sam

One character I'll forever be jealous of is Henry winter because oh my god he knew seven languages, loaded, six guys couldn't pull him off during a fight, had everyone in the greek class losing it over him

henry rolling in his grave at this new odyssey adaptation

”I asked chatgpt” well, I asked Charles Dalton and he just started playing the saxophone

Smoking on planes wasn’t properly banned until the 90s. The amount of cigarettes Henry must’ve smoked on the flight back to Vermont from his disastrous Rome trip with Bunny…

Camilla holds herself together remarkably well considering everything that happens: the bacchanal, being an accomplice to two murders, being abused by her own brother. She doesn’t often show her emotions. She cries towards the end when Henry and Charles have to appear in court, but that’s almost it. Bunny attempts to belittle her in a number of ways, most of which have 0 impact. She was, as Richard says, ‘impervious to slights about her appearance,’ but this doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have any insecurities in that department - she’s just good at pretending like she doesn’t or is desensitised to insults about her appearance. When Henry picks her up after she cuts her foot in the lake, she tells him to put her down, saying ‘I’m too heavy for you.’ Based on the way she’s described by Richard, she absolutely isn’t ‘too heavy,’ especially for Henry. It’s a small moment of vulnerability that we see from her. But why? Is it just natural human self consciousness? Is she worried about incurring Charles’ jealousy as she’s being held by Henry? Is it a sly allusion to Henry’s injury as we know he walks with a limp? Either way, the lake scene is one of my favourite moments of the novel.

"I asked chatGPT" well I asked Henry Winter and he was quite startled. He said “No,” and put down his fork.

god i just remembered that bunny went to julian after the bacchanal "in all earnestness" asking questions about ethics and sin and forgiveness. that was his go to source on moral authority. AND THEN i start thinking about how it's heavily implied that henry was having a lot of doubts about the bacchanal and it was julian who encouraged him to "do what's necessary" and kickstarted his obsession with making it work. and THEN i think of richard referring to him as the only protector in the world and the only source of benevolence. jesus fuck that man failed them in every way imaginable...

I think that the twins may be the most mysterious. We know the least about their life before Hampden. With Francis, we know he grew up wealthy, was educated in various prestigious schools, his mother appears in the novel. Bunny’s family have “delusions of grandeur,” sending him to prep school despite not having a lot of money. Bunny studied Ancient Greek years before college. Henry is also mysterious, but we have a small idea. We know he was injured as a child and missed a lot of school before eventually dropping out, we know he isn’t very happy at home but has a mother who according to Bunny, dotes on him. He published a translation of Greek when he was only 18. His parents send him a lot of money. But what of Camilla and Charles? We know they’re orphans, and that they attended a regular school like Richard, and they’re almost as poor as Bunny. When they go home for Christmas, they work for their uncle - Henry and Francis are definitely not doing this because they don’t have to. Camilla, according to Richard, preferred studying English literature. What led her to Greek? The twins are the only people whose family members don’t appear in the novel. There are mentions of nanas and aunts and uncles, but they don’t actually appear. Richard’s family doesn’t appear either - but he tells us enough about them. We have little to no idea of what the twins’ home life was like, and what made their relationship the way that it was. Charles has a talent for forgery, which suggests a cunning nature from a young age. He is “possessive” and watches Camilla “like a hawk”. But we don’t know when this started. Perhaps when they arrived in Vermont, finally isolated from any family members… they grew up in what I imagine would’ve been a conservative southern family, this must have played a role on the clear power imbalance in their relationship.

relationships are temporary, dead poets society is forever