Personal reflection

Dear Reader of Fine Literature,

     What you're doing on my blog in the first place is a complete mystery, but since you're here already, it would be rude of me to leave you without a recommendation. So, for your reading pleasure: The Virgin Suicides.

     This book is, surprisingly enough, about virgins who commit suicide (okay, the virgin thing doesn't apply to all of them, but you get the idea). Except-- it's about so much more. This book is about family and love and community and beauty and life and death. It's about femininity and masculinity and everything in between. It's about the way one person can change so many lives. And yes, it's about suicide. But I'm getting to that.

     Let's talk about love first. You wouldn't think love would be easy to find in a book so blatantly about death, but the beauty of The Virgin Suicides is in the moments of life and love between morbid discussions. The love is in the way the Lisbon sisters cared for each other and in how they preserved Cecilia's memory, no matter how strange they might have found her. The love, however misplaced, is in how eager the neighborhood boys were to help the Lisbon girls escape the terrible lives they were being forced to live. Love was in the way the deaths of Cecilia, Lux, Mary, Bonnie, and Therese wrecked their parents-- pain of that kind cannot be felt without love first.

     And beauty. Let's talk about beauty. The Lisbon girls were beautiful, that's not in doubt. It was one of the things which made their deaths so tragic. Cecilia was beautiful, with her ethereal eccentricity; Lux was beautiful, with her mysterious physicality; Bonnie was beautiful, with her quiet dignity; Mary was beautiful, with her subtle poise; and Therese was beautiful, with her sharp intelligence. Each girl supremely different, but each girl undeniably beautiful. Beauty can be found in everything, and Jeffrey Eugenides makes that easy to see.

     Finally, death. We can't end a discussion about a book called The Virgin Suicides without talking about death a little bit, so here it is: in fiction, death doesn't have to be sad. It doesn't have to be happy either. It can be whatever you want it to be and it can be nothing at all-- that's what makes it fiction. The thing to remember is that literature can mimic the real world, and vice versa, but, with a book like this, some things are better left in an alternate universe.

Peace and blessings, Sarah

To all old-fashioned, conservative, conventional, concerned, cautious, casily-scandalized, modest parent (and the like) rearing a child who is to enter the mercurial, barely navigable, capricious world,

Let your kid read One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Should they one day come into the house reading a large tome with a mystical piece of artwork on the cover and Marquez’s name pasted along the bottom and they continue to do so with a shocked or disgusted or plain confused expression on their face, know that it is all in the name of a unique pedagogy. Sure, the salacious descriptions of incestuous lust and violence might make you worry, but a readers exposure to this illicit, forbidden character action and components is absolutely crucial to the novel’s theme and overarching, cerebral lesson. Let me explain.

This novel has no central character, so much a central family. Family members of the seven generation spanning Buendias have a role to enforce the constant mistakes and ultimately fatal sins the Jose Arcadios, Aurelianos, Amarantas and Remedioses continuously live bound to. Each character of the Buendia family is heavily influenced by their previous ancestors; their molded into place and molded into repeating their father’s and mother’s mistakes. It almost seems as if they live in a haze in this whimsical city of Macondo- and it their fates end up being predestined and prophesied. Take a look at one of the final quotes, in which the final Aureliano sees the end of his family line by reflecting on some familial history.

“...Aureliano skipped eleven pages so as not to lose time with facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the instant that he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, prohpesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror.”

Yes, confusing should you not have read the book, but absolutely crucial as it states a power the Buendias had only learned of too late- the importance of interpretation. Only now in these last few pages do we see Aureliano break free from his familial shortcomings and read the prophecy that should condemn the Buendias. He finally interprets not just the explicit prophecy that he finally translates, but he judges and interprets the past acts of his lurid ancestors with conscious devoid of fear, but instead filled with desperation and sorrow. He becomes his own too late, and people like the Buendias are to never populate the world.

Readers must take heed to such a warning, and all people as race are condemned to live in a solitude within their minds. Yet, in solitude there is freedom to act as an individual, and a freedom to break past the sins of the father, or to follow the predestined path of ignorance, and dismissing the reflections of mirrors for nothing more than a shallow face. Let your child read this book and scare them and inspire them to become an individual. 

Sincerely, Angela

     Of Mice and Men remains one of my favorite books. I had read it once before when I was much younger after seeing the play performed, and I was transfixed by the way the characters talked and the way Steinbeck wrote, so different it was from what I was used to. I didn’t understand why everyone was so mean to Lennie, because I couldn’t see that any of the bad things that happened were his fault, and I cried when George shot him. I have been invested in this story from a young age, and I think it was really important for me to come back and revisit this classic now that I’m old enough to really understand it.

