Blog # 1: Summer Reading

I enjoyed the novel 1984 the most.  I thought that the author did a good job representing how someone would feel in that type of society through his characters.  He made the characters easy to relate with and understand, even though they were in incredibly different circumstances.  I liked how he displayed his view of what humans are like through the actions of his characters in hopeless situations.  I don't neccesarily agree with his belief that people are inherently evil (Winston truly wishing his love Julia was being tortured instead of him), but his methods of proving this point through the plot was done well.

I least enjoyed the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.  I know it is a lame reason, but the english dialect that the author wrote the dialogue in was very time consuming to interpret.  I know it was used to make the dialogue more accurate and authentic, but the time needed to make sense of it shifted my attention from what was actually happening in the book.  Now that I have read it, however, this shouldn't be much of a problem because I already know the plot.  On a positive side, I did enjoy the plot of the story.  Janie's constant movement both physically and situationally kept the plot interesting.  Her drive to live independently and be respected was probably a very rare thing to achieve during that time, and I found it interesting how the author had her come about achieving that.

I would analyze the odd behavior of Meursalt in The Stranger.  He seemed to have no feelings for other people other than those that benefited himself.  His lack of empathy was very difficult to relate to, even though his motives and actions were very simple.  Using knowledge gained from IB Psychology, I would guess that the author was trying to depict this character from a Freudian perspective.  He appears to have only an Id (basic selfish instincts), and seems not to have developed a Superego (the opposite of the Id, where society teaches one to care and relate to others, or have morals).  This book was probably written around the time that Freudian theories were popular, so it would be an understandable that the author try to incorporate those ideas in characterizing Meursalt.