Simple Yet Powerful

What seems to be a simple and short description when first glancing at the Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku proves to be much different after reading. Even though a limited number of words were used, these haiku tell of the trying circumstances many people faced and express the pain and suffering the Japanese endured while imprisoned. The first poem takes readers on a telling journey through the first year at a concentration camp. A woman is taken in the spring for she writes "at home peony bud/ still firm. At this time she also informs readers that she's able to see her husband the day troops arrest her, but after this point she never mentions him again. Most likely this was the last time she saw her husband, and it's extremely difficult to think of never seeing a loved one again. The poet then takes readers through the summer months, into the winter with "Withered grass on ground," and finally stops again in the spring as "Dandelion has bloomed." Images of the grass and dandelions help the author explain her inner emotions and what she's thinking during this time of her imprisonment and how "On certain days/ heart is full of hypocrisy." In the haiku from the Anthology of Modern American Poetry I felt as if I sat in the concentration camp alongside this writer. I could feel the wind, hear the goat, and see the headless doll. It was if I too saw a victim fall to the ground before me. Even though the Japanese haiku appear choppy by jumping from thought to thought, short, and simple, the poets still express to the audience what they were feeling at the time, and they place readers in the same camp with their description.

Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku

When reading the Haiku from the Japanese American Concentration Camp handout there were several stanzas that really jumped out at me, and I wanted to post them on here. These stanzas really place the reader in the anguish the writers were going through at the time they wrote them.

Black clouds instantly shroud
autumn sky
hail storming against us today also

Winter wind
relentlessly blasting shed
goat bleating

Doll without a head
lying on desk top
one evening

From The Pangolin:

"Fearful yet to be feared," the armored
ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, but
engulfs what he can

-These stanzas really capture the pain and the injustice of the imprisoned Japanese Americans and really affected me when I read them.

The Image of Mind

If there was ever an indirect description of something that came across so full and vivid, it is Moore's image of the mind in "The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing." She never addresses the mind specifically, but instead parallels it with very translucent and shining imagery. "...the glaze on a / katydid-wing," "the dove- / neck animated by / sun," "the / mist the heart wears," are all examples of the reflective, fresh, almost gem-like portrayal of the mind. This kind of imagery makes the mind seem contemplative, reflective of reality, yet reflexive and influential on the essence of reality, much like how I would view the mind. There is a lot of light included in this as it relates to the sun and the shining of mist and glazed wings. I think this is important because -- if we think about this allegorically -- the mind needs something to feed off of and analyze. Without a subject, the mind is blank. That is what struck me about Moore's image of the mind: it feels transparent to me, with the ability to refract its subject and warp it or purify it.

Moore's Eternity

Marianne Moore's "What Are Years?" is a pretty profound dialogue on growing older, death, and eternity. There were two passages that really made me think about the concept and kind of gave me solace.
The first is "He / sees the deep and is glad, who accedes to mortality / and in his imprisonment rises / upon himself." The meaning I got from this was that the bird (the supposed subject of the poem) was able to look upon eternity (the deep) and was glad that he was not forced to exist in it, that his existence was temporary. I can sympathize with this because I feel that having to exist forever would be very wearying and mentally overwhelming. Having a temporary existence, in a way, is motivation to make the best of life. If you live forever, there's always tomorrow.
The second passage reads: "Though he is captive, / his mighty singing / says, satisfaction is a lowly / thing, how pure a thing joy is." This correlates with the second half of the previous quote, but focuses more on the fulfillment and enjoyment of striving to extend your mortal impression as far as you can. In many ways this reminds me of "Ode to a Nightingale" where the speaker speaks admiringly and enviously of nature's immortality. He/she realizes, however, that the temporary quality--the mortality--of life is what makes it so invigorating and special. Having no end or beginning takes the momentary enthrallment out of life. In this way, the speaker of "Ode" realizes that his/her current peace and happiness is the apex of life and is finally willing to pass on.
The bird, and therefore the speaker, of "What Are Years?" is reaching the same conclusion: he/she is grateful for the passion of life that mortality brings, and ultimately prefers it over the vastness of eternity. The final lines, "This is mortality, / this is eternity" sums up the revelation: live for the moment and you can experience eternity in everyday life.

