and writing it all out. It took me less than five hours to finish. As I went, I jotted down some vague notes to help me work out some lesson plans (I'm such a nerdy teacher, I seriously love making lesson plans, so I guess it's a good thing that I'll be in a consistent classroom for about six weeks), but that did not deter the pace of my reading. Plus, it was just difficult to put down.

So Maus is pretty famous, which is putting it quite lightly, I know. Maybe I just haven't been paying much attention, but I don't know that graphic novels, in general, have become really popular or legitimate until quite recently. There are other graphic novels on my "to-read" list, and I feel like they were published in the last ten years or so. Part one of the text, "My Father Bleeds History," was published in the late 70's or early 80's, Part two ("And Here My Troubles Began") coming out about a decade later. It won the Pulitzer Prize. I think it would be safe to say that this is an innovative text in the graphic novel genre.

Maus is a memoir of the author's father's experiences as a Jew in World War II, from the war lines to the ghettos to Auschwitz itself. But it is just as much a story about "Artie's" relationship with his father. Vladek Spiegelman is a difficult man to get along with. In his old age, he suffers from many health problems: very poor eyesight (one eye is glass), diabetes, and he often requires an oxygen tank. He has bad circulation. He takes many pills each day (which he obsessively counts out). And he's very moody. His wife Mala (another Holocaust survivor whom he married after Anja, Artie's mother who survived the war with him, committed suicide) can hardly stand him, even running off at one point to Florida, only to reunite (reluctantly) after Vladek follows her there and becomes ill. Artie frequently becomes exasperated with his father, especially when he asks him to do some sort of home repair project (Artie, an artist, always resisted doing those sorts of things around the house, afraid that his father was constantly judging him). And though Francoise, Artie's wife, tries to be patient with Vladek, she becomes irritated with him when he makes racist comments about a black hitchhiker whom she gives a ride to.

I'm fascinated by Vladek, and I really appreciate the fact that the author chose to include so much personal information about his father's later life, interwoven between his stories of the Holocaust. At one point in the book, a character (I can't remember who) makes a comment that there are already a lot of Holocaust stories out there. Certainly, there are, and some of them are definitely worth reading, but I don't feel like there's been so much about the life of survivors (and their children) after the Holocaust. Francoise hypothesizes that her father-in-law's behavior is due to trauma that he suffered in the concentration camps, and while Artie agrees with her to some extent, he also notes that he's met other survivors, friends of his parents, and they didn't seem to behave as he did. In the end, it doesn't seem like Artie is able to truly understand why his father acts and thinks the way that he does, but he does appreciate his experiences. See, he proves that by including all of that about their shaky relationship; if he'd just wanted to make his story about his father's experience in the Holocaust, he easily could have done that, and the book probably would have been just as successful. All of that information really shaped his parents as "characters"; they are real, and he portrayed them as such.

Well, except for the fact that all of the people were drawn as animals. It breaks down basically like this: the Jewish people were mice, the Germans cats, the Polish people were pigs, Americans are dogs, French people are frogs (ha! Love it!)...although he did make his wife a mouse instead of a frog, including in the story a scene of them arguing about the matter. When Vladek and Anja were trying to go incognito through the unfriendly Polish streets, they were portrayed as mice wearing pig masks. The only time in the story that the author breaks this is in one scene in Part II, when he is describing his feelings of being overwhelmed by the success of Part I. At one point, the characters were all people, but were wearing their respective animal masks (Artie, of course, a mouse).

I could speculate about why the author chose the animals that he did for each. It seems kind of obvious, I guess. The Germans as cats, the Jews as mice, because the Germans were ruthlessly going after them. The Polish people as pigs may seem harsh, but though Vladek and his father encountered a few friendly Poles, most of them were ready to betray Jewish people to the Germans. Americans as dogs, I guess because they came in and ended the war, rescuing many survivors (as has been portrayed in other Holocaust literature as well). French as frogs is obvious and hilarious. At one point as I was thinking about the distinctions, though, I wondered why the author would do this. I mean, aren't we all one people? But then, the Germans definitely didn't believe that; they classified and made distinctions between different "types" of people, different "species," if you will, and ranked them (cats at the top, mice at the bottom, of course). Oh, there's also a Gypsy character who is portrayed as some kind of bug, I think a butterfly or perhaps just a fly, I had a hard time telling. Butterflies would make sense, as they are beautiful, but would be hunted by cats. So Spiegelman's symbolism makes sense to me...plus, the mice just look so cute in their little clothes (although not throughout the entire book).

I would love to know more about Anja, the author's mother. He did as well; the mention of her diaries, kept after the war, is a motif in both parts. At first, his father (a hoarder of sorts) claims that he is unable to find them; then he says that he burned them up after his wife's suicide. Artie is furious, even calling his father a "murderer." Anja is a strong presence in Part I, but not so much in Part II, since she and her husband were separated at Auschwitz, and the story is following Vladek. In the story, Artie seems bitter that he cannot tell his mother's story as well...I wonder if that bitterness lasted?

Still, she is prominent in the first part. Her ongoing mental illness is clear even before the war started, with her collection of pills for her "nerves" and her post-partum breakdown after Richieu's birth (Artie's older brother, who did not survive the war; Artie was born after the war and grew up an only child) and her subsequent institutionalization. Then, of course, she committed suicide, more than two decades after surviving the war. One would think that she had already seen the worst of it, that life in America could only be a vast improvement. Well...since, of course, there's not much prominent literature out there about post-Holocaust life for survivors, people outside of the situation (myself included) don't understand that it's more complicated than that. I guess one might think that Anja, and others like her, suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but again, her mental illness goes back further. It seems too that Artie inherited this from her, as he at one point was institutionalized himself.

While the actual experiences that Vladek had in the concentration camps are not very much unlike other Holocaust stories that I have read, Spiegelman's drawings bring a new dimension to this portrayal. The details and depictions seem so genuine; it's clear that the author really took his time, made sure that he told the story through his father's eyes as much as possible. There's no more succinct way to put it: Maus is a masterpiece. It is both the story of the experiences of millions of people, and the story of one family. This book is essential; it's no wonder that it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Vladek Spiegelman, in a photo taken not long after the war. It is one of the few actual photographs in the text. He sent this to his wife Anja, having it taken at a souvenir stand. Kind of a dark souvenir, I think, but I also can't help but note that Vladek was a good-looking man. I mean, it's pointed out in the text that he was handsome, but damn.

I'm not sure if this was an alternative title page for the text by Spiegelman himself, or if it was fan-generated. The mice in the book aren't quite as long-faced, and their eyes are darker.