[WH] - Why I hate this book.

"'These things happened last winter, sir,' said Mrs. Dean; 'hardly more than a year ago,'" (pg 221).

There are a ton of reasons why I hate this novel, but they all revolve around Wuthering Heights major theme of doubling.

• The story is frame story in which Lockwood tells the story about how Nelly told him a story in which she took a very minor role.  I think the purpose was to make the events seem more realistic, but frankly, I think it just made the flashbacks more confusing as a time line is almost impossible to form.  The above quote took me forever to figure out the logistics of whether she was talking in the present or the past.
• I really want to write a story about the protagonist, but unfortunately there appear to be two (if that is even legal).  Cathy drives most of the plot at the Grange, but Heathcliff drives all of the plot at the Heights.
• Heathcliff obviously seems to be the protagonist, but he is also an antagonist to Cathy at the same time.  At the same time though, it could also be said that Nelly is just as large an antagonist for not letting her love Linton fully.
• Why would Catherine ever have a baby girl named Cathy?  At least name it Kathy or Quatheryryne or something so I have some way of denoting a difference between the two.  I guess this just shows the similarities between the two halves of the plot.
• Unless I missed something, Catherine Earnshaw married to become Catherine Linton where as Catherine Linton is engaged to become Catherine Earnshaw.  Did I mention the similarities between Catherine and Catherine?
• Whose idea was it to name her characters Hindley, Heathcliff and Hareton?  Emily Bronte really seemed to be struggling when she was naming her characters for this book.

[WH] - The narrator who never talks

"I have now heard all my neighbor's history, at different settings, as the housekeeper could spare time from more important occupations" (page 134).

There were plenty of places that in the novel where we see Lockwood directly address the reader and then return to Nelly to tell the story, but this was the quickest for me to find.  There are many reasons why this book confuses me, but I have established it in my first blog post (the last that you'll read if you go from top to bottom) that Bronte is a meany who intentionally made her story confusing to parallel the relation problems.

So why would Bronte decide to make a narrator to emcee the novel and just introduce the new narrator every chapter?  Well, there could be a variety of reasons for this and I believe a combination of the bunch is probably the best reason, but like every rude AP test makers, there has to be a "best" reason for everything so I will make myself five choices and why one is the best.

• Since Lockwood is an new member of the society (poor guy...) it would make sense in a story sense that he would ask an older member of the community about the history of the families.
• It allows the Bronte to remind us a few times a chapter that everything in the story, up to this point at least, is a flashback and that no memory is one hundred percent error free so certain parts will be understated or exaggerated.
• As a participant in the action, Nelly will underplay parts that would hurt her credibility and exaggerate where she was a major player in the game.  I noticed this in chapter 15 when she passively watched Heathcliff crush Catherine as if she was not there.
• We'll just say that D was a really stupid choice that I immediately threw out because I can't think of another reason why Bronte would change narrators.
• Aliens came and...

A) is a very good choice, but no author ever writes a book so that it makes sense so clearly this is wrong.   Both choices B) and C) are very similar and have equal merit, but I have to go with answer B) since it seems like the "best" choice based on it's two literary terms and best encompasses all the chapters and not just the more recent ones that are more clear in my mind at the moment.

[WH] - Why Bronte will never be a journalist

"Cathy stayed at Thrushcross Grange five weeks: till Christmas.  By that time her ankle was thoroughly cured, and her manners much improved" (page 45).

As a trained journalist I cringe at the sight of every chapter and all major events beginning with a factor of the time of day, length of the embrace or time passage since a previous event.  I could not help but think to myself that this must be important.

It did not hit me why the time and setting was important until Nelly failed to mention a time frame for me to base the timeline.

"Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have each a simple headstone above, and plain grey block at their feet, to mark the graves" (pg 146).

The word "now" was ambiguous to me (granted this whole novel seems pretty ambiguous) because I had to decide if it was Nelly still speaking in the past sense of the word now or the present sense of the word now.  Imagine my confusion when I thought someone else died, but then imagine my joy when I realized that no one died, but that she was talking in the present sense of the word now.  While in most novels the time frame of a story is not important, Wuthering Heights requires a time piece to be present because of it's two main style features.

• The story is a frame story where Lockwood is recalling what Nelly told him.
• The story, up to now, is almost entirely a flashback as Nelly talks about her past at Wuthering Heights.