I found that "The Walls Do Not Fall" is a pretty unique interpretation of post-war reconstruction and resurrection, especially for how old it is. H.D. creates a religious mutt of a poem that includes mythology, Christianity, and Judaism among others to symbolize the rebirth of hope after the global schism of WW2. Instead of isolating belief, H.D. tries to model the sublime of each religion and fuse it into this one thematic poem. I like how she tries to match each religious persona with its parallels (ex: Amen-Ra and Christ) and presents them as spiritual allies. Especially with Amen-Ra and Christ, who are both resurrection figures of their respective beliefs, are portrayed as returning during the spring time when the desolation of the world is buried beneath new blooms.

Death in Larsen and Hemingway

Not that anyone needs to know this, but I'm playing a bit of catch up with my blog postings. That said, here we go...

After I finished reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, I started thinking about the ending and its similarities and differences from Larsen's Passing. In each book, a major character whom we've come to know and and connect with dies. I found it particularly intriguing that in both books the other main character played a relatively large role in that death.

Starting with Passing, Irene indirectly/directly causes Clare's death. I referred to this slightly on a previous post and I will go into more depth here. The most obvious argument for Irene directly causing Clare's death stems from Irene putting her arm on Clare just prior to Clare falling to her death. Granted, Larsen deliberately leaves this ambiguous (like a "Lady and the Tiger" sort of vibe), but one could legitimately argue that Irene's hatred/resentment of Clare forced its way to the surface an manifested itself through a rage-induced homicide. Indirectly, Irene's behavior in front of Clare's husband causes Clare's husband to come to the party in a rage. Had Irene never made him suspicious, Clare would probably have lived (although one could argue that this sort of occurrence was inevitable). Regardless of the perspective, Irene's emotions inevitably caused the death of Clare. Of course her emotions were those of anger and resentment, emotions which are the converse of Henry's.

In A Farewell to Arms, Henry's physical and emotional actions eventually cause Catherine's death. From a physical perspective, had Henry not deserted the army, it is entirely possible that Catherine would have had a safe delivery. I say that only because lots of stress and travel while pregnant can't be good for one's health or for the baby. Granted, that's not the strongest argument I could muster, but it works for now. Henry's emotional aspects contribute more greatly to Catherine's death. I deliberately left sex out of the physical aspect of my analysis only because for my purposes, the sex is merely a physical expression of an emotional need. Without the emotion (namely, lust), Catherine never would have gotten pregnant. Neither Henry nor Catherine probably wanted a baby at that point (having a baby in the middle of a war in a foreign country can't be too high on anyone's list). So, had Henry not impregnated her, she never would have died. Henry did eventually come to love Catherine (as opposed to lust after her), but his lust and his love led to Catherine's death all the same.

Catherine's death and Clare's death had a large impact on Henry and Irene respectively. At the end of Passing, everything becomes dark to Irene. At the end of A Farewell to Arms, Henry walks out into the rain. Both the dark and the rain obscure one's ability to see clearly. Ironically, both Henry and Irene see life more clearly than they did before the deaths.

Hemingway and Minimalism

William Faulkner once said of Hemingway: "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." Of course Hemingway's response to that was, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

The amusing nature of that exchange aside, Hemingway does have a point. I will admit that I have quite the appreciation for Hemingway because of his approach to writing. His minimalist approach is arguably just as strong or stronger than the more descriptive approach as done by Faulkner or Steinbeck (I like Steinbeck, but hate Faulkner). From one angle, the minimalist approach does not bog the readers down with overly inflated language whose only purpose is to aggressively convince the reader that the author in question possesses a vast lexicon and can whimsically extract exquisitely worded phrases. Instead of all that, the minimalist leaves the description to the reader. Arguably, this causes the reader to become much more actively involved in the story as everything is not laid out.

