Hello! Today's book is Hunter S Thompson's famous--or maybe not so famous--book. It's a warped version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Actually, in one of the videos or excerpts or somethings we saw or read in Robby D's class actually asked, basically, "Where (or what) would Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas be without Kerouac's On the Road?" What I mean by saying it's a warped version of Kerouac's most famous book (actually and for sure famous) is that like Kerouac, Thompson is looking for "it", or, the American Dream, which I think is fair to say could be "it", or a portion of "it". (And now I have a sudden urge to read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test... Hm. Strange.) But yeah, I think it's a fair query, and a fair judgment.
So--Thompson (excuse me, Raoul Duke) and his attorney have been sent to cover a story out in Las Vegas. They've stuffed their rented car with... Um. Well... "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls" (4). So... Yeah. Kerouac just stuck to pot. What I should mention is--well, what I feel obliged to mention is that Thompson doesn't out rightly mention Kerouac anywhere, or not at all that I noticed, but he talks a lot about Horatio Alger. Horatio Alger was a fictional character who was your basic "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" fellow. I've never heard of anyone still 0reading the books he's featured in, and they're not required reading anymore, but you've probably read a description of someone that calls them a Horatio Alger. So that's kind of who they're trying to be--kind of. I think there's a difference between Horatio Alger representing the American dream and Kerouac. Alger was trying to make something of himself and be successful (so I'm led to believe), while Kerouac is just trying to be--living without worries, doing whatever he wants, not being trapped in one state or another--et cetera. (Of course, if Horatio Alger does make something of himself he wouldn't have worries and would have the money to do what he wanted... But it's obviously different.)
Anyways--the book opens with a quote by a fellow named Samuel Johnson. The quote is "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being human". This is the Samuel Johnson is this guy, apparently. Although that is true of the book--the men are ruining themselves with drugs and constantly high and stoned and everything else--but they've fallen into a different kind of pain (or something) entirely.
"Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars" (18). Thompson's reasoning for this excursion in the "red shark".
Most of these quotes are here because they were definitely on the sheet Robby D gave us. Here we go: "Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant... It seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened" (67).
"There was madness in any direction, at any hour... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastical sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..." (68). I believe this is where the quote on Robby D's paper ended. The section, however, ends with this: "So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back" (68). Obviously the hippies didn't work out. There's a better quote some page later: "But what is sane? Especially here in 'our own country'--in this doomstruck era of Nixon. We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him ... but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn't deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy: the desperate assumption that somebody--or at least some force--is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel" (179). This too was on Robby D's sheet, and I think that it's interesting, implying that acid heads were desperately looking and hoping for God--Kesey's band insisted they were all anti-god, didn't need Him or any, but they worshiped Kesey fanatically--religiously.
The only tape they have is a Rolling Stones tape which has the song "Sympathy For the Devil" on it. While listening to it: "Sympathy? Not for me. No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas. This place is like the Army: the shark ethic prevails-eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity" (72).
"No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind" (89).
Thompson and his attorney end up at a drug conference. This is filled with people who couldn't tell you the difference between a joint and a tab of LSD. Joints are sometimes known as roaches, and a man presenting says it's because joints look like cockroaches. Any idiot who has seen a movie, read a comic book or can use Google images can see this is not the case. Wikipedia's theory is that the name comes from "joined", as in "joined rooms"--opium dens. There's that mystery solved. Anyways, Thompson goes onto further explain how idiotic and uninformed these people are, and that he can just see people like Timothy Leary making up these BS lines and feeding them to these unwitting people. Although this sort of behaviour is natural for in groups when speaking to out groups, undoubtedly those gags caused troubles and misunderstandings that hurt the hippie/LSD/et cetera movement incredibly. My point then, is just the fact that the disciples of acid and other drugs and such did play with people in this way, and in bigger ways, and basically screwed themselves.
Thompson and his attorney, much later, end up in a little truck stop diner, and the two, possibly strung out and possibly not, explain to the waitress and cook that they're looking for the American Dream. The two of them--the waitress kind of an airhead and the cook kind of a grizzled older fellow--try to figure it out... The waitress asks the cook where it is, thinking it's a physical place. He responds by asking what is that, and then says he thinks that it's the "old Psychiatrist's Club" (165). The club is on the street/road/whatever Paradise... All that is left of the building--the American Dream--is a scorched base in an uncared-for vacant lot that's weed-choked. "The owner of a gas station across the road said the place had 'burned down about three years ago'" (168). In the introduction to this particular chapter it says that Thompson refused to read over this chapter or even discuss this. I would bet that Thompson wrote that himself and it wasn't actually an editor writing. The metaphor is so obvious I don't even feel like calling it a metaphor is quite right. First of all, the cook, old and grizzled, is stuck in a dead-end job, and probably has been since he was the waitress's age--he doesn't know what the American Dream is. He can only guess about what it might be. The building is on paradise. To achieve the American dream would, imaginably, put one in a heaven or paradise of sorts. And the building has been burnt down. Even its foundation is cracked and ruined and dirty. The lot on Paradise is unattended to and ugly and filthy itself. It burned down about three years ago--if you will recall, Thompson said that less than five years ago the hippies and acid generation ruined themselves. That may not be exactly what he's referring to, but it seems to coincide... Either way, it's saying that the American Dream has been almost completely obliterated with barely even the memory of what it was still remaining.