This time thing really messes with my head.  I think I need to practice telling time more.

Never Let Me Go - Thirteen

"She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside.  She said they revealed your soul" (pg 175).

Chapter 15 and its fifteen pages of fun seemed to have many references to former chapter plots.  These flashbacks were unlike previous chapters though.  While every chapter is a flashback to Kathy's childhood, these flashbacks were Kathy figuring out life.  Kathy has seemed to me like a very analytical teenager, but in this chapter, she is talking from her 31-year-old self more than from her early teen self.  This chapter was set up as though she was writing a book for her childhood self to read to know how to react to the situations she is in, or in this case, how not to act.

Personally, I found all of this adult analysis to be fairly jumpy, but at the same time really did seem to have some good advice.  In the above excerpt, Tommy is referencing the Gallery from Madame, which had been really harped upon during the early chapters of the book, but had seemed to magically disappear from memory during part two of the novel.  These recurring images back up what I have noticed to be the main theme of this novel which is the power of time on wisdom.  Every chapter has a very similar set up where Kathy recollects one or two major events from her childhood, then she analyses them from her grown up perspective along with how she interpreted them when they actually happened.

Now I have to wonder.  When I grow up, how will I interpret my childhood choices?

P.S.  Did you happen to take a random trip to Germany or Ukraine?

Never Let Me Go - Two

        "Anyway, it was those temper tantrums that really got people going, escalating everything, and around the time I'm talking about- the summer of our Senior 2, when we were thirteen- that was when the persecution reached its peak.
       Then it all stopped, not overnight, but rapidly enough... Then gradually, people got bored and the pranks became more half-hearted, until one day it struck me there hadn't been any for over a week" (pg 21).

Ishiguro uses a plethora of small anecdotes through Kathy's memory to indirectly characterize Tommy.  I think that these play hand-in-hand to shape Tommy's character in the most unbiased way possible by allowing the reader to infer their own personality traits of Tommy instead of simply hearing Kathy's view on Tommy's persona.  Through all the tantrums, I learned that Tommy really just seems to be misunderstood and not really an angry person.  He seems to be the kid who wants to be friends with people, but is not really sure how so he just tries to get attention in whatever form he can.  During these anecdotes, Kathy really showed us the changes that Tommy made to better his lifestyle.  Anecdotes also help me to relate to the characters more as well as make the story seem more plausible.  The juxtaposition in Tommy's personality above shows us how quickly he was able to change when Miss Lucy told him that it is okay to be different (which is a nice contrast to Brave New World's values).  I think that Ishiguro chose to juxtapose the different personality traits of Tommy so that we can really see what was bothering him and that he really just needed reassurance in his life.  It also may become the start of a theme on how people can change their personalities so easily, but I would not go out on a limb to say that one yet.

I also think that these flashbacks and anecdotes will remain very active in the first part of the novel since it appears to be used to describe Kathy's childhood with Tommy and Ruth at Hailsham.

Never Let Me Go - One

"My name is Kathy H.  I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer for over eleven years...  But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my donors staying 'calm...'  There's no way I could have gone on for as long as I have if I'd stopped feeling for my donors every step of the way" (pg 3-4).

While I am still not positive on what a carer is, this direct characterization on Kathy H. portrays her as a very good one.  The use of "I" and "my" also show that this is a first person point of view narrative.  I feel as though Ishiguro directly tells the reader that this story is in this point of view so that we realize right away that there will be bias and emotion that an omniscient point of view would lack.  This is expounded on in the flashback to Kathy's childhood which are later in the chapter.  For possibly the first time in my life, I found the first chapter of a book to be fairly straight forward and a good basis to what the novel will be about (which is a nice change after Brave New World's first chapter).  The direct characterization early on seems to be very important in setting the stage for how she is different than the others.  She was clearly very similar to Ruth and Tommy in her childhood life, but her demeanor seemed to be very unlike any of the others in her childhood, which may explain why she is a carer now while they are donors (I think?).  The one thing that seems very evident by the memories Kathy tells the reader (whom she refers to as "you") is that being a donor seems to be a very bad thing.  All I think of when I hear donor is an organ donor, but if they are alive then is that really possible?  Please do not let this be another twisted morals book; that would just be mean.