Reading Diary

 

Hey guys!

So for uni, I had to write 300-500 words every week on something I had read to make a reading diary. I made them into the form of mini essays with loads of analysis and personal insight. Heres my first five entries.

• Week 1 - Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (novel)
• Week 2 - Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett (play)
• Week 3 - Trainspotting - Irvine Weslh (novel) and a brief comparison of the film adaptation
• Week 4 - A Dream within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe (poem)
• Week 5 - Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen (novel)

Week 1: Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (novel)

 “…Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, panting, and then she was in my arms, her innocent mouth melting under the ferocious pressure of dark male jaws, my palpitating darling! The next instant I heard her – alive, unraped – clatter downstairs.”

In this extract of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert and his ‘Lolita’ kiss for the first time. Nabokov consistently uses elegant, stylist and often cryptic language to trick the reader into forgetting the alarming fact that the person Humbert is hopelessly in love with and making an effort to seduce is in fact a twelve-year-old girl. Nabokov manipulates Humbert’s narrative in such a way as to portray him as a romantic, articulate and thoughtful character. However these deceptive traits to Humbert’s personality – of being loving, intelligent, gentlemanly and wholesome – only make his paedophilia all the more sinister, unsettling and disturbing to read as Humbert seems able to hide his desires at will but speaks to the reader about them so openly and with such ease. By using the word “innocent” when describing Dolores, Nabokov is implying that Humbert is fully aware of how naïve and trusting Dolores is but continues to sexually groom her, regardless of him being conscious of the fact that his actions are tremendously immoral and illegal. Nabokov also suggests that Humbert is indeed taking away Dolores innocence by touching her inappropriately and practically forcing her to become a woman when she is still merely a child.

Nabokov emphasises this point by describing Dolores mouth as ‘melting’ under the pressure of Humbert’s jaws which offers a comparison between Humbert’s fully grown adult male form against Dolores petite, skinny and adolescent female body. Nabokov evokes this disturbing image which draws upon the reader’s own sensory perceptions by evoking the feeling of the physical pain Dolores must have felt under such pressure. The lexical choice of the word “dark” is also appropriate in supporting the evidence of Humbert’s immorality as the word has connotations of sin, suspicion, secret and evil. By abruptly and bizarrely adding in ‘alive, unraped’ when referring to Dolores’s state at the end of the extract, Nabokov is suggesting that Humbert is trying to manipulate the reader into believing that he technically did not rape Dolores and that simply kissing her in an overly sexual way is perfectly acceptable. Throughout the novel, Nabokov, through Humbert’s narrative, implies that Dolores is the party making sexual advances towards Humbert which I believe is Humbert’s desperate attempt to conceal, from the reader and from himself, that he is in fact a paedophile and a rapist who has been grooming Dolores over a period of time.

Nabokov discloses more of Humbert’s disturbing character as Humbert begins to frequently exaggerate and sexualise every movement, word and expression made by children around him, with particular attention placed on Dolores. This point is stressed by Humbert’s insistence on referring to particular children, and to Dolores, as ‘nymphets’. By using the term nymphet – meaning a sexually mature and promiscuous child - Nabokov furthermore reveals Humbert as a very manipulative and intelligent character who is not to be trusted as he develops overstated personas for these children to justify his unsettling thoughts and desires. By doing this, Nabokov makes a strong attempt to convince the reader that it is in fact the children around Humbert that tempt him into giving in to his specific, animalistic and sick sexual desires by using flowery language and linguistic trickery to make the act of rape sound like something beautiful and excusable. This insight into the psychology of a paedophile, although disturbing, is also very intriguing as it conveys how Humbert’s mind works as he intelligently invents bizarre and calculated reasons to justify his deviant behaviour.

