Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Well!  You've heard of this.  You know you've heard of this.  Don't even try to tell me that you haven't heard of this.  Even if you somehow aren't aware of this movie's (everyone knows this movie; I have a feeling many people are surprised when they find out that this is a book) existence, you know these faces.  This is a book set before, during, and after the Civil war.  What makes it most interesting is that it's set in the South, and if you're not from the South at least, you don't really hear about that perspective of the war.  Then again, Mitchell could have been a Southerner and may have exemplified things--though I've no doubt Northerners looted, robbed, and burned down property.  Most of them were probably fighting just because there was fighting going on.  Actually, the book does a good job of proving that not all Northerners were saints.
The main character, Scarlett O'Hara, is your basic Southern belle.  Basically every boy her age (or of marrying age) wants to marry her.  Her world, just before the war, is shattered because she learns that one ex-beau of hers is getting married.  She is pretty convinced that she loves him, but it's actually a stupid crush that screws up a good portion of her life--even when she realizes that she never actually truly loved Ashley (about four pages from the book's end), it bites her in the butt.  And she doesn't change at all.  She almost matures and grows and learns at the end, but she ruins it all.*
Rhett Butler is a suave, smooth-talking ladies' (is that right?) man.  He's a scam artist, and he gets around.  He's a slippery, slimy thing--unfortunately, even though I hated him at the end of the book, he was the only main character I could like.

The first sentence of the novel is this: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms as the Tarleton twins were" (1).  This is interesting--her eyes are sort of the hypnotizers (yes, I know that's not a word.  Roll with it), and her charm draws men in.  As the hardships of the war and its aftermath continue, her charm disappears, and her face becomes narrow and even harsher.  Her lack of beauty becomes painfully clear, and her face begins to look like her cold mind.  (To be fair, it was necessary to become that way to survive the war and all, but while she grew up mentally to survive, she never really matured, if you understand what I mean.*)
So the book starts on the day Scarlett learns Ashley is to be married.  She becomes horrified, but somewhat comforted--because she will see him at the barbecue the next day and she becomes sure that she will be able to talk Ashley out of it, or have him admit that it was just a joke, or something.  Surprise, surprise, this was not the case.  And I've lasted almost three paragraphs without complaining, and now it has to happen: Ashley 'loved' Scarlett (by the end Scarlett realizes it was just infatuation, or lust)--but at the beginning he cannot tell the difference.  He didn't propose to Scarlett even though he thought he loved her because he was cowardly.  When he reappears after the war it is excruciating, watching their "drama" unfold.  They have their dramatic soap opera "I love you and I must kiss you" moments, and I just want to keel haul them both.  They need sassy gay friends.  Scarlett, he turned you down because he wasn't man enough to make a good decision--and Ashley, you missed your chance.  You both need to write sad poems in your diaries and move on.  I practically cheered when they realized that they were just being teenagers about each other.

Anywayyys.  Scarlett gets livid, and in desperation she accepts a proposal from a certain Charles.  Of course Ashley tells Scarlett he loves her that night... Ugh.  I didn't find this dramatic or touching or anything, and as you can tell, I never found it particular touching or moving or dramatic.  If you can't man up then don't make the rest of us suffer, jeez.
Scarlett's dramatic bit is that Ashley turns the corner and walks away, Scarlett realizes that she is now stuck to Charlie when in reality her and Ashley share stupidity love, and the section reads something like "and in that moment Scarlett realized how much she loved Ashley".  (Note the "something like".)  Ughhh, cry me a river.  And in the book this failed "romance" didn't even bother me yet.  I figured it would fade.  Sure, she's living with Ashley's wife, but come on.  Five years pass!  Six!  Come on.  Ugh... They just... they just make me want to drink.  Let's just please move on, okay?

"'The man is too clever with cards to be a gentleman'" (137).  Scarlett's father on Rhett, who got him, in a word, wasted, and wrecked him in cards.

"'Once he's made up his mind to something, no one could be braver or more determined but--He lives inside his head instead of outside and he hates to come out into the world'" (142).  This is Scarlett's major revelation about Ashley.  It comes while she is secretly reading a letter from him to his wife--she realizes that he was too cowardly to marry her for fear it would "'upset his way of thinking and living'" (142).  Of course, she doesn't think of it as cowardice.  She just gets frustrated that she doesn't quite understand her revelation--what it means to be in your head and to fear coming "out into the world" and thinks that if she could figure it out she would figure out how she could have gotten him to marry her instead of Melanie.

 "'All wars are sacred,' he said. 'To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is "Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!" Sometimes it's "Down with Popery!" and sometimes "Liberty!" and sometimes "Cotton, Slavery and States' Rights!"'" (153).  First of all, Rhett is referencing the crusades, any sect of Christianity that's not Roman Catholicism (probably the Protestant Reformation?), liberty could be anything, but my first thought was of the Revolutionary war (remember the stamp act, the sugar act, and the other unfair taxes?), and the last one is, of course, the Civil war, which is currently going on (in the story), and which Rhett clearly doesn't support or believe in.  Scarlett, idiot as she is, doesn't understand the references and gets annoyed that he is bringing up seemingly unrelated topics.
Second of all, Rhett has a very good point.  I still kind of have trouble with trying to figure out how the Crusades were more money related than trying to gain back the holy lands from 'heathens', but I'm not very familiar with the Crusades.  And it makes sense with an overwhelming amount of battles and wars that can be skimmed off the top of the head.
3.  This book certainly proves that noble reasons don't mean squat.  The Northerners are portrayed as being more racist than Southerners--after the war, one Northern lady is horrified at the suggestion to get a black nursemaid for her children.  The Northern ladies, who have all read Uncle Tom's Cabin, are also grossly interested in hearing about servants being whipped and tortured.  Now, as I said, Mitchell may be a Southerner, so she may be trying to make Northerners look stupid--though I've no doubt that there was a good percentage of Northerners that were like this.  They didn't give two pence for their noble cause--they might not even have been aware of that.  Now, let me go in another direction entirely: Scarlett and Melanie are both shocked at the idea of whipping slaves, and it's true, that only once we see a slave beaten (and that slave is beaten by her own mother) in the book, but remember--we basically are only seeing "house slaves", or "house n-----s".  Though life was still rough, their lives were considerably more posh, and probably wouldn't have been treated as harshly as field hands.  (Go read the Meet Addy American Girl Doll book for an example of how field hands were treated.)  Scarlett thinks of Mammy and Pork and the other house slaves as family, or just below family, so beatings and other harsh actions were probably rare.  (Hence why the field hands ran away and Mammy and Pork and company did not.)  I can't remember what I was trying to prove, but I hope that this off-kilter rant/long statement was at least somewhat interesting/enlightening.  Now then--I guess on to more coherent things...

