This is a pretend retrospective, mostly because I finished it a few weeks ago and didn't feel like taping it to the end of the Camus post. This is going to be short.
First off, this is a good series. The only thing I've ever read by Gaiman that I wasn't really in love with was Stardust, to be honest. I've mentioned smidgens here and there about the other volumes, I think--well, the series wraps itself up perfectly. And I mean, perfectly. It's kind of like... Like a panel out of Watchmen. The one I'm thinking of is in the sort-of epilogue, when the first Silk Spectre is making tea while The Outer Limits is just opening on the TV. Her daughter and the second Night Owl come to the door with the hair dyed and such... And all the panels are synced to the opening of the TV show ("Do not attempt to adjust your TV set..." etc), the steam is acting with it, the actions and items in the background work with it--even Silk Spectre's struggle to recognize her daughter works with it. It is so ridiculous how detailed and perfect it is--that's what the whole series is like. You may not necessarily notice every perfect intersecting detail, but it's all there at the end. That alone is a good reason to read it, I mean, really.
But it is good in its own right. I mean... I don't know what to say other than what I have already. If you like comic books and like Neil Gaiman, read it. It will appeal to people who enjoy fantasy books, mythology books... Gaiman himself describes it as horror, and it is kind of dark, but... I don't know. When I think horror I either think of something like the Alien movies, or something like a psychological horror, you know. This did not strike me as being either of those, though there are some disturbing ideas presented here and there, I suppose...
Oh, and there's a companion to the series by Hy Bender that is mostly interviews with Gaiman, and that is amazing. The first few chapters are rubbish--"Why read a comic book?"--in my personal opinion, if you're asking yourself that, then maybe you ought not be reading it at all, or even considering reading it. ...Buuuut, once he starts talking about the issues themselves, and presenting the Gaiman interviews, it is very interesting. Actually one of the coolest parts--other than overlooked details being pointed out, or realizing I was right about certain things, or Gaiman being Gaiman--is seeing how many characters were borrowed from long-forgotten DC comics. Lucien, Dream's librarian, Cain and Abel, Eve, Prez, the guy who believes he is the new Sandman after Dream was trapped (first volume, I'm pretty sure)... They're all borrowed from mostly failed comic lines by DC in the seventies. It's actually pretty crazy. I'd love to find those old comics and read them too, to see how they matched up, you know? (Especially Lucien's and Prez's.) Hm... I also wonder if Neil Gaiman intended his short story-turned-radio play-turned-comic book Murder Mysteries to sync in with this. I'm pretty sure that was written even after Hy Bender's Companion book was, though, so he does not mention it. (Murder Mysteries is about heaven--or the Silver City as it is known in Sandman--prior to Lucifer's fall, although Lucifer is not the main character. However, he leaves after the main events take place, and you see his original departure from heaven, though the main character leaves before Lucifer begins his assault.)
Hmmm... I guess that's it. Like I said, I don't have a lot to say--at least nothing particularly important... I'd urge you to read it, if again, you like fantasy, mythos, Neil Gaiman's other works... I highly doubt you'll be disappointed. But if that is not your thing, don't bother. I borrowed mine from the library out of convenience (and being flat broke), but actually, it's kind of funny... I just finished the series, and right after that Neil Gaiman announced on his Tumblr that a special edition box set of the series was being released for $125. In an alternate universe where I am not a flat-broke college student, I have preordered it and await its arrival in excitement.
(And if you're broke, no worries! This comic is popular and well-known enough for nearly any library to carry at least a few of its volumes! My college library even has the first two... Actually, I think it's two and four, or something like that. Well... You know what I mean.)
So yeah! Go read the series, it's good. Oh, and the spin-off comics aren't bad either, especially the ones by Jill Thompson--it's the spin-offs of the spin-offs you have to look out for (no thank you, Dead Boy Detectives!) And sorry that this wasn't more detailed. I don't have any volumes on me, and I read the whole series in a rather stilted fashion. So... Sorry.... (But this should only give you more incentive...)
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Today I woke up and thought, what would up my hipster street cred? Reading The Stranger by Albert Camus, which is surprisingly a very short book. This edition is about 119 pages, and the font is fairly large and widely-spaced. So it's an extremely quick read.
The book is also very simple in terms of how it is written. This could be due to the fact that it was translated from French, but also because according to the introductory notes, Camus was trying to imitate an "American" style: short sentences in the form of statements, thus making the story faster-paced, etc...
