Archive for February, 2008
To Be Or… As A Characterization Of Hamlet
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 | Book Reviews | 5 Comments
Hamlet’s classsic “To be or not to be…speech” really shows who he is. Obviously Hamlet is horribly depressed. We have already seen several examples of this, but this speech gives us a clear picture of his sadness. More importantly however, his speech shows his weakness and indecisiveness. Hamlet is consistently melancholy, but he never really acts on it; he just kind of wallows around, full of self-pity and loathing. Throughout the play he seems to wish for death and here we find out why he doesn’t bring it on himself. This speech provides us with a clear understanding of Hamlet and his motivations. He feels that his troubles and his heartache are to to much to deal with. While this speech is not the first time he has mentioned suicide, it does give the clearest picture of just how far gone he is. He seems to be weary of life, as he consistently says to sleep while refering to death. As though he only wishes to rest and forget his troubled soul. It is not that he feels there is too much pain or strife in life, but that he is tired with dealing with it and exausted by his efforts. More interestingly, Hamlet shows here his fundamental cowardice and fear.
He has been going on for the whole play about how terrible his life is and how much pain and suffering he has had to endure, and he starts out the speech on this note. This is the first indication of his weakness. Hamlet, it seems, would rather bemoan his troubles than solve them. He goes on and on about his crappy life but rarely, if ever, even tries to do anything about it. Even in his desire for death he will speak but not act. He doesn’t decide against suicide because of some noble realization (that life is far to precious to be wasted for example), he is just too scared of the afterlife. Hamlet’s motivation for wanting to die and also for remaining alive gives some of the best insight into his personality. In this speech Hamlet elects not to kill himself and discovers why he has not yet done it.
His reason for choosing life over death is also shown here. He is too afraid of the unknown, of the undiscovered country to act on his desire. It is not so much that he is afraid to act, just that he has become so despondant that he doesn’t really care enough to do anything. All of his actions thoughout the play, up through the end of the story, can be viewed as a consequence of his despondence and cowardice. Hamlet lays out in this speech exactly what kind of person he is.
Ian McEwan “The Cement Garden”
Monday, February 25th, 2008 | Book Reviews | 1 Comment
“I did not kill my father”, that´s the very first sentence of this peculiar book!
What follows, is a couple of events which don´t seem to be normal at all.
There is a family with four children. Two girls and two boys. The father is a dominating person in this family and everyone has to obbey him. One day father buys a sack of cement and while cementing their garden, he dies from a heart-attack “his head resting on the newly spread concrete”. What a relief!!
Jack, admires his older sister. They play doctor-games with their little sister Sue.
“We looked into her mouth and between her legs with a torch and found the little flower made of flesh.” Soon Jack starts mastrubating almost every morning in the bathroom. Some weeks after their dad died, mother becomes bed-ridden and stays in bed all day long, then she dies. She orders not to tell anybody, when she dies, because then the four siblings would be separated and would lose their house.
One would expect deep sorrow and tears of the children. No! No tears (except of the little boy Paul)! The oldest girl Julie has to take the responsibility. They decide to bury mother in the cellar in a trunk which they cover with rests of father´s cement.
The older silblings Julie and Jack become surrogate parents of Sue and Tom.
Tom is hysterical and wants to be a girl then a baby. Jack is doing nothing at all and refuses to wash himself. Sue is in her room writing and reading something. Julie has a new boy friend, who is rich andobliging. Jack is distracted and jalous. It seems as if the four orphans have completly forgotten how it is to have a mother and a father. Nobody talks about this subject and about the future.
There is a strong smell in the house. When they go down into the cellar, the conrete over mother´s “grave” is broken up. To Derek they improve a story about a dead dog, they´ve burried in the cellar. Mother is covered with cement again.
Julie keeps distance to Derek who urges to move into their house.
The climax and the turning point of this, in my opinion, perverted story, is a sex-scene between Julie and her brother Jack. Derek catches them, while they are examining their bodies.
“As I closed my lips around Julie´s nipple a soft shudder ran through her body and a voice from across the room said mournfully, `Now I´ve seen it all`”
“ `Why didn´t you tell me?´ I felt Julie shrug. Then she said, Actually, it´s none of your buisness.´ ”
This book is nothing special if you read it and don´t try to figure out why it´s actually written and what is it really about. It´s surreal in a way. In my opinion it is very close to Freud´s theories and I´m sure that McEwan is quite familiar with his work. The examples which McEwen uses to show difficulties of young sexual identity are certainly very exaggarated and that´s why this book immpressed me in a negativ way. It wasn´t pleasant for me to read .