"What sells, today, is whatever F---s You Up--whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time. The ghetto market has mushroomed into suburbia. The Miltown man has returned, with a vengeance, to skin-popping and even mainlining... and for every ex-speed freak who drifted, for relief, into smack, there are 200 kids who went straight to the needle off Seconal. They never even bothered to try speed" (202).
"Uppers are no longer stylish... It is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon" (202).
The book ends without Thompson finding the dream. He boards a plane back to Denver and snorts some amyl, then shambles into the bar. The very last sentence is, "I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger... a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident" (204). Presumably, he will start on the same path all over again.
And, not to be overlooked--my favourite lines in the book. The attorney will often start demands or requests or even just statements as "As your attorney, I advise..." My favourite? "'As your attorney, I advise you to tell me where you put the goddamn mescaline'" (119).
MLA Citation Information: Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Vintage Books: New York, 1998.
I'm tempted to put this in the classics shelf just because it's such a nutty bastardization of On the Road and like books. We'll see tomorrow, I guess. Despite its insanity and because its subject is likely to get it written off as--um--just some junky work or something, you can tell Hunter S Thompson is a very bright fellow. I'd recommend it.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
So. I can't say that I'm in love with this book. Virginia Woolf certainly is eloquent, but I found it very difficult to get into the book. She writes well--incredibly well--but I just wasn't feeling it, even if I could relate to the characters and all of that. That's just the way it goes sometimes.
The book itself is about, unsurprisingly, Mrs Clarissa Dalloway. It starts out on the morning of a day she is holding a party. On that day her former suitor comes by from India, where he has met a woman he loves. Seeing Clarissa kind of throws him, and he goes back over the signs that their love couldn't last or hadn't existed at all, and all of that. (There's no dramatic reuniting scene or any of that, just for the record.) The story is also told through Septimus, a war hero who suffers from shell shock and who only appears in the main plot a few times, his wife, and Clarissa's daughter's history teacher. Because it only takes place on one day, it's compared to Ulysses often--a comparison I wouldn't make. There's a world of differences between them. It just doesn't seem right to compare the two...
The first note is mainly just a quote from Clarissa--she's reflecting on her relationship with Peter. "For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say?--some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning--indeed they did" (9). The main reason why I've bothered to quote this section is because it's just a speculation on the mind and memory, an entirely accurate speculation, and that's the sort of thing that interests me. The secondary reason is that I find the "reward of having cared for people" bit quite interesting. The section could mean imagining that he has come back (thus her mind has brought him back) and he is no longer bitter about choosing Dalloway over himself. It could also mean that she is thinking about him without having any bitterness recalled in herself--thus, her affection for him overcame all of that.
"She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day" (11). Fun fact: this quote was the whole reason why I decided to read this book. It popped up on my Tumblr dash.
"The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?" (20). This sentence comes forth in introducing the reader to Septimus. He had a look in his eyes as though he were eternally apprehensive, so strong it made others feel the same, and thus...
"To love makes one solitary, she thought" (33). Septimus's wife fears her husband's supposed mental illness, and half drowns him under various doctors and psychologists, who never let him speak and just put forth their judgment. Rezia, the wife, isn't terribly smart and makes things more difficult for her husband and never listens to him, just swallows everything the doctors say without thinking. Eventually--spoiler alert--this causes him to kill himself, because he overhears a doctor recommending to Rezia that he should be placed in an institution. This makes me wonder about Woolf's feelings about Septimus and their similarities--Woolf eventually killed herself.
"It's been a hard life, thought Mrs Dempster. What hadn't she given to it? Roses; figure, her feet too... Roses, she thought sardonically. All trash, m'dear. For really, what with eating, drinking, and mating, the bad days and good, life had been no mere matter of roses, and what was more, let me tell you, Carrie Dempster had no wish to change her lot with any woman's in Kentish Town! But, she implored, pity. Pity, for the loss of roses. Pity she asked of Maisie Johnson, standing by the hyacinth beds" (40). This just reminded me of V for Vendetta... When Evey is reading Valerie's life story and she talks about how she grew roses with her lover in the window box, and then the war came, and after that there were no more roses at all--and she begins the conclusion to her letter with "It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one".
This is from when Peter first calls upon Clarissa after having been gone for so long: "Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her... Mastery and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifting his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly on some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over" (71).
"But to whom does the solitary traveller make reply?" (88). Peter, of course.
When Clarissa is first introduced to Richard Dalloway, she mishears his name and thinks that he is WickhamWickham is the name of the snake-in-the-grass in Pride and Prejudice... Not that Richard shows any outward signs of villainy, just that he stole Clarissa's heart, and that really matters most to Peter. At the end of the day, they don't, like I said, have a dramatic reconciliation--the book ends with Peter looking upon her. Nothing big and dramatic, and I kind of liked that. Maybe Wickham isn't the one Clarissa should have married, and that is why he received that nickname, but he does not seem particularly cold or conniving like Jane Austen's Wickham (though he is a politician). More likely than not, though, it just happens to be a name that I just happened to recognize that just happened to be the same. Though you never know, of course...
"The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought... was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained--at last!--the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,--the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light" (119). / "'They keep telling you, when you're older, you'll have experience--and that's supposed to be so great. What would you say about that, sir? Is it really any use, would you say?' 'What kind of experience?' 'Well--places you've been to, people you've met. Situations you've been through already, so you know how to handle them when they come up again. All that stuff that's supposed to make you wise, in your later years.' '...For other people, I can't speak--but personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me'... 'Then experience is no use at all? You're saying it might just as well not have happened?' 'No. I'm not saying that. I only mean, you can't use it. But if you don't try to--if you just realize it's there and you've got it--then it can be kind of marvelous'"--Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (page one hundred sixty).