Anyways, it's so simple it feels natural--not in a directly-in-the-head Ulysses type deal, but in a "Oh, I can relate to this thought, or his overall detachedness, or this or that", without really trying. I know I've praised authors on this before, but this time by the end I got a little bored with it... Maybe because the main character lacked real emotion and empathy? I mean, he is the titular stranger. He's a stranger to the people around him, including family and his lover, as well as the whole human structure of government, society, and so on. But it hurts his appeal, although his numbed "surprise" at things is something I can relate to and probably most everyone can for certain situations. This lack of emotion also prevents certain catharsis from occurring. For example, the book starts when Meursalt learns of his mother's death. He goes to her rest home, stays at the vigil, goes to the funeral, and goes home--because you've just met him, you think he's in shock. But he's like that the whole time. He never really gets upset about his mom's death--I think that might be what bothers me the most. And that's one of his grievances, he gets pissed that people would be so upset over her death and cry over it because she lived happily. Which I can see--but it also feels fake and almost like a justification for him not feeling anything over his mother's death. I'm biased because I'm very close to my mother, but he just... to be so blase about it... It just agitates me.
...And I wouldn't ride on him putting his mother in a home or anything, and I think during the trial (I'll get to it later) it was messed up that everyone kept on focusing on that instead of what he was being tried for, but I mean... I mean... That's your mother. Okay, don't cry for her life, but I think he was looking at it through a narrow lens (see above). Cry for the fact that she is your mother and now she is gone and she should have meant something to you. I mean--is what I'm saying making sense, or...? Well, let's get on with it. Sorry about that big monster paragraph.
No... Just kidding. One more problem with the style. Because it's so--um--easy, for lack of a better word, it was hard for me to stay invested. By the end my eyes were just sliding over whole paragraphs. When the chaplain/priest/whatever the proper title for him would be showed up, I was just cruising because I knew that's when some huge revelation or something was going to come through, and I didn't like the main character enough or think he was a good enough character to find what he was saying worth my time. I mean, I could empathize with him sometimes, just kind of muddling through life, being surprised in a numb way at new situations and the passage of time, but... He just... I don't know, he didn't seem like a character who would have a lot of feelings or opinions on anything (other than the clear lust he feels for his girlfriend, you never get anything from him, really), so it was almost like he didn't deserve that emotional explosion at the end. And I've tried subsequently to go back and read it, but I can't focus well on it... Anyways, he still is kind of an asshole. There, I said it. Yeah, being a human isn't great, but that's no reason to turn into an insufferable jerk. His last paragraph of speech where he's yelling at the Chaplain (that actually spans a few pages) is just like some "mad at dad" middle schooler/early teenager. Oh you're so tough. Go buy a Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt and read a... Well, read an Albert Camus book.
Oh man. Sorry for the rants. I didn't even hate the main character until I started writing this. But he is such a... Ugh, he makes me so mad, taking it all in in retrospect. So! Um--How did the main character end up in this situation with a chaplain? Well, I've already said that the book starts with his mother's death. The book starts out with him going to her funereal, and then coming back to work. Actually, he obsesses about having to ask his boss for days off and focuses on that more--just that weird obsession alone reminded me of Gregor Samsa, from Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but that connection goes away.
Anyways, like I said, he never mourns, but makes detached observations of life around him, mostly. For example: his two neighbours, one he probably genuinely cares about (probably, because it's damn hard to tell with him), and one who has a gross mange-y dog. The guy beats his dog all the time because it walks too fast or too slow for him, but he has real affection for the dog deep in his heart, and when it goes missing you see that. (Not saying you should beat your dog, though!) He also meets with a women who used to work with him that he was attracted to. They start having a mostly sexual relationship, which I think is a point brought up in court, or somebody freaks out about around then--that Meursalt would enter a sexual relationship (or a romantic one) so close to his mother's death. That's one thing I can defend him on, however: maybe, following his mother's death, he wanted to feel alive, needed in some way, wanted to revel in the life still around him... But in retrospect, it seems more like he was just kind of horny. Oops.
His neighbour that he cares about, Raymond, has a girlfriend who steps out on him, so he beats the tar out of her. He is not taken into custody because it is the 1940's, but over the next few days he notices that the girl's brother and several of his "Arab" friends start tailing him. When Raymond and Meursalt are together at a friend's beach house, they accidentally come across this group--they attack Raymond with knives and fists and he is injured. Meursalt, later, goes back to the same place where they found the group and sees just the brother alone. He took Raymond's gun so Raymond would not do anything irrational following his assault--and ironically fires five shots into the brother, killing him, with no explanation, on a complete spur of the moment. You can pretend that he was doing it as payback for assaulting Raymond, or as a warning, but he claims the overwhelming heat made him do it, so...