So, my next note is just a quote from during the siege--when Northerners went through plantations and towns and all and burned whatever they couldn't eat or loot--they burn thousands of dollars worth of cotton at Tara (the O'Hara plantation), for example.  "It was as though, the worst having happened, they had nothing more to fear.  They had feared a siege and now they had a siege and, after all, it wasn't so bad.  Life could and did go on as usual.  They knew they were sitting on a volcano, but until that volcano erupted there was nothing they could do, so why worry now?" (218).  Or: Gone With the Wind summarizes my basic take on life entirely.

Rhett Butler, right before he took Scarlett, Melanie, and Scarlett's son by Charlie back to Tara during the siege: "'[Yankees] are pretty much like Southerners--except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents'" (223).  This cracked me up.  At first I got annoyed (accents?  We don't have accents!)--but then I remembered Rhode Islanders, and Bostoners, and... Are New Jersey folks 'Yankees'?  And, of course, it's ironic, because Southern accents are simply awful.  They grate on my nerves (well, still not as bad as Rhode Island accents, I'll give Southerners that, but...)

Ah, my next note is on a reference to the book of Job--Scarlett manages to grab hold of a mangy horse at Tara.  It's been kicked about and is a pretty sad sight, but it's better than having no horse.  She says that if the horse was dead, she would just curse God and die--"Somebody in the Bible had done just that thing.  Cursed God and died" (261).  Of course, no-one had actually done that--while Job is suffering from boils and destroyed crops and his sons becoming ill and dying, his wife suggests that he curse God and die.  (What about her?  Seems suspicious to me.)

Oh, and of course Melanie was pregnant, and fared badly.  Actually, they thought she would die after she had the child--the second there was a worry of her death I was like, "SHE IS GOING TO DIE AND ASHLEY WILL BE ALIVE AND ASHLEY AND SCARLETT WILL GET TOGETHER!"  Eventually Melanie does die due to complications--but this is because of a second child, nearly 400 pages and five or six years later.  Of course, this is when Scarlett realizes she and Ashley didn't really love each other, but still.  I called it this early on, and at that point when she actually died, I rolled my eyes.  It's like when the girl conveniently dies in David Copperfield, except it didn't seem so stupid and overwrought then, although I did predict it.  Anyways, times are tough, there are infirm, house slaves who are useless because they aren't field hands, there is Scarlett's kid, Melanie's new baby, and Pork's wife just had a baby.  Scarlett isn't exactly rejoicing at all the mouths to feed, and to hear that there's another baby about nearly drives her mad.  "Babies, babies, babies.  Why did God make so many babies?  But no, God didn't make them.  Stupid people made them" (270).  I pretty much died laughing.

"But she could not feel.  She could only think and her thoughts were very practical" (358).

As a little bit of a summary of what has gone on--I'm sorry--the war has ended, and Scarlett took a visit back to Atlanta, Georgia.  Desperate to make some income for Tara, Scarlett married her younger sister's old beau, Frank Kennedy, and manages his store and two lumber mills.  Obviously, this is a scandal to everyone, and Frank is embarrassed, and Scarlett's younger sister hates everything that has ever lived.  I believe I've mentioned already about how all the Northern officers' wives were curious about whipping and slave mistreatment because they had all read Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Mitchell refers to this as bigotry!  Scarlett expresses disbelief at the thought of whipping slaves--but again, Scarlett has only ever been in contact with house slaves--slaves who very rarely would have been whipped.  Not only that, Mitchell, I have found out since last writing on here, was a terrible racist.  In fact, that's what she's known for more than being the author of this book.  Mitchell might not have believed whipping and such occurred.  The house slaves she portrays are "like family" (according to Scarlett), but are more often than not portrayed as being very stupid or doglike--like Dilcey.  Even if a slave is being portrayed as being intelligent, or at least smarter and cleverer than an animal, they are always brought down, for Mitchell will describe them in broad stereotypical ways.  EG, "she had that negro-like way of...", she had X look that was common to negroes such as herself", "she had the powerful glare of a...", et cetera.  Mitchell actually even presents the slave system as being necessary. Unbound field slaves being drunken degenerates and a group of them almost gang-rapes Scarlett.  Although this probably occurred now and again (just as white men will rape women, it happens), the knowledge of the author makes everything untrustworthy and suspicious.  (If the topic of the book itself didn't make the reader wary already...)  So--Mitchell was probably trying to say that the slave system was necessary, or else all hell would break loose and no-one would be safe, et cetera.

Mitchell also puts women who believe that they have the right to vote (and men who believe that women should have that right) on the same level as lunatics, alcoholic (women) and divorced women (which was quite a scandal in those days).

Frank is killed after the incident where Scarlett is almost raped--he was a member of the KKK, and upon hearing her recounting of what happened, he rallied the troops, so to speak, and killed the men who did it and lost some of their own.  Scarlett feels guilty about his death, especially since she was so nasty to him while they were married.  Anyways--Rhett goes to comfort her, and there's a funny scene: "'It's all Frank's fault for not beating you with a buggy whip... I'm surprised at you, Scarlett, for sprouting a conscience this late in life.  Opportunists like you shouldn't have them.'  'What is an oppor--what did you call it?'  'A person who takes advantages of opportunities.'  'Is that wrong?'  'It has always been held in disrepute--especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn't take them'" (552).
Rhett then immediately proposes to Scarlett.  Scarlett accepts.
"He made her play and she had almost forgotten how.  Life had been so serious and so bitter.  He knew how to play and swept her along with him" (569).

