Téa Obreht's "The Tiger's Wife"

     Plot twist: I do actually read books published in the past century! In fact, the book I just finished up today came out in 2011. That's only two years ago!

     But in all seriousness, Téa Obreht's novel, "The Tiger's Wife" is absolutely fantastic.

     It is hard to describe the novel's plot because the novel is really several stories woven together into one lovely narrative. On the most basic level it is the story of Natalia, a young doctor, telling the story of her grandfather. But this explanation is too basic to do the novel any justice.

     In regards to time frame the novel jumps from the present to the past back to the present and then even farther into the past...basically it's all over the place. Confusing as this sounds, the book was very easy to follow along with. I think one reason why the story is so coherent, despite it's jumps in time and story, is that the entire book is told in first person from Natalia's point of view. Natalia is even our narrator when she tells the reader of the Tiger's Wife, even though the story took place before Natalia was born. That Natalia is consistently in the story adds to the sense of unity between the different plotlines. She is the thread that weaves all the pieces together.

     Part of the reason for the varying plots, and also one of the reasons that I love this novel, is that Obreht fleshes out nearly every character. And by flesh out, I mean tell you what the character was like when he or she was a kid and thus, the reader understands every character's motives. Because of this, the reader finds him or herself liking all the characters at one point or another, even the ones that are seemingly unlikeable.

     Another reason why I found this book so compelling is the lovely struggle between reality and folklore. The novel takes place in a fictional unspecified Balkan country. Many of the characters are extremely superstitious whereas others, like Natalia's grandfather, value science and logic over old wives' tales. This struggle adds a fantasy-like facet to the novel, and the reader is never quite sure what is real and what is myth. I think another reason why this novel is told from first person point of view is that it reinforces the Balkan tradition of storytelling, and how myth and reality are nearly inseparable to the point that the reader is never sure of how things actually happened. Thus, the novel appeals to the reader's imagination without coming across as unbelievable, and the ambiguity prompts interesting questions.

     I would try to better explain the plot of this book, but it's the type of novel that is most magical when you know very little going in, and simply are able to watch the plot unfold.

     All in all, I would highly, highly recommend this book. It takes a chapter or two to really get into it, but reading the entire book is most definitely worth your time. Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife is like a carefully woven quilt, where, if you look closely, the stitches may look incongruous and haphazard, but when you step back, the big picture is beautiful.

    

The Great Shakespearean Challenge Day 158

      138 out of 1194 pages read

     King Richard III picks up where King Henry VI Part Three leaves off. King Edward IV, who ascends the throne at the end of Henry VI, is now older, very ill, and trying to maintain peace between two disputing factions of his court. Little does he know, his brother Richard is plotting to take the throne.

     Richard III was a nice change of pace after three plays of Henry VI. Whereas Henry VI is a weak king, overwhelmed by power, naïve, and easily pushed around, Richard is a man completely possessed by his desire for power. He is willing to do anything to become king including (but not limited to) killing his brother, killing his two young nephews, killing his wife...well, killing just about everyone. A sharp contrast to the pious Henry VI, who tries to defeat his adversaries with words rather than violence.

     And, while being a pushover is not an effective way to rule a kingdom, neither is killing the majority of your family. Richard becomes consumed by his greed for power and his insecurity that everyone is conspiring against him (which, by the end of the play, everyone is pretty much fed up with the guy). For awhile things start looking good for Richard and the reader thinks that maybe he will be able to hold onto the throne, however, his sins quite literally come back to haunt him when, the night before the end battle that will decide if Richard or the Earl of Richmond will become king, Richard is visited by the ghosts of those he killed. The ghosts curse him and, the next morning, King Richard is defeated.
    


This is White Tower, which is where
Edward V and Richard were supposedly
murdered. It is now nicknamed (no doubt
for the benefit of tourists) "Bloody Tower."