So he is caught for his murder, found guilty and put into jail. He has an appeal waiting, but it's pretty much known that it won't go through and he will be executed anyways. Get this, by guillotine! Apparently guillotines were used for death sentences in France until 1981. Damn, France.
So yeah. There's a pretend ambiguous ending, but the ending is pretty much sorted out. I know Blogger doesn't give the reader any concept of how posts are being written, or the time frame in which they are written, but I took a day's break between writing the above and what I'm writing now. I think my main problem with the theory that makes Meursalt (that life is just a random mixing of sensory feelings and emotions and such) is that that's not how people are. I mean you only have to be alive to know that that's not true, that people aren't like that (except, perhaps, if you have some sort of mental disability, but we are never given any hints that Meursalt should be seen in that way, even if he is the titular stranger and is seen by even himself as different from everyone else... I think to say something like that would be putting words in Camus's mouth).
So onto things I've noted from the book that I haven't mentioned already in my numerous angry rants!
First of all, the book starts off with a quote from the Medieval play Everyman, which I thought was a curious choice, mostly because it has been, for the most part, forgotten... (It's a passion play, or some other type whose popularity pretty much died once people realized they should bathe in their own waste, so it's not really common for a group to put this one on today...) But after reading I realized that the people who printed the edition of Camus's book are of Everyman's Library. Oooops. (If you're curious, the quote is "Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side". Although I remember the general idea of the play, I don't remember who says this, and I don't want to go looking for the book that it is in at this very moment... I think it might be Everyman's Soul, or Knowledge or Wisdom or some other positive personification...)
I honestly don't have anything till Meursalt shoots the Arab halfway through the book (the book is divided as his life is: before and after the murder). Really, I talked about a lot of what I thought might be interesting to mention already... Anyways, here's the quote: "My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more shots at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness" (Camus 57). This is the part of the book that's the most skillfully written, in my opinion. Although looking at it again, the bullets lodging without a trace bothers me... Of course there were wounds left behind, unless the guy is made out of Jell-o...
The next part of the book comes right after this. Now, I borrowed this book from the library, and someone left behind a Post-it on the page for part two that says "Question everything that you believe to be true..." (Actually, this would make a great hipster photo...) When I just kind of flipped through the book prior to reading it I cam upon this page and was very intrigued, as I'd imagine anyone would be. Unfortunately... The book is kind of disappointing... And I would not connect it with the Post-it note's statement, either. Maybe that was the point of the book and I missed it, but it seems as though there are better books to put such a note in... That said, I will not be taking the note out.
In the courtroom Meursalt first refers to himself as a stranger or an outsider-looking-in (though, again, it is obvious he has really felt that way or was that to begin with), when he sees all the usual journalists and bailiffs and policemen greeting each other warmly... And then the jury and people observing are talking too... "...He gave the policeman a warm handshake. I noticed then that everyone was waving and exchanging greetings and talking, as if they were in a club where people are glad to find themselves among others from the same world. That is how I explained to myself the strange impression I had of being the odd man out, a kind of intruder" (Camus 81). I think this is the first time that he is consciously aware of that feeling which has existed even in his narrative--the feeling made apparent to him because of, or cemented by, the fact that he is actually detained from these people physically and because of his gained status as a criminal (a murderer, no less!).
Um... Let's see... My next note was in his sentence... "...The presiding judge told me in bizarre language that I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people" (Camus 102). Note that it's "bizarre language" and not "a bizarre language". I missed that the first time and was very confused. (He probably meant "legalese", as it were...) But yeah. Guillotines! Like I said, used in France until 1981! Damn, France. Daaamn.
Um... Yeah. I already complained about the end, and the ideas behind it. My last thing to say regarding this was that it occurred to me to look up Meursalt's name in French. Meur means murderous, meurs means die, and salt is just salt (all according to Google translate. We have a French/English dictionary in the attic but... Yeah, that's not happening). So, did Camus put meaning behind his name on purpose? Maybe. Maybe it's just a common French name (or was in the early twentieth century). So that's it for me on Albert Camus's The Stranger!
MLA Citation information: Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. Everyman's Library: United States, 1993.
The book is also very simple in terms of how it is written. This could be due to the fact that it was translated from French, but also because according to the introductory notes, Camus was trying to imitate an "American" style: short sentences in the form of statements, thus making the story faster-paced, etc...