A Farewell to Arms benefits greatly from this approach as it adds a visceral level to all the proceedings. For example, when Henry and his friends are shelled, Hemingway's description of the violence is very direct. When Hemingway describes Henry's kneecap as halfway down his calf, the reader can immediately visualize that and almost unconsciously adds all the graphic details.

In scenes with Henry and Catherine, this minimalist style causes the reader to actively contemplate what each character feels. It is up to the reader to read in between the lines and fill in the emotions as it were. If Hemingway explored all the minutia of their relationship, it may not have been bad, but it would have deprived the reader of some character speculation.

All of this hearkens back to the imagist poets from earlier in the semester. Take a poem like Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". The poem arguably has more of an impact because of its cryptic nature. Hemingway takes that same idea and applies it to his novel. The result of both is the same: the reader is more actively involved and can potentially get more out of the material than if the authors had spelled everything out in excruciating detail.

Hemingway's mock Iliad

The back of our Scribner edition of Farewell to Arms starts out by calling the book, "The best American novel to emerge from World War I." I was thinking about what this quote meant in comparison to all the horror associated with the Great War.

War used to be romanticized in novels, such as the Homer's Iliad and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. However, WWI shattered many of the idealized perceptions of heroism and courage. Looking at FTA's text, there are many instances in which Hemingway uses images to create somewhat of a mock epic. For example, Hemingway pens in Chapter 1, "The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves." In what appears to be a run-on sentence, Hemingway's use of the the conjunction "and" creates a bond between the leaves and the soldiers. Not only does this paint a picture of the large quantity of soldiers, but it ties these troops to the landscape as well. In other words, one could say that the number of troops was as great as the number of leaves in the countryside. This is actually one technique Hemingway copies from Homer's Iliad. Homer, too, compares troop masses to leaves. However, the backdrop of the bloody World War I gives the image a new sarcastic meaning. Whereas Homer intended to create a beautiful image with this juxtaposition, Hemingway creates an ironic image that foreshadows the pointless waste of life in the novel.

A Lack of Description

When I first started A Farewell to Arms I didn't like the lack of description. When reading the work of descriptive authors the scene they explain comes to life for me. But that wasn't the case for Hemingway's novel. He expressed thoughts and scenes that didn't seem out of the ordinary. For example, after Henry arrives to the front after his leave he says "The fields were green and there were small green shoots on the vines, the trees along the road had small leaves and a breeze came from the sea." We as readers already know that the grass in fields is green. We also understand that in the beginning of spring all natural life sprouts green. Because I wasn't experiencing that moment with Henry I want to be given details that I don't know already. But after listening to Mike's presentation last week I changed my mind. He explained how Hemingway's work lacked description on purpose so that readers can use their imagination. I had never thought about it that way. A lack of description puts the reader to work. Instead of being handed a picturesque scene without doing any thinking at all, Hemingway's audience must fill in the blanks, create their own picture. Now that I understand Hemingway's motive for a lack of description in A Farewell to Arms, I learned to appreciate his work more.

Women's Dependency

While reading A Farewell to Arms, I noticed women in the book are completely dependent upon men, but men cannot be dependent on women. For instance, the nurses are all under command of the doctors. They cannot properly do a task (such as when Frederic first arrives at the new British hospital, but must wait for the doctor to get back before anything can be done to him). The two girls picked-up along the road seen when Frederic and the troops are retreating are completely dependent on the soldiers for safety and for food. Catherine often expresses her desire to be a "good girl". She wants so much to please Frederic, as if she fears that she will be rejected if she does not properly fulfill her womanly duty. However, the statement that men can depend on women is proven false twice in the end. Henry falls in love with Catherine, and yet she dies. He fought so hard for her (and not that she can help it) but she died. He couldn't depend on her. The baby, a boy, was dependent on his mother, the woman, to deliver him safely. Yet he died. Men are clearly given a privileged role throughout the book.