"But Proportion has a sister, less smiling, more formidable, a Goddess even now engaged--in the heat and sands of India, the mud and swamp of Africa, the purlieus of London, wherever in short climate or the devil tempts men to fall from the true belief which is her own--is even now engaged in dashing down shrines, smashing idols, and setting up in their place her own stern countenance. Conversion is her name and she feeds on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace... She stands preaching; shrouds herself in white and walks penitentially disguised as brotherly love through factories and parliaments; offers help, but desires powers; smites out of her way roughly the dissentient or dissatisfied; bestows her blessing on those who, looking upward, catch submissively from her eyes the light of their own" (151). Like I said, the lady can write. There's absolutely no question of that.
"The difference between one man and another does not amount to much" (157). This is one of those things that can either crack you up--Lady Bruton, a fan of Mr Dalloway, thinks this. She likes him because he was nice to her on one occasion, but she can't remember which exactly, because it was the kindness that counted. It could have been any man or woman or anyone. Anyways, it either cracks you up or depresses you--because it applies to you as well.
Oh, and Richard gets excited by the fact that Peter is in the area and impulsively buys a great bunch of roses to give to his wife to remind her that he loves her.
"How unbelievable death was!--that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant..." (185). Mrs Dalloway, thinking about life day by day--until, of course, the inevitable.
I believe I have mentioned Miss Kilman already--Elizabeth's history teacher. Miss Kilman hates Mrs Dalloway. She thinks she doesn't work hard enough (she believes that instead of lounging around the house and throwing parties and such, she should be working in the factory) and really sees Dalloway as a worm. "Observing [Clarissa Dalloway's] small pink face, her delicate body, her air of freshness and fashion, Miss Kilman felt, Fool! Simpleton! You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; who have trifled your life away! And there rose in her an overmastering desire to overcome her; to unmask her... If only she could make her weep; could ruin her; humiliate her; bring her to her knees crying, You are right! But this was God's will, not Miss Kilman's. It was to be a religious victory. So she glared; so she glowered" (189). So Miss Kilman is a little, how you say, high-strung... Why I bothered to point it out is because Mrs Dalloway feels basically exactly the way about Miss Kilman--that she is foolish and is frittering herself (at least her mind) away--though she does not necessarily want to humiliate her or anything. "Clarissa was really shocked. This a Christian--this woman! This woman had taken her daughter from her! She in touch with invisible presences! Heavy, ugly, commonplace, without kindness or grace, she know the meaning of life!" (189-190). It's just sort of ironic that they'd both see each other in essentially the same exact light--you know? Neither of them believes at all that the other knows what's going on, or isn't a heathen. Kilman appears to be a straight backed, puritanical Christian (I'm thinking of the guy in The Scarlet Letter who had a house with shards of glass in the walls or whatever it was exactly), and Dalloway appears to be more relaxed and calm--like she thinks to herself later, she'd rather just let people be what they are. Of course that's not quite true, but still, I'd rather be in Mrs Dalloway's company than Kilman's. Miss Kilman is a tad too intense for me.
My next note is on the page Septimus kills himself. It's some more irony--like I mentioned earlier, Septimus overhears his doctor suggesting an institution, and it's for that reason and because he can't bear to be poked and prodded and made frustrated again that he kills himself. He says that he doesn't want to die, but it's his act of rebellion. The doctor, of course, cannot figure out why Septimus would want to kill himself.
Anyways--flip to many, many pages later--Elizabeth is, of course, at her mother's party. The book does not mention whether she has entered society yet, but Clarissa's cousin mentions it relation to Elizabeth, at the party. I've only marked this because she complains that nowadays girls wore "straight" and "perfectly tight" frocks (I'm going to say that probably means "form-fitting" and "skirts well above the ankles" (257). Ankles! Curved chest pieces! Open-top carriages! What disgraces could possibly be next!?
A woman named Sally was at the party as well (this woman Clarissa had romantic feelings for, very strong ones--to just think that they were under the same roof sent Mrs Dalloway--before she was a Mrs of course--all a-quiver). She thinks about how everyone loved her even though she was quite clumsy and could be absent-minded. She notes several mistakes of hers, smoking in her bedroom, stealing food from the larder for midnight snacks, and once she left a valuable book "in the punt" (276). I had to look this up... It's either a small boat, a Catalan newspaper, or the indented bottom of a wine bottle.
Anyways, the party. It goes well--for a tad bit Mrs Dalloway thinks it's going poorly, but it all turns out well. It ends at the party's close, with Peter: "'I shall say good night. What does the brain matter,' said Lady Rosseter, getting up, 'compared with the heart?' 'I will come,' said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was" (296).
MLA citation information: Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, 1925.
It wasn't half-bad. I don't think Virginia Woolf is my new favourite, but I wouldn't turn her down, yeah? I quite liked Clarissa--I've been reading a great myriad of books and--you know what, I liked Septimus, and Peter too. There were a lot of characters I could relate to. That's actually odd, I've been reading a lot of books with characters I can relate to, which may or may not be a bad thing (the next book up is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). Hmm... I don't have a lot of commentary of this. Not half-bad, not awe-inspiring, but likable, and if I saw it at a used book store I'd pick it up. That sounds cruel, but I'm cheap. Sorry I didn't describe the plot more, but it is really just a day in the life. There's not a whole lot to say... Well. Yeah.
