The Circle of Life

I know we're supposed to focus on a narrow scope/a specific aspect of the book in these blog posts, but I wanted to comment on the novel as a whole, in light of yesterday's discussion. I’ve been thinking a lot about what Kelly asked us in class yesterday, about how we should go about reading this book, and about Abby’s answer to that question (what we have to just let the book take us on the ride, and not question too much of how or why or what is happening). I think that we should read this book just like we watch a movie (or at least, how I watch a movie). Somebody brought up Shutter Island last class as well; I think this is a perfect example. To some extent, it’s exciting to try to pick apart the details and attempt to put them together to create some sort of unexpected, all-encompassing conclusion. However, if one focuses too much attention on trying to make sense of everything, he loses the value that comes with simply allowing oneself to be entertained and to be challenged emotionally (not merely logically). Sometimes all you can do is sit back and let the stimuli wash over you, and enjoy them. While watching Shutter Island, half-way through I was saying to myself, “I have no idea what’s going on!” But it made the experience almost liberating in a way—accepting that not everything needs to work out, not all questions are going to be explicitly answered, so we must find an answer that works best for us (“once inside you just have to make the rest up as well as you can” (46)). He directly says that his narrator is inaccurate and purposefully confuses and distorts the plot. But that doesn’t detract from the novel’s worth. “What follows may or may not be my true story: either way it is of no great importance” (44). By doing so, he implies that there is something deeper that the reader is to find value in—for, I would think, nobody would write a novel without the purpose to relaying something meaningful, valuable, revealing, or truthful (and I don’t think that Flanagan intended for his book to be read only by students who would be forced to finish it in fear of receiving a poor grade).
I think it is important for us to be having the discussions we’ve been having about the novel, and it has definitely helped me to put things in perspective and to discover certain themes of the novel, nuances I didn’t pick up on, interpretations I hadn’t thought of, etc. But I think it’s a shame that so many are so frustrated by the lack of clear-cut or holistic answers or by the unreliability of the author that they have given up on finding any value in the novel. I haven’t finished the book yet, but I think that, in the end, there will be many unfilled gaps in the story—but we shouldn’t be left disappointed. The plot, the characters, the point of view, are, like life, circular and confusing and frustrating and unable to be fully grasped or shaped to fit a neat mold or model or system. But, like Abby said, that’s the beauty of it. Sure, I think the narrator is insane; and I think much of what he is telling us is simply a figment of his imagination. By allowing ourselves to be caught up in the madness, we can still find truth (33)—in the pain felt by unrequited love or and lost childhood, or in the hope a hero can bring, or in the pleasure of art and creation. “Stories as written are progressive, sentence must build upon sentence as brick upon brick, yet the beauty of this life in its endless mystery is circular” (352).