Farewell To Arms

First of all, A Farewell to Arms was horribly depressing. The entire time the two main characters, Henry and Catherine are on this quest to have this beautiful life together, but the obstacles in their life deter them from ever finding this “happy” place in their lives where they can just relax and enjoy each other. Henry, the protagonist of the novel, has no passion in his life until he meets Catherine. Although she at first is just playing this flirty game with Henry, and is just trying to seduce him because of her grief for her dead fiancé, I don’t think she intended to fall in love with him. By the end of the novel, she was pregnant, and I truly think that even though she didn’t mean to truly have feelings for Henry, I do believe by the end of the novel she was completely in love with him. By the end of the novel, it seemed almost too good to be true for the two to finally just have each other. I kind of expected her death and problematic pregnancy to be her demise. I think the plot, and the overall “romantic tragedy” is very stereotypical to the time period. I think people very typically associate these exaggerated romances with war, especially during World War I and this novel fit perfectly into this category.

Nella Larsen

My presentation on Nella Larsen was very informative in helping me to understand the time period. It gave me a first hand perspective of how black women felt during the Harlem Renaissance. Since the Harlem Renaissance impacted urban culture throughout the United States including literature, drama, music, visual art, and dance, it gave blacks a new way to explore “Black America.” Nella Larsen was a “mulatto” woman, and she used this physical aspect of her life throughout her literature. In her two books Quicksand and Passing, she told tales of the mulatto woman, and their struggle to lead fulfilling lives despite the stereotype of the “tragic mulatto.” The mulatto woman also inspired paintings such as “The Octoroon Girl” by Archibald Motley, which featured a light-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. Art and literature featuring the mulatto woman gave her a new “role” in society. The mulatto woman was now the new representative of the “New Negro Woman.” She was seen as a heroine, and emphasized roles of “self-sacrifice,” taking jobs such as teachers, nurses, and librarians. These popular images of the “New Negro Woman” enforced a standard of behavior, appearance, and vocation for all black women at the time. Overall, Larsen and Motley were icon’s throughout the Harlem Renaissance because they made the “New Negro Woman” more modern, independent, and extreme. They defined the “mulatto” as a public icon, and gave the “New Negro Woman” a new outlook and defined her expectations.

Nella Larsen

My presentation on Nella Larsen was very informative in helping me to understand the time period. It gave me a first hand perspective of how black women felt during the Harlem Renaissance. Since the Harlem Renaissance impacted urban culture throughout the United States including literature, drama, music, visual art, and dance, it gave blacks a new way to explore “Black America.” Nella Larsen was a “mulatto” woman, and she used this physical aspect of her life throughout her literature. In her two books Quicksand and Passing, she told tales of the mulatto woman, and their struggle to lead fulfilling lives despite the stereotype of the “tragic mulatto.” The mulatto woman also inspired paintings such as “The Octoroon Girl” by Archibald Motley, which featured a light-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. Art and literature featuring the mulatto woman gave her a new “role” in society. The mulatto woman was now the new representative of the “New Negro Woman.” She was seen as a heroine, and emphasized roles of “self-sacrifice,” taking jobs such as teachers, nurses, and librarians. These popular images of the “New Negro Woman” enforced a standard of behavior, appearance, and vocation for all black women at the time. Overall, Larsen and Motley were icon’s throughout the Harlem Renaissance because they made the “New Negro Woman” more modern, independent, and extreme. They defined the “mulatto” as a public icon, and gave the “New Negro Woman” a new outlook and defined her expectations.

Sex in Modernism

As we have read the selected texts from the Modernism period, it becomes clearer to me the presence of sex. Especially in Hemingway, the societal views of sex are reflected upon his novel. First of all, sex is presented as an objectified function. In the beginning of the novel the reader is introduced to Rinaldi and immediately we get this sense of his reduction of women based on sexual adequacy. Also, most of the times that Catherine discusses her sexual experiences with Frederic, she feels like a whore. That seems like a terrible way to remember such a special moment - however, society has pushed the notion on her that "sex is bad" and that she should really view it in no other way.

For Frederic, sex ruins everything because of the huge changes it brings. Because of his sexual relations with Catherine, she dies. Instead of sex being a good thing (a healthy part of their relationship) it resulted in Catherine's death and the loss of his son. I feel as if Hemingway wrote this way because he internalized society's view of sex as unclean or immoral. After all, free sexual expression was unheard of.

