death-of-a-naturalist

In the books “The Assault” and “Memories for Forgetfulness” common elements are used to highlight their situation. Both books use this to show what the character, Anton or the author goes trough in war and how common utilities turn into luxuries and a fascination. This use makes it more personal and insightful for the reader. This appreciation creates a feeling of closeness to the books also, because the reader can relate the items to their own life, even if they have a different meaning than to the books.

The ought of coffee in “Memory for Forgetfulness” is very significant to the author and creating the feeling in the book. The author decided to speak for pages about his fascination towards coffee creating a feeling of desperation in the reader and wanting him to go ahead and drink some coffee. The author express his love toward this common element in our households almost at heavenly and the outer most important part of the day. The author described his aroma and the way it feels and how it is supposed to be served and taken. He basically describes everything from the body to how it tastes. This common element becomes a luxury and a fascination.

In the book “The Assault” no elements are stated that vividly like coffee is in “Memory for Forgetfulness”. Some elements are quickly seen as glorious when Anton was in his childhood. The most evident of these elements was the hot cocoa that was served to him after the assault. He described the chocolate as precious and with a feeling of happiness. There are other elements that are expressed with love, yet Anton is not very keen on expressing what he considers as great, so not many things are expressed in this form. The food takes an important change in the book, but not as life changing as the hot cocoa is expressed.

In these two books the coffee and the hot cocoa take an important role in the persons’ lives. These uses of common elements change the perspectives the reader has towards them and the meaning changes. For a reader in “normal” conditions this two elements are more than common, yet in war they are a luxury and both the people who consumed them changed their attitude and thoughts even for a second and relaxed and just drank.

These also represent happiness in the middle of confusion and caos and deaths.  When Anton drank the chocolate it almost seemed that it was a relief that his parents has died, because know he was drinking his chocolate. He did not show much emotion, if at all towards the death of his parents and brother, yet he did show emotion towards the cocoa and showed how happy he was that he was drinking it. In “Memory for Forgetfulness” the coffee represented happiness as well, but more as a dependence than a mere coincidence. The coffee represents for the author happiness as well, but also it is the parameter in which he remembers or keeps a line of regularity in the middle of caos. It also represents his stability in knowing that he can do this, even if it very hard, and can keep something regular, something that he controls.

The common elements coffee and hot cocoa take a superior meaning in the books “The Assault” and “Memory for Forgetfulness”. They stop being ordinary subjects and become luxuries and represent happiness and control relaxation. This change in meaning from the readers perspective to that of the book helps with the creation of a link between them and to highlight the difficulties that are taking place. Also they help with creation of change in the character or author of the book.

This poem is a peculiar one, due to the fact that it is writing style is not what is commonly used. It is also peculiar because the writer is defending his age, and his form of life to and from media and critics and readers. The poem is chaotically divided into Cantos which when separate make some sense, though together this does not change much. The poem is very personal, yet very public and meant to express his opinion towards does that do not believe.

The author throughout the poem takes a defense position. He defends his age and how old he truly is, which is being threatened by the media and his wife and a reader. He insists that he is just turning forty and that he is not forty-eight like his ex-wife says and like neither Wikipedia, nor the reader stated.  He vigorously insists that anything that may be told by other people should be ignored due to the fact that it is his age and it should be respected and his saying should be taken as the complete truth. He even makes the reader reason of which is his true age, “What other age could someone born in 1969 (and not 1951)/ Possibly be?” This poem is unusual, not because he is defending his age, but due to the fact that everything else in his life reflects that he is wrong, but he does not like to face it. This type of behavior could be related to a mid-life crisis, which would agree with the author’s age. Yet why the need to defend himself to such a deep level, without no apparent threat. This because in the II Canto he is not only defending himself, but reassuring his point by using a famous personality to back himself up. Even as the author does all this the reader is more confused at the end of the poem, because the continues defense scheme creates uncertainty and doubt, he creates the opposite feeling of which he is trying to portray.