Week 2: Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett (play)

In his tragicomedy, absurdist play Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett introduces the two main characters Vladimir and Estragon as two old companions who have spent many years in each other’s company. Although the two characters appear to have a fondness for one another, I believe that their friendship only exists to ‘pass the time’ as there is ‘nothing to be done’. Vladimir (profound, troubled, intelligent and philosophical) appears to feel protective over Estragon (vulnerable, forgetful, naive and ignorant) as Beckett depicts Vladimir demanding to know who has beaten Estragon during the night while they were apart. Beckett shows the strong differences between the comrades as Vladimir is constantly trying to find answers to the meaning of life while Estragon is blissfully unaware and ignorant to such profound thoughts and ideas. Beckett also illuminates their contrasting personality traits as an explanation of why they bond so well. I believe Vladimir and Estragon’s relationship could be considered as a representation of the two halves of a brain, with Vladimir symbolising the left side of the brain (the side responsible for logical thinking, reasoning and rationality) and Estragon representing the right side of the brain (the side responsible for creativity, imaginative thought and romantic notions). This theory supported subtly by Beckett suggests that the two characters can only be truly functional when working together, co-existing and depending on each other for emotional, mental and physical support.

Beckett also explores existential ideology widely throughout the play, shown through Vladimir’s increasing emotional turmoil and mental deterioration (intensified by his ‘cabin fever’ – the claustrophobic reaction to being isolated in a small space for a long time with no new stimulus) as he struggles to find the reason for living. The play, which is set in a deserted wasteland containing only a single tree, depicts Vladimir and Estragon’s agonising wait for a visitor – a man named Godot who never comes. As the reader begins to realise that Godot is not going to arrive, or if he even exists at all, Beckett hints that the expectations of Godot are so high, due to how long Vladimir and Estragon have been waiting, that even if Godot were ever to reach them, no matter what or who he was, he would only be a disappointment. I believe that this is Beckett’s metaphor for life itself because no matter what a person does or achieves during their lifetime, night will still follow the day and their life will still inevitably come to an end. The wait for Godot represents humanity’s wait for some kind of epiphany or explanation illuminating the purpose of our existence. However, throughout the play, Beckett is suggesting that such a meaning of life doesn’t exist at all and that every person lives simply to wait and pass the time until they die.

Beckett’s grim and depressing ideas of life are emphasised through Vladimir’s dialogue: “Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.” Beckett presents this disturbing and grotesque image as he stresses the certainty of birth and death. Beckett proposes the unsettling notion of a baby being born and immediately being placed into a grave, to highlight that the infant is inevitably going to die regardless of his/her potential or future choices, posing the question: what is the point of living? In Waiting for Godot, Beckett saddens and disheartens the reader into the realisation that perhaps life and existence in fact has no meaning at all.

Week 3: Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh (novel) and a brief comparison of the film adaptation

Trainspotting, a harrowing black comedy novel by Irvine Welsh, offers an insight into the rave and heroin subculture in Edinburgh during the late 1980s-1990s, which also touches on the cultural and political issues of that time including: vast unemployment, the rise of heroin addiction and HIV and The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The novel consists of seven short stories that form loosely connected episodes with narration revolving around a group of friends/drug users; the main speakers being Mark Renton, Simon ‘Sick Boy’ Williamson, Daniel ‘Spud’ Murphy and Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie. The cult classic – written in Scots, in the regional dialect of Leith, Edinburgh – tells the often grotesque, disturbing, sexist and sectarian tales of the main characters to exemplify the squalor and gritty conditions they endure in order to fuel their drug habits. The Scots language in Trainspotting is essential as it provides a certain cultural realism and serves as a construct to build a sense of place, mentality and attitude as the characters adopt a life of drug abuse, crime, violence and sex initiated by rise of unemployment in the late 1980s. This point is exemplified by Renton’s narrative early in the novel when he is discussing ‘junk dilemmas’, cheating death and living in squalor: “The wallpaper is horrific in this shite-pit ay a room. It terrorises me. Some coffin-dodger must have put it up years ago…appropriate, because that’s what ah am, a coffin-dodger…”