Ultimately, it makes sense to me why the Modernist authors present sex in a negative way. In all of the novels that we have read, sex was not something to be talked about outright. For females especially, they were to be not sexual beings, and there is an evident struggle to define the good that results from sex in the Modernist time.

it's been a while...

Hello Classmates! It has been a while; no other excuse but the truth: I forgot about you lovely people. My apologies. on to more important matters.
I will not comment from previous things such as Journey of the Magi, but I will briefly say that I loved that very much.
Now A Farewell to arms. I can absolutely see why it is a Modernist book. As Dana said previously, all the characters are coping with their problems, but not really in casual ways. In fact they are coping in a very modernist fashion, no emotions, but merely drowning themselves in alcohol, or in promiscuous sex. The only character who deserves any credit is the preacher who is using God as his scapegoat, as he should be anyway. But what really bothers me is how Henry and Catherine use love as their escape, especially Catherine who is also coping from the death of her fiancee. I think Henry should be outraged by this, because clearly he is just her rebound. She has transferred all her feelings to Henry, and since Henry is coping with the war, he is accepting them and reciprocating the same thing. If perhaps in another time, Henry would realize that she is merely using him to get over her fiancee.
I believe that it is well deserved that the book should end and it is raining and Henry is left all alone. This type of scene is very common in movies, and rain would symbolize the state of sadness; not just for Henry but for everyone. I also have to criticize Catherine, as a female, I am aware of heartache and this "transfer" of feelings, and the result just ends up hurting the rebound. I feel that even though it is "modernist" literature, she should have some feelings, and not be cruel to him. Suppose Henry is okay with this, and they are just using each other to get over their sadness, then okay. It sounds like today's relationships. Crazy, friends-with-benefits sort of fashion.

An Apathetic World

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms has a slight tinge of Greek tragedy. I say that only because the relentlessly depressing tales from Greek mythology stemmed from the Greek's attempts to explain all the misery that befalls people who do not necessarily deserve it. Their rationale took the form of a variety of gods who toyed with humans in childish ways. Hemingway seems to see the world like that as well.

The world goes on regardless of what Henry and Catherine do. Throughout the book, the semi-distant war rages while they try to keep what they can under control. Neither of them has any real control of what happens during this time. All they can do is play damage control; quite convenient given that Henry drives and ambulance and Catherine is a nurse. In that sense, they literally represent humans' place in the grand scheme of things: we can indulge in love all we want, but in the end, love is only a way of distracting us from the inevitable tragedy of death. Indeed, the only certainty in this world is that we will die.

Building on that idea, the end of the book provides much food for thought. Catherine giving birth to a dead baby has meanings on many different levels. Babies, of course, symbolize new life/starting anew/innocence, etc. One could look at the baby's death as a literal representation of mankind's loss of innocence. We try to create new life in the hopes of making a better world, but it is all in vain.

Catherine's death adds to the theme of life's futility and man's inability to alter the inevitable. All of Henry's love for Catherine can do nothing to save her. Is it fair that he should lose both the baby and Catherine? Of course not. But that does not matter. The world does not concern itself with any of us; it just continues on apathetically. We could be good people or bad people, it does not matter. Henry's virtues and flaws had nothing to do with Catherine's and the baby's death. Yes, one could argue that had she not gotten pregnant until after the war she may have been safer, but that's mincing minutia.

In the end, an appropriate summary of this book would be Macbeth's famous words: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing."