I guess I don't have anything more to say. Sorry... Um... I guess I'll see you with Hunter S Thompson next!
EDIT: On page 192, Clarissa complains that when Peter visited her that afternoon, he only talked about himself and said that it was a "degrading passion"--this is of course a reference to the book of Leviticus, where it refers to sexual relations between two men (the implication is that all-women relations would be the same, but it is not specified) as such. He loves himself; he is a man loving a man.
The book itself is about, unsurprisingly, Mrs Clarissa Dalloway. It starts out on the morning of a day she is holding a party. On that day her former suitor comes by from India, where he has met a woman he loves. Seeing Clarissa kind of throws him, and he goes back over the signs that their love couldn't last or hadn't existed at all, and all of that. (There's no dramatic reuniting scene or any of that, just for the record.) The story is also told through Septimus, a war hero who suffers from shell shock and who only appears in the main plot a few times, his wife, and Clarissa's daughter's history teacher. Because it only takes place on one day, it's compared to Ulysses often--a comparison I wouldn't make. There's a world of differences between them. It just doesn't seem right to compare the two...
The first note is mainly just a quote from Clarissa--she's reflecting on her relationship with Peter. "For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say?--some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning--indeed they did" (9). The main reason why I've bothered to quote this section is because it's just a speculation on the mind and memory, an entirely accurate speculation, and that's the sort of thing that interests me. The secondary reason is that I find the "reward of having cared for people" bit quite interesting. The section could mean imagining that he has come back (thus her mind has brought him back) and he is no longer bitter about choosing Dalloway over himself. It could also mean that she is thinking about him without having any bitterness recalled in herself--thus, her affection for him overcame all of that.
"She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day" (11). Fun fact: this quote was the whole reason why I decided to read this book. It popped up on my Tumblr dash.
"The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?" (20). This sentence comes forth in introducing the reader to Septimus. He had a look in his eyes as though he were eternally apprehensive, so strong it made others feel the same, and thus...
"To love makes one solitary, she thought" (33). Septimus's wife fears her husband's supposed mental illness, and half drowns him under various doctors and psychologists, who never let him speak and just put forth their judgment. Rezia, the wife, isn't terribly smart and makes things more difficult for her husband and never listens to him, just swallows everything the doctors say without thinking. Eventually--spoiler alert--this causes him to kill himself, because he overhears a doctor recommending to Rezia that he should be placed in an institution. This makes me wonder about Woolf's feelings about Septimus and their similarities--Woolf eventually killed herself.
"It's been a hard life, thought Mrs Dempster. What hadn't she given to it? Roses; figure, her feet too... Roses, she thought sardonically. All trash, m'dear. For really, what with eating, drinking, and mating, the bad days and good, life had been no mere matter of roses, and what was more, let me tell you, Carrie Dempster had no wish to change her lot with any woman's in Kentish Town! But, she implored, pity. Pity, for the loss of roses. Pity she asked of Maisie Johnson, standing by the hyacinth beds" (40). This just reminded me of V for Vendetta... When Evey is reading Valerie's life story and she talks about how she grew roses with her lover in the window box, and then the war came, and after that there were no more roses at all--and she begins the conclusion to her letter with "It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one".
This is from when Peter first calls upon Clarissa after having been gone for so long: "Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her... Mastery and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifting his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly on some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over" (71).
"But to whom does the solitary traveller make reply?" (88). Peter, of course.
When Clarissa is first introduced to Richard Dalloway, she mishears his name and thinks that he is WickhamWickham is the name of the snake-in-the-grass in Pride and Prejudice... Not that Richard shows any outward signs of villainy, just that he stole Clarissa's heart, and that really matters most to Peter. At the end of the day, they don't, like I said, have a dramatic reconciliation--the book ends with Peter looking upon her. Nothing big and dramatic, and I kind of liked that. Maybe Wickham isn't the one Clarissa should have married, and that is why he received that nickname, but he does not seem particularly cold or conniving like Jane Austen's Wickham (though he is a politician). More likely than not, though, it just happens to be a name that I just happened to recognize that just happened to be the same. Though you never know, of course...
"The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought... was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained--at last!--the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,--the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light" (119). / "'They keep telling you, when you're older, you'll have experience--and that's supposed to be so great. What would you say about that, sir? Is it really any use, would you say?' 'What kind of experience?' 'Well--places you've been to, people you've met. Situations you've been through already, so you know how to handle them when they come up again. All that stuff that's supposed to make you wise, in your later years.' '...For other people, I can't speak--but personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me'... 'Then experience is no use at all? You're saying it might just as well not have happened?' 'No. I'm not saying that. I only mean, you can't use it. But if you don't try to--if you just realize it's there and you've got it--then it can be kind of marvelous'"--Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (page one hundred sixty).
"But Proportion has a sister, less smiling, more formidable, a Goddess even now engaged--in the heat and sands of India, the mud and swamp of Africa, the purlieus of London, wherever in short climate or the devil tempts men to fall from the true belief which is her own--is even now engaged in dashing down shrines, smashing idols, and setting up in their place her own stern countenance. Conversion is her name and she feeds on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace... She stands preaching; shrouds herself in white and walks penitentially disguised as brotherly love through factories and parliaments; offers help, but desires powers; smites out of her way roughly the dissentient or dissatisfied; bestows her blessing on those who, looking upward, catch submissively from her eyes the light of their own" (151). Like I said, the lady can write. There's absolutely no question of that.