The poem is divided into Cantos this form of writing is not unusual and it is usually used to divide ideas. In this poem that use is not completely given, this due to the fact that the author does not change the subject that much and the use of Cantos distracts the reader and at the same time helps understand the rambles of the author. The order of the Cantos are told and referred to into in the poem, the poet makes reference to “Canto III” in Canto VI when trying to restate something he “claimed in Canto III”.  This poem brakes the train of thought with every change of Canto making it complicated, yet if the poet had not used this form of structure understanding the ramblings would have been very complicated and almost impossible to do.

This poem is very peculiar also in the form it was written, other than the fact that it was very defensive; the author makes it completely personal. This is completely normal what is not that unusual is the fact that that personal level is defensive and the poet is trying to make all the points clear, but they all seem to back fie him. Take for example the inclusion of Nicole Portman to the poem he is trying to make the poem that someone in her twenties would not go out with anyone in their fifties. That has some logic into the argument, but the fact the she made a “background check” on him makes the reader suspicious and generates doubt of his credibility.  

This poem is very different from the norm, though not usual it is interesting and yet confusing. The author tries to defend his argument, yet the poem comes to be very confusing and made out of rambles. The structure of the poem helps to understand, yet the use of Cantos adds to the misunderstanding of the poet. The credibility of the author is lost through the poem, due to the fact that that much defending creates doubt and not reassurance.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/05/18/090518po_poem_frazier

Ode to nail polish:

From all the things in the world many cannot give you the sense of happiness that this little bit of color can. At least for me the hardest thing that would make me go mad would be not having nail polish. This is a very superficial fact from life that is not appreciated by many. For me having my nail painted gives me piece, it gives me a sense of tranquility and makes me feel stress free. That little bottle of color of 12 ml brings me many coats of happiness. Those two times a week that my time is taken to chose one of my 12 bottles keeps me happy for the rest of the days. Yet if I do not get to do this my being cannot hold on. Due to this I have stayed up until 3 o 4 am to use that tiny bottle. It is my guilty pleasure, my obsession, my everything. Those 12 bottles of white and black, of bull’s blood and wine color, pink and coffee, blue and yellow, purple and French, pale pink and red. Those colors are what keep me going biweekly appointment. I feel happy of just thinking of my bottles. My nail polish has that smell that drives my mom crazy and dizzy, yet it makes me nails look shiny and niece. It has a color that is specific to every bottle and no two colors are alike, no two bottles are the same. The consistency may change or the color a little. Every one of them being special. I cannot go a day, an hour even minutes without having nail polish in my nails they bring me joy. This little bottle that can superficial for many and stupid to others brings me joy and happiness it makes jump in my shoes every time I buy a new bottle. This 12ml of joyful liquid makes me glad to have them and they are my babies that need to be changed every once in a while and news can be bought easily they represent hope and s relief of unwanted symptoms they make my heart full of joy and make me feel better through the day every time I happen to look at my hands. This self done treat is due entirely to my nail polish which will never be missing from my hands.

I found that this contrast of colors that are usually used as good or bad, were used in one person and that the one person ended up being a manipulator and suicide. At first in the story we believed that White and Black are different people, we later find out that they are not and this comes as shock due to the fact that Black is a very twisted person who needs Blue to full fill his suicide dream. White is generally seen as good and the character is just seen, at first, as a person who is concerned about his wife or about Black and what he might do. Black is seen as someone boring who just writes and sits and reads in a room and does nothing at all. He is seen as just someone calm and that is it. We later see that Black wears a mask that is usually worn in Halloween and that is scary and has blood gushing out and grotesque features.

. We later find out that white and black are the same person and that they are both bad and evil. This is completely unexpected, yet again everything that happens in the story is unexpected. This can also be linked to the fact that white and black are expected to be contrasts as the ying and the yang and between them they are neutral in this case they do not become neutral when merged. They become worst and evil when together. Also if this to colors were merged we would get gray and that would be like the middle point which could be represented by blue that was in the middle of everything and hurt and driven into insanity and to kill white-black. It can also be related to the fact that this story does not have two sides well defined and that everything seems to be in a gray area undefined and messy. This can be seen in something as simple as the case of the murdered boy and how they never found his killer and they are still trying to find that out. This hole book is a gray area of uncertainties, even how it ends it is unknown were blue goes and this leaves this grey area in the loop. It leaves the readers on the loop of what has happened.