My thoughts

So, I know there is foreshadowing in the book, but like Dana, I figured it was foreshadowing war and not what happened when he wasn't at war. It turns out I was wrong. It could perhaps be speculated that the war scenes foreshadowed what happened when he wasn't at war, which isn't at all what I expected from this novel. There are a few things that bother me about this book though. First of all is the lack of depth in the characters. I suppose this has an explanation though. The only people in this novel that are described are the people that the narrator interacts with while not at war. This could possibly show the narrator's detachment from the war, both physically in some parts and mentally throughout the entire novel. The part that this bothered me the most was when Aymo was killed. He was one of the few characters in the novel that actually had a name, and yet his death, despite the physical detail of it was not very emotional. I felt little to nothing for his death and I have a strong feeling that the narrator did also. This shows the strong sense of detachment the narrator has.
Just to keep on going with the things that bother me and the sense of detachment, the narrator's actual name is only stated once in the novel, on page 84! Everyone simply refers to him as Lieutenant. This shows his strong detachment from the war and all horrible things.
The final irksome scene for me is his child. When he first sees his child, the one he and Catherine had been looking forward to so much. He compares the child to a skinned rabbit! This part bothered me a lot because of the extreme lack of detachment. After he realized his child had died he felt a little bad for it, like he had Aymo, but there was no real attachment or sense of loss. Come to think of it, it's the same way he treated Catherine's death. Which means that the narrator likes to run away from problems and death and horrible things. I know this was really scattered, sorry.

One thing that stuck out to me was how often Catherine's hair was described and praised by Henry. During one of her night shifts working at the hospital, Henry takes her hair down, pin by pin, and when she leans down, he describes her hair being all around them as "the feeling of inside a tent or behind a falls." I think that that statement represents their love as a whole; their love is private and behind closed doors. They are really only truly happy when they are alone together. The war is going on and their side is losing, yet when they are alone, nothing can upset them. They isolate themselves from everything and indulge in their own happiness.

Coping

I was very confused while reading this book as to why a war plot suddenly jumps into a happily ever after gone terribly wrong. I didn't understand how Hemingway was able to connect the dots. When this book opened, I saw the storm clouds in the distance and thought this is a foreshadowing of the events of the war. But the more I read, the more I found descriptions of major war events always seem to get glazed over. For example, when Frederick Henry jumps into the river to escape being shot, Hemingway mentions the guns shooting at Henry only as an after-thought. There had to be a reason for this, I thought. Further into the book, quotes like this began to pop as I read them:

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."- chapter XXXIV

All of the characters within the novel are coping with their worlds being broken, as this quote suggests will happen. It's like the characters are anesthecizing themselves. If you look, all major characters drink alcohol (and often). The preacher uses God as his way of coping with the war. Rinaldi uses sex. Henry and Catherine use love as an escape war and for Catherine, the death of her fiance. The major characters all seem to have a way of taking the focus off of the pain. Unfortunately, its only a matter of time before the storm catches up with them. The very good (the preacher), the very gentle (Catherine), and the very brave (the soldiers) are gone. Henry is left alone and its raining when the book ends.

When looking at it like that, this book seems to make more sense. It's not just a book about war. It's a book about being broken by the world.

Symbolism in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

There are many symbols I found throughout this novel, which added a lot of meaning to the novel. The most meaningful symbol I found was the color gray, he constantly comments on the gray cars, the gray streets, and the gray expressions. I also noticed that he uses white when talking about Catherine until the end he says "I thought Catherine was dead. She looked dead. Her face was gray, and it was the only part I could see." Gray symbolizes the pain, and death that Henry saw.
The second thing I saw as symbolism in the novel was the rain. During the retreat and the worst battles it is always raining. Catherine even brings up the fact that rain tends to ruin things, and after she dies Henry walks home in the rain. Rain symbolizes both unhappiness and death throughout the novel.
The third symbolic thing I found was Catherine's hair as Henry describes it as very delicate. It symbolizes the love between Catherine and Henry and drowns out the war that is surrounding them.
The river is also symbolic because it is his first escape from the war and it was his escape to Switzerland so that he could fulfill his dream of being with Catherine. I found the river to be a symbol of hope in the novel and a turning point in the novel.
These were just a few symbols I found throughout the novel that I really thought added a lot of meaning and made the novel more enjoyable to read.