Again, another reference--really a paraphrase--to the Bible: "'It's harder for speculators' money to get into the best parlors than for the camel to go through the needle's eye" (572).  Jesus, in Matthew, says that "It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven... It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" (Luke, Mark, Matthew--various phraseries of this).

As things usually go, Rhett and Scarlett have a child together.  The daughter began to suffer from night terrors.  After Bonnie was born, Scarlett absolutely refused to have another child and would not even let Rhett share a bed with her.  So their daughter slept in her crib in her father's room with the lights on.  Scarlett once overhears Bonnie relating one of her horrible nightmares to her father--she explains that a big "it" sat on her chest and had claws.  The claws are different, but often incubi are characterized as sitting on their victims' chests or stomachs.  (See "The Nightmare", a painting by Henry Fuseli--the 1790 version is pretty nightmare-inducing in its own right, too.)  I just thought that that was a rather curious reference, if Mitchell even intended that... (The kid is only four or five!)

Ashley is terrible and depresses the world--it kills him that Scarlett has turned so hard and money hungry, but she's had to become that way.  Though she's hard and cruel now, she has adapted, and he's become weak because he can't handle a hard life of work and money garnering.
"'I shouldn't have let him make me look back,' she thought despairingly.  'I was right when I said I'd never look back.  It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything but look back'" (615).

"'Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them'" (675).  Scarlett, after seeing Melanie in her deathbed, when she realizes that she would have gotten nowhere if Melanie hadn't been at her side.  As she realizes this, she realizes that she never needed Ashley at all.  Her love for him wasn't really love at all, it was hardly anything: "Out of the dullness, one thought arose.  Ashley did not love her and had never really loved her and the knowledge did not hurt.  It should hurt.  She should be desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at fate.  She had relied upon his love for so long.  It had upheld her through so many dark places.  Yet, there the truth was.  He did not love her and she did not care.  She did not care because she did not love him.  She did not love him and so nothing he could do or say could hurt her" (675).
*So--as Scarlett has her revelation, Rhett has his own.  He was sick of playing second banana to Ashley for so long, and now that Melanie is out of the picture, he sees no point in staying on.  When Scarlett attempts to explain that she truly loved him all along and only just realized it, he explains that he fell out of love with her as easily as she did with Ashley.  Now--this disappointed me, though I understood it.  It made sense.  Now, as a backtrack, Scarlett's little anthem was "I'll think about it tomorrow, tomorrow is another day", etc--and that's how the book ends: "'I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara.  I can stand it then.  Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back.  After all, tomorrow is another day'" (689).  The last line is inspiring.  As last sentences go?  Very nearly one of the best.  But--"some way to get him back"?  Oh no.  Oh hell no.  You spent four hundred and fifty pages attempting to do this with Ashley.  You are not doing this again.  You are still an idiot.  Though she grew up--she became money-minded, could manage food and all--managed a store, two mills and Tara--but she didn't mature any.  Ughhh.


Oh, and the last time I saw the movie, I was about eleven.  Basically the only scene I remember was when Rhett and Scarlett's daughter dies--she falls off a pony while riding sidesaddle when it jumps a hedge.  The second Rhett bought her the pony I was basically like, IT IS ALL OVER, YOU HAVE SEALED YOUR DAUGHTER'S FATE.  The only other scenes I remember clearly are these two: the iconic "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" scene, and an added scene where Scarlett gets mad that her waist is nineteen inches (because of her two children) instead of sixteen as it used to be.  I remember it because I couldn't figure out what the big deal was.


Well, there's that.  The book was rather gripping--I was completely sucked in during the war years.  Unfortunately, when Ashley showed up again and their pathetic romance played out I lost interest.  But still--if you're interested in this period, definitely read it.  Like I said, it was pretty interesting to see the war and its aftermath from a Southern perspective.  It was even more interesting because I took a history class first semester that was something like America 1650-1870, so I actually knew what the battle of Vicksburg met, who Carpetbaggers were, and so on.  I wouldn't read it if you haven't got a lot of free time, though--my edition clocks in at nearly seven hundred pages, and it's columned like a Bible.

MLA Citation Information: Mitchell, Margaret.  Gone With the Wind.  The Macmillan Company: New York, 1936.  (Is it possible that I have a first edition of this book!?  Or a close to first!?  It's in awful condition, but still, that's pretty cool...)



Unrelated Revelation Time: I was thinking about sunflowers the other day and realized something about the film adaptation of Everything is Illuminated--in The Sunflower, Wiesenthal observes that every grave of a soldier has a sunflower growing on it.  In Everything is Illuminated; however, those flowers are probably meant to represent the dead residents of Trachimbrod.  Or maybe soldiers too.  There were an awful lot of flowers.

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 of Mormon: 1 Nephi-Mosiah

(Note: This post includes the first two books of Nephi, the books of Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, the Words of Mormon and the book of Mosiah, obviously.)

So, I came into possession of this through my World Religions class.  First of all, Mormons are nice.  Like really nice.  Like if you were having a bad day you would call your Mormon friend up and they would make life all better again.  Second of all, that class was made up of--not exactly dummkopfs, but they might as well have been zombies.  I was pretty much the only one talking, seriously.  So the three Mormon representatives--teenagers, Mormons have this really cool custom of taking a year or two off for mission work--loved me, and gave me a copy of the book to take.  So that was cool.  Anyways, I dug the friendliness and professionalism and all of that.  If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick a religion learned about in that class and convert to it, I would definitely be a Mormon.  The only big problem I have is that using contraceptives might as well be one of the seven deadly sins.  You're supposed to "be fruitful and multiply"--that would not work for me.  Nope.

