Hadiyah's Blog

In  The Sun Also Rises , Jake Barnes isn’t really the most loveable character because he seems to be racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic. Also, his views on masculinity are kind of annoying. Aside from all of this, there are a few times where we can relate to him.  “It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.” (42) Jake says that it is easy for him to act all manly during the day when he’s around others. Later at night when he is all alone, he lets himself go. You can see this when he’s around his friends he acts all superior. He thinks he’s better than Cohn and he seems to decide who is good enough to hang around with Brett. But later when he’s home alone, he starts thinking about Brett and starts to cry. Around others, he tries to act as if nothing really bothers him but alone he lets himself be sad.  He puts up a front with others. He has an act to show to the world. Doesn’t everybody? We act dif...

In  Mrs. Dalloway , Clarissa is judged by both Richard and Peter for her parties. They see it as childish or that she’s a snob. We might want to agree with them too, because why would someone like throwing parties? They seem to be trivial, just an event without real meaning. Does she want to appeal to everyone and show that she can be the “perfect hostess” or does she want to be the center of attention? What’s the big fuss about parties? Clarissa says that she throws these parties as an offering. She wants to be able to bring people together. She says that parties are her gift because she doesn’t do anything else important. She just simply likes life. I think that she just wants to make people happy. She enjoys life and she wants others to as well. She uses her parties to accomplish that.  I think this shows how even seemingly trivial things can make someone feel better, like being invited to a party and being able to socialize. Peter and Richard are wrong for thinkin...

In the Mezzanine, the passage Howie reads from his Penguin classic describes life as trivial or ephemeral. The word ephemeral in French is “éphémère”. In the book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), this word is used to describe flowers. The Little Prince visits the planet of a geographer. The geographer asks the Little Prince to describe his planet for his geography book. When the Little Prince describes his home, he mentions his rose. The geographer says that he doesn’t write about flowers because they are ephemeral. The Little Prince asks what this means, and the geography says it means that his flower is won’t last forever, that his flower is going to disappear. This upsets the Little Prince because he realizes that his flower is going to disappear, and he left her all alone. Later on, he is on Earth and comes upon a garden of roses. He realizes that his rose isn't unique. This makes him sad because he thought his rose was important, but because she’s just an ordinary rose, t...