Author: ryangregerson6

In the Awakening, many relationships are formed and some eventually result broken. The first little relationship we have is between the married couple- Léonce Ponteillier and Edna Pointellier. We learn quickly that Edna is the clear protagonist of the novel and everything is based around her. Leonce, the husband, is a self absorbed man who thinks he can buy her wife anything she wants and she will just automatically fall in love with him. He thinks highly of himself and considers himself a good person. Edna begins to lose feelings when she meets a new man, which is the next relationship I am going to be talking about, Robert Lebrun. Robert kind of has a small role at the start but I noticed he has a flirty personality and he’s good around the kids which Edna loves. Madame (Adele) Ratigonolle and Edna are another unique relationship and they are really good friends. Just a little backstory on Madame Ratigonolle, she lives in New Orleans and is considered a Creole wife. A Creole wife is a wife who always no matter what, places their children and husband before them. That is one of the many things that differs in Adele and Edna’s relationship.It is odd because they are good friends but are total opposites of each other. It does raise tension in the relationship between her and Leonce, because he believes that Edna doesn’t favor the kids or him as much as he would like her too, which I guess you could say it partly true. Not about the kids but about him. Robert and Edna are hanging out with Adele when she starts to notice something. She feels like some sort of spell coming on. Frightened, Edna and Robert spray her like cologne so it goes away because they don’t want Adele finding out about them because she would freak out. The spell goes away and Adele suspects absolutely nothing. In chapter seven, Edna spills the beans about a lot of her past relationships not mentioning Robert though. The next relationship that takes place is in chapter 10 with Edna and Mademoiselle Reisz. This is another unique relationship because although they don’t really have much in common they are similar in some ways. For example, Mademoiselle Reisz is unmarried with no children and spends a lot of time playing the piano which she is very good at. She’s like a free independent woman which is why she kind of relates to Edna. It doesn’t seem like Edna is super free but she for sure is an independent woman. At this point Robert and Edna are starting to get a little more serious but Robert is acting weird because it seems like he was avoiding her a little bit in chapter 10. They hang out a little bit at the end but you can tell something is off. In chapter 11 the relationship between Leonce and Edna is slowly going off the rails. Edna refuses to join Leonce in the cottage and is really starting to distance herself from him. As she spends more time with Robert she really starts to lose interest in Leonce. Just when everything seemed perfect Robert suddenly departed leaving Edna. Confused and upset Edna doesn’t really know how to react because she was starting to pursue a relationship with him. Edna starts to have flashbacks because stuff like this has happened to her in the past ruining relationships. She then questions herself and feels like she is not good enough. One of the last relationships I am going to address is the relationship between madame Lebrun and Edna. It is a little odd considering this is Robert’s mother but her and Edna start to become friends. Edna tells the truth about Robert and how she likes him and she feels no guilt telling her that. This is one of the first people Edna has told and she really opens up about it telling her pretty much everything. Madame Lebrun doesn’t get mad or anything and just listens. Edna likes being able to talk to someone who knows so much about Robert. On her way to the beach after the little chat with Lebrun she sees Mademoiselle Reisz who gives her a bit of information. She says that Robert used to beat his brother for being jealous of an innocent relationship with a girl by the name of Mariequita. Edna gets a little bit of Robert’s dark side but I don’t think it really troubles her. She still misses Robert deeply and wants him to come back.

For this blog, I’m going to be briefly talking about Edna as a mother and how she treats her boys. We learn right off the bat Edna Pontellier has two kids with her husband named Léonce Ponteillier. We quickly learn Edna is the more protective parent and she shows extreme affection and that she cares for these kids. In chapter three the husband checks on the boys when they are sleeping and tells Edna that one of her boys, Raoul has a fever. This concerns Edna greatly because he was perfectly healthy by the time he went to bed but all of a sudden he has a fever? This is suspicious and because of her concern she goes outside and cries until the mosquitoes become too much and make her go back to sleep. As something with Madame Ratignolle and Edna is slowly developing she still makes time for her kids and it shows in chapter seven when she goes on the beach and plays with them in the tent. She begins to learn she is starting to develop feelings for Robert because he is there for her and her kids unlike the husband and when he leaves in chapter 15 she feels crushed. Edna slowly begins to lose her mind a little bit because Leonce leaves dinner to go dine somewhere else and that really bothers her. At the beginning it really shows how focused she was on being a motherly figure and being a good role model for these children but as it progresses it heads for a darker turn which I will explain in my next blog post.

In these great american novels there always seems to be a reoccuring theme. In my last blog post, as a matter of fact, I talked about another reoccurring theme, the American Dream. The American dream was in three of the books we read so I felt it was really important to include that in one of my blogs. Something I noticed in the Jungle is that one of the themes in the book is extremely similar to a theme in the Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck. When reading grapes of wrath, the Joad family undergoes a lot of obstacles and most of the joads fight through them together and work really well as a family. The one problem is when the going gets tough, some of these members of the family drop out and run away, meaning they can’t handle these difficulties. Just like the characters in Grapes of Wrath, Jonas, one of the characters in The Jungle, was close with Jurgis and the family until Jurgis sprained his ankle. It’s not like he stopped liking Jurgis after that he just was unable to tolerate the misery, so he disappeared and left the family. The pay wasn’t great and the working conditions were terrible as well and a lot of people were getting sick so he decided to run away. It relates because as I mentioned earlier with the Grapes of Wrath, when the going gets tough some peoples main option is to just run away and to never be seen again. That’s exactly what they did and that’s exactly what Jonas did, he couldn’t handle it.