One of Trainspotting’s most intriguing and complex characters is Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie. Welsh creates the character of Begbie – a terrifying, vicious sociopath who assaults and brutalises innocent people and is addicted to the rush of violence – to represent the very epitome of immorality, criminality and narcissism in society. Welsh depicts Begbie as an amoral character devout of compassion, conscience and sympathy. However, Welsh intriguingly proposes that Begbie lives by his own twisted, specific moral code: Begbie believes that it is perfectly acceptable to ferociously attach an innocent American tourist during the Edinburgh Festival and to mercilessly beat his pregnant girlfriend; but holds a firm and intense value of loyalty and dependability to his so-called friends. Another fascinating and perhaps sceptical feature of Begbie’s character that Welsh subtly offers is that Begbie repeatedly expresses throughout the novel his hatred for ‘junkies’ and how he considers them to be scum and the lowest form of life, yet he persists on mixing and socialising with a group of young, functioning heroin addicts. Although Begbie’s sexuality remains ambiguous throughout the text, his behaviour and overcompensation of being a thug and the alpha male of the group leads me to believe that Begbie’s alarming and fierce acts of sickening violence are motivated by his fear of being revealed as homosexual. This theory is supported by Danny Boyle’s film adaptation of the text in which Begbie has a liaison with a transvestite (unknown to him), yet he doesn’t viciously assault the transsexual when he discovers that she is in fact a man, which surprises the audience as we would expect Begbie to seriously assault the transvestite like he does to random, innocent strangers. Boyle’s film also depicts a moment charged with sexual tension in which Begbie forces Renton to place a cigarette in his mouth and light it for him. This idea also links in with the increase in cases of HIV around this time and illustrates a hesitation possessed by many people of coming out as gay for fear of being judged and ridiculed due to the social stigma, confusion and lack of knowledge associated with HIV and AIDS amongst homosexuals in the late 1980s.

Welsh’s brutal honesty and ability to create credible and complex characters is what makes Trainspotting so believable, genuine and successful.

Week 4: A Dream within a Dream – Edgar Allan Poe (poem)

A Dream within a Dream is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe written in the poetic structure of iambic trimetre to create a beat that progresses from lighter to heavier and forms a lyrical rhythm. On first reading, the poem appears to be merely about: the narrator kissing his partner goodbye and questioning if life is in fact fantasy after her departure. The narrator then stands on a beach whilst crying, holding grains of sand that inevitably slip from his grasp and he desperately tries to save even a single granule from ‘the pitiless wave’. However, A Dream within a Dream actually deals with the very existential concept of life being merely an illusion and the struggle of differentiating between reality and the imaginary. The narrator’s angst and philosophical despair over this notion stems from the parting of his companion, as the speaker’s memory wavers and he begins to wonder if he in fact ever had a partner at all: “You are not wrong, who deem, That my days have been a dream”.

Poe also portrays the narrator’s efforts to grip sand in his fists to symbolise his attempt to prove that the world around him is tangible and real by pursuing a feeling of permanency: “How few! yet how they creep, Through my fingers to the deep”. However, the sand continues to slide from his grasp and back into the current no matter how tight his grip is, making him question reality as he realises that nothing in life can be attained forever. Poe’s use of repetitive rhetorical questions throughout the poem supports the idea that the speaker’s mental state is unstable as he is incapable of distinguishing between what is real and what is allusion.

Poe also uses the title of the poem to show that the speaker is fantasising within a fantasy and to suggest that the speaker’s daydream/inner dream has become so lifelike and his reality/outer dream has become so dreamlike that he has difficulty distinguishing between them and becomes entangled in a profound and incomprehensible nightmare of vagueness, ambiguity and doubt.