This book is full of metaphors or rather it is actually a parable. The title “Cement Garden” is a symble for this stiff atmosphere in the house and in the souls of the children. It stands also for the education they got from their father. Education is like the foundation out of cement to build a house on it.
D. Lessing`s “The Fifth Child”
Monday, February 25th, 2008 | Book Reviews | No Comments
Imagine! You are pregnant and both, you and your handsome husband are really looking forward to this new baby. Your FIFTH baby! Everybody in your large family is pleased to spend their freetime on holiday at your big house and helps you where help is needed. Some of this big family members sometimes wonder and are surprised about your desire to have AT LEAST 6 children and why you had 4 of them in only 5 years. In their opinion you are exergerating a bit.
But it was always hard for you to preserve your attitude towards sex and the value of a real family, especially in the sixtees.
Back to our main characters – to Harriet and her husband David Lovatt.
When Hariet was pregnant last time they decided to give it a break for a couple of years. Both are really dismayed when she`s pregnant again. Because they don`t trust the Pill and don`t use any other contraceptives but only the count-days-method, David holds the responsibility for this pregnancy on Harriet. During her pregnancy Harriet developes a hatered to this ”monster”(that`s how she called her foetus) inside her body who tries to hurt her from inside. She cannot sleep because of the permanent moving of the foetus thus the doctor prescribes her a sedative. Poor Harriet takes more and more of these “drugs” to calm down the baby.
After eight months of horrible aches in the belly, which she hardly can stand anylonger, Harriet gives birth to their new family member. It is a boy!
“He was not a pretty baby. He did not look lake a baby at all. He had a heavy-shouldered huncher look, as if he were crouching there as he lay.”
Ben, this is how Harriet called him, has green-yellowish cold eyes and a head, which is too big for his body. From the first moment, this strange child starts his fight! He`s struggling and kicking around with an abnormal strength and he`s insatiable hungry.
The four other children are afraid of Ben. Harriet is sure, she cannot love her own baby and David doesn`t even touch him.
Their dream of a family life in an isolated, protected world of their large house begins to darken.
Nobody admits that Ben is the destroyer of the happyness and pleasure. Herriet is condemned by everybody, even by David, her husband.
When Ben is 6 month old, he tries to hurt his brother Paul. When he`s about one year old, he kills a dog and then also a cat. Ben strangles them! He seems to be uncontrollable and heartless.
Not human!!
The family insists on putting him into an institution for freaks, where they are kept away from the society and are druged to death eventually.
What a RELIEF! Everything turns back to normality. The four other children adore their mother who almost didn`t pay attention to them since her last pregnancy. David and Harriet hope for a new beginning in their torn relationship.
“Harriet understood what a burden Ben had been, how he had oppressed them all, how much the children had suffered,…”
Harriet realizes, how much Ben had influenced the characters of the other four unfold young minds. She owned them and her husband David so much!
At the other side Herriet has remorse having given away her own child, although she never did feel any affection towards him. Her decision is set. She will go and see where and how Ben is now.
Nor David neither her mum are able to talk her out of it.
This is the turning point of the story!
Harriet is torn between the ruthlessness and cruel society and her responsibility as a mother. Her pathetic feelings caused again condamnation from everybody, for the rest of her life.
When she arrives at the institution Ben was brought to, by her family, she doesn`t even think about any other possibilities and decides to bring her son back home. She finds him in a room with walls out of white plastik and smeared with Bens own excrements !
“The doctor” gave him something very strong, so he was away for half a day and moreover they put him in a strait-jacket.
Obviously he would die very soon, because while he was druged he couldn`t eat.
Back home her children and David sat silent.
“He would have been dead in a few months. Weeks probably.” A silence.
“I thought it was the idea!”, said David.
For the next time Harried cared again much more about Ben then about the other children. This was David`s job.
Ben is sometimes like a pet who either trust or doesn`t trust his owner. Herriet threats Ben with returning him to this horrible place if he wouldn`t obbey her. So he is really afraid of her.