Seeing Gertrude Stein in Hemingway

I was forced to remember Gertrude Stein as I read Hemingway. It becomes obvious through their friendship and their writing that Stein influenced Hemingway and his work. Stein's infamous run-on sentences and lack of punctuation show through in A Farewell to Arms. Sentences would continue for almost an entire paragraph. While reading that sentence, the audience wouldn't know where to pause or stop for it appears Hemingway enjoyed limiting the number of commas and periods he used. While reading the novel, I would sometimes forget the first half of the sentence and have to start over to refresh my memory. Or I would hit a road block because I didn't know when or if there should have been a break in the sentence. But Hemingway's grammar and sentence structure wasn't the most frustrating. It was very disappointing that in the beginning of the novel Henry seems so detached from everything in his life. He feels no connection to the war he is fighting, which explains why he doesn't care if he's on the front line or not. His detachment even follows him into the first stages of his relationship with Catherine. Henry compares this relationship to a game of bridge, admitting no true love for Catherine exists within himself at that point, which almost brings her to the level of a prostitute. To cope with the disinterest in his life, Henry turns to alcohol. He drinks everyday, no matter where he finds himself, whether it be in the hospital while he recovers from an injury or while on the train to Milan. At least Henry finally stops his destructive ways by connecting with Catherine through love and readers have a way to escape the likeness of Hemingway's writing style to Stein's.

I actually really liked all of the uncertainties that went along with the book. However, I appreciate how the book set up opposing viewpoints, mainly when Gertrude, Irene and Clare were all out for tea. Gertrude and Clare had this marvelous idea of "passing" and Irene thought it was absolutely horrible. I absolutely agree with what Irene though, I think to deny one's own heritage and race is to deny part of one's self. Which, I believe, is the role of the African-American in modernist society. They are starting to embrace who they are and collectively celebrate that, instead of trying to hide it.
I know this is all a bit sporadic and it probably is but there is one part that I really want to bring up. When Irene first catches Clare staring at her, her first thought is "There is no way she thinks I'm African-American", she then explains how she could always fit in with white society without them even knowing. This, I believe, shows that the thought of "passing" isn't something foreign to Irene and almost makes her seem a little hypocritical.
To wrap this up, I just want to point out how much of a jerk Irene's husband is. There is absolutely nothing about this character that I like. The fact that he refers to Irene as "Nig" and just his general outlook on the African-American race made me cringe every time his name came up or he ambled into the scene.

Uncertain

It's rather fitting that a book where the two main characters who cannot be clearly distinguished as either black or white should end with so many unclear answers. Clare "fell" out of a window, but the reader never entirely knows whether that fall was a jump or a push. The reader is also left guessing at the relationship Clare and Brian held. And yet, the uncertainties leave the reader wondering who is the victim? Is it Clare, the girl who was forced by her white aunts to hide her identity after her father passed away? Was it her fault that as the daughter of an unwealthy African-American janitor, she would want have a life comforted by money and better treatment if the key to that was severing her ties to her race- a race that really faced hardship day after day with the uncertainties of freedom (and the limitations of it)? Yet, after her young eyes were opend to the reality of the world she chose, she simply wanted to retreat back to the comfort of her race. Was she the victim of murder? Or is the victim Irene, whose life seemed to be unraveling all around her from the moment Clare produced a letter? Was Clare a leech taking from Irene all the things she had lost herself? Did Irene murder the one who rejected her own race, or did she simply try to stop her from jumping? It's all so unclear, yet it produces so much insight to the challenges of passing.

Facades and the Like

After finishing Nella Larsen's Passing, I found the book fit nicely into the modernist idea of the identity search. In this particular instance, skin color acts as the determining factor with regards to how the characters see themselves.

The similarities between Irene and Clara intrigued me. Both characters base a great deal of their worldview (yes, I said it) on how their world perceives skin color. True, Irene embraces her African-American identity much more than Clara, but the issue of race plays an equally important part for each of them when it comes to their every day lives. For the sake of space, I'm only going to look at Irene for this post.