Anyways, it's so simple it feels natural--not in a directly-in-the-head Ulysses type deal, but in a "Oh, I can relate to this thought, or his overall detachedness, or this or that", without really trying. I know I've praised authors on this before, but this time by the end I got a little bored with it... Maybe because the main character lacked real emotion and empathy? I mean, he is the titular stranger. He's a stranger to the people around him, including family and his lover, as well as the whole human structure of government, society, and so on. But it hurts his appeal, although his numbed "surprise" at things is something I can relate to and probably most everyone can for certain situations. This lack of emotion also prevents certain catharsis from occurring. For example, the book starts when Meursalt learns of his mother's death. He goes to her rest home, stays at the vigil, goes to the funeral, and goes home--because you've just met him, you think he's in shock. But he's like that the whole time. He never really gets upset about his mom's death--I think that might be what bothers me the most. And that's one of his grievances, he gets pissed that people would be so upset over her death and cry over it because she lived happily. Which I can see--but it also feels fake and almost like a justification for him not feeling anything over his mother's death. I'm biased because I'm very close to my mother, but he just... to be so blase about it... It just agitates me.
...And I wouldn't ride on him putting his mother in a home or anything, and I think during the trial (I'll get to it later) it was messed up that everyone kept on focusing on that instead of what he was being tried for, but I mean... I mean... That's your mother. Okay, don't cry for her life, but I think he was looking at it through a narrow lens (see above). Cry for the fact that she is your mother and now she is gone and she should have meant something to you. I mean--is what I'm saying making sense, or...? Well, let's get on with it. Sorry about that big monster paragraph.
No... Just kidding. One more problem with the style. Because it's so--um--easy, for lack of a better word, it was hard for me to stay invested. By the end my eyes were just sliding over whole paragraphs. When the chaplain/priest/whatever the proper title for him would be showed up, I was just cruising because I knew that's when some huge revelation or something was going to come through, and I didn't like the main character enough or think he was a good enough character to find what he was saying worth my time. I mean, I could empathize with him sometimes, just kind of muddling through life, being surprised in a numb way at new situations and the passage of time, but... He just... I don't know, he didn't seem like a character who would have a lot of feelings or opinions on anything (other than the clear lust he feels for his girlfriend, you never get anything from him, really), so it was almost like he didn't deserve that emotional explosion at the end. And I've tried subsequently to go back and read it, but I can't focus well on it... Anyways, he still is kind of an asshole. There, I said it. Yeah, being a human isn't great, but that's no reason to turn into an insufferable jerk. His last paragraph of speech where he's yelling at the Chaplain (that actually spans a few pages) is just like some "mad at dad" middle schooler/early teenager. Oh you're so tough. Go buy a Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt and read a... Well, read an Albert Camus book.
Oh man. Sorry for the rants. I didn't even hate the main character until I started writing this. But he is such a... Ugh, he makes me so mad, taking it all in in retrospect. So! Um--How did the main character end up in this situation with a chaplain? Well, I've already said that the book starts with his mother's death. The book starts out with him going to her funereal, and then coming back to work. Actually, he obsesses about having to ask his boss for days off and focuses on that more--just that weird obsession alone reminded me of Gregor Samsa, from Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but that connection goes away.
Anyways, like I said, he never mourns, but makes detached observations of life around him, mostly. For example: his two neighbours, one he probably genuinely cares about (probably, because it's damn hard to tell with him), and one who has a gross mange-y dog. The guy beats his dog all the time because it walks too fast or too slow for him, but he has real affection for the dog deep in his heart, and when it goes missing you see that. (Not saying you should beat your dog, though!) He also meets with a women who used to work with him that he was attracted to. They start having a mostly sexual relationship, which I think is a point brought up in court, or somebody freaks out about around then--that Meursalt would enter a sexual relationship (or a romantic one) so close to his mother's death. That's one thing I can defend him on, however: maybe, following his mother's death, he wanted to feel alive, needed in some way, wanted to revel in the life still around him... But in retrospect, it seems more like he was just kind of horny. Oops.
His neighbour that he cares about, Raymond, has a girlfriend who steps out on him, so he beats the tar out of her. He is not taken into custody because it is the 1940's, but over the next few days he notices that the girl's brother and several of his "Arab" friends start tailing him. When Raymond and Meursalt are together at a friend's beach house, they accidentally come across this group--they attack Raymond with knives and fists and he is injured. Meursalt, later, goes back to the same place where they found the group and sees just the brother alone. He took Raymond's gun so Raymond would not do anything irrational following his assault--and ironically fires five shots into the brother, killing him, with no explanation, on a complete spur of the moment. You can pretend that he was doing it as payback for assaulting Raymond, or as a warning, but he claims the overwhelming heat made him do it, so...
So he is caught for his murder, found guilty and put into jail. He has an appeal waiting, but it's pretty much known that it won't go through and he will be executed anyways. Get this, by guillotine! Apparently guillotines were used for death sentences in France until 1981. Damn, France.
So yeah. There's a pretend ambiguous ending, but the ending is pretty much sorted out. I know Blogger doesn't give the reader any concept of how posts are being written, or the time frame in which they are written, but I took a day's break between writing the above and what I'm writing now. I think my main problem with the theory that makes Meursalt (that life is just a random mixing of sensory feelings and emotions and such) is that that's not how people are. I mean you only have to be alive to know that that's not true, that people aren't like that (except, perhaps, if you have some sort of mental disability, but we are never given any hints that Meursalt should be seen in that way, even if he is the titular stranger and is seen by even himself as different from everyone else... I think to say something like that would be putting words in Camus's mouth).
So onto things I've noted from the book that I haven't mentioned already in my numerous angry rants!
First of all, the book starts off with a quote from the Medieval play Everyman, which I thought was a curious choice, mostly because it has been, for the most part, forgotten... (It's a passion play, or some other type whose popularity pretty much died once people realized they should bathe in their own waste, so it's not really common for a group to put this one on today...) But after reading I realized that the people who printed the edition of Camus's book are of Everyman's Library. Oooops. (If you're curious, the quote is "Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side". Although I remember the general idea of the play, I don't remember who says this, and I don't want to go looking for the book that it is in at this very moment... I think it might be Everyman's Soul, or Knowledge or Wisdom or some other positive personification...)
I honestly don't have anything till Meursalt shoots the Arab halfway through the book (the book is divided as his life is: before and after the murder). Really, I talked about a lot of what I thought might be interesting to mention already... Anyways, here's the quote: "My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more shots at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness" (Camus 57). This is the part of the book that's the most skillfully written, in my opinion. Although looking at it again, the bullets lodging without a trace bothers me... Of course there were wounds left behind, unless the guy is made out of Jell-o...
The next part of the book comes right after this. Now, I borrowed this book from the library, and someone left behind a Post-it on the page for part two that says "Question everything that you believe to be true..." (Actually, this would make a great hipster photo...) When I just kind of flipped through the book prior to reading it I cam upon this page and was very intrigued, as I'd imagine anyone would be. Unfortunately... The book is kind of disappointing... And I would not connect it with the Post-it note's statement, either. Maybe that was the point of the book and I missed it, but it seems as though there are better books to put such a note in... That said, I will not be taking the note out.
In the courtroom Meursalt first refers to himself as a stranger or an outsider-looking-in (though, again, it is obvious he has really felt that way or was that to begin with), when he sees all the usual journalists and bailiffs and policemen greeting each other warmly... And then the jury and people observing are talking too... "...He gave the policeman a warm handshake. I noticed then that everyone was waving and exchanging greetings and talking, as if they were in a club where people are glad to find themselves among others from the same world. That is how I explained to myself the strange impression I had of being the odd man out, a kind of intruder" (Camus 81). I think this is the first time that he is consciously aware of that feeling which has existed even in his narrative--the feeling made apparent to him because of, or cemented by, the fact that he is actually detained from these people physically and because of his gained status as a criminal (a murderer, no less!).
Um... Let's see... My next note was in his sentence... "...The presiding judge told me in bizarre language that I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people" (Camus 102). Note that it's "bizarre language" and not "a bizarre language". I missed that the first time and was very confused. (He probably meant "legalese", as it were...) But yeah. Guillotines! Like I said, used in France until 1981! Damn, France. Daaamn.
Um... Yeah. I already complained about the end, and the ideas behind it. My last thing to say regarding this was that it occurred to me to look up Meursalt's name in French. Meur means murderous, meurs means die, and salt is just salt (all according to Google translate. We have a French/English dictionary in the attic but... Yeah, that's not happening). So, did Camus put meaning behind his name on purpose? Maybe. Maybe it's just a common French name (or was in the early twentieth century). So that's it for me on Albert Camus's The Stranger!
MLA Citation information: Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. Everyman's Library: United States, 1993.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Ah--the sequel to The Hunger Games. I didn't like this one as much, but it's not a bad book. It just didn't strike me in quite the same way (though it did have me flipping through the later pages and reading random sentences... Not sure what to make of my reaction? Well, it meets Stephanie Meyer's "high expectations". Oh yeah--on the back of the book there is a quote of praise from Stephanie Meyer: "It not only lived up to my high expectations, it surpassed them. Stunning". You know who has no right to have high expectations or any expectations of anything at all? The author (authoress?) of the Twilight saga.