Soon he should go to school but Herriet is afraid that he would hurt there somebody. He did.
The two older children want to leave and go to a boarding school. The other two prefere to go to a friends house after school. David is almost never at home but at work. Once a happy family life now it breaks apart. The only reason for it is – Ben.
Lateron Ben becomes part of a street-gang of youths. The teenagers tease him with names like Gobblin, Hobbit or Gnome but he doesn`t mind. They take him to their trips. Harriet is their sponsor because she`s glad when he`s away and she is able to spend time with the othe two children.
Soon, she knew it, they would leave too, to go to a boarding school. The main reason for it again is Ben.
Ben finishes his primary-school and can hardly write his own name or read. In spite of this fact he changes to another school. He starts bringing home his own gang of ten boys who obbey him wordlessly although he speaks seldom.
“When he did say something, it was never much more then Yes, or No.Take this!Get that!”
“They were a bunch of gangly, spotty, uncertain adolescents; he was a young adult.”
After twenty years, Herriet´s and David´s marriage turned in a way they never supposed it would.
They didn`t have a family anymore. The large house, the symbol for family life, should be sold.
Herriet feels terribly lonely. Nobody ever understood her thoughts about this strange creature she has given birth to.
Ben is about to leave too. His gang becomes famous for its brutal crimes. Ben came and went with the same cold blooded mood of an animal. He didn´n even say good-bye.
The Men`s Beauty
Sunday, February 24th, 2008 | Humour & Stuff | 3 Comments
Men are often complaining about women who are spending eternities in the bathroom painting their face to go out for dinner, shopping, making sports, bring the post in or the garbage out! No doubt – women love it to paint their faces in different colours and to comb their hair and try another new hairstyle ending up with a nervous collapse and the usual ponytail. But that won`t be the subject of this post! I`ll show you how much more interesting is the special attitude of Today`s men towards their looks and their vanity.
The new generation of men is reading style magazin`s, buying anti-age creams, shopping with the best friend and join a Sports&Wellness Studio. How comes? Is it normal?
Of course it`s the effect of the marketing strategy of the cosmetics and textile industry as well. But women played a much more decisive role then it might seem! Yes, women helped to rediscover the Men`s Beauty, which had been lost during the centuries!
The Beauty of men and women had a prominent rank in the ancient world. The Greeks idolized the mental as well as the physical beauty. Their bathing rituals for example contained, besides a solid epillation, body massages, vapour-baths and a cosmetics care afterwards. Usually men went to a Therme to meet friends and business partner. By now Today`s men are very similar to the old Greek men … Some of them already caught up with women in terms of style and looks! Sometimes I feel really uncomfortable if a (hetero) good looking man with twitched eyeborows is sniffing new perfumes at a perfumery! But haven`t it been the women who nagged about their untended men over years and years? “You don`t have any taste at anything! You look disastrous! Go and shave your face! Cut your hair! Is it your single T-Shirt (trousers, shoes, shorts…) ?!!!” I think every women can identify with it!
But now look! The New Generation of modern Men starts a counterstrike against all these accusations and prejudices! They are shaving away every body hair, pre-dating their hair-dresser appointments, reading style-magazines to catch up with the new spring-collection and even visiting cooking courses to please their girl-friend (wife)!
Actually women should be satisfied by now and be happy with their perfect styled men! Sorry guys – as for me, I miss sometimes your masculine flavour, your uncumbed long hair and you confused glance in a clothes store! I don`t mind if you stay as you are!
Man is man!
Kaminer “Russendisko”
Friday, February 22nd, 2008 | Book Reviews | No Comments
The russian author emigrated from Moskow in 1990. Living in the German capital Berlin he writes about trivial situations of his everyday life. In particular he reflects and outlines in a funny way special problems which russian emigrants are confronted with in terms of the new mentality and language.
“Russiandisco” iss a light and amusing book to read! The humourous way to describe russians, who are coming to the West to start a new life and ending up in the Berlin suburb Marzan in an asylum, is very well done and hits the mark!
The russian (jew) community holds together. There are russian “Intelligenzia”clubs, folklore-feasts, restorants and Diskos! The author points out, that customs, mentality and the way of life of russians living in Berlin didn`t change much throghout years. And it`s quite unlikely that a foreigner of the first-generation will integrate into the new society.