In the development of further imagery, Poe depicts the sand as a representation of the passage of time as sand falling through the speaker’s fingers is reminiscent of sand falling in an hour glass. The ‘surf-tormented shore’ also provides another metaphor for time as the waves persist in dragging the sand back into the sea seemingly until none will remain. This ideology illustrated by Poe, mixed with the narrator’s turmoil as he appears trapped in a limbo of delusion and hesitation, provides a sense of finality and time running out. The concept of time is a significant theme throughout the poem as time co-exists with reality by means of tracking and proving events to support the idea of what is genuine and disproving what is fake. Poe subtly illustrates time as a prevailing force that contributes to the narrator’s panic and mental dissonance of reality. Poe hints that the speaker’s inner dream is proving to have consumed and ensnared him as he becomes completely detached from his perception of time and reality and descends into madness.

The poem concludes with Poe hinting through the speaker that perhaps the difference between reality and dream can never be definitively proven: “Is all that we see or seem, But a dream within a dream?”

Week 5: Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen (novel)

Girl, Interrupted is a memoir by Susanna Kaysen based on her own experience of being sectioned, diagnosed as having border personality disorder and being in a psychiatrist hospital during her late teens in the 1960s. Kaysen intelligently structures her novel to depict the plot but intersperses the format with files from her very own internal hospital record that was logged during her stay at McLean Hospital. The text engages with many themes and social issues including: social stigmas of mental illness and insanity; sexism within mental institutions and in the workplace; the argument of treating the brain or the mind; and the question of how successful hospitalisation is as means of treatment to promote recovery.

The main characters in the novel include: Susanna; Lisa (sociopath); Georgina (depressive); Polly (schizophrenic, depressive and self-harmer); Daisy (addicted to prescription drugs, apparent agoraphobic and suicidal); and Cynthia (severe depressive). One of the most stimulating and complicated characters in Girl, Interrupted is Polly Clark. Polly was admitted to McLean Hospital for pouring gasoline onto her face and upper body and then setting herself alight, leaving her with a permanently disfigured appearance. When describing Polly’s scars, Kaysen sophisticatedly uses scar tissue as a metaphor to epitomise the carefully constructed persona that some people with mental illnesses feel the need to portray in an attempt to conceal their disorder and appear as ‘normal’ to the rest of society: “Scar tissue has no character. It’s not like skin. It doesn’t show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It’s like a slipcover. It shield’s and disguises what’s beneath. That’s why we grow it, we have something to hide.” By stating that scar tissue has no character, Kaysen is finely proposing that due to social stigma, those with mental illnesses are not considered as people with feelings and personalities, but thought of and labelled with only their disorder. Additionally, Kaysen’s suggestion that scar tissue is something that the mentally ill have the ability to ‘grow’ and her short, abrupt sentence structure create a clever and sinister construct of comparing scar tissue with altered characteristics which assists in the transition of an account of mental illness into sensitive and accessible fiction.

Another intriguing trait of Polly’s character is the respect she subtly commands from the other patients in the ward. None of the other patients ever dare to ask Polly why she so brutally and irreversibly harmed herself and almost admire her courage to do something that has altered her appearance in such a painful and lasting way. However the unstable and fragile mental state of, the usually cheerful and ignorant, Polly is fully exposed when she finally realises the permanency and gravity of what she has done to herself: “At dusk the crying changed to screaming. Dusk is a dangerous time…‘My face! My face! My face!’…And then I think we all realised what fools we’d been. We might get out sometime, but she was locked up for ever in that body.” At this point, Kaysen forcefully demonstrates that Polly’s deformity is what sets her apart from all the other residents in McLean Hospital. Most of the other patients will most likely be able to recover to some extent, be released from the hospital and be able to lead content and fulfilling lives but Polly will always have extensive burns that will serve as an unavoidable and painful reminder of her period of mental illness as she will be imprisoned inside a distorted body for the rest of her life. By conveying this point, Kaysen encourages the reader to consider how Polly will ever be able to recover from her psychological disorders under such circumstances.

Kaysen’s accessible and genuine narrative of insanity provides the reader with an insightful perception of the truth about mental illness and the pursuance of recovery in a psychiatric hospital. Kaysen also subtly hints that mental illness isn’t an affliction that can be cured purely with medication but demands a devoted, lifelong, therapeutic maintenance of the stability of the mind.