Anyways. This is set following the original games--Katniss and Peeta's actions have sparked many rebellions--for example, the third district is completely out of commission, the eighth district had be controlled... and the Capitol is keeping an eye on them. Collins does a very good job of illustrating the tension between Katniss and the Capitol--instead of just describing the idea of Big Brother, she makes the reader feel like they're the ones being scrutinized. Of course, it helps that the book is from Katniss's point of view... But still. It's very eerie.
Now, the Capitol wants to get back at Katniss specifically for essentially making them look like fools. This upcoming year is also the seventy-fifth year of the games. Every twenty-five years the games are "special" versions, known as Quarter Quells--in these there are one or more major twists on the game that year--for the seventy-fifth, those chosen for the games are chosen from each district's pool of winners. Katniss, of course, is the only female winner from her district. More twists are the incredible difficult and twisted challenges of the arena--it's set up like a clock, and... I didn't quite get how this worked, exactly, but if you were in the four o'clock area at that time, you would have to deal with whatever danger would be released. For example, one area spits out acid rain at its time, one starts a huge lightning storm... The worse locks you into its sliver for the whole hour where muttation birds (that's what they call it; I know, it drives you nuts, doesn't it?) scream in the voices of people you care for--one sounds like Katniss's sister, a winner from one of the other games named Finnick hears the girl he loves.... And so on.
Oh, and there are still issues about everyone thinking Peeta and Katniss are still madly in love. They would have given Katniss some slack had she done a convincing job of this, but according to the head of the Capitol, she did not.... So... Um... Yeah, let's go!
Oh, okay. My first note is 78 pages in--every half year between games, the survivors of previous games meet at the Capitol, celebrate, hang out, are doted upon by the Capitol, whatever. These parties have huge dinner setups. Katniss is so excited about all the food that she is determined to try as much as possible--one bite from every dish (she gives the rest to Peeta). She is asked why she has stopped eating, she explains that she is full, and the person who asked laughs and shows her a vial of liquid. You take a sip in the bathroom and bam! You vomit up your meal and are free to continue eating. Now, I made connections to Ancient Rome pretty clear in my last post, but I get excited about that sort of thing, so sorry if this is tiresome. (You don't have to read this, you know.) In ancient Rome, there were these things called vomitoriums. Well--depending on your source, that wasn't their real name, but the point is, you would stuff yourself at an elaborate upper-class Roman feast. Granted, no Roman feast could compare to the elaborate dishes at the Capitol, but we're still talking about things like flamingos stuffed with sparrows, roasted songbird tongues, dishes involving dormice... A lot of things getting stuffed into other things. You got full but you didn't want to miss out on the rabbit fetus? Well, fortunately for you your host was kind enough to provide (or you owned yourself, which if you were upper class wasn't so unusual) an ostrich feather long enough for you to tickle the back of your throat. You went into the vomitorium--or whatever the proper name was--tickled your throat, vomited, came back, and went on with your meal of strange things that most people would be horrified to eat. (Incidentally, could my willingness and drive to try unusual foods be related to the fact that I'm Italian and almost certainly have Roman roots? I'd try most of things that a Roman nobleman would have eaten... Except for maybe the tongues. Maybe. I'd love to try the fish sauce, though!) Anyways... Katniss is just as horrified and disgusted as you probably are right now, and goes back to her room.
Oh okay, and her other friend, Gale, wants to run away (back at home). She agrees to, and tries to start planning in her head how she could do so while taking her and Gale's family with her and Gale. Gale abruptly informs her that he loves her--she's so shocked she can't think straight and responds with--wait for it--"'I know'" (Collins 97). If you're not laughing, you've never seen a Star Wars movie. Sorry.
Aaaand... Wow, there's been about a month break between what's up here and what you're reading this very second, so sorry if I'm a little foggy. Finals and all of that, and general laziness... Anyways, I guess I described the hunger game arena this year in basic detail... They start out on platforms in the middle of the ocean and they have to swim to that island with all the traps on it... So if you can't swim (which is a possibility, depending on your district), you're pretty much done from the start, there. I don't remember if anyone specifically gets screwed by that factor (the belts on the tributes' uniforms are flotation devices when used properly, or something like that), but that would be interesting if they were... Again, a little foggy on the details...
