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(This story began here. Previous installment here.)
What's that, you ask? Well yes - I did finish the full trilogy. Minutes ago, in fact.
Amazon made it possible. Two things made it inevitable. One, I like to finish things. And two, this was something worth finishing. With books you never know that until you've finished them, of course. Some books are an enjoyable read while moving through them, while in the words, while dwelling in the world shaped by the words - that on completion leave you with a nagging sense (no matter how much you'd prefer it otherwise) that you had just completely wasted your time. Chalk that up to the author's inability to write a finish. Perhaps they grew tired of the creative process and just quit. Or perhaps they loved the process so much they could not - but deadlines required something, complete or not.
On completion of the trilogy I pronounce myself satisfied.
(Somewhere the Freudians are smiling. Sorry guys, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.)
Speaking of books, somewhere in America, the first day of school. Assigned reading:
Edna Pontellier, the heroine of The Awakening, shocked readers in 1899 and the scandal created by the book haunted Kate Chopin for the rest of her life. The Awakening begins at a crisis point in twenty-eight year-old Edna Pontellier's life. Edna is a passionate and artistic woman who finds few acceptable outlets for her desires in her role as wife and mother of two sons living in conventional Creole society. Unlike the married women around her, whose sensuality seems to flow naturally into maternity, Edna finds herself wanting her own emotional and sexual identity. During one summer while her husband is out of town, her frustrations find an outlet in an affair with a younger man. Energized and filled with a desire to define her own life, she sends her children to the country and removes herself to a small house of her own: "Every step she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to 'feed upon the opinion' when her own soul had invited her." Her triumph is short-lived, however, destroyed by a society that has no place for a self-determined, unattached woman. Her story is a tragedy and one of many clarion calls in its day to examine the institution of marriage and woman's opportunities in an oppressive world.What a wonderful tale for High Schoolers.
When I was in High School we read To Kill a Mockingbird.
"Every step she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual."
Another great quote I've found recently:
If anyone ever starts a museum of horrible explanations, the one-liner by Newsweek's Evan Thomas about his magazine's dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case "The narrative was right but the facts were wrong" is destined to become a popular exhibit...To which Glenn Reynolds appends, "Indeed".
The old me would have been inclined to agree, but having read the above review of The Awakening I realize now that Thomas is very strong and highly expanded. He's fortunate he doesn't live in Edna Pontellier's times, where he'd have been destroyed by a society that has no place for such a strong, self-determined individual.
Classic Evan Thomas:
Given all that has been reported about the treatment of detainees—including allegations that a female interrogator pretended to wipe her own menstrual blood on one prisoner—the reports of Qur'an desecration seemed shocking but not incredible.- explaining why his magazine published rumors that resulted in worldwide riots and death. (Thomas dodged explaining exactly how large a toilet and its associated plumbling would have to be to allow a Koran to be "flushed down.")
Very strong.
To Kill a Mockingbird (warning, spoilers follow):
Tom Robinson's trial begins, and when the accused man is placed in the local jail, a mob gathers to lynch him. Atticus faces the mob down the night before the trial. Jem, Dill, and Scout, who sneaked out of the house, soon join him and refuse Atticus's advice to leave. Scout recognizes one of the men as Walter Cunningham, father of one of her schoolmates, and her polite questioning about his son shames him into dispersing the mob.That's because they were strong. Had Atticus merely relieved himself from obligations he could have been strong, too, like Evan Thomas and Bob Ewell.At the trial itself, the children sit in the "colored balcony" with the town's black citizens. Atticus provides clear evidence that the accusers, Mayella Ewell and her father, Bob Ewell, are lying: in fact, it was Mayella who was making sexual advances towards Tom Robinson, and then was caught. The marks on Mayella's face are from wounds that her father inflicted upon discovering her with Tom; he called her a whore and beat her. Everyone pointed out that the right side of Mayella's face was bruised, which would show that the abuser was left-handed. Mr. Bob Ewell himself is left-handed and Tom was handicapped on his left arm. Yet, despite the significant evidence pointing to Tom's innocence, the all-white jury convicts him.
Coalition Soldiers rescued a 2-year-old Iraqi boy from a dry well in which he fell Thursday.Newspapers on Iraq:Soldiers with Company B, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division responded to the pleas for assistance from the father of a 2-year-old boy who had fallen into a dry well near the family’s residence.
<...>
“I could see that the baby had fallen some 25 feet and was lying at the bottom of the well,” Powell, a native of Newport Beach, Calif., said. “He appeared to be breathing, but would not answer to our calls.”
BAGHDAD, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Iraqi police said on Sunday they had found 60 decomposed bodies dumped in thick grass in Baquba, north of Baghdad.One of those stories is truth, the other is fiction.There was no indication of how the 60 people had been killed, police said. Baquba is the capital of volatile Diyala province, where thousands of extra U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have been sent to stem growing violence.
Flashback:
In Iraq, a group of young men armor up and arm themselves and prepare to go outside the wire. As much as any one of them might want to relieve himself of obligation to his fellows, none will. Each knows they might not come back. Because this is part of a flashback, I can tell you now that one of them won't.
If they glanced upward on the way out the gate, they might have seen the leading edge of the dust cloud that had progressed so many miles from the Syrian desert that day. Gravity was working its magic on the cloud by then, and even though near weightless the particles were falling back towards the ground.
The story continues here.