As I mentioned previously in my other little blogs, The American Dream has been a reoccuring theme in a lot of these books. While reading the Jungle I slowly learned that this book also has what these other books see as the american dream. For example, I believe in my second most recent blog, I wrote about the day of the locust, mainly the American dream because I thought that was a very important concept in that book. Faye Greener, one of the main characters in the novel a day in the locust, only wants to be a star in hollywood which in the time and in the novel was pretty much every young person’s dream. She would even wear clothes that made her look like these young hollywood studs even though she wasn’t really one. Another example is Of Mice and Men. In, of Mice and Men the american dream is that if you work hard you get a lot money and retire in a nice place and I would say this American Dream is really similar to my book the Jungle. In, The Jungle, the main purpose Jurgis moves is to pursue the American Dream, the belief that if he works very hard he will acquire all these riches and become extremely wealthy. Also when he moves he expects to find a land full of equality, acceptance, opportunity, and last but most importantly, freedom. Basically the reason I felt this was important to blog about is because this has been a theme in now three books and I think that’s interesting that all these american novels include the American Dream.

A quote I found quite interesting in my novel the Jungle by Upton Sinclair is about one of our main characters Jurgis Rudkis. “He did not drink or fight , because he was thinking all the time of Ona; and for the rest, he was a quiet, steady man, who did what he was told to, did not lose his temper often, and when he did lose it made the offender anxious that he should not lose it again. When they paid him off he dodged the company gamblers and dramstops, and so if they tried to kill him; but he escaped, and tramped it home, working at odd jobs, and sleeping with one eye open.” (page 26) This little excerpt here from the book just gave us a fantastic incite on one of the few main characters in the book, Jurgis. We learn Jurgis is quiet, rather chill guy and he respects what people tell him. He doesn’t really complain he just does what he’s asked. The part that really caught my eye in this quote was when they said when he lost his temper he was told not to lose it again. That shows discipline and we are shown early this Jurgis guys is a very disciplined man. The author is intending to portray this man throughout the book as the reliable guy that does his job and tries not to mess with anyone (or maybe not.) We will learn a lot more about him as this story goes on but so far he is a good guy that doesn’t drink or fight.

I don’t know why exactly but after reading the book No Country for Old Men the little scene with the coin toss at the cash register is still in the back of my head. I just think it’s totally crazy how he determines the fate of someone’s life based off a coin toss, even when that person didn’t bother or trouble him in anyway. I also thought about how much people take things for granted because when that guy won the coin toss he didn’t seem to care as much. To be fair, he probably didn’t think if he lost that coin toss he was going to die because he doesn’t really know Chigurh but I kind of agree with Chigurh on the fact that people take so many things for granted. Also one more thing confused me on the coin toss, I didn’t really understand why Chigurh was obsessive over this coin. I understand why he insisted on the guy keep it in a safe place, because it spared his life, but I got a little confused when he started talking about like the date of the coin. He said something like, “this coin dates back many years and it is a very valuable coin,” maybe he is making up something for him to keep it safe with him because the guy doesn’t know how significant that coin flip was for him. I believe Chigurh is just making up something for this guy to keep this coin, otherwise I don’t know why he brought that up.

Casy said, “He was foolin’, all the time. I think he knowed it. An’ Grandpa did not die tonight. He died the minute you took im’ off the place.” Obviously, this quote is a metaphor, he did not literally die the second the second they left the house but that’s what makes this quote so unique. Grandpa didn’t want to go on this trip in the first place but he was forced tp because the family drugged him and brought him with. For the quote Casy is actually saying that he died along with the house that they left. His heart was with the house, so when the house died, grampa metaphorically died too. Another quote that was earlier in the paragraph, also from Casy: “Grandpa an’ the old place, they jus’ the same damn thing.” (pg. 199) As I mentioned prior, Grandpa is compared to the old house mainly because he lived their is whole life and when asked to leave he did not want to give it up. He gave his heart and soul to that place and the second they took him his heart died because he was no longer happy. They should have just let him be and not forced him to come with if he didn’t want to.

Throughout the book, especially in part one, Bell does and excellent job of keeping us updated on what the character is thinking. In part one, We meet Moss, a middle aged veteran, who is very brave. He comes across a truck with dead bodies and two million dollars worth of cash in the truck. Throughout the experience of him stumbling across it and taking it we learn all the thoughts going through the head of Moss. He often questions if he should really go through with this or not which leads him to the decision that he will do it but he know people will die along the way and one of the people dying could definitely be himself. Although death fears him a little he stays strong and is extremely brave. He knows it will all be worth it in the end if he survives because again this is 2 million dollars we are talking about. At this time two million dollars sets you for life and beyond.

pg. 27 “His own shadow was more company than he would have liked. Ugly feeling out here. A trespasser. Among the dead. Dont get weird on me, he said. You aint one of em. Not yet.”

This is just one of the many thoughts Moss had when he was headed back to the truck with the dead people. I believe the author is leading us to assume he’s eventually going to become like these guys because they murder people and he knows people are going to be after him and someone is going to die in the end.