     King Richard III was, obviously, an actual English king, but how accurate is this play as a historical record? Was Richard really as evil and greedy as Shakespeare portrays him? The mystery that baffles historians the most is the murder of Edward IV's young sons, Edward V and Richard. According to the play, Richard III ordered Sir James Tyrrel to murder Edward and Richard. Richard III had already started rumors of Edward V's illegitimacy, as well as the illegitimacy of Edward IV, but, if you want to be king, killing the heir to the throne is much more effective than spreading rumors about him. With Edward V and his brother out of the way, Richard III was the next logical heir.

     But was Richard III really that desperate to become king? Desperate enough to kill his two young nephews and numerous other family members? Or was Richard III simply painted a villain by the Earl of Richmond, who would defeat Richard III and ascend the throne as King Henry VII? Richard III certainly was not the only man to have motive to kill the two young princes. Here is an interesting article for anyone wanting more information on the real-life mystery.

      If we're being honest, historians will probably never figure out who actually killed Edward V and Richard. Regardless, Shakespeare's Richard III still represents a powerful example of literature's effect on history. If in fact Richard III was innocent, the play represents how easy it was for the ruling monarch to bend history. After all, Elizabeth I was queen when Shakespeare was writing plays, and, being the granddaughter of Henry VII, she would not have appreciated anyone praising her grandfather's enemy. Thus, it makes sense that Shakespeare portrays Richard III as a nearly compassionless villain, rather than a misunderstood tragic hero (Richard III does kind of start to feel bad after he is cursed by the ghosts of those he killed, but during the end battle, he still fights ruthlessly for his right to be king, thus the recognition of his sins does not seem to be fully realized). Had Shakespeare said good things about Richard III, we would probably study Shakespeare as "that writer guy who made the queen angry and ended up with his head on a pike" and we would be deprived of Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, etc., and we would live a very sad, very meaningless existence.

      But I digress.

     Point is, King Richard III gives us an interesting look into the life of 16th and 17th century royalty. Whether Richard III himself was that bloody or not is inconsequential because someone killed those two princes, someone was desperate enough for power to kill two young boys. So perhaps we should look at Richard III the character not as Richard III the actual king, but rather, as an archetype for power-hungry nobles, a symbol for the underlying greed and deceit in every monarch's court. After all, it's not like Richard III was the only guy willing to kill family members for the throne. Stuff like this happened way before his time, and will continue to happen with Henry VII's descendants. Just wait until we get to King Henry VIII.

     Well, after four plays of bloody English history, I will now move onto a bloody Roman tragedy as I dive into Titus Andronicus. Yay! Or as the Romans say--Euge!

Charlotte Bronte's "Villette"

     You may have guessed this already, but Charlotte Bronte is one of my favorite authors. Possibly my favorite author ever, but don't hold me to that. I don't like picking favorites.

     Just a few days ago, I finished Villette, which is Bronte's last and most autobiographical novel. And, of course, while reading Villette, I couldn't help but to make comparisons to Jane Eyre.

     In many ways, Jane Eyre and Villette are very similar. Both are about young women who are more or less on their own and who find themselves questioning their roles in society. Both Jane and Lucy Snowe (Villette's protagonist) achieve independence through education. Jane becomes a governess; Lucy becomes a teacher and ultimately ***SPOILER ALERT*** Lucy opens a school of her own. Both protagonists fall in love with Byronic men whose mysterious pasts make it difficult for our protagonists to marry them.

     Jane and Lucy are not completely similar, however. Lucy I think is a more (for lack of better word) controlled version of Jane. What I mean is that both young women are passionate, but Lucy is much better at controlling her emotions. In fact she is so good at controlling her emotions that every character has a different opinion of her. Graham, Paulina, Paulina's father, and Mrs. Bretton think Lucy is solemn and perhaps a little dull, as well as a loyal and kind friend. Ginerva Fanshawe thinks Lucy to be grumpy and crotchety. And the eccentric M. Paul Emanuel's first impression of Lucy is that she is strange, passionate, and a little vain. For the most part, Lucy is very reserved, but when sufficiently provoked, she erupts into a fury of passion.

     Jane Eyre, on the other hand, is less reserved. This is especially true at the beginning of the novel when Jane is a young girl not afraid to state her opinions and to talk back if she feels she has been wronged. As Jane grows older, she does better control her passions, but there is still a poignant difference between Jane and Lucy's attitudes. And I think that main difference is that Jane is more confident than Lucy.

     Of course, one of the main themes of Jane Eyre is Jane's uncertainty of her position in society. She is a woman in a patriarchal society; she is a governess, her place is above that of a servant, but she is scorned by Mr. Rochester's equals; and she struggles to balance her feelings for Mr. Rochester and her duty to God. Yet despite this, throughout the book Jane seems to know who Jane is. Her personality is consistent and Jane always stays true to herself which is why, in the end, she able to find that balance between passion and duty. Jane Eyre may not know where she belongs in society, she may feel alienated and out-of-place, but she is certain of herself.

     Unlike Jane, I think Lucy Snowe is uncertain of herself. She has recently lost her family and finds herself in a country that speaks a language which she hardly knows. A Protestant in a country of Catholics, Lucy finds herself questioning her religion in a very different way than Jane Eyre. Jane is in a situation where she needs to decide whether she is willing to sacrifice her values and religious duties so that she can be with Rochester. But she never wavers in her actual religious beliefs. Lucy, however, finds herself comparing and contrasting Protestantism and Catholicism. She feels alienated because her religious beliefs, and she questions which religion is superior. For the most part, Lucy is fairly stalwart in her preference of Protestantism, however, at one point in the novel she does seek comfort in a Catholic church and pours her heart out in a confessional.

     But more importantly, there is the differences in how all the other characters view Lucy. Villette is told in first person from Lucy's point of view, but she is fairly reserved in the thoughts she divulges to the reader. Thus we, the readers, as we try to discover Lucy's personality by reading between the lines, find great interest in what the other characters think of her. And while Lucy does not necessarily change herself for different people, the reader does see that different sides of Lucy come out when she is dealing with different people. And, as we read between the lines, we see that because Lucy is so out-of-place in this new country, because different people bring out different sides of her, both the reader and the Lucy are aware of a certain degree of insecurity in the narrator.

     Lucy Snowe is a young woman who is unsure of who she is; feelings which no doubt stem from her lack of family (I think it is very notable, and not at all an accident, that the reader knows absolutely nothing about Lucy's family and of their fate), from her alienation as a foreigner, and from the differing opinions her friends hold of her. She appears, to the reader, rootless.

     The rootlessness and uncertainty of Lucy Snowe's character should be no surprise to any reader who knows a little bit about Charlotte Bronte's life. At the time Villette was written, Bronte had lost all of her siblings to tuberculosis and was questioning her place in society as she found herself in the literary spotlight and facing the harsh criticisms of Jane Eyre and Shirley. The back of my copy of Villette dubs the novel, "Charlotte Bronte's last and most autobiographical novel," an epithet which I find very believable, having read The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell.

     Lucy Snowe's experiences in the fictional country of  Lambassecour are based off of Charlotte and her sister Emily's experiences at a girl's school in Brussels. Charlotte and Emily had attended a school in Brussels, and to help pay their tuition, they taught a music class. Charlotte allegedly developed feelings for the school's headmaster, M. Heger, a pious Catholic Frenchman with a wife. Thus, we see the inspiration for M. Paul as well as Lucy's battle with unrequited love. Furthermore, because of her awkward position in society as a controversial female writer, Bronte no doubt many a time questioned who she was as she tried to separate the Charlotte Bronte from Currer Bell.

      Oh geez, I was hoping to also compare M. Paul's character to Mr. Rochester as well as go into more detail about the autobiographical facet of the novel but this post is already super long. I haven't even told you of what I thought of the book overall! I guess this will have to be a multi-post extravaganza. So stay tuned for more on Villette! And for those of you following my Great Shakespearean Challenge, look forward to a post on Richard III, coming soon!

The Great Shakespearean Challenge Day 140

 

     103 out of 1194 pages read

     Last week I was privileged enough to go to London, England for a week with my family. Needless to say, it was pretty much one of the best trips ever. And part of what made the trip so amazing was that I got to visit to this place:

 

     If you are unable to identify the above building, then we cannot be friends.

     Just kidding.

 

     Except not really.

 

     For those of you who have just been demoted to acquaintance status, you are looking at a photo of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. No, unfortunately it is not Shakespeare's original Globe Theater, but, the theater is as close and as accurate to the original Globe as any theater ever will be. It's an incredible building.

 

    And as if seeing the theater itself wasn't amazing enough, I was also able to talk my parents into getting the three of us tickets to see A Midsummer Night's Dream.

     We waited until the last minute to get our tickets (my mom was worried about the weather), so we had a limited choice in seats but luckily we were able to get three seats next to each other. It was either that or standing room only, which my old and feeble parents  (just kidding, love you Mom and Dad) refused to do. As it was, they weren't completely sold on the idea on seeing a play at the Globe, so standing for three hours while watching said play was completely out of the question.

    The Globe is an open theater, which is why my mom was so concerned about the rain. However, what we did not know, and what was a pleasant surprise, is that the bench seats (literally, the seats are wooden benches) are, in fact, covered. As for the 700 or so people in the standing area, they are completely exposed to the elements. The stage, of course, is covered by an overhang.

     Even though it was a little chilly on the day we went, everyone is sitting so close together that the seats were actually very cozy. That, and the theater is well-insulated from the wind. Also, as I mentioned before, the seats are literally backless wooden benches. But before entering the theater, there is a little kiosk where pampered ticketholders can rent blankets, seat cushions, and seat backs. My parents and I rented seat cushions (they were one pound a piece) and, needless to say, doing so was a very good investment of three pounds.

     The show started at 2:00 but they started letting people in at 1:30. At about fifteen minutes or so before the show started, a small group of musicians in 16th century garb came onto the stage and played some tunes on Shakespearean-era instruments. Not only was this entertainment for the audience, but it also created a Shakespearean ambience. Aside from the fact that everyone around us was wearing brightly colored rain slickers and most were on their phones, it was easy to believe we were actually in Elizabethan England, waiting to watch A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Shakespeare himself.

    The show itself was absolutely fabulous. The actors were incredible and the show was well choreographed. As often is done in productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the actors who played Oberon and Titania were the same actors who played Theseus and Hippolyta. This is, of course, done to reinforce the parallels between these two couples as well as to reinforce parallels between the dreamy fairy world and the normal human world.

    Bottom's little troupe of misfit actors tap-danced their way on and off the stage in clog-like shoes, a wonderfully humorous addition that reinforced their silly dialogue. There was an especially funny moment in the second half of the play where Bottom and Peter Quince have a little dance-off (clog-off?). The clogs were especially ingenious because you could always hear Bottom and his friends before they came onto the stage. This was especially clever for the scenes when they went through the crowd in the standing section to get onto the stage.

     Seeing this play was a reminder that plays are, in truth, not meant to be read. They're meant to be seen. To be honest, I never realized just how funny A Midsummer Night's Dream is until I saw that play. I read the play in my sophomore English class. We read the play out loud as a class and watched the movie version of it, but not even the movie conveyed Shakespeare's wit half as well as the play. Obviously, when reading the play, you understand the humor, but you don't fully appreciate it. As for the movie, whoever directed the film didn't fully see the humor either because the actors all read their lines with a seriousness fitting for Romeo and Juliet.

     In short, seeing this play taught me that Shakespeare's plays cannot be fully appreciated unless they're performed in front of a live audience. It's the way the actors interact with the audience and the random things that are going on in the background of the stage that truly bring to life Shakespeare's brilliance.

     The clogs are, of course, a perfect example of the actors interacting with the audience and bringing to life Shakespeare's genius. It was the little things that brought everything together. Like when Demetrius, after Puck doused him in love potion, did a backflip when he saw Helena. Or when Oberon was climbing up the columns and swinging from ropes while the young lovers were arguing and chasing each other through the woods. So many little things that cannot even be explained or appreciated in stage directions made this production hilariously entertaining. Even my parents, who were unsure about seeing the play, were laughing along with me.

     The production was (dare I say it?) perfect. Even with the occasional airplane flying over the theater, the phone that went off, and the sudden downpour of rain three-fourths of the way through the play.

   It was amazing.

    

*Blogger is being a buttface right now (please excuse my language) and is not letting me make my pictures smaller. Sooo I did want to put up more pictures but Blogger isn't really letting me. Hopefully I'll be able to add them up later.

The Great Gatsby, the Movie

     Okay, one more post about film adaptions of books, and then I promise I'll resume blogging about actual books.

     The Great Gatsby hit theaters with a whirlwind of pomp and fancy advertisements. With vibrant trailers and a star-studded cast, the movie was sold as an exciting summer blockbuster, and not so much as a film adaption of an American classic.

     I remember watching TV with my mom when an ad for The Great Gatsby came on. This was before the movie was in theaters, and I commented that I wanted to see it when it came out.

     "It looks very...stylish," my mom said, saying the last word with a tone of harsh skepticism.

     And she was right. The movie was very stylish. The graphics were fantastic, the party scenes were glittery and colorful, and the wardrobe was amazing. And really, whats more stylish than Leonardo DiCaprio in a dapper 1920s style suit?

     But unlike Anna Karenina, in which the stylishness and beauty of the film took away from the integrity of the story, I think the stylishness and pomp surrounding The Great Gatsby actually, in an almost ironic way, reinforces some of the themes of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel.

     I mean really, if you think about it, Gatsby would love this movie. Everything about Gatsby is stylish. His extravagant parties, his mansion, his canary yellow car. The movie's star-studded cast, the visual effects, the fact that the movie can be seen in 3-D, and the ridiculous amount of advertising, would all be right up Gatsby's alley. So whether this was purposeful or not, the movie itself seems to symbolize everything Fitzgerald was trying to say about the 1920s, the superficiality, the flashiness, the preoccupation with everything new and colorful and stylish.

     So overall, I thought this movie was very successful. The cast was absolutely wonderful, Daisy's dresses were to die for, the plot moved at a decent speed, and the visuals were stunning (please note, however, that I did not see Gatsby in 3-D).

     But, as much as I liked the movie, it still was not perfect.

    The first issue I had was the music.

     WHAT WAS UP WITH ALL THE RAPPING?

     Okay, okay. I understand. They needed party music, right? They needed something edgy, music that would capture the corruption and flashiness of the 1920s. And sure, rapping is perfect for that, right? But it's completely unrealistic!

     If we traveled back in time to the 1920s and asked someone what he thought of "rap music," he  would furrow his brow and say, "Wrap music? How do you wrap music around things?"

     It didn't exist back then!

     What's wrong with jazzy flapper music?  The lyrics of the rap songs were very fitting for the movie, but it just seemed so incongruous with what was taking place on the screen. There was a blaring disconnect between the music and the movie itself that was at times very distracting.

     But enough about the music.

     Overall, I thought the actors did a wonderful job portraying their characters. However, I did feel that Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker's characters were not quite rounded out enough. As my friend pointed out, Tom wasn't unlikeable enough. In the book, he was painted as a slightly cruel misogynist, but that did not come across very well in the movie. The scene where he slaps Myrtle, for instance, was too dramatized. It made it seem as if that act of violence was out of character for Tom, rather than something that happened frequently.

     As for Jordan, there was an important scene in the front half of the novel where Nick and Jordan were talking while out driving, and Jordan is characterized as being as reckless and superficial as Daisy and Tom eventually prove to be. In the grand scheme of things, it isn't that most important moment in the book, but it did give an important insight into Jordan's character. This scene was missing from the movie, and I think that because it was missing, Jordan's character was not fully fleshed out, and her purpose in the movie seems somewhat irrelevant other than as a plot device. Her relationship with Nick is hardly even addressed.

    For the most part, though, I think The Great Gatsby is a very good adaption of the novel and definitely worth seeing. I can say with nearly one hundred percent certainty that Jay Gatsby himself would approve.