Humankind is always been haunted by the idea of oblivion, the mere thought of being forgotten, the inkling of being swiped out of the face of earth, fHumankind is always been haunted by the idea of oblivion, the mere thought of being forgotten, the inkling of being swiped out of the face of earth, from memory, from hearts of those who were held close, strikes us down like an old rotten sapling, that didn’t see the good days of opulence, nor was given the sun enough, so couldn’t grow to become a tree. Death seems to be a farfetched long-talked idea, an unpleasant episode others went through and never happened to us, an equivocal dot of a thought swiftly burring under the teemed dirt of brains, and there are times, when death gets undressed of that dirt, arises naked and dances Rhythmically In tandem with you. This was the time when it happened! Of all Camus’ novels, none described man’s confrontation and cohabitation with death so vividly and on such an epic scale as La Peste, translated as The Plague. Happy town of Oran at the west fronts of Algeria, encounters plague in a fine morning of mid-summer when people are indulged in petty goings-on as we today. Our narrator unfolds the events with a voice most detached yet complacent, Dr. Bernard Rieux is the survived witness and victim of what happened in later months, of the transition of people, of the heart crushing groans that became the interminable anthem of the town, I’ve never in my life seen someone fighting the already defeated battle with plague, their groins sagging with buboes, eyes flushed and fever bright, writhing with every breath that escapes from their body, their limped throats causing squeaks like rat, with an endless thirst that quenches never, until bellies are burst when swelled too much with liquid, lungs defy to cooperate and the already defeated battle comes to an end leaving a body cold and open in every pore, this is not the end we want for us, for our loved ones, day after day, after day, until the anger turns into agony and agony weds with despair, giving birth to an endless indifference. This is the story of those who were left at the other side of gate, and when gate was opened, people were not what they were expected to be after this long.They changed, for better or worse. “In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure. And all the hideous fears that stamp their faces in the daytime are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall into a sort of hectic exaltation, an unkempt freedom fevering their blood.” God is the luxury of better days, a fair whether friend, a source of comfort for the relentless hearts, a good-times enthralling idea that breeds on the soil of one’s soul, and the certitude of hereafter a pornographic clip that wets our insides for a timely pleasure, tickling our sensitive places with the sensuousness of more to come, a pigeon’s closing of eyes on seeing the cat right in front of him, but when faced with reality, first thing that crumbles down like a shred of glass is the comfort feel of that eternal reward in exchange of the hell we spend called life, you can’t entertain the thought of some supernatural deity sitting in sky looking down at masses in silence anymore, counting the time of judgment to come, while they writhe in pain indescribable and call for him only to receive a ceaseless silence in response, there’s something gravely wrong with god theory, it has to be. Again and again, Camus invokes some condition of well-being that has been forfeited, because the pestilence has taken hold. Cut off in the plague city, the people's moorings of past loves and values are all lost: "They experienced the deep suffering of all prisoners and all exiles, which is to live with a memory which serves no purpose." Sequestered and sullied, the inhabitants suffer the breaking of all social bonds; all time becomes time present and erases hope (in the future) and love (with its connectedness to the past). But the central puzzle Camus worries at comes towards the end of the novel, with Tarrou's celebrated question, "Can one be a saint without God?" To which Dr Rieux responds, "Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me . . . What interests me is - being a man.".....more
No matter in what farthest corner of the world you live, which color is of your skin, what kind of habits you’ve grown over the time for you to be knoNo matter in what farthest corner of the world you live, which color is of your skin, what kind of habits you’ve grown over the time for you to be known as a busy person, what are the erogenous fantasies your mind weave in the moments of quiet to make you tremble with pleasure, which, from many doctrines you chose to scale the things as “right” and “wrong” which one from countless delusions you’ve opted as religion, or you weren’t the one to opt it, you inherited it like other concrete property, to which fairy god you sold your reason in exchange of a fabricated assurance of hereafter and a hoax of a succor for your inner void, it is absurd to find meaning in the meaninglessness of life, to keep asking questions for which there’s no answer, because life doesn’t offer any, there’s nothing like “truth” in this senseless world Camus puts it as: “That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh” (MS, 21). So, one is inclined to ask, is life worth living? If not, why don’t we cease to exist, as there’s no meaning to keep going on a path which leads to nowhere but right at the point we started our journey from, if there’s no hope of life after this one, why to live this one to begin with, and this leads us to ‘existential anxiety’, for Camus, it is only when one abandons hope, one can live to one’s fullest, 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here' and live because we are our fate, and our frustration is our very life: we can never escape it, and consequently, the truly one philosophical question “suicide” must be out of question, simply not an option, because if life’s not worth living for someone who strives to have a meaning, so is death, there’s no point in committing suicide, because it entails that one is quitting to something he couldn’t grasp, let we be indifferent to what that simply doesn’t make a difference. So did our absurd hero, Sisyphus, who was punished by gods for airing secrecy, he was to lift a boulder heaviest than skies on his shoulders, and climb the mountain, by reaching up, the boulder will roll down with Godspeed and Sisyphus had to watch it all the while, lift the boulder, ascent the mountain, watch it rolling down, for eternity. But the pleasure lies in knowing, Sisyphus knew the meaninglessness of his act, the absurdity of doing it again and again, with no hope in way, with more passion every time he goes down to lift the boulder, with new intensity, never resigning himself to despair, because despair roots out from presence of hope, if there’s no hope otherwise, certainly never is there despair. And for Camus, Sisyphus' triumph is his act of this absurdity “His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing” (MS, 120).....more
So it starts as you lay there awake, in the quiet hours of night, lulling your head to be hushed of those deafening thoughts, faces, voices, you kept So it starts as you lay there awake, in the quiet hours of night, lulling your head to be hushed of those deafening thoughts, faces, voices, you kept on getting day long, as you con your head into forged drowsiness, and it starts dawning on you, the coiled snake sitting in the corner of your mind tilts its head, clogs every nerve in his coil, deep-seated thought of being all alone in this universe of biological process over process strikes you to the core, universal loneliness houses your whole being, Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable - but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being 'alone': You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I'm talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are, we can never talk the next soul of our inner happenings, the loneliness of this kind eats our being and we device heavens, If not in this life, but in the life to come, we don’t want to be this alone, but there are some stories who teach us the inevitability of it, no matter how far we travel in pursue of a dream land, we will always be alone! “Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.” What if just in our head it all is, what if we are always been delusional by definition, of people we thought we loved or were loved, of sickness we thought were cured, of people we thought we’d known, of souls we thought had touched, of love we thought had lived, of memories we thought had faded, of faces we thought had gone, or weren’t there at the first place. This is the story of unloved and alone, of George Milton and Lennie Small, the story of two antithetic coming together in bond only death dared disrupt. The story of the dream which dwelt all just in head and inspired them to work from place to place in the wake of depression years in America. Steinbeck’s characters are suspiciously caricaturesque,as if placed there just for that purpose, with no backdrop stories of their own, no life before the opening scene, a giant-structured low at wits character to be paired with equally short-statured but quick-wit George who protects Lennie from the harms of his world, they dreamt of rabbits and a farm where there won’t be having any masters, a land of their own, in the times of impossibilities and hunger extreme, universality of their dream takes the reader in awe of ingeniousness of the writer, nihilistic viewpoint of life being a journey from zero to zero is too much loud in undertones of his prose, the dream of a land of their own was a driving force to keep their heads up the consuming loneliness which seems to be ever prevalent in the air that all characters breathe in. “There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts” said Camus in his last manuscript, this emptiness echoed through this sad tale of shocking ending, the ending we were given the hints of from the very start, the ending we kept denying to accept till the very end......more
When we are growing children, we have so many fantasies of countless things, we have our own interpretations of the phenomena of nature, Imagination oWhen we are growing children, we have so many fantasies of countless things, we have our own interpretations of the phenomena of nature, Imagination of a bearded old man dwelling in sky as God, Rain from sky as tears of angels, angry trees shedding leaves, fairies visiting only good children at night, and so many and many…. They all sound sweet to ears, even stupid but sweet.. But what if a grown adult of five and twenty, fantasizes those children a source of his “melancholic pleasure” what if he gawps at those children with eyes laden with unspeakable desires and mind full of unsaid robust thoughts, what if he gapes at their nimble healthy statures with envy and lust at the same? What is wrong in doing so? What if his whole being depends on those stolen caresses and marked touches? What harm can his sheer individual thoughts do to society? Isn’t it the highly celebrated Nietzschean Theory that preaches there is nothing named “morality” in the world, albeit he justified the cause quite intellectually, as there is no meaning of one’s existence, as there is nothing called reality, that no kinds of action are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in themselves, whoever does them. But this is not the whole lot of the problem here, our protagonist Michel and writer Gide are entwined together so much and deep that it is not possible to ignore the autobiographical acclaim of the story. Story, on the surface is very simple one, Michel marrying Marceline near the deathbed of his father, to console