So!  Here we go.  This is going to be a long post, I'm sure, but let's start with the introduction, I guess... So the story goes that this book was found inscribed on tablets.  The tablet's words were copied down, as the time wasn't quite ripe for the tablets to be revealed to the world.  The books are a kind of revamped version of the old and new testaments.  So... Let's go!  On with 1 Nephi!
So Nephi's father was a prophet that everybody thought was mad--he also claimed Jerusalem would fall and all of that.  This is probably a good time to mention that I read this about three weeks ago.  I guess my point for marking this was the parallels with the Bible... Maybe.
Oh yeah, so they leave the city and flee to wilderness, pretty much like Moses and his people leaving Egypt.  You know, people "murmur against" him, are punished, keep on murmuring against, don't learn, except sometimes, eventually go off the beaten track... And so on.  So... Yeah.
"Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes.  It is better that one man perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief" 1 Nephi 4:13.
Oh and they too have the commandments and the laws and Leviticus in their possession.  They go ahead and mention that.  Just an interesting note, since I don't actually have a sense of time or proportion.
God is also, again, referred to as the "God of Israel" 1 Nephi 5:9.  Again, a note I think is interesting that probably no-one else would.
Oh, a response to those people rebelling against Nephi's father: "How is it that ye have forgotten what great things the Lord hath done for us...?" 1 Nephi 7:11.  He actually goes on to list great things that God did help them achieve, but.  I just thought it was interesting wording or what have you.  Something about it struck me.
This too: "How is it that ye have forgotten that ye have seen an angel of the Lord?" 1 Nephi 7:9.
I notice that in 1 Nephi 10, God, when referred to as 'he', isn't capitalized.  That's pretty intriguing...
Then 'he' is referring to a regular man: "For he that diligently seeketh shall find" (which can continue to) "and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them" 1 Nephi 10:19.
Nephi's father sees a mysterious tree in 1 Nephi 11, and an angel asks Nephi if he understands what the tree was.  My note was just "the cross?" because the cross Jesus was put on is sometimes referred to as a tree.
Also, in most traditional versions of the crucifixion story, Judas hangs himself after he realizes what he has done.  In Nephi's vision, he sees Jesus getting crucified, and then the "multitudes of the earth" rallying against the twelve apostles.  So... Did Judas not kill himself?  Did he repent? Are you... Are you allowed to repent after doing that sort of thing?  I mean, I know it was necessary for Jesus to be resurrected and all, but still...
There's the repetition of the line so often occurring in the Bible: "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last" 1 Nephi 13:42.
Nephi also sees a vision that is like John's vision written in revelations of the false, poison church: "And that great pit, which hath been digged for them by that great and abominable church, which was founded by the devil and his children, that he might lead away the souls of men down to hell--yea, that great pit which hath been digged for the destruction of men shall be filled by those who digged it" 1 Nephi 14:3.  Again.  Good wording.  Good way of bluntly getting the point across.
Also, they flash forward to a time when the name of God will become a "hiss and a byword, and be hated among all nations" 1 Nephi 19:14.  Of course, I thought of Ulysses, when Stephen Daedalus says that God is like a shout in the street.
The first book of Nephi is ended with the promise that it is not just Nephi and his father proclaiming the God of Israel--others have been taught and have seen God in the same manner.

My first note on 2 Nephi is more for a particular word than anything else. You know, the phrase is God will smite thee, but it use the word 'smitten'.  Now it makes sense--obviously there's the same root and same meaning--smite means being struck with the hand or hit with a hard blow.  Smitten means the same thing, but it can also mean that someone is very much in love.  I just thought it was interesting, especially in how appropriate it is (and a little odd that smite doesn't have that same definition).
Remember how in the Old Testament hell--or an equivalent to hell--is Sheol?  If not, Sheol is all dark and nasty, unpleasant and so on.  The darkness is like a blanket, and you may be able to hear other people crying out but you can't reach them or answer them (although that last bit doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but...) Anyways, this book characterizes hell as just being sleep--"the sleep of hell" 2 Nephi 1:13.  That's interesting, the idea that you're not being tortured but you're just... not... there.  I guess that would make it more of a purgatory than a hell then, though... Anyways, here's the full thing: "O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men; that they are carried away captive down to the gulf of misery and woe.  Awake!  And arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all earth.  But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have behold his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love" 2 Nephi 1:13-15.  Okay... So reason number one why I marked it: Matisyahu's debut album is "Shake off the Dust... Arise".   Reason two is that it says that you can't return from the grave.  But you have a second life, so wouldn't that count...?  Unless if it means you can't return to the earth.  Yeeeeeep.
Again, later: "Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyselves from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion" 2 Nephi 8:25.
"Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear" 2 Nephi 9:46.  /"'There are just some kind of men who--who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one'"--Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird.
"Seek the Lord, not peeping wizards" 2 Nephi 18.  The phrase "peeping wizards" is the funniest thing ever.  Let's move on!
Chapter eighteen also mentions the priest Uriah. If I'm not mistaken, that is also the name of one of the archangels.
"Hell from beneath thy feet is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee" 2 Nephi 24:9.  I believe this is a reference to the final days when the dead will rise and walk the earth and so on.


So onto the next book, Jacob... My first note has to do with Jacob warning the people of Nephi against "fornication and lasciviousness" Jacob 3:12.  That seems strange to me because of the be fruitful and multiply bit.  I mean--you're supposed to procreate like crazy.  Like I said, birth control in any form is looked down upon.  And obviously to get babies you've got to have sex.  (I almost said 'make'.  Make sex?)  Maybe it just means bestiality and pedophilia and stuff?  (And since this would be Old Testament time, this would probably include homosexuality too.)  That's my best guess, anyway.
"And now I, Jacob, am led on by the Spirit unto prophesying; for I perceive by the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that by the stumbling of the Jews they will reject the stone upon which they might build and have safe foundation" Jacob 4:15.  I'm going to go ahead and say this refers to the crucifixion of Jesus.  If that's the case, then that oft-repeated New Testament quote about the stone that was rejected being the cornerstone of faith makes a lot more sense now.
Hmm, those appear to be the only notes I've got on Jacob, and I didn't mark anything for Enos, Jarom, Omni, or The Words of Mormon.  Sooo... On to the Book of Mosiah!  


"Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just--But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.  For behold, are we not all beggars?" Mosiah 4:17-19.  This is pretty much the exact opposite of Grecian/Roman/probably other ancient civilizations that I don't know about beliefs too--if you had a beggar or a leper or someone suffering in general, the gods were punishing them, and if you helped them, you ran the risk of pissing the gods off and making them torture you too.  Yeeep.  I also just really like that last line too.  
"And I would that ye should remember, that whosoever among you borroweth of his neighbor should return the thing that he doth borroweth, according as he doth agree, or else thou shalt commit sin; and perhaps thou shalt cause thy neighbor to commit sin also" Mosiah 4:28.  I LOVE this!  One, it may supposed to be serious--in fact there is no may about it--but it seems like there's a bit of humour happening at the end there, along with the truism.  Two, it is true.  Three, I like the fact that it's being said that sometimes sinning isn't all one fellow's part--that there can be (and often is) a reason... 
Oh, here's one thing that really, really bothered me: "And again: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me" Mosiah 13:13.  It's not that God 'says' that he's a jealous God.  He does it often enough in the Old Testament.  What bothers me is that in the old Testament, there is the line which follows: "Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death" Deuteronomy 24:16.  I know that says put to death, but I took it to mean that they may not be punished for each other's sins either--I mean, by saying that he'll take it out on the latter generations... Well, he's not really saying death, but still... It could be potentially  worse than death.  I just don't like this bit with what I convinced myself was said, I guess.  And saying it will come on to latter generations that the sinner probably won't even know isn't going to make them stop.  They'll just be like, oh... I won't get in trouble for it then?  Sweet!  Guess I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing.  Awesome.  I mean, if they do live to see the suffering, they'll feel guilty then (probably), and regret it, but that would be what's known as locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen.
"Unrighteous kings lead their people into sin" Mosiah 29.




So those are all of my notes!  I had some more, but again, it's been a while since I picked this up so I didn't remember why pages were noted, or how my scrawled-in notes related to what I thought they related to.  So, I'm going to get started on the second half (Alma-Moroni, about 320 pages) but there's going to be some in-between, especially since I've also just finished Fight Club, and I've decided to take a lot of my other books down off the 'classics' self for review.  Most of them are pretty short--actually the ones that are coming down for review are the two Hermann Hesse books.  But yeah.  They're both pretty short.       


MLA Citation Information: The Book of Mormon.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: United States of America, 2010.




Ohhh, plus I'm going to be in Cape Cod for a few days in a week.  I know, I know, I won't update for a whole week, eeee.


Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: Congratulations by MGMT
This post's cryptic song lyrics: You're the son of his majesty, remember how it used to be, in the light of the day it's easy to see--Now it's nighttime, you had to leave 

The Bible: Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation

Well, here we are, the home stretch.  The rest of these 'books' are actually just letters, except for Revelations.  Sooo, yeah.  Let's do this.

All of Paul's letters start with "The Letter of Paul to X", or "The Second Letter of Paul to X" or what have you, but Hebrews is just "The Letter to the Hebrews".  From whom?
"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it" Hebrews 13:2.
"Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured" Hebrews 13:3.  / "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free"--Eugene Debs


The Letter of James:
"Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field" James 1:9-10.
"No one, when tempted, should say, 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one... One is tempted by one's own desire" James 1:13-14.
"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world" James 1:27.
"But you have dishonored the poor.  Is it not the rich who oppress you?" James 2:6.
"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?  If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?" James 2:14-16.  
"You believe that God is one; you do well.  Even the demons believe--and shudder" James 1:19.


I don't have any notes for either 1 Peter or 2 Peter.


The First Letter of John:
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves" 1 John 1:8.
"Do not love the world or the things in the world.  The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world--desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches--comes not from the Father but from the world.  And the world and its desire are passing away" 1 John 2:15-17.
"God is love" 1 John 4:8.


I don't have notes for John's second or third letters, nor do I have notes for Jude's letters.


...Buuuut I do have a note or two in Revelation.  (Though I could have sworn that it's Revelations, but okay, fine.)
My first note is that this is where our picture of the apocalypse comes from.  The final judgment, the raising of the dead, the four horsemen--!  That was fun, it brought me right back to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a book that was torturous enough to read that it actually felt like you were suffering the blows dealt by the four horsemen and the seven angels' horns.  But seriously, when they were describing the four horsemen, I was just expecting one of them to be introduced as Ras the Exhorter.  Bad times with that book.  Awful times.  Yet not the worst.
What confused me is that John talks about these seven angels with their horns--every time one blows their horn, something terrible happens.  When angel number five blows his horn, John "saw that a star had fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit; he opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft" Revelation 9:1-2.  So one would automatically assume it's Lucifer/Satan (come to think of it, Satan is never once referred to as Lucifer in the Bible--), no?  But that doesn't make sense, because those events would have happened pre-Eden, not during the end of times... Right?  Or maybe it's supposed to be a metaphor.  Or maybe John is seeing an illusion that is playing up to Satan releasing hell's contents to the world...?  
It's also implied that none of the 144,000 who go to heaven forever are women.  That's fun.
Oh, and might I add--the 'number of the beast'?  We normally think of it as 666, but according to the footnote, depending on your translation/edition of the ancient writings, it could be 616.  I had a dream once that it was 521.
Also, demons and devils preparing to ransack the world during the end of times gather in a place that is called 'Harmagedon' in Hebrew.  Gee, wonder what word that sounds like...
"And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them" Revelation 9:6.
Other than that, there are a few errant notes here and there relating to the final Chronicles of Narnia book, The Last Battle--but of course there'd be similarities between this and that.  


MLA citation information: Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Edition.  American Bible Society: New York, 1989.




So, I'm sure you're hankering for a big reaction to everything, the old and new testament, to have some major religious revelation or what have you...

As for me myself, I had some insight--but it didn't do nearly as much for me as, say, Everything is Illuminated.  There are clearly some things that have touched me, but it didn't quite do it.  My views spiritually--well, some found backing here, and some were not satisfied.  I don't know them that well myself, yet, they're still for the most part unformed.  Or maybe it's not quite that, it's just hard to verbalize them.  Anyways, like I said--some things boded and some didn't.  I tried to remain objective when I read this, but there are many moments when I clearly did not do so.  Well, these things happen.  
You may be wondering if this will be going on the 'Classics' shelf.  I'm not sure yet.




Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: Elephant Love Medley from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack
This post's cryptic song lyrics: The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast, the slow one now will later be fast, as the present now will later be past, the order is rapidly fading, and the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a-changing

The Bible: 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon

Look at all those books covered!  Just kidding, they're just Paul's letters.  I figured I might as well get them all done in one fell swoop.  I'm so close to the end I'd be able to taste it if not for the taste of blood in my mouth from the space formerly filled by my wisdom teeth.

So, first off--The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians!
"Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?" 1 Corinthians 3:16.
"'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are beneficial" 1 Corinthians 6:12.
"For the woman does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does" 1 Corinthians 7:4.  He means sexually.  This is the only time he's going to put men and women on an equal level.  For extra fun, you can see my rage build as we go on! Anyways, he goes on with this bit: "Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement of a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control" 1 Corinthians 7:5.  Yes, I included it here mostly because it made me chuckle.  So I'm not so mature.  So sue me!
"It is better to marry than to be aflame with passion" 1 Corinthians 7:8.  He means that it's better to marry than to sleep around with anyone, but it definitely sounds harsh if you don't realize that...
"For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his [believing] wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her [believing] husband" 1 Corinthians 7:14.
Paul talks a lot about the wed versus the unwed, and how the unwed are better off because they don't have to spend so much time worrying about pleasing their spouses, and "the affairs of the world" 1 Corinthians 7:33.  He doesn't say don't marry ever, but he says that he just wants to make that point.  Okay, fine, but wow, talk about throwing an institution under the bus.  Paul wasn't even ever married either, just saying!
One thing that I don't understand is how he explains how widows' second marriages should be: "But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the Lord" 1 Corinthians 7:39.  What does that mean?  Is that like how nuns are "married" to God?
"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" 1 Corinthians 8:1.
"Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize?  Run in such a way that you may win it.  Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wealth, but we an imperishable one" 1 Corinthians 9:24-25.  I know that it's not fair to say Paul's writing reminds me of CS Lewis's because CS Lewis came much, much later, but again, I read CS Lewis before I read this, so let me be.  The whole section of 'The Rights of An Apostle' (which concludes in the paragraph that contains that last quote), or 1 Corinthians 9, reminds me greatly of CS Lewis's writing style in particular, maybe not as much as anything else Paul wrote, either... Well, maybe that's just me.
"You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.  You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons" 1 Corinthians 10:21.
"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.  Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved" 1 Corinthians 10:31-33.  I like the first sentence a lot, but that which follows bothers me.  It makes me think of Aesop's fable about the father, the son, and his donkey--they take the donkey to market, and the first man to pass them laughs because they are walking and not riding the donkey.  So the father puts his son on the donkey, and the next person to pass is upset that the boy is forcing his father to walk, and says it out loud.  So the man takes his boy off of the donkey, and he gets on.  The next person expresses verbally his disgust at the father making his son walk.  So, the two of them get on the donkey together and the next person who passes gets upset that they should be overworking the donkey so.  According to this, the clincher is that they carry the donkey and the donkey slips from their grasp and drowns, though that doesn't sound quite right to me... But the point of this tangent is that the moral is, "Please all and you will please none", or "Try to please everyone and you will end up pleasing no-one", or anything else in that vein.  Soooo yeah.
And here comes the first of many times Paul enrages me with what he says about women!  "A man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is an image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man.  Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man.  Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man.  For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head" 1 Corinthians 11:7-10.  Really, Paul?  You're cool.  He goes on to say that they are still important, as both genders come from God, but still.  Listen, Paul.  Broski
Surprise, surprise: I like 'The Gift of Love' (1 Corinthians 13).  "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude... it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.  / "Love is like a tree: it shoots itself; it strikes its roots deeply into our whole being, and frequently continues to be green over a heart in ruins"--Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame).
"Love never ends.  But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end" 1 Corinthians 13:8.
"And now, faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love" 1 Corinthians 13:13.
"...Women should be silent in the churches.  For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.  If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.  For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.  Or did the word of God originate with you?  Or are you the only ones it has reached?" 1 Corinthians 15:34-36.  Really, Paul?  That's cute of you.  I know it was undoubtedly the mindset of the times, but did you have to add the "Or did the word of God..." et cetera bit?  Women are allowed to talk in church now, so there! BAM, Paul.  Bam.
"And why are we putting ourselves in danger every hour?  I die every day!" 1 Corinthians 15:30-31.  I'm not sure if I quite understand what Paul means here, other than that he means it metaphorically...

Here's Paul's second letter to the Corinthians--aptly named 2 Corinthians in the index.
"And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them" 2 Corinthians 5:15.  / "Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it"--CS Lewis.
"Everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" 2 Corinthians 5:17.

The next book, Galatians, is a letter from Paul to them too.
"Am I now seeking human approval, or God's approval?  Or am I trying to please people?  If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ" Galatians 1:10.
"For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith through love" Galatians 5:6.  Again, it is not the symbol that matters, it is the heart that matters.
"...Through love become slaves to one another" Galatians 5:13. / "We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered--our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure"--Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated).
"For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another" Galatians 5:14-15.
Paul also lists a number of sins, some of which look familiar--some of the seven deadly sins are listed here, though not all of them--those that make an appearance here are: lust, envy, and avarice.  Just thought I'd mention it.  (Who decided the whole list?)

Ephesians is another letter from Paul.
"Be angry but do not sin; do not act rashly on your anger, and do not make room for the devil" Ephesians 4:26-27.  / "When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent.  Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord" Psalms 4:4-5.


"Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.  Live as children on the light--for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true... Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them" Galatians 5:8-9, 11.
Paul annoys me more about what he says about women, but that's really all you need to know.  My note on it again is, "REALLY, Paul?"  ('The Christian Household', Ephesians 5, if you're that curious about what Paul said.
"Whatever good we do, we will receive the same from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free" Ephesians 6:8.


I have no notes on Philippians, but I've got two quotes from Colossians.
"Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourself with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.  In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!" Colossians 3:9-11.
"Above all, clothe yourselves with love" Colossians 3:14.