"The difference between one man and another does not amount to much" (157). This is one of those things that can either crack you up--Lady Bruton, a fan of Mr Dalloway, thinks this. She likes him because he was nice to her on one occasion, but she can't remember which exactly, because it was the kindness that counted. It could have been any man or woman or anyone. Anyways, it either cracks you up or depresses you--because it applies to you as well.
Oh, and Richard gets excited by the fact that Peter is in the area and impulsively buys a great bunch of roses to give to his wife to remind her that he loves her.
"How unbelievable death was!--that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant..." (185). Mrs Dalloway, thinking about life day by day--until, of course, the inevitable.
I believe I have mentioned Miss Kilman already--Elizabeth's history teacher. Miss Kilman hates Mrs Dalloway. She thinks she doesn't work hard enough (she believes that instead of lounging around the house and throwing parties and such, she should be working in the factory) and really sees Dalloway as a worm. "Observing [Clarissa Dalloway's] small pink face, her delicate body, her air of freshness and fashion, Miss Kilman felt, Fool! Simpleton! You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; who have trifled your life away! And there rose in her an overmastering desire to overcome her; to unmask her... If only she could make her weep; could ruin her; humiliate her; bring her to her knees crying, You are right! But this was God's will, not Miss Kilman's. It was to be a religious victory. So she glared; so she glowered" (189). So Miss Kilman is a little, how you say, high-strung... Why I bothered to point it out is because Mrs Dalloway feels basically exactly the way about Miss Kilman--that she is foolish and is frittering herself (at least her mind) away--though she does not necessarily want to humiliate her or anything. "Clarissa was really shocked. This a Christian--this woman! This woman had taken her daughter from her! She in touch with invisible presences! Heavy, ugly, commonplace, without kindness or grace, she know the meaning of life!" (189-190). It's just sort of ironic that they'd both see each other in essentially the same exact light--you know? Neither of them believes at all that the other knows what's going on, or isn't a heathen. Kilman appears to be a straight backed, puritanical Christian (I'm thinking of the guy in The Scarlet Letter who had a house with shards of glass in the walls or whatever it was exactly), and Dalloway appears to be more relaxed and calm--like she thinks to herself later, she'd rather just let people be what they are. Of course that's not quite true, but still, I'd rather be in Mrs Dalloway's company than Kilman's. Miss Kilman is a tad too intense for me.
My next note is on the page Septimus kills himself. It's some more irony--like I mentioned earlier, Septimus overhears his doctor suggesting an institution, and it's for that reason and because he can't bear to be poked and prodded and made frustrated again that he kills himself. He says that he doesn't want to die, but it's his act of rebellion. The doctor, of course, cannot figure out why Septimus would want to kill himself.
Anyways--flip to many, many pages later--Elizabeth is, of course, at her mother's party. The book does not mention whether she has entered society yet, but Clarissa's cousin mentions it relation to Elizabeth, at the party. I've only marked this because she complains that nowadays girls wore "straight" and "perfectly tight" frocks (I'm going to say that probably means "form-fitting" and "skirts well above the ankles" (257). Ankles! Curved chest pieces! Open-top carriages! What disgraces could possibly be next!?
A woman named Sally was at the party as well (this woman Clarissa had romantic feelings for, very strong ones--to just think that they were under the same roof sent Mrs Dalloway--before she was a Mrs of course--all a-quiver). She thinks about how everyone loved her even though she was quite clumsy and could be absent-minded. She notes several mistakes of hers, smoking in her bedroom, stealing food from the larder for midnight snacks, and once she left a valuable book "in the punt" (276). I had to look this up... It's either a small boat, a Catalan newspaper, or the indented bottom of a wine bottle.
Anyways, the party. It goes well--for a tad bit Mrs Dalloway thinks it's going poorly, but it all turns out well. It ends at the party's close, with Peter: "'I shall say good night. What does the brain matter,' said Lady Rosseter, getting up, 'compared with the heart?' 'I will come,' said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was" (296).
MLA citation information: Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, 1925.
It wasn't half-bad. I don't think Virginia Woolf is my new favourite, but I wouldn't turn her down, yeah? I quite liked Clarissa--I've been reading a great myriad of books and--you know what, I liked Septimus, and Peter too. There were a lot of characters I could relate to. That's actually odd, I've been reading a lot of books with characters I can relate to, which may or may not be a bad thing (the next book up is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). Hmm... I don't have a lot of commentary of this. Not half-bad, not awe-inspiring, but likable, and if I saw it at a used book store I'd pick it up. That sounds cruel, but I'm cheap. Sorry I didn't describe the plot more, but it is really just a day in the life. There's not a whole lot to say... Well. Yeah.
I guess I don't have anything more to say. Sorry... Um... I guess I'll see you with Hunter S Thompson next!
EDIT: On page 192, Clarissa complains that when Peter visited her that afternoon, he only talked about himself and said that it was a "degrading passion"--this is of course a reference to the book of Leviticus, where it refers to sexual relations between two men (the implication is that all-women relations would be the same, but it is not specified) as such. He loves himself; he is a man loving a man.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
The Book of Mormon: Alma-Moroni
Hey, I'm back, finally finished with the Book of Mormon! This is going to be a quick intro--this post is about the books of Alma, Helaman, 3 Nephi, 4 Nephi, Mormon, Ether, and Moroni. There! Done!