Irene is a bit of a paradox though. On the one hand, she criticizes Clara (albeit silently) for "passing" as a white woman as if that act usurps the entire African-American heritage. However, despite all of Irene's sourness at this aspect of Clara's behavior, Irene allows Clara to get away with it. Why? Some might say it's because Irene is a genuinely compassionate person who tries not to let the negative aspects of her personality control her. I say it's more complicated than that. Irene feels a certain bond to Clara if for no other reason than both of them can "pass" and both of them share an African-American heritage. Given the hostile environment in the United States towards blacks at that time, it is no wonder that Irene resists the urge to out Clara. Irene feels a certain bond with all of her race; her desire to defend that supersedes her desire to expose Clara. When Irene begins to suspect Clara of having an affair with Brian, complications ensue. We can assume that Irene's behavior in front of Clara's white husband in the street tipped him off as to Clara's real identity. But there, jealousy motivated Irene; she threw the concept of racial unity/identity out the proverbial window (unintentional, morbid pun there). Granted, we never know for certain if Irene killed Clara at that moment, but technically, we could argue that had Irene not acted the way she did when she encountered Clara's husband on the street, Clara never would have fallen to her death.

One could discuss the identity issues presented in this novel for quite a while (like, in an American Modernism class for example). Irene's inability to come to grips with her identity leads inevitably to tragedy. Irene struggles between her racial identity and her personal identity (which are intertwined) thus causing a maelstrom of confusion, jealousy, and regret.

The "passers" who loathe their own race

The obvious difference in the lives of Clare and Irene did not seem to be shocking to me at first. However, once I reached Chapter Three and read the encounter of Clare, Gertrude, Irene, and Clare's husband I was simply appalled. I almost felt bad reading it because it just seemed too outrageous the way that these people talked about race and to one another.

I do not understand how this way of "passing" could ever be permitted by African Americans. The African Americans that I know of are proud of their race; what would they think if they read this? The women speak of their children and Clare and Gertrude express that they were fearful that their children would be "too dark." I cannot imagine what would have happened if Clare's daughter would have been a dark child. I can imagine that her own mother would have resented her. And her father may have disowned them both. Clare's husband is the worst one to me. He is introduced to the reader by coming into the visit greeting his wife, "Hello, Nig" in a way that seems so disrespectful and must be hurtful to Clare because she actually is African American. No wonder she felt the need to pass, because it seems as if all of the people in her life hate being black. The husband goes on to say that he HATES negroes, and ironically, he is married to one. He also goes on to describe stereotypes of African Americans, and distastefully so.

Larsen did a fabulous job displaying the types of people in this time period who rejected their own race, she kept me glued to the text and provided shocking moments among the characters. Reading this novel definitely sparked some anger in me, I wonder if that is what she intended?

Nella Larsen's Amazing Description of Scenes

When reading this novel I was so amazed by Larsen's ability to describe certain events and scenes throughout the novel. One of the first scenes that created a vivid image in my mind was in the beginning of chapter 2: "Chicago. August. A brilliant day, hot, with a brutal staring sun pouring down rays that were like molten rain. A day on which the very outlines of the buildings shuddered as if in protest at the heat. Quivering lines sprang up from the baked pavements and wriggled along the shining car-tracks. The automobiles parked at the kerbs were a dancing blaze, and the glass of the shop-windows threw out a blinding radiance. Sharp particles of dust rose from the burning sidewalks, stinging the seared or drippings skins of wilting pedestrians" (12). I read this paragraph over and over again wondering how Larsen was able to describe this scene so perfectly.
Another description that took my breath away was the beginning of chapter 3 which states, "On Tuesday morning a dome of grey sky rose over the parched city, but stifling air was not relieved by the silvery mist that seemed to hold a promise of rain, which did not fall" (32). Once again this scene is described so perfectly and it as if I were actually there just by reading it. I also noticed that Larsen uses these descriptive scenes at the beginning of chapters to set the mood of the following events.
Later in the novel: "The year was getting on towards its end. October, November had gone. December ahd come and brought with it a little snow and then a freeze and after that a thaw and some soft pleasant days that had in them a feeling of spring" (85). Once again this description of scene takes place in the beginning of a chapter, sets the mood, and creates an image in the reader's mind.
I really like Larsen's writing and although this novel was short it was filled with beautiful images and descriptions which really made the novel meaningful and enjoyable to read.