One quote from 1 Thessalonians:
"...Encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them.  See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.  Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances" Thessalonians 5:14-18.


Two quotes from 2 Thessalonians:
"Anyone unwilling to work should not eat" 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
"Brothers and sisters, do not weary in doing what is right" 2 Thessalonians 3:13.


1 Timothy, 'The First Letter of Paul to ""'.
Paul makes me mad about treatment of women again... (1 Timothy 2.)
"...In later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.  They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be thanksgiving by those who believe and the truth" 1 Timothy 4:1-3.  This throws me off a little.  Is the abstinence from food meant to be abstinence from (certain) foods?  If so, is this a shot at the Jews?  Wasn't Paul Jewish?  Did Christianity exist as its own thing at this point?  Help, please.
"For everything created by God is good" 1 Timothy 4:4.  But what about these demons and liars that were just named?  I'd say that yes, they are still good--because they would exist to test man and see who is worthy and upstanding and whatnot.  So... They have good... means?  Kind of?  But you see what I mean?
And you know the saying that "Money is the root of all evil"?  One, Jesus didn't say that.  Two, that's not the correct quote.  "For the love of money is the root of all evil" 1 Timothy 6:10.  Aha!  What a difference a seemingly paltry four words can make!
"They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life" 1 Timothy 18-19.
"Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith" 1 Timothy 6:20-21.  Aaaaand this is why the Catholic church pretty much suppressed every discovery prior to the nineteen-hundreds, I'm going put my neck on the chopping block and say.


I have no notes for 2 Timothy, The Letter of Paul to Titus, or Philemon.


MLA citation information: Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Edition.  American Bible Society: New York, 1989.




Not much to say that I haven't said above.  One thing I have noticed that, while the old testament emphasized the fear of God, the new testament seems to emphasize love, love from either party.  I guess this explains why things were kind of fudged in Sunday school...
Well, one more post--less than sixty pages left--eleven books left--we're almost there.  See you later.


Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: Time of Your Song by Matisyahu
This post's cryptic song lyrics: "Love is a many-splendoured thing!  Love--lifts us up where we belong!  All you need is love!"

The Bible: John, Acts of the Apostles, and Romans

Introductions stopped being needed posts and posts ago...


First up is the book of John, again, a telling of the story of Jesus.
So, my first note has to do with Samaritans.  After reading these books, I find myself faced with the age-old question: What the hell is a Samaritan?  When I was a kid and I asked that in Sunday school, our teacher skirted the issue because she clearly did not know either.  Fairly recently, it occurred to me that Samaritan sounds a lot like Semitism.  Semitism is another way of saying Judaism, so Samaritan=Jewish person, which seemed pretty logical.  However, there is a passage in Luke that threw me for a loop: "(Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans)" John 4:9.  Maybe that was true in those days, but in these days, the two groups are very similar.  Considering how Samaritans practice, it seems more likely that this was a human statement by John, rather than an objective statement based on fact...
"But Jesus answered them, 'My father is still working, and also I am working'" John 5:17
Jesus also only feeds the five thousand in John's chronicling of events.
"'The world cannot hate you [the disciples], but it hates me [Jesus] because I testify against it that its works are evil'" John 7:7.  Also, according this section, not even Jesus's flesh-and-blood brothers believed he was who he said. (What about Joseph?  No further mentions of him after Jesus's birth...)
"'Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin'" John 8:34.
Oh, and the story 'A Man Born Blind Receives Sight'--that gets a 'super-metaphor' status.  Jesus gives sight to a blind man?  No further explanation is necessary.
Only in John's version of the story is it specifically Mary (Magdalene) who buys the ointment and rubs it on Jesus's feet with her hair.  (True story!  Yuck.)  This is also the only time it is said that Judas was the one who protested her buying the ointment instead of giving money to the poor.  After he says that, John adds in parenthesis: "(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it)" John 12:6.  I'm going to say that's almost certainly slander.
"'The light is with you for a little longer.  Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may hot overtake you.  If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going.  While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light'" John 12:35-36.  
Only in this version does Jesus wash the disciples' feet.
Also, when Judas leaves, it is said he does so because Satan enters him.  That's new, too.
"'How can you say, "Show us the Father?"  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?'" John 14:10.  Okay, come on, this is a hard thing for somebody to wrap their heads around, Jesus!  It's harder for me to believe that he is in the father as well as vice versa.  My brain does not bend that way well.  What rubs me the wrong way is that Jesus says, if you can't believe that, then "'believe me because of the works themselves'" John 14:11.  That sort of policy doesn't seem right to me... I suppose it's better than not believing at all, but it almost seems like, I don't know, cheating.  
Also, in this version, Peter does not weep after he realizes he has denied Jesus three times and therefore fulfills Jesus's prophecy; rather, he goes to warm himself with the waiting soldiers and slaves.
Okay, and maybe I missed this in all four of the books, but that bit about the other crucified criminal who is forgiven by Jesus while they're hanging isn't in any of them.  That kind of made me sad.  In a weird way, I liked that story.