Ah, yes! Me being me, I've marked one of the most heartbreaking moments in the book. Katniss and Peeta befriend two people from whichever district was in charge of fishing (oops). One is a young, popular man who won a few years before Peeta and Katniss, and the female tribute is an elderly woman whose shining day came many, many decades before. Anyways, they all get stuck in the part of the island with the gas that affects your nervous system--it doesn't kill you right away, but it sets you up for a pretty excruciating death if you don't find shelter. Peeta needs to be carried. It hits Katniss, and she starts having trouble controlling her body--Mags, the old lady, can't move fast enough to escape it, but the other guy--Finnick--can't carry Peeta and Mags. So, Mags: "Mags hauls herself up, plants a kiss on Finnick's lips, and then hobbles straight into the fog. Immediately, her body is seized by wild contortions and she falls to the ground in a horrible dance. I want to scream, but my throat is on fire" (Collins 301).
My next note is... Ugh, it's so stupid, but the Beavis and/or Butthead in me thinks that it is hilarious. People commonly describes the noise clocks make on the hour or half hour or whatever as chimes or bongs. This book is no different. "Twelve bongs last night" (Collins 325). Daaaaaaaaaayum, Katniss.
Oh man, and my last note is on another thing I thought was hilarious but will probably make everyone else in the world facepalm. I mentioned how Gale kissed Katniss earlier in the is post, right? (Not going back to check. Deal with it.) Well, he does, in the privacy of Katniss's own home, but somehow the president knows anyways. But after Katniss kisses Peeta towards the end of this book, she thinks: "I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more. But my head wound started bleeding and he made me lie down" (Collins 352). I don't know why I found that so hilarious but I do.
Anywayyys... Like I said, I'm kind of fuzzy on the end, which is probably better for you, because I can't inadvertently (or advertently?) spoil the end. All I remember is that the members of Katniss's Hunger Games "team" had planned a rebellion in their game, and Katniss's obliviousness prevents her from understanding it (again, I can't blame her at all, because I'd be the same way). Buttt it also means major consequences for the districts that the members of those rebellions hail from... Well, I'm sure there will be a recap in Mockingjay! I'll keep you guys updated, because God knows if your libraries are anything like my local libraries, you won't be able to even get your hands on a free copy till next January (31 holds on it at Wallingford! 31 holds!!). Wheeeeee.
MLA Citation Information: Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. Scholastic Press: United States of America, 2009.
Anyways. This is set following the original games--Katniss and Peeta's actions have sparked many rebellions--for example, the third district is completely out of commission, the eighth district had be controlled... and the Capitol is keeping an eye on them. Collins does a very good job of illustrating the tension between Katniss and the Capitol--instead of just describing the idea of Big Brother, she makes the reader feel like they're the ones being scrutinized. Of course, it helps that the book is from Katniss's point of view... But still. It's very eerie.
Now, the Capitol wants to get back at Katniss specifically for essentially making them look like fools. This upcoming year is also the seventy-fifth year of the games. Every twenty-five years the games are "special" versions, known as Quarter Quells--in these there are one or more major twists on the game that year--for the seventy-fifth, those chosen for the games are chosen from each district's pool of winners. Katniss, of course, is the only female winner from her district. More twists are the incredible difficult and twisted challenges of the arena--it's set up like a clock, and... I didn't quite get how this worked, exactly, but if you were in the four o'clock area at that time, you would have to deal with whatever danger would be released. For example, one area spits out acid rain at its time, one starts a huge lightning storm... The worse locks you into its sliver for the whole hour where muttation birds (that's what they call it; I know, it drives you nuts, doesn't it?) scream in the voices of people you care for--one sounds like Katniss's sister, a winner from one of the other games named Finnick hears the girl he loves.... And so on.
Oh, and there are still issues about everyone thinking Peeta and Katniss are still madly in love. They would have given Katniss some slack had she done a convincing job of this, but according to the head of the Capitol, she did not.... So... Um... Yeah, let's go!