My first few notes on Alma are quotes: "The law could have no power on any man for his belief" Alma 1:17.
"Now there was a strict law among the people of the church, that there should not any man, belonging to the church, arise and persecute those that did not belong to the church, and that there should be no persecution among themselves" Alma 1:21. From what I understand, Mormons are pretty calm towards everybody.
There are a lot of timing problems and things I don't understand. Now, this was originally recording in the mid eighteen-sixties--so of course the author knows about Jesus Christ. Of course, the Old Testament didn't know who Jesus was, so it basically says "someone will come". Now, there's a possibility that when this was or was not dictated, that's what it was given as, and Joseph Smith just replaced it with Jesus... But it's a weak argument and this is, what I consider to be a fatal flaw in giving the religion credibility. I know that seems cruel, but when folks born one hundred years before Jesus are saying you have to wash your lineaments in Jesus's blood... Well, you know. Can't cleanse it through his blood if he hasn't shed it yet! Even if it's a metaphor, it's still incredibly bothersome.
There's also the implication that, at eighty-three BC (the Mormons date big events in their books, which is very nice), it was known that Jesus would be born of Mary. It's probably because of my own upbringing, but I find the fact that this was known by anyone (and so early!) to be ridiculous. Mary didn't even know what was going to happen. Nobody else did. It seems unfair to spread the specific word to some and not all...
"He cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he a shadow of turning from the right to the left, which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round" Alma 7:20. I think that the word choice is interesting--he literally cannot walk in crooked paths, cannot leave his words, or go to the left (left was considered to be evil for--actually, in some Catholic schools children are still taught to write with their rights if they're a lefty)... Knowing me, you should not be surprised that I thought of A Clockwork Orange--the point of the novel and movie is really the question of what makes a man good (or evil). Alex's choice to act evilly is eliminated--but does that really make him good? His free will has been eliminated so he can't choose... Well, I think you know what I'm getting at. (And in that case, saying his path is eternally round is appropriate!) A few chapters later we are told that he cannot deny his word--unfortunately, since Mormons, when referring to God, don't capitalize he or him, this may just be pronoun trouble--Jesus may not be able to deny God's word, not his own. (I suppose that that's most likely.)
"Now, there is a death which is called a temporal death; and the death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death. The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God, knowing even as we know now, and have a bright recollection of all our guilt" Alma 11:42-43. I thought the bit about the body being brought back perfectly and all of that was the most interesting bit. I also think it's a little cruel to make a person remember everything... I hope you get to forget a lot of it afterwards. It would be pretty unbearable.
"This mortal life is a probationary state" Alma 12.
Later the garden of Eden is discussed, and it says that the redemption plan was "laid from the foundation of the world" Alma 12:25. This is not a new idea, but it is a disappointing and curious one. I mean, why write that fall into the very fabric of existence? At that, it's kind of like, "What's the point at all then, if you're just dooming them from the start?", you know? That always really bothers me.
"And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouths of angels" Alma 13:25.
Alma was also apparently in possession of the same healing powers as Christ, 81 years before. Again, this bothers me, most likely only because of my upbringing. One example of Alma healing is Alma helping a lame man to walk again. But that's kind of one of the things that made Jesus so special, right? I mean obviously there's the whole son of God thing, but I figured that's where his ability came from so, despite my unsure feelings towards Jesus/what he was/might have been, it just bothers me that Alma is doing the same thing like it's nothing.
And here's another one! At seventy-three BC: "And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come" Alma 46:15. Maybe I'm being close-minded, stupid, or skeptical--but come on! Christianity was started after Jesus. It was named after him. This is literally gibberish to me.
"And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe--that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power" Alma 57:26. I just thought that to use taught as the word was interesting.
I also think the use of the word should is interesting.
Here starts the notes on the next book, Helaman--Lucifer is referred to as the "author of sin" (Helaman 6) and used interchangeably with Satan and presumably the devil in chapter six on...
Those who are fooled by him begin to form their own secret groups and gangs: "And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words" Helaman 6:22. As my bro Ken Kesey would say: "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus!"
I don't understand this passage at all--obviously it's God talking to the people, Nephi to be specific, but... "Behold, I give unto you power, that whosoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus ye shall have power among the people" Helaman 10:7.
"Behold [God] hath put it into my heart to say unto this people that the sword of justice hangeth over this people" Helaman 12:5.
"He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you" Helaman 14:31. My note on this was that this was very Karmic.
My last note is about the Nephites and the Lamanites. Jesus has, presumably, just been born (the date is one BC) and they get mad that the saviour isn't being born among them. At first I was like, he hasn't even done anything yet! Jeez! But then again, these people apparently knew all about Jesus one hundred, two hundred years prior, so yeah. I guess I'd be pretty annoyed too. "Thanks for sending the saviour among them and not us--no, I don't even want him to visit. I don't even care. I didn't even want to be saved anyways!" Yeaaaah.