Acts of the Apostles is basically about miracles performed by the disciples after Jesus's crucifixion.
Now, Jesus heals a lot of lepers and those bedridden.  Many more acts of this kind occur in this book, which leads me to wonder about the acts.  I can't think of a cure for the lepers that could have occurred through regular means, other than those he made wash (since people hardly washed in those days, it is possible that a simple dip in a river could be enough to remove infection or other impurities)... But those who could not walk: perhaps Jesus was, well, silly as this may sound, a sort of early chiropractor?  And before he died he taught his skills to Peter, hence why Peter (I mention Peter specifically because the notes pertaining to this are next to 'Peter Heals a Crippled Beggar') could do as he did.  It sounds like a decent hypothesis...
For my next note--it may seem silly to compare this group with a group that wouldn't appear until about 1,800 years later--but I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test before this, so cut me some slack.  That book is about Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, a group which would rather reject mainstream society and make their own.  They tried their best to live communally while sharing absolutely everything--no money was used, and even norms regarding monogamous relationships were disregarded.  (Sounding familiar?  Perhaps you've read Heinlein's Stranger in A Strange Land, one of the books that inspired Kesey.)  Another thing they attempted to reject was religion, though KeseyLevite... [who] sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet" Acts 32, 34, 35-37.  Granted, the Pranksters tried to eject money, but still.  Just saying... And while I'm making the argument that I am, cleanliness is next to fordliness, and Ford is in his flivver--and all is well with the world.
Also, according to Acts, Jesus was crucified on a tree.
Romans are also referred to as 'Hellenists', which is rather strange, as that was what the Greeks called themselves.  That would have gone into antiquity when Roman became a superpower and super-dominator of the ancient world, but okay, fine...
What I find really interesting is that while Paul is in Athens, he recognizes that the Athenians are very religious, and he commends them for it.  He sees, among all the Athenian altars to all the Athenian gods, one that reads "'To an unknown god'" Acts 17:23.  He goes on to say that that unknown god is his God, and though the Athenians have been worshiping incorrectly, it is good for them to be so full of faith and spirit, they need only to mend there ways but a little.  "'From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and boundaries of the places where they would live, so they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us'" Acts 17:26-28.  I absolutely one-hundred percent love this passage.


My next note is from Romans--the full title of the book being 'The Letter of Paul to the Romans'.  It is, from what I understand, Paul attempting to educate the Romans in the ways of Christ.
First of all, Paul is referred to as a servant of Christ--though a footnote tells us that in the Greek he is referred to as a slave of Christ!  Not sure how I feel about that one...
"Claiming to be wise, they became fools" Romans 1:22.  
Anyways, Paul says that in the beginning, and even now/then, people were aware of God's presence and existence through the majesty of the world and its workings that are obviously always surrounding.  The people didn't honour God properly, and are basically called idiots in their inability to understand this, and from their misunderstanding created various other gods and deities.  (Paul is being a lot harsher on the whole of Rome than on Athens...) And because of this, God "gave them up to degrading passions.  Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another" Romans 1:26-27.  Roman men sleeping with other men?  Unheard of!  You must be thinking of some other empire that was notorious for its, er, sexual freedom.  
"All those who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law" Romans 2:12.
"For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical.  Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart--it is spiritual and not literal.  Such a person receives praise not from others but from God" Romans 2:28-29.  At its base, this is saying, it's the heart, rather, your faith--you could go to church or synagogue or mosque or whatever else you may participate in every Sunday, Friday, Saturday, or whatever day you choose to go, and you could celebrate Purim or Christmas or Passover or Ramadan or Easter or what have you, but if you don't believe it doesn't mean a thing.  People will say "What a fine, upstanding person, going to X every Y day, like a good, right Z should", but their words don't mean a thing, you see?  It's just a symbol (as would the actual physical circumcision be).  The heart is what counts most--and although this does not completely apply, or maybe not at all, I feel compelled to insert this here in relation to that last quote or at the very least what I just wrote: "People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums"--Jack Kerouac
"'Rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die'" Romans 5:7.  I'm not sure if I understand what is being said here exactly--the better a person is, the less likely someone is to die for them...?  And this brings up what I've been thinking since reading Matthew.  Perhaps this is too skeptical and cruel of me--undoubtedly it is--but I couldn't help it: "Martyrdom was to me merely a tragic form of scepticism, an attempt to realise by fire what one had failed to do by faith. No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their heart tells them is not true"--Oscar Wilde*
"The wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23.
'The Law and Sin' and 'The Inner Conflict' are rather intriguing--they voice some very common arguments and problems with religious teachings.  (They're both located in Romans 7, and I'll provide you with a few quotes from both.)  "What then should we say?  That the law in sin?  By no means!  Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.  I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet'... Apart from the law sin lies dead" Romans 7:7-8.
From 'The Inner Conflict': "For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh; sold into slavery under sin.  I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" Romans 7:14-15.  That is, by acting good he is acting as he does not want, and in some way, hates it.  It also treats sin as a sort of separate personality--"It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me" Romans 7:20--which takes over the body and acts as it wants.
"So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin" Romans 7:25.
"Let love be genuine" Romans 12:9.
"Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer" Romans 12:12.  Or, if you'd rather, persevere in hope or faith.  Again, it is the heart of the matter, not exactly the matter itself...
"Extend hospitality to strangers" Romans 12:13.  
"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves" Romans 14:7.  It goes onto say that we live and die in God, but I like this just as well--if not more--just taken at that face value.  It gives me hope.
"Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" Romans 14:23.  This I don't like a bit.  I think it's quite unfair and unjust.
"The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet" Romans 16:20.  Again, this doesn't feel quite right at all.




Well, here we are.  You're probably wanting a reaction to Jesus now--I promised I would include one--and I'd be willing to say he was a visionary, certainly.  Clearly he was and still is an important figure.  It bothers me, though, how flat a character he is.  I mean, in Matthew his character bounces all over the place like a pinball, but by John he's just a flat fellow.  He doesn't seem human (of course, depending on what you believe, there's a very good reason for that), though his words and teaching do carry a great power, regardless of your religious inclinations.  Honestly, this is going to sound lame, but I preferred him in Jesus Christ Superstar (how does one treat a musical's title?)--because he was portrayed as a human with faults and fears.  He was scared to die, he was upset that he'd be betrayed, and though he eventually accepted it, he certainly cried out to God about it.  Only once in the books does Jesus cry out (in one situation, I mean, this occurs in the the first two books), and that is right before he dies--he cries out, "My father, why have you forsaken me?"  Thus reality meets idealism, but, are you getting what I'm driving at?


I really like Romans.  It's sort of like a latter version of Leviticus, at least that's how I see it.  It's pretty interesting.


*I apologize if this seemed like a rude quote to include, considering what I am implying by including it, but again, I could not help it.  It's simply my reaction to what I read.


MLA citation information: Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Edition.  American Bible Society: New York, 1989.




Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: What's the Buzz? from the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack (I told you to expect a facepalm!)
This post's cryptic song lyrics: Keep my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds--I'm the arrow, you're my bow, shoot me forth and I will go