Wednesday, November 10, 2010
"Richard flanagan...the author of confusion"
through class discussion, reading the novel, and blogposts, there seems to be one commonality between them all, that being this extreme sense of confusion. im not sure if the author intended to create this confusion in the beginning in order to serve a later purpose in the novel, but it is clear from class discussion that there is a ton of unanswered questions at this point, which the author probably assumed would arise due to the fact that he addesses it within the text. as pointed out in class, on pg. 59 the author states that the single most persistent question at this point is "why?" he states that it is the most "stupid, pointless, and destructive of questions". this in itself lets me know that he anticipated the reader questioning the purpose of the story, yet we have read over 100 pages and still are just as confused now as we were when we first started reading the novel. Also when you throw the fish into the mix things just get even more confusing as people tried to speeculate what role they play in the novel and what or who they are representative of. As someone pointed out in class on monday, this novel seems to be constructed in layers, and with each layer comes another level of confusion ( in my opinion). im hoping that by the end everything will have neen figured out and make perfect sense, but at this point it definitely doesnt.
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ReplyDeleteWhat's up Robert,
ReplyDeleteThey say that ignorance is bliss, I therefore must be truly ignorant b/c I don't feel confused at all. First off I don't try to connect Hammit's story and Gould's story together. I keep Hammit's story on the back-burner and if it comes into play later on, that's great if not, I'm not really concerned about it. I'm reading Gould's story as if it were a prisoner's memoirs (first draft, of course). I don't see the confusion in the story. Yes he jumps around his life story alot, but I think he does that because that's the way he thinks. actions and reactions, causes and effects. The class says the narrator is confusing, I think it's because the narrator is confused. He contradicts himself, but don't we all? Maybe what he intended the book to be changed as he wrote it and reminisced on the true emotion of his life. Maybe he didn't feel like erasing everything and starting over. His resources were scarce. I think this is a book about a man who had a tragic childhood, became a semi artist, due to bad habits and societal customs was imprisoned, was forced to draw fish and in that process became infatuated with fish-art-interpretation etc, and used that to tell of the horror and misfortune that befell upon the prisoners of Australia, who were all on the brink of insanity. I could be wrong but I don't mind it, I like the book I think its interesting. If this book is painful to read for most of the class then it's poetic that they suffer as did William B. Gould. Muawahahahahhahhah hahahahha.
Kind regards,
Tomas Suarez