In the book they are several references to the tower of Babel. This story I find goes truly well with Ghosts, this because of what the tower represents. The Tower Of Babel is a story from the bible. It is said that it was located In Babylon, everything was fine in the world and everyone spoke the same language and where able to communicate with each other perfectly. The problem came when the king in charge, Nimrod, and several others who were building this tower decided to make it touch the sky and go higher than the clouds. If they had done this in the name of God then there would have been no problems at all. What they ended up saying was that they would give themselves names if they could build a tower so high. There is were God gets mad and decides to give them a lesson, the people who were working on the tower were from different parts of the world, yet spoke a same language. God decided to make them speak their own language and therefore communication between them disappeared. Due to these misunderstandings there were several colossal damages in the building of the tower and it ended collapsing.

The book “The city of Glass” is very much related to this biblical story directly and indirectly. Directly, because it is mention several times during the book. It is first mentioned when there is mention to Stillman’s work and all the damage it had caused in Peter and of his philosophies. It is also later on mentioned when Stillman is doing his daily walks around New York city and he is spelling “The Tower of Babel”.

It is mentioned indirectly because of many reasons, the most important to make reference is the very end when Quinn has become Paul Auster and has become a bum. This because at first he is still talking to everybody to the Stillmans, yet he has lost all contact with his relatives, because they are dead, and to his friends who might be considered the lack of God o of friendship the one who threw him into such despair in his life.  When Stillman disappears he loses all contact with society Quinn even goes into an alley and hides from the garbage truck as to not be seen, this can represent the loose of language in the tower and after that it all went downhill he acted as a complete bum and as we can see because of the red notebook his health decreases he loses his apartment to a girl, his things get sold by the land lord and he has nowhere else to go. When he is told by Paul Auster that  Stillman had killed himself  2 and a half months ago he goes into despair and looks for Peter and his wife, and they were gone to from their house from that point on he sleeps in that apartment and is brought food everyday to him. This could also be seen as the fact that he was not completely alone, because there was someone watching out for him, just like God was for the people of Babylon; he just got mad that they would do something like that.

Another form of how the tower is related to the story is that Quinn also changes his author’s name when he no longer feels like Quinn, but he feels like Wilson. This can be related to the fact that the king Nimrod stopped behaving like a king and started acting like God and that changed all the prospective. The worst part is that Quinn did not do it once, but he changed who he was 3 times and that was what brought him to his collapse.

On page 117 he asks Mrs. Curren to go with him and take a ride with him. This is one of the moments when he shows emotions in the story. Actually is not emotion what he shows but mostly it demonstrates that he cares about her and is not just there. also when he picks her up from the bench when she was sick and carried her and slept with her, this is on page 160. Also at the end of the book it is shown that he holds her until she dies and also before that they would sleep toghether with the dog on there feet, just like the night when he picked her up. He also cooks for them and goes to shop for them everyday. All of this shows that he did care for Mrs. Curren and that she, to some extent, did mean alot to him.

This an interesting book, the author J.M. Coetzee might appear like a very superficial writer. I consider him on the other hand to have made a book full of feeling and meaningful ideas about society and about the hard times that unfortunately we are all living. This book might have a simple idea or concept, yet most words when thought through are loaded with meaning and value for us to learn from it.

The idea that children don’t longer have parents and they have the consent to do what they please, that people do not have the idea of charity in their hearts, that people can just ignore their elders and disrespect them. All of those degradations from society are shown by Florence’s family and they represent everything that is going bad in the world. Ms. Curren I feel is the person who will show us the reality and how has everything changed.

The fact that the narrator is talking to her daughter in a letter to be given to her after she is dead makes it more personal and amusing to read. The narrator shows us how she is suffering from cancer and brings us closer to her experiences and her feelings.

 ”For twenty years I have not bleed. The sickness that now eats me is dry, bloodless, slow and cold, sent by Saturn. There is something about it that does not bear thinking of. To have fallen pregnant with these growths, these cold, obscene swellings”

I have truly appreciated reading this book and hope that it will keep on amusing me till the very end. I believe that this book is the one book that will give us, or least to me, more meaning when reading it.

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