his soon-to-fly soul, Marceline proving a matchless, caring wife, Tuberculosis engulfing Michel with every breath, Marceline takes good care of him and pulls her back to life, at length, the same malady wraps her and she dies of tuberculosis….. But this is not what Gide intended us to cherish, there is more to it. The appeal of individualism; its anticipation of Freud more valid than its oblique reflection of Nietzsche. Its more personal triumph lies in the successful avoidance of lyricism, of confused or angry self-justification, of special pleading-of all the evasions, in fact, to which autobiographical fiction is tempted. If we are to frame our main character in Freudian sexual scale, he is pretty latent homosexual.. He takes pleasure in walking alone to the Arab gardens, praying may his wife not follow him, he desires to sleep at a barn land, where the son of his servant a boy of 15 is sleeping, he contempt the weakness of her wife that blankets her when she falls prey to the deathly disease, but is prompted to touch the naked shoulder of young Bachir whom his wife takes home for her husband’s amusement.. Though the scenes are not explicitly described, rather left to reader’s conjecture, and there is no unravel thought of him that may help reader to judge what’s going on in his head, all we come to read are justifications for being Immoral.. But the last lines saying: “She laughs and declares I prefer the boy to her,she makes out that it is he who keeps me here, perhaps she is not altogather wrong!...more
Love in the time of cholera, might not be the best work of Marquez,and the theme of love might be a quite clichéd one…….but what marquez gains is the Love in the time of cholera, might not be the best work of Marquez,and the theme of love might be a quite clichéd one…….but what marquez gains is the worldwide readership of novel and its falsetto echoing in masses quite high… And he leaves you in wondering What is love? Hmm for me,it is simultaneously eternal and ephemeral malady,if it goes unrequited.there is nothing more tragic than to bear an untold story inside you,nothing more pathetic than to burn in one’s own inferno,nothing more tormenting than to dwell in wild imaginations that never come true,nothing more piercing than the pang of heart,but nothing more beautiful than the beauty of hope,the anticipation of “one day” and the eagerness of “may be someday” ……and the torture goes on and on ……consuming your being bit by bit, dropping your breaths sigh by sigh,and dwindling your life day by day! Why do we do so? Why don’t give up on one who gave up on you? Why don’t move forward? Why don’t quit? No, you don’t quit. You simply cant….if it is love, and not some obsessive desire for someone,if its love and not the ephemeral sensation of belonging, if its love and not the blazing heat of “want”! Yess,you can nourish it in heart for centuries, it is yours to seed and water, you can spend a life of an unmarried widow, you can die a spinster, you can breath for fifty years, nine months and four days as a bachelor…..as did Florentino of Marquez. I got nothing to do with his one night stands, his bedding other countless women, his imprudent paces,his indifference to other wordlydoings,his excessive character flaws,even his last sexual relation with a child of twelve……(that’s cringing truly)but duh,man is most worthy of love because he is the one most in need of love.. Well, magical realism isn’t crafted aptly, rape is romanticized, and dialogues get stale and very much uncrafty…coming toward the excessive literary devices that are used in throughout the novel, we come to face heavy rain as the novel get starts, water in any form symbolizes the cleansing and change in circumstances. Then there are “birds” that depict prostitutes as a danger to Florentine’s virginity. A gothic melodramatic scene is created by showing a lurking creature at river brink, flowers are so many and delivered at so many occasions that reader gets enough at a time.and the most extensively used cholera,is a counterpart of love and is portrayed as lovesickness, The novel's most prominent theme suggest that lovesickness is a literal illness, a plague comparable to cholera. Florentino Ariza suffers from lovesickness as one would suffer from cholera, enduring both physical and emotional pains as he longs for Fermina. because we wish what we don't have and love whom we can't have.......... Huh! I talked so little of other characters hmm,and littler of the story itself,I just wanted to pen it for Florentino and his heroism,his stubbornness,will and yess pain!so much of it……that I aimed mostly.and did exactly......
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children?
Set during the great depre How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children?
Set during the great depression, the novel focuses on the Joads,a poor family of sharecroppers driven from their Oklahoma by draught, economic hardship and changes in financial and agricultural industries. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they were trapped in dust bowl, the Joads set out for California.
Along with thousand other Okies they sought jobs,land.dignity and a future. The book’s sense of realism results from its brutal setting,The migrants exist in a world characterized by durt,dust,suffering,starvation,death poverty,ignorance,prejudice and despair.Steinbeck does not hesitate to provide honest details,many of which appear in brief chapters of exposition and social commentary that intersperse the Joad’s story. Steinbeck evokes the repetition and moral bluntness of Biblical tales;at other moments,he assumes the clear castigating tone of a soapbox politition;sometimes his style conjures up ancient epics of heroic deeds and archetypal struggles.Thus,the auther roots his story in a more universal tradition,endowing it with significance the exceeds the individual characters and their specific setting.