     I’m glad I read this book because I love what it says about friendship and family. That may seem surprising, given the ending, but throughout the book, when Lennie and George’s friendship is called into question, they defend each other.Although Lennie doesn’t grow much as a character over the course of the novel, it’s established that he’s fiercely loyal to George and that his dream was really only to live with him in a place where they could be free from society’s harsh judgment. Through Lennie, George learns to become a better person, to be someone who sticks up for the weak and stands up to the strong for the benefit of others instead of taking advantage. When George chooses to shoot Lennie in the end, it’s because he can’t bear for his friend to have to suffer at the hands of Curley and his mob. He knows that Lennie trusts him to do what is best, and acts accordingly.

     I’m glad I read this book because it is beautiful as well as tragic. The opening pages describing the landscape of the story took me to George and Lennie’s Eden-- a place to feel safe and comfortable. The way Steinbeck uses synesthesia of the warmth of the sun and the smell of the breeze and the sound of a lizard “skittering across crisp leaves” creates the feeling of truly being there in this calm place. It is here where George and Lennie start and end their final journey together. It is painful and sublime at the same time, as life often is. 

     I’m glad I read this book because it is so very real. Anyone can relate to the struggles faced by our main characters. Anyone can read this book and find themselves or someone they know. And surely anyone can find meaning in the Robert Burns poem from which the title originates: “The best laid schemes of mice and men / go often askew / and leave us nothing by grief and pain / for promised joy!”

I think of all that I had gotten from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, what I had gotten was… well, I think it was a series of things. From this novel, I learned a multitude of things. I learned to be a better reader, and, oddly enough, I think I had learned to be a better writer. What is particularly unique, however, is that I had done so through a slight but a very present degree of difficulty. To be more frank, I had struggled a bit reading this, and despite which, I had liked it.

Toni Morrison writes her novel with simple prose, yet she manages to craft a very dense narrative that is thick with lush backstory and complicated motivation of characters. All of her characters are dynamic, and they change through the eyes of Milkman as he changes as well. In doing so, however, Morrison structures her novel like that of a mysterious suspense. Nothing is really told in short, concise detail, but instead much is revealed through the characters’ own descriptions and recollection and thought processes, which are written in long, drawn out debates and mental quandaries. For example, when Milkman begins to connect the dots and cross some bridges regarding his ancestors’ lives, Morrison writes:

“Milkman’s scalp began to tingle. Jake the only son of Solomon? Was that Jake the only son of Solomon? Jake.” (302)

Morrison presents information regarding characters in such a way that pushes urgency and harried thought, but also slowly builds into climactic action. As Milkman discerns his ancestral roots as a purpose for his escape from the unfulfilling life he left in Michigan, he questions himself as he did in the quote above. While I am grateful that the narration was told this way, at the time, I was frustrated! I was frustrated with the slow and methodical pace of Morrison’s build and plot development, but in doing so, I think I had to suspend my impatience for meticulous reading, and rereading, and even some skipping. When I had reached the end, with its (spoliery!) ambiguous ending full of sudden action and consequences, I had felt fulfilled with a satisfied curiosity and a feeling of earned discovery.

 Overall I feel as though my project was a success. Although only one of my plants grew, I still was able to succeed in taking something old and making it into something new. There are many variables that I believe caused my other plants to not grow. One was the wait I risked for the plants. The winter of 2014 to 2015 was very long and unexpected. I took a risk to wait until it was warmer outside in order to grow my plants. This is due to the heating and air conditioning being broken in my home. Even if I grew my plants inside throughout the winter, they would not have gained the necessary temperature in order to grow. Due to this wait materials, with the exception of the food scraps, were gathered well ahead of the planting of the garden. Another factor was the temperature. Relating back to this terrible winter, it was far too cold to be growing plants. I originally planned to begin my garden on March 20, the first day of Spring. however it heavily snowed that day. Afterwards it did not start warming up until early April. I had to wait this long in order for their to be ideal conditions for the plants to grow. I also think that the reason why my garlic was able to sprout is because garlic plants are used to growing in damp climates underground. The garlic may have been able to grow while the other did not because the conditions were better suited to it.  Another factor that could have contributed to the plants not growing to their best ability may have been my choice in soil. At my house we have a compost pile in our backyard, and I thought that in the spirit of the recycle project I should use the dirt from back there. My mother told me we had leftover potting soil in our garage I could use, however I wanted to use the compost as a little extra in my project. This caused complications for the soil would quickly dry up. Not wanting to alter my data I watered my plants regularly so that the dirt would not be too dry. Whether or not the compost soil affected the data or not is unknown, but it is a possibility.    I do wish that my other plants would have sprouted but I am still proud of my accomplishment. I was able to take a food scrap and grow a healthy plant that I plan on taking care of after the experiment.     The other 4 plants that did not grow I plan on putting in my compost pile in my backyard so that the plants can continue to decompose and contribute to the Earth yet again. 

Click here to look at some extra/fun stuff that occurred during the experiment!

Time Span - March 18, 2015- April 20, 2015 Total Days Spent - 34 days (from the beginning to the end of the project) Total Weeks - 4 weeks and 6 days  (from the beginning to the end of the project)

Final Product: