1984

It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same, he perceived, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.

-(Winston Smith) George Orwell, p.85 (1949)

She's Come Undone

This is a special post as I am using one of my all-time favourite book- Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. I sincerely hope you pick it up and read it. You'll be blown away.

Like the whale herself, my memories of Gracewood have become for me a corpse I'm obliged to carry. Sometimes it occupies the passenger's seat in the car during long, quiet drives; sometimes it lies beside me in bed, on nights when I can't sleep, or on nights when I can. The corpse is either benign or dangerous. It has the gift of speech.

"You're a beautiful person, Dolores," Dr. Shaw told me the very first day I sat across from him, locked in my fat and self-hatred.

"Yeah,right, I'm Miss Universe," I snapped back. "I won it in the swimsuit competition."

To The Lighthouse

With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets- what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair- He took her bag.

- (Charles Tansley p.o.v.)Virgina Woolf, p.13(1927)

Hard Times

No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had taken great pity on him years ago,and to her alone he had opened his close heart all this time,on the subject of his miseries; and he knew very well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him. He thought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with pleaure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night; of the lightness then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored honour,self-respect,and tranquility all torn to pieces. He thought of the waste of the best part of this life,of the change it made in his character for the worse every day,of the dreadful nature of his existence,bound hand and foot, to a dead woman,and tormented by a demon in her shape. He thought of Rachael,how young when they were first brought together in these circumstances,how mature now,how soon to grow old. He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry,how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she contentedly pursued her own lone quiet path- for him- and how he had sometimes seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with remorse and despair. He set the picture of her up, beside the infamous image of last night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole earthly course of one so gentle,good,and self-denying, was subjugate to such a wretch as that!
Filled with these thoughts- so filled that he had unwholesome sense of growing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased relation towards the objects among which he passed, of seeing the iris round every misty light turn red- he went home for shelter.

- (Stephen Blackpool in monologue)Charles Dickens, p.72(1854)

Hard Times

He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say,good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by,dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within- or sometimes only maim him and distort him!

- Charles Dickens, 3rd person narrative:omniscient;intrusive. p.7(1854)

Hard Times

"I'll explain to you, then," said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, "why you wouldn't paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality- in fact? Do you?"

"Yes,Sir!" from one half. "No,Sir!" from the other.

"Of course,No," said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. "Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact."

- (Mr. Gradgrind to the pupils in his model school)Charles Dickens,p.5,(1854)

The Man Who Turned Into Himself

"What was that line in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories? 'Once you have eliminated the impossible,then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'..."

- (Conversation between Dr. Michael J. Tickelbakker and Richard A. Hamilton at Chez
Arnaud) David Ambrose, p.166,(1993)

My Sister's Keeper

"What do you want me to say, Julia? I wasn't good enough for you. You deserved better than some freak who might fall down frothing at the mouth any old minute."
Julia goes perfectly still. "You might have let me make up my own mind."
"What difference would it have made? Like you really would have gotten great satisfaction guarding me like Judge does when it happens, wiping after me, living at the end of my life." I shake my head. "You were so incredibly independent. A free spirit. I didn't want to be the one who took that away from you."

"Well, if I'd had the choice, maybe I wouldn't have spent the past fifteen years thinking there was something the matter with me."

"You?" I start to laugh. "Look at you. You're a knockout. You're smarter than I am. You're on a career track and you're family-centred and you probably can even balance your checkbook."

"And I'm lonely, Campbell," Julia adds. "Why do you think I had to learn to act to independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zip code. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PMS. You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that they're not."

I don't know how to respond to that; it's like being told after thirty-five years that the sky, which I've seen as a brilliant blue, is in fact rather green.

"And another thing- this time, you don't get to leave me. I'm going to leave you."

If possible, that only makes me feel worse. I try to pretend it doesn't hurt, but I don't have the energy. "So go."

Julia settles next to me. "I will," she says. "In another fifty or sixty years."

- (Conversation between Julia Romano and Campbell Alexander at the courthouse) Jodi Picoult, p.370 (2004)

My Sister's Keeper

When I first became a parent I used to lie in bed at night and imagine the most horrible succession of maladies; the bite of a jellyfish, the taste of a poisonous berry, the smile of a dangerous stranger, the dive into a shallow pool. There are so many ways a child can be harmed that it seems nearly impossible one person alone could succeed at keeping him safe. As my children got older, the hazards only changed: inhaling glue, playing with matches, small pink pills sold behind the bleachers of the middle school. You can stay up all night and still not count all the ways to lose the people you love.

-(Sara Fitzgerald in monologue) Jodi Picoult, p.226 (2004)

Summer Sisters

"How was the plane trip?" her mother asked.
Caitlin was motioning for her to hurry. She pointed across the room to eerie-looking shadowa dancing across the windows.
"The plane?" Vix asked.
"Yes, the plane," her mother repeated.
Caitlin threw a towel over her head and walked toward Vix, arms outstretched like a zombie. Sweetie started barking, excited by Caitlin's antics. "The place was okay," she told her mother. Already it felt like ages ago. Her first trip on a plane. She wondered if all the firsts in her life would go by so quickly, and be forgotten just as quickly.

-(phone conversation between Victoria 'Vix' Leonard and her mother)Judy Blume, p.23
(1998)

ed: Breezed through this one in 6hours, it had it's moments but the prose is forgettable and there was an abundance of sexualisation on everything. Not great, but alright.

Suicide-The Ultimate Rejection

Suicide in history and literature: social and cultural variations.

But see the Madman rage downright
With furious looks, a ghastly sight.
Naked in chains bound doth he lie,
And roard amain, he knows not why.
Observe him: for as in a glass
Thine angry portraiture it was.
His picture keep still in thy presence:
Twixt him and thee there's no difference.

(Robert Burton 1621, The Anatomy of Melancholy)

"Every man is the greatest enemy unto himself." -Robert Burton

To be, or not to be, that is the question:- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings an arrows of outrageous fortune; Or take up arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them?... To die,- to sleep;- To sleep!- Perchance to dream; ay, there's a rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled of this mortal coil....Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?

(Hamlet III.i)- William Shakespeare

All quotes taken from Colin Pritchard's Suicide- The Ultimate Rejection? A psycho-social study. (1995)

Wuthering Heights

"May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there- not in heaven- not perished- where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer- I repeat it til my tongue stiffens- Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you- haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always- take any form- drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

(rambling monologue of Heathcliff to Ellen Dean) Emily Bronte, p.148 (1847)

Wuthering Heights

"You teach me now how cruel you've been- cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears; they'll blight you- they'll damn you. You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right- answer me- for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you- oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"

(Heathcliff to Catherine Linton) Emily Bronte, p.144 (1847)

Wuthering Heights

"Are you pursued with a devil," he pursued savagely, "to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me? You know you lie to say I have killed you: and Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence! Is it not sufficient for you infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?"

"I'm not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me! Come here and kneel down again! You never harmed me in your life. Nay, if you nurse anger, that will be worse to remember than my harsh words! Won't you come here again? Do!"

(Dialogue between Heathcliff and Catherine Linton) Emily Bronte, p.142 (1847)

Wuthering Heights

"This is nothing," cried she: "I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

(Catherine Earnshaw to Ellen Dean) Emily Bronte, p.80 (1847)

Matrix Warrior: Being The One

For while a humaton's eyes are fixed outward, upon the petty baubles which the matrix has provided as distraction- looking for love, food, money, fame, and above all social acceptance- the warriors' eyes are turned inward, gazing into the abyss of their non-existence.

And yet, paradoxically, with the certainty that all this will be gone in a heartbeat, they allow their eyes to feast upon the features of the world, not hungrily but gratefully, knowing that all of this, this beautiful illusion (so long as they can remain indifferent to it) is the means to their freedom.

-Jake Horsley, p.57 (2003)

note- a humaton refers to the plugged in people of the matrix (the disillusioned, basically), and in other words, you and I.

Wuthering Heights

"You've a nice house, Joseph," I could not refrain from observing, "and pleasant inmates; and I think the concentrated essence of all the madness in the world took up its abode in my brain the day I linked my fate with theirs!..."

-(Isabella Heathcliff to Joseph) Emily Bronte, p.130 (1847)

Wuthering Heights

Now, you shall hear how I have been received in my new home, as I am led to imagine Heights will be. It is to amuse myself that I dwell on such subjects as the lack of external comforts: they never occupy my thoughts, except at the moment when I miss them. I should laugh and dance for joy, if I found their absence was the total of my miseries, and the rest was an unnatural dream!

-(Isabella Heathcliff to Ellen Dean) Emily Bronte, p. 125 (1847)

Wuthering Heights

"Nelly, do you never dream queer dreams?" she said suddenly, after some minutes' reflection.
"Yes, now and then," I answered.
"And so do I. I've dreamt in my life dreams that have strayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one; I'm going to tell it- but take care not to smile at any part of it."

-(Catherine Earnshaw to Ellen Dean) Emily Bronte, p.79 (1847)

Disturbances In The Field

"Dresses don't have all these pockets," I said.
My future looked bleak and sparse.
"No, but you ladies have your pocketbooks. They hold even more."
Pocketbooks were an appendage. Pockets were part of the suit, inseparable.
Well if I couldn't have a suit I would have a man, at least, and I would know what wondrous things were in each of his pockets.

-Lynne Sharon Schwartz, p.23. (1983)