Next note starts in on Nephi: "And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned" 3 Nephi 9:4. First of all, it should be absolutely no surprise that I wrote "ATLANTIS?" next to this line. Secondly, the 'I' speaking--yeah, that's Jesus. Actually, this seems like it would be another huge problem for Mormons, as they use the regular Bible too--and Jesus is basically a hippie in the Bible. He's probably the last guy in the Bible you'd say would take down a city, even if it's 34 BC (so, probably only a few months at most before he was crucified) and is a little stressed because he knows what's coming. That was kind of weird; it felt more like the crazy storytelling in the book of Revelations than anything else. And if we are to assume that there was a regular Jesus even if he was not the son of God--he couldn't sink a whole city. This is definitely some over-the-top storytelling here.
Jesus also says, after he is the son of God, that he created the heaven and earth. I'm going to say whatever to this because I have no idea how the Trinity actually works.
"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them" 3 Nephi 14:17-20.
Later Jesus says this to the people: "Behold, my bowels are filled with compassion towards you" 3 Nephi 17:6. I don't even...
Jesus again: "And how be it my church save it be called in my name? For if a church be called in Moses' name then it be Moses' church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel" 3 Nephi 27:8. Makes sense, and it would explain Christianity's differences in the actual names themselves except for the reasons I've been complaining about for several paragraphs.
No notes on the fourth book of Nephi.
The next book is the actual book of Mormon. My first note (my only note, actually) is on this passage: And they did not come unto Jesus with broken hearts and contrite spirits, but they did curse God, and wish to die. Nevertheless they would struggle with the sword for their lives" Mormon 2:14. My first note is on how this parallels the story of Job--Job's wife suggests to him that he curse God and die. And--a comparison to Isherwood's A Single Man: "Then to the mirror. What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here's what it has done to itself, here's the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds. The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative" (10). George in the book isn't necessarily suicidal, of course--he can "imagine no alternative", but he isn't particularly interested in life either.
The book of Moroni describes elders naming priests and the purpose of baptism... Apparently baptizing children is considered bad as well, not because they haven't chosen, but because they're already "alive in Christ" Moroni 8. I'm not sure if I quite understand that; I'm just going to go ahead and say that it's because it's believed that little kids aren't really responsible for themselves, or don't understand baptism or atonement or any of that yet. I think that's what is being said... (Moroni 8:10-15.)
The book of Moroni--the whole Book of Mormon, remember--ends with a bid of farewell, and the promise that when he meets the reader it will be before "the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead" Moroni 10:34. What does that even mean? Wasn't that a cowboy movie?
That's my last comment on Moroni. I have to admit that by this point I was losing interest badly, so close to the end. Although... At least it didn't end like the New Testament. As fun as the book of Revelations is...
Well! That's it. I finally completed this. (My poor wrists...) I should also mention that there's a handy little index in the back of the book, though I won't be going through it. Sorry.
The Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: United States of America, 2010.
Isherwood, Christopher. A Single Man. University of Minnesota Press: Minnesota, 2001.
Okay... Yep. Next post will be on Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which will probably occur in about a week or so, most likely.
My first few notes on Alma are quotes: "The law could have no power on any man for his belief" Alma 1:17.
"Now there was a strict law among the people of the church, that there should not any man, belonging to the church, arise and persecute those that did not belong to the church, and that there should be no persecution among themselves" Alma 1:21. From what I understand, Mormons are pretty calm towards everybody.
There are a lot of timing problems and things I don't understand. Now, this was originally recording in the mid eighteen-sixties--so of course the author knows about Jesus Christ. Of course, the Old Testament didn't know who Jesus was, so it basically says "someone will come". Now, there's a possibility that when this was or was not dictated, that's what it was given as, and Joseph Smith just replaced it with Jesus... But it's a weak argument and this is, what I consider to be a fatal flaw in giving the religion credibility. I know that seems cruel, but when folks born one hundred years before Jesus are saying you have to wash your lineaments in Jesus's blood... Well, you know. Can't cleanse it through his blood if he hasn't shed it yet! Even if it's a metaphor, it's still incredibly bothersome.
There's also the implication that, at eighty-three BC (the Mormons date big events in their books, which is very nice), it was known that Jesus would be born of Mary. It's probably because of my own upbringing, but I find the fact that this was known by anyone (and so early!) to be ridiculous. Mary didn't even know what was going to happen. Nobody else did. It seems unfair to spread the specific word to some and not all...
"He cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he a shadow of turning from the right to the left, which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round" Alma 7:20. I think that the word choice is interesting--he literally cannot walk in crooked paths, cannot leave his words, or go to the left (left was considered to be evil for--actually, in some Catholic schools children are still taught to write with their rights if they're a lefty)... Knowing me, you should not be surprised that I thought of A Clockwork Orange--the point of the novel and movie is really the question of what makes a man good (or evil). Alex's choice to act evilly is eliminated--but does that really make him good? His free will has been eliminated so he can't choose... Well, I think you know what I'm getting at. (And in that case, saying his path is eternally round is appropriate!) A few chapters later we are told that he cannot deny his word--unfortunately, since Mormons, when referring to God, don't capitalize he or him, this may just be pronoun trouble--Jesus may not be able to deny God's word, not his own. (I suppose that that's most likely.)
"Now, there is a death which is called a temporal death; and the death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death. The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God, knowing even as we know now, and have a bright recollection of all our guilt" Alma 11:42-43. I thought the bit about the body being brought back perfectly and all of that was the most interesting bit. I also think it's a little cruel to make a person remember everything... I hope you get to forget a lot of it afterwards. It would be pretty unbearable.
"This mortal life is a probationary state" Alma 12.