I had to to pause and breath,pause and breath hard just to stomach what i was reading.this one is a true nerve-raging story for a must read!
And Steinbeck has done a damnedest job by telling the things as they are! ...more
I don’t remember the exact time, when I started forgetting things, let alone the reason be a medical or psychological. I forget remembering my forgetfI don’t remember the exact time, when I started forgetting things, let alone the reason be a medical or psychological. I forget remembering my forgetfulness even at times, and things go irrevocably wrong. But our dear brain, do quiver things with us, our memory is discerning in keeping things, and the only reminiscence I have in all its luminous shape is of the way to school, of the old man I used to pass in my way daily. There was something in his eyes, even as a child I could sense that, or I was the only child who could sense that, because no other one seemed to even notice him, his wrinkled, weather-worn face had a pair of speaking eyes, they spoke as you looked into them, same as the Santiago of Hemmingway had "Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated". Santiago and Hemmingway both are entwined together too much to shun the autobiographical acclaim of the struggle away. Hemmingway, wrote his last work to restore the position of his literary genius, and succeeded undoubtedly. The story, is quite simple one like the style of EH, even the principle heroism of Hemmingway novels is not prevalent here.Santiago,is not to be expected to have macho expeditions, fighting supernatural forces, projecting immaculate masculine powers, what he is, is a man destroyed but not defeated, what he fights is life itself, and what he fights for….is not mere living! Hemmingway is at his best while portraying the sea imagery, the sound, the air, the smell and sight, all seen through the words, and lived through the eyes of old man, are more like a character rather than objects, the sea itself is symbolized with life and all it has to offer, the treasures and miseries and sorrows for those who mistook her for a woman who can be wooed with hearty songs! Santiago knows the skills, but lacks the fate, he is not to take the biggest catch of his life home, albeit his struggle of three days with mighty Marlin. The ambivalence in the treatment of pride is very much vivid in throughout the novella. . A heroic man like Santiago should have pride in his actions, and as Santiago shows us, "humility was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride" .but in truth, wasn’t it the pride that drove the old man past from usual sea stations, "beyond all people in the world," to catch the marlin. While he loved the marlin and called him brother, Santiago admits to killing it for pride, the excitement that stirs, the blood that rushes through those old veins while battling the mighty antagonist is unshakably nothing else, than a notion of pride. And after all as Wilde says:
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!
How happy we are with the life we are so busy in living? And how busy we are in thinking all other worldly doings than life itself…. And here Hermann’s How happy we are with the life we are so busy in living? And how busy we are in thinking all other worldly doings than life itself…. And here Hermann’s Sidhartha points a score over us. When we look back into years that have passed, the moments that are gone, the memories fading away swiftly, and new ones forming in their place with equal swift, what all these counts are wanting is the incidence of inner-peace. It might be there, ensnared, crumpled, and terse but we never partook the uttermost sense of being at peace...did we? The novella drags along three main themes, of enlightenment, inner-peace and Love.. Sidhartha is never at peace with heart, continually in search of enlightenment and always in midst of loved-or-not-loved. His transformative journeys from a Hindu to ascetic to Samana to Buddhist to ferry man and a man-enlightened Is encapsulated with such brilliance and precision that nothing is left untouched neither is said unnecessary. Hermann proves to be annoying at certain moments no doubt, the immaturities of Sidhartha’s resolves, the allegedly high claims of him to be superior over others, the insatiable quest of something apparently of no existence and unnecessary philosophy-loaded dialogues of every other person are just tainting the sheer beauty of rhetoric. coming toward the essential philosophy preached in whole story, Siddhartha proposes that one must find “unity” in all of the world: “And all of the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world.” (135) This approach completely dismisses the reality that life is of constant conflict and one’s goal should be to struggle against injustice – rather than ignoring it. This philosophy inherently teaches passivity, which is dangerous and destructive. Sure Siddhartha may have achieved peace next to the river, but the merchant continued to rob, the elites continued to exploit, and the poor continued to go hungry. In this light, Siddhartha’s world outlook is both naïve and hardly instrumentive to bringing about a better world. The world we can make a better place to live in, better than some imaginary eternal happy fields, and better than the scriptures proposes it to be...
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