#3)
Even though I have already talked about Patrick a lot, I think it is worth it to mention him again.
Patrick definitely has a tragic flaw that is an issue to his downfall. Evidently, Patrick’s tragic flaw is his incapability of grabbling with his grief. It seems Patrick cannot handle losses. I hypothesized that Patrick would later on get used to so much loss and grief in his life that he would eventually feel indifferent towards it, but as he lives life with more losses, I think it gets harder because of stronger attachment. For example, when Clara left, it was devastating for Patrick; however, Alice Gull came along and helped him eventually escape from his grief for Clara which was hard. Therefore, when Patrick lost Alice, it was even harder because Alice was the one who helped him get rid of his pains. If I were Patrick, it would feel as if there was no one left to help me out of my grief for Alice now.
Patrick’s inability to cope with the grief of Clara caused him to be utterly destroyed as evident from the smell and condition of his room: “the room smells like a clean butcher shop.” His reminiscence of memories with Clara show that he is unable to let Clara go: “Pieces of Clara float around him.” Due to this, maybe Clara left him once again after seeing him when Ambrose almost killed him. Then his inability to cope with Alice’s death led to his firing of the Muskoka Hotel. The burning of his sleeve and his imprisonment symbolizes his disaster. In these portrayals of downfall, Ondaatje uses lots of repetition of emptiness, lost, and blindness. Even in the midst of grief, one must learn to cope with it or search of hope, or otherwise it will lead to disaster.
2008년 8월 29일 금요일
In the Skin of a Lion Question #2
#2)
I identify definitely the most with Patrick Lewis. I feel like I can so understand Patrick and his actions.
Even when Patrick came to Toronto for the first time, I felt like I was in his position. When he felt like it was a new world, I felt like I was looking back at my childhood. His emotions of feeling lost, empty, needing hope and identity was exactly how I felt in Sweden. I was only 7 years old when I first went to Sweden. I knew nothing about this foreign country. No language, no culture, no identity existed inside me. I felt like I wanted everyone to stop talking because I could not understand anything. I was so lost that I wondered as I grew up in Sweden about my identity. The honest expression of how I felt was that I felt like a monkey with black hair, in a zoo. I felt so intimidated by the foreigners and I felt anger and grief at the same time. Just like Patrick had that inner grief that made him lose his identity but also find it, I too showed lots of anger. Even though I did not blow up anything with dynamite, I had the same sort of firing anger resulting from the grief of being so embarrassed and different. In my situation, this difference was between Asians, and Europeans, while for Patrick it was the immigrants (poor) versus the Rich.
I haven’t experienced losses of a “husband,” but I have lost many friendships due to my unstable life. Having moved schools so many times, I always had to make new friends, and become separated from old ones. My grief may not have been as strong as Patrick’s but I feel that it was similar in that both were continuous losses throughout our lives.
I think that pathos definitely is an element of my response to this character. In the novel, the part where Clara leaves Patrick and comes back after Patrick was almost murdered by Ambrose, and when she leaves him again, I felt so much sympathy for Patrick. The fact that he was abandoned twice and Ondaatje’s description of how Patrick was made me feel so bad: “After Clara leaves him, Patrick cleans his room on Queen Street obsessively. Soap crystals fizz in a pail, the mop slices the week’s dust. Then he sits in the only dry corner where he has previously placed cigarettes and smokes the Roxy, dropping ash into the bucket beside him.” This is not the way someone copes with grief. I felt that Patrick was so destroyed due to his grief that there is so much pathos present. Even his violent attempts to blow up the Waterworks to me seemed as a struggle to get rid of his pain and grief. To me even the last scene where he talked on the phone with Clara, I felt the pain, it seemed like her phone call could have caused him to feel grief once more.
I identify definitely the most with Patrick Lewis. I feel like I can so understand Patrick and his actions.
Even when Patrick came to Toronto for the first time, I felt like I was in his position. When he felt like it was a new world, I felt like I was looking back at my childhood. His emotions of feeling lost, empty, needing hope and identity was exactly how I felt in Sweden. I was only 7 years old when I first went to Sweden. I knew nothing about this foreign country. No language, no culture, no identity existed inside me. I felt like I wanted everyone to stop talking because I could not understand anything. I was so lost that I wondered as I grew up in Sweden about my identity. The honest expression of how I felt was that I felt like a monkey with black hair, in a zoo. I felt so intimidated by the foreigners and I felt anger and grief at the same time. Just like Patrick had that inner grief that made him lose his identity but also find it, I too showed lots of anger. Even though I did not blow up anything with dynamite, I had the same sort of firing anger resulting from the grief of being so embarrassed and different. In my situation, this difference was between Asians, and Europeans, while for Patrick it was the immigrants (poor) versus the Rich.