Oh, okay. My first note is 78 pages in--every half year between games, the survivors of previous games meet at the Capitol, celebrate, hang out, are doted upon by the Capitol, whatever. These parties have huge dinner setups. Katniss is so excited about all the food that she is determined to try as much as possible--one bite from every dish (she gives the rest to Peeta). She is asked why she has stopped eating, she explains that she is full, and the person who asked laughs and shows her a vial of liquid. You take a sip in the bathroom and bam! You vomit up your meal and are free to continue eating. Now, I made connections to Ancient Rome pretty clear in my last post, but I get excited about that sort of thing, so sorry if this is tiresome. (You don't have to read this, you know.) In ancient Rome, there were these things called vomitoriums. Well--depending on your source, that wasn't their real name, but the point is, you would stuff yourself at an elaborate upper-class Roman feast. Granted, no Roman feast could compare to the elaborate dishes at the Capitol, but we're still talking about things like flamingos stuffed with sparrows, roasted songbird tongues, dishes involving dormice... A lot of things getting stuffed into other things. You got full but you didn't want to miss out on the rabbit fetus? Well, fortunately for you your host was kind enough to provide (or you owned yourself, which if you were upper class wasn't so unusual) an ostrich feather long enough for you to tickle the back of your throat. You went into the vomitorium--or whatever the proper name was--tickled your throat, vomited, came back, and went on with your meal of strange things that most people would be horrified to eat. (Incidentally, could my willingness and drive to try unusual foods be related to the fact that I'm Italian and almost certainly have Roman roots? I'd try most of things that a Roman nobleman would have eaten... Except for maybe the tongues. Maybe. I'd love to try the fish sauce, though!) Anyways... Katniss is just as horrified and disgusted as you probably are right now, and goes back to her room.
Oh okay, and her other friend, Gale, wants to run away (back at home). She agrees to, and tries to start planning in her head how she could do so while taking her and Gale's family with her and Gale. Gale abruptly informs her that he loves her--she's so shocked she can't think straight and responds with--wait for it--"'I know'" (Collins 97). If you're not laughing, you've never seen a Star Wars movie. Sorry.
Aaaand... Wow, there's been about a month break between what's up here and what you're reading this very second, so sorry if I'm a little foggy. Finals and all of that, and general laziness... Anyways, I guess I described the hunger game arena this year in basic detail... They start out on platforms in the middle of the ocean and they have to swim to that island with all the traps on it... So if you can't swim (which is a possibility, depending on your district), you're pretty much done from the start, there. I don't remember if anyone specifically gets screwed by that factor (the belts on the tributes' uniforms are flotation devices when used properly, or something like that), but that would be interesting if they were... Again, a little foggy on the details...
Ah, yes! Me being me, I've marked one of the most heartbreaking moments in the book. Katniss and Peeta befriend two people from whichever district was in charge of fishing (oops). One is a young, popular man who won a few years before Peeta and Katniss, and the female tribute is an elderly woman whose shining day came many, many decades before. Anyways, they all get stuck in the part of the island with the gas that affects your nervous system--it doesn't kill you right away, but it sets you up for a pretty excruciating death if you don't find shelter. Peeta needs to be carried. It hits Katniss, and she starts having trouble controlling her body--Mags, the old lady, can't move fast enough to escape it, but the other guy--Finnick--can't carry Peeta and Mags. So, Mags: "Mags hauls herself up, plants a kiss on Finnick's lips, and then hobbles straight into the fog. Immediately, her body is seized by wild contortions and she falls to the ground in a horrible dance. I want to scream, but my throat is on fire" (Collins 301).
My next note is... Ugh, it's so stupid, but the Beavis and/or Butthead in me thinks that it is hilarious. People commonly describes the noise clocks make on the hour or half hour or whatever as chimes or bongs. This book is no different. "Twelve bongs last night" (Collins 325). Daaaaaaaaaayum, Katniss.
Oh man, and my last note is on another thing I thought was hilarious but will probably make everyone else in the world facepalm. I mentioned how Gale kissed Katniss earlier in the is post, right? (Not going back to check. Deal with it.) Well, he does, in the privacy of Katniss's own home, but somehow the president knows anyways. But after Katniss kisses Peeta towards the end of this book, she thinks: "I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more. But my head wound started bleeding and he made me lie down" (Collins 352). I don't know why I found that so hilarious but I do.
Anywayyys... Like I said, I'm kind of fuzzy on the end, which is probably better for you, because I can't inadvertently (or advertently?) spoil the end. All I remember is that the members of Katniss's Hunger Games "team" had planned a rebellion in their game, and Katniss's obliviousness prevents her from understanding it (again, I can't blame her at all, because I'd be the same way). Buttt it also means major consequences for the districts that the members of those rebellions hail from... Well, I'm sure there will be a recap in Mockingjay! I'll keep you guys updated, because God knows if your libraries are anything like my local libraries, you won't be able to even get your hands on a free copy till next January (31 holds on it at Wallingford! 31 holds!!). Wheeeeee.
MLA Citation Information: Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. Scholastic Press: United States of America, 2009.
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