All posts by YT

Film as escapism

“Some lights went out and the show started–a Tamil film with all known gods in it. He soon lost himself in the politics and struggles of gods and goddesses; he sat rapt in the vision of a heavenly world which some film director had chosen to present. This felicity of forgetfulness lasted but half an hour. Soon the heroine of the story sat on a low branch of a tree in paradise and wouldn’t move out of the place. This portion tired Iswaran and now there returned all the old pains and gloom. ‘Oh, lady,’ Iswaran appealed, ‘don’t add to my troubles, please move on.'”

Narayan, R.K. Malgudi Days. New York: Penguin, 2006. 55.

Moments of concentrated empathy






Hurston and Janey’s sense of humor




Buying sweets



Faulkner and “saying without words”



How much of this paragraph was actually spoken out loud?



Consciousness in Mrs. Dalloway




Krebs’ post-war loneliness


Hemingway, Ernest. “Soldier’s Home.” In Our Time. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 2003. 69-70. Print.

I can’t relate to Krebs’ war experiences, but I feel a lot of sadness for Krebs because he can’t find anyone who understands his experience.

Similar narrative technique as Joyce?


Sayers, Dorothy. Whose Body? 1923. Reprint, New York: Dover, 2009. 29.

Most of the novel is driven by characters’ dialogue and readers discover details of the case at the same time as Peter. When an omniscient narrator does step in, the tone seems ironic and humorous. This resembles the narrator in Joyce’s Portrait because we also don’t know if the narrator agrees with Stephen or is gently mocking him. This passage resembles Lord Peter’s style of speech in that Peter would also resort to the most drastic descriptions, such as describing his mother’s unknowing aid as the “greatest assistance.” He might also sugarcoat negative aspects of people and refer to his mother’s coldness towards his career as maintaining a “polite fiction of its non-existence.” However, the narrator maintains some distance by referring to Peter’s mother as The Duchess. We know it is not free indirect discourse as Peter refers to his mother as “Mummy.” In this way, the narration technique resembles Joyce’s because the narrators adopt the voice of their characters but maintain a humorous and critical distance.

Child-like wanderings of Jeff and Melanctha

“They were very happy all that day in their wandering. They had taken things along to eat together. They sat in the bright fields and they were happy; they wandered in the woods and they were happy. Jeff always in this way loved to wander. Jeff always loved to watch everything as it was growing, and he loved all the colors in the trees and on the ground, and the little, new, bright colored bugs he found in the moist ground and in the grass he loved to lie on and in which he was always so busy searching.”


Could Stein’s roundabout way of writing scenes be also a way of composing images like paintings?

On Marlow’s mistress

“She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her necklace bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress.”

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. “Heart of Darkness”, 168. Oxford: Oxford NY, 2002.

Even though Kurtz clearly drapes her in fine jewels and wealth, his mistress still embodies the wildness and savagery of nature.