Later the garden of Eden is discussed, and it says that the redemption plan was "laid from the foundation of the world" Alma 12:25. This is not a new idea, but it is a disappointing and curious one. I mean, why write that fall into the very fabric of existence? At that, it's kind of like, "What's the point at all then, if you're just dooming them from the start?", you know? That always really bothers me.
"And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouths of angels" Alma 13:25.
Alma was also apparently in possession of the same healing powers as Christ, 81 years before. Again, this bothers me, most likely only because of my upbringing. One example of Alma healing is Alma helping a lame man to walk again. But that's kind of one of the things that made Jesus so special, right? I mean obviously there's the whole son of God thing, but I figured that's where his ability came from so, despite my unsure feelings towards Jesus/what he was/might have been, it just bothers me that Alma is doing the same thing like it's nothing.
And here's another one! At seventy-three BC: "And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come" Alma 46:15. Maybe I'm being close-minded, stupid, or skeptical--but come on! Christianity was started after Jesus. It was named after him. This is literally gibberish to me.
"And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe--that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power" Alma 57:26. I just thought that to use taught as the word was interesting.
I also think the use of the word should is interesting.
Here starts the notes on the next book, Helaman--Lucifer is referred to as the "author of sin" (Helaman 6) and used interchangeably with Satan and presumably the devil in chapter six on...
Those who are fooled by him begin to form their own secret groups and gangs: "And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words" Helaman 6:22. As my bro Ken Kesey would say: "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus!"
I don't understand this passage at all--obviously it's God talking to the people, Nephi to be specific, but... "Behold, I give unto you power, that whosoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus ye shall have power among the people" Helaman 10:7.
"Behold [God] hath put it into my heart to say unto this people that the sword of justice hangeth over this people" Helaman 12:5.
"He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you" Helaman 14:31. My note on this was that this was very Karmic.
My last note is about the Nephites and the Lamanites. Jesus has, presumably, just been born (the date is one BC) and they get mad that the saviour isn't being born among them. At first I was like, he hasn't even done anything yet! Jeez! But then again, these people apparently knew all about Jesus one hundred, two hundred years prior, so yeah. I guess I'd be pretty annoyed too. "Thanks for sending the saviour among them and not us--no, I don't even want him to visit. I don't even care. I didn't even want to be saved anyways!" Yeaaaah.
Next note starts in on Nephi: "And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned" 3 Nephi 9:4. First of all, it should be absolutely no surprise that I wrote "ATLANTIS?" next to this line. Secondly, the 'I' speaking--yeah, that's Jesus. Actually, this seems like it would be another huge problem for Mormons, as they use the regular Bible too--and Jesus is basically a hippie in the Bible. He's probably the last guy in the Bible you'd say would take down a city, even if it's 34 BC (so, probably only a few months at most before he was crucified) and is a little stressed because he knows what's coming. That was kind of weird; it felt more like the crazy storytelling in the book of Revelations than anything else. And if we are to assume that there was a regular Jesus even if he was not the son of God--he couldn't sink a whole city. This is definitely some over-the-top storytelling here.
Jesus also says, after he is the son of God, that he created the heaven and earth. I'm going to say whatever to this because I have no idea how the Trinity actually works.
"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them" 3 Nephi 14:17-20.
Later Jesus says this to the people: "Behold, my bowels are filled with compassion towards you" 3 Nephi 17:6. I don't even...
Jesus again: "And how be it my church save it be called in my name? For if a church be called in Moses' name then it be Moses' church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel" 3 Nephi 27:8. Makes sense, and it would explain Christianity's differences in the actual names themselves except for the reasons I've been complaining about for several paragraphs.
No notes on the fourth book of Nephi.
The next book is the actual book of Mormon. My first note (my only note, actually) is on this passage: And they did not come unto Jesus with broken hearts and contrite spirits, but they did curse God, and wish to die. Nevertheless they would struggle with the sword for their lives" Mormon 2:14. My first note is on how this parallels the story of Job--Job's wife suggests to him that he curse God and die. And--a comparison to Isherwood's A Single Man: "Then to the mirror. What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here's what it has done to itself, here's the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds. The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative" (10). George in the book isn't necessarily suicidal, of course--he can "imagine no alternative", but he isn't particularly interested in life either.
The book of Moroni describes elders naming priests and the purpose of baptism... Apparently baptizing children is considered bad as well, not because they haven't chosen, but because they're already "alive in Christ" Moroni 8. I'm not sure if I quite understand that; I'm just going to go ahead and say that it's because it's believed that little kids aren't really responsible for themselves, or don't understand baptism or atonement or any of that yet. I think that's what is being said... (Moroni 8:10-15.)
The book of Moroni--the whole Book of Mormon, remember--ends with a bid of farewell, and the promise that when he meets the reader it will be before "the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead" Moroni 10:34. What does that even mean? Wasn't that a cowboy movie?
That's my last comment on Moroni. I have to admit that by this point I was losing interest badly, so close to the end. Although... At least it didn't end like the New Testament. As fun as the book of Revelations is...
Well! That's it. I finally completed this. (My poor wrists...) I should also mention that there's a handy little index in the back of the book, though I won't be going through it. Sorry.
The Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: United States of America, 2010.
Isherwood, Christopher. A Single Man. University of Minnesota Press: Minnesota, 2001.
Okay... Yep. Next post will be on Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which will probably occur in about a week or so, most likely.
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