I haven’t experienced losses of a “husband,” but I have lost many friendships due to my unstable life. Having moved schools so many times, I always had to make new friends, and become separated from old ones. My grief may not have been as strong as Patrick’s but I feel that it was similar in that both were continuous losses throughout our lives.
I think that pathos definitely is an element of my response to this character. In the novel, the part where Clara leaves Patrick and comes back after Patrick was almost murdered by Ambrose, and when she leaves him again, I felt so much sympathy for Patrick. The fact that he was abandoned twice and Ondaatje’s description of how Patrick was made me feel so bad: “After Clara leaves him, Patrick cleans his room on Queen Street obsessively. Soap crystals fizz in a pail, the mop slices the week’s dust. Then he sits in the only dry corner where he has previously placed cigarettes and smokes the Roxy, dropping ash into the bucket beside him.” This is not the way someone copes with grief. I felt that Patrick was so destroyed due to his grief that there is so much pathos present. Even his violent attempts to blow up the Waterworks to me seemed as a struggle to get rid of his pain and grief. To me even the last scene where he talked on the phone with Clara, I felt the pain, it seemed like her phone call could have caused him to feel grief once more.
In the Skin of a Lion Question #1
#1)
The passage I found most beautiful in this novel is in the rising action of the novel. This is when Patrick Lewis arrived in the city of Toronto. To me this passage was just beautiful because it was so full of rich imagery. The setting in this passage is the Union Station in Toronto. I think that the descriptions of this setting impacted my emotions. As I was reading this passage, the fact that this train station was described as a “palace, its niches and caverns, an intimate city.” It was described as a palace which made me want to be in this position. The setting being in a train station overall impacted my decision to choose this passage because all the imagery combined with the setting wanted me to escape my reality and travel, or journey to a place so beautiful and peaceful, where I can just sit and reminisce. Even though Patrick is now in the city, he ponders back to the time when he was at the small village of Bellrock; his childhood. Michael Ondaatje uses this setting to evoke our sense of nostalgia. The description does not really portray this nostalgia, but in a way all the detailed description was so personal. “The mosquitoes” and “black underwater color of creek” was just like how I remember my childhood in Sweden. To others this might not have stood out as a passage they liked. However, for me, the details such as putting “the smallest pellet of raspberry onto your tongue and [opening] it delicately with your teeth” was such a minor, but a precious memory. To me, even though this setting is a hot summer on a field, while reading this, I could not feel the sun that strong, but could feel a slight breeze for some reason. This soothing feeling could have come from the diction Ondaatje uses such as “smooth pink marble,” “palace,” and “angels.”
“The tides of movement.” This emphasis on movement, or change was poetically introduced. There was some beautiful personification with his name: “he spoke out his name and it struggled up in a hollow echo and was lost in the high air of Union Station.” This was so pleasing to read as Ondaatje wrote in such a poetic way of hinting at the loss of Patrick’s identity.
The passage I found most beautiful in this novel is in the rising action of the novel. This is when Patrick Lewis arrived in the city of Toronto. To me this passage was just beautiful because it was so full of rich imagery. The setting in this passage is the Union Station in Toronto. I think that the descriptions of this setting impacted my emotions. As I was reading this passage, the fact that this train station was described as a “palace, its niches and caverns, an intimate city.” It was described as a palace which made me want to be in this position. The setting being in a train station overall impacted my decision to choose this passage because all the imagery combined with the setting wanted me to escape my reality and travel, or journey to a place so beautiful and peaceful, where I can just sit and reminisce. Even though Patrick is now in the city, he ponders back to the time when he was at the small village of Bellrock; his childhood. Michael Ondaatje uses this setting to evoke our sense of nostalgia. The description does not really portray this nostalgia, but in a way all the detailed description was so personal. “The mosquitoes” and “black underwater color of creek” was just like how I remember my childhood in Sweden. To others this might not have stood out as a passage they liked. However, for me, the details such as putting “the smallest pellet of raspberry onto your tongue and [opening] it delicately with your teeth” was such a minor, but a precious memory. To me, even though this setting is a hot summer on a field, while reading this, I could not feel the sun that strong, but could feel a slight breeze for some reason. This soothing feeling could have come from the diction Ondaatje uses such as “smooth pink marble,” “palace,” and “angels.”
“The tides of movement.” This emphasis on movement, or change was poetically introduced. There was some beautiful personification with his name: “he spoke out his name and it struggled up in a hollow echo and was lost in the high air of Union Station.” This was so pleasing to read as Ondaatje wrote in such a poetic way of hinting at the loss of Patrick’s identity.
피드 구독하기:
글 (Atom)
