Question 1: The Sun Also Rises
Brett, Robert, and Jake are the three main characters in the novel, “The Sun Also Arises” who experience some form of alienation. However, each of these characters is dealing with a different form of alienation which is a central theme in Ernest’s novel. For instance, Jake seems to undergo a powerlessness since he is portrayed not to have control over the cultural estrangement, as well as, personal problems (Rani, 2014). Though Brett is also powerless, she is experiencing social isolation while Robert seems to be battling with meaninglessness, social isolation, and normlessness. Though, Gertrude Stein referred to these people as a “lost generation” it is not the true picture that Ernest creates in the novel because these characters are psychologically and physically wounded due to the effects of war.
Each of these characters takes a different though desperate remedies to encounter their alienation experiences. Jakes is impotent which and sexually not fit and this pushes him away from Brett despite the fact he loves her (Rani, 2014). However, he tries to seek comfort from Brett’s body that he is possessive with – it consoles and comforts him. Also, he tries to move to other countries to escape the isolation which does not work. In the same time, Brett is not in a position to achieve all her sexual desires from Jake and this sends her to heightened sexual alienation. To encounter this social force, she welcomes several men in her sexual life to realize her satisfaction. She likes Jakes but she is in a love affair with Mike and Cohn – despite the death of her husband (Rani, 2014). Through drinking, promiscuity, and sexual activity makes her overcome the sense of alienation.
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Robert also tries to overcome alienation through seeking pleasure from romantic books and romantic places. He also tries to go to different countries to have the isolation feeling fade but all is in vain. The novel depicts these characters to have no self-confidence and courage to live with their status. In fact, they are after seeking pleasure to overcome their stressful lives (Rani, 2014). However, their approaches in life is not workable and this tells that courage and self-confidence are essential elements that make and individuals be satisfied with their selves.
Question 2: In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason
"In Country,” a novel by Bobbie Ann Mason explores the tension between the past and the present, childhood and adulthood and country and city. Mason examines the theme of hanging to the pats and racing towards the future in terms of three symbols; the cats that populate the farmhouse, the monopoly game and the half crashed rabbit in the road (Mason, 2005). Through the use of these symbols Mason brings human emotions to connect the past and the future and how they could easily develop into impersonal socio-economic reflections about the new South.
In this novel, Mason suggests that when transiting from the past to the future, we make the past logical in relation to the present conditions. When transiting from the past to the present, there is nothing one can hold, not even their past memories. Clinging on to the memories of the past permanently destroys it and will never be able to recover (Mason, 2005). This is because when while trying to remember them you are reinterpreting them and that creates nostalgia because the past becomes unseizable and yet extremely necessary. Running to the future and avoiding the past creates a state of agony and inability to move forward.
In the end, the disturbing image of the dead cat with its legs frantically working but still stuck in one place represent our frantic efforts to live in the present and move to the future and forget the past. The past and the present are in a constant dialogue as it is not possible to disengage them entirely from each other. The acceptance of the semantic complexity of the present entails a constant contemplation on memory and history (Mason, 2005). Events and experiences in the present revokes sensory events in the past and the two separate times are joined. This liberates the individual consciousness from, and one can live free of its limitations; through the body and our senses, the past and the present fuse. Therefore, to avoid the trap of history, you have to knowingly reenact it, embrace the past and then reconstruct it.
Question 3: The Girls in My Town
Angela Morales ’s The Girls in My Town is a bibliographical essay that creates an unforgettable portrait of a family in Los Angeles. The author paints a number of vivid scenes such as her parent's appliance store, an elementary school where girls wanted to wash dishes like the boys, the room in which her grandmother lied dying and the community college where she teaches remedial English to an ex-con with a miserable past (Morales, 2012). All these portraits and the characterization of the larger Los Angeles create a sense of place that brightens and colors the collection. They simplify the family and the changes that have occurred over generations, as the authors journey from a daughter to a mother and then telling the stories of her grandparents. Morales central theme centers on how our lives are predetermined by circumstances that are far beyond our control. Certain events have happened in our childhood that we find difficult to forget. People remember what they remember because these experiences have had significant impacts in shaping our lives. For instance, Morales remembers the unpleasantries she has undergone in her life like surviving her parents' loud and sometimes violent feuding, but these memories give a better meaning and understanding of her past (Morales, 2012). These experiences shaped her from a child to a woman and then to a writer.
It is very difficult to escape the influence of past events of our early lives or forgetting about them even the painful ones. There are things that have happened in the past that we can never forget as they have contributed in making us who we are. When people remember their past, it helps them better understand it better and make a better person out of the past chaos (Morales, 2012). Remembering the past events is like dragging the memories out of a burning house, cleaned off the ashes, dressing them up in their best outfit, and pushing them back out into the world.
References
Mason, B. A. (2005). In Country. 1985. NY: Harper Perennial .
Morales, A. (2012). The Girls in My Town. Southwest Review , 97 (2), 167-183.
Rani, R. (2014). Sense of Alienation in Ernest Hemingway’s the Sun Also Rises. International Journal of Research , 1 (5), 964-971.
