For example on page 351 he says "skins of wallaby & possum& quoll hung on the walls at unusual angles, as if they might momentarily take back their original form as animals & leap down." then he goes on more about these skins and how mesmerizing they were for the next two paragraphs. then does some philisiphizing about how life is circular. This seems confusing because the book is supposed to be talking about how he's starving and dying. Basically things just sort of happen in life and there doesn't have to be any lead up to it, because that's not how life is. And things happen while other things are happening and then sometimes things repeat themselves I think that's what makes life a circle.
Friday, December 3, 2010
How Do You Read This
This piece of literary work has truely been a struggle for me from the beginning. At first I was comprehending close to nothing. I would and read and not know what to put on my quiz. Now I can began to interpret the book and even enjoy it and before I thought about Kelly's question on Wednesday I did'nt have any idea how I got better at understanding this book. After reflecting on how I did, I think it really correlates with what josh was talking about last class. I think you can not read this as prose and you must read it more as poetry some what. The book is not linear, meaning you should'nt try to connect/ read page to page or even paragraph to paragraph, you have to read each thing he says in the context within its self.
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agreed! at a certain point, the novel was so confusing and i was growing increasing frustrated waiting for something to occur that would tie evertything together but i dont think it ever really happened. then i just stopped trying and just took things at face value. i think that Flanagan was intending the novel to mirror life. the fact that people want there to be a direct cause and effect (linear) relationship kept arising and causing a great deal of frustration, but i think the author was making a point to show that in real life theres not a reason for everything that happens, and sometimes things happen without a logical reason or explanation. taking that view somehow made the book a little easier to digest.
ReplyDeleteI don't really think you have to read it definitively as either prose or poetry; rather, I think when reading this book we have to just keep an open mind ot interpret it as best we can. Even making correlations from this book to our own lives. This book is not linear, but then again, neither is life in general. We are forever going through cycles and times that tend to repeat. Therefore, perhaps if we just look at it as someone's journal of their lives but also random and yet meaningful musings, then we might be better able to understand the context of the book.
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