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Now here me out. The Last of the Mohicans, a book about the last of a Native American tribe fighting in the 7 Years War, compares well to the travels of a hobbit, Frodo Baggins. Both Uncas, the son of Chingachgook, the last two Mohicans, and Frodo Baggins, are called to adventures they are not aware/involved in at all. Gandalf and Bilbo by earlier adventures leave Frodo the ring of power, and Frodo, a hobbit that should have no involvement with the greater world or the ring itself, has to go himself destroy the pinnacle piece of evil of that world. Uncas and his father just randomly run into party of Major Heyward, Cora, and Alice. They decide to help them after seeing that they are one, completely lost, and two, being led by an enemy of all parties concerned. I guess that it could be said that both are fighting the evil of their respectful worlds (Sauron and the French.(Ah yes, comparing the evil spirit of a demon to the French )) Another connection in the two groups in the first parts of their respective books are that they are both made up of a motley assortment of characters. The Fellowship, had 2 men, 1 elf, 1 dwarf, 1 wizard, and 4 hobbits. (Where Im at in LotM, chapter 6,) The band has 1 english major, 2 daughters of an english commander, one psalm singer from Connecticut, 2 Native Americans from the Mohican tribe, and a random American outdoorsman named Hawkeye. This creates a degree of mistrust while they are getting to know each other, an interesting dynamic that can be seen in both books.

Reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” in the time of the coronavirus is definitely an interesting choice. Before beginning the book I read many people’e warnings about reading this book during this odd time, nevertheless, I decided to read it anyway. The connection between a post apocalyptic world and our world today is closer than I would like to think. I found a lot of similarities in the way the man reminisces about his past. I believe a lot of us are reminiscing about normal life before the pandemic. We also see a connection with a sort of fear and unknowing of the future and the solitude. There are differences of course in the need to find shelter and the underlying cannibalism. Getting away from the disturbing connections to the real world, I am very pleased with the quality of the writing in this book. I’m surprised with the quality however as I very much enjoyed Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”. I like and am intrigued by his lack of quotations and punctuation. The bond between the man and the boy is very strong and apparent. The man sees protecting the boy as his job and the love he feels toward him makes it an easy job. This is clear especially when the man kills the passerby who grabs the boy without question. The boy sees the man at safety and comfort. This is easily seen at times where the boy experiences fear and clings to the man for protection. Although the age of the boy is not yet known, he is a bit apprehensive and feels a bit of guilt letting the man always put him first, which shows maturity possibly beyond his years from the boy.

Pearl S. Bucks, “The Good Earth” follows the story of a poor farmer named Wang Lung during turn-of-the-century times in China. The book opens on the day of Wang Lung’s wedding day- the day he is to be married to a 20-year-old slave from a higher class family. Right from the beginning, women are seen as strictly objects to clean, take care of the men in the house, and to bear them children. Wang Lung describes how he wished to marry a “pretty slave” and his father instantly responded with “and what will we do with a pretty woman? We must have a woman who will tend the house and bear children as she works in the fields, and will a pretty woman do these things? She will be forever thinking about clothes to go with her face!….” This quote alone provides deeper insight into how women were seen during the 1930s in China. Comparing this to slavery in America, African Americans were sold all over the South with no hesitation. They weren’t seen as human, not even less than, they were property and only property. Wang Lung married this slave-girl without even speaking a single word to her- he had to buy his wife from. another family. There was no love, no affection, strictly business. Although China is becoming evolved on a manufacturing basis during this time, their social-cultural views of women, are still lacking on a much broader level. Even though today in America, these views of women have changed, there are still many stereotypes against them and on some level, will the belief that they are less than men ever truly go away?

In the book, The Day of the Locust, the author, Nathaniel West puts emphasis on the theme of love. However given the hedonistic nature of this novel the question arises, what type of love is he emphasizing? The novel is centered around people striving for success at all costs: “I’m going to be a star some day,” she announced as though daring him to contradict her […] “If I’m not, I’ll commit suicide” (154). This quote identifies how consumed Faye is with the Hollywood dream and how she has yet to fall to the mercilessness of Hollywood movie industry. Throughout the book, West has shown that no one is to be trusted in Hollywood and everyone is there to achieve success for themselves. From the moment Faye and her Father stepped into Tod’s house, they were deceiving him to get him to buy shoe polish. Since the characters are so consumed with this ambition of success, one can think that the characters are using the idea of love as a catalyst to achieve success. Faye will only “fall” for someone who is wealthy or handsome which would thus give her some platform; she constantly shuts down anyone she does not deem wealthy or handsome enough. Which in turn leads to many men pinning after her for the entirety of the novel, and she uses them when she is in need of something. For example, Faye took advantage of Homer when she needed clothes and a place to stay. So, I think that West is trying to say that Hollywood love cannot be trusted when people are thoroughly consumed with themselves.

In Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, he portrays a certain view of the world’s way of creating fate. Within Inman’s stories of the deadly Civil War and gloomy passage home through Cold Mountain, Inman begins to think that there’s not much he can do in his fate. While he is in the hospital he recounts a few of the battles he wishes to never relive but he doesn’t know if he can help that: “It was simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat… if a thing like Fredericksburg was to be used as a marker… we’ll be eating one another raw” (16). Frazier ultimately shows what war can do to a man. Inman seemed at least content in the flashbacks in the village with Ada but war has shown him what humans are capable of doing to each other and he has lost hope in the world. He never chose to go to war and it has changed him. I think he realizes how much more brutal and violent he is and part of it is due to his underlining anger that he doesn’t believe that whatever he does, he won’t have an effect on his fate. Though further through his trek home, the readers can see how his heart is what leading him without him knowing. He repeatedly helps people because he knows that is the right thing to do and he still has the strong determination to get home to Ada. I think he wants to defy the world of “random sweepings” (18) who’s aim is to drag you down and he will do anything to prove himself stronger than the world’s dreadful version of his destiny.

For this blog post, I decided to do a comparison between my choice novel, The Sun Also Rises and a novel I’ve read, The Great Gatsby. The first thing I noticed between these two novels was that both refer to the Lost Generation, which is the generation that grew up during or right after World War 1 ended. The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby are both set in the 1920s, one set in Paris and the other in New York City. Another connection between is how characters in both novels are searching for more and seem a little bit lost. Gatsby is chasing after the American Dream and wants more. In the other novel, Jake is searching for happiness and uses partying as a distraction for the void he’s trying to fill. Brett is another character in this book who’s using men and partying to distract herself. I think these two characters use partying as a distraction because of the time period, with the World War just ending. Another connection between these two is the relationships and both novels are lacking real love. For example, in The Great Gatsby, Tom and Daisy are married but they don’t actually truly love each other. Tom has many affairs and despite this, they stay together. Tom was rich so Daisy decided to marry him instead of waiting for Gatsby, even though Gatsby was the one who she actually loved. In The Sun Also Rises, Jake and Brett’s love after the war is strange and doesn’t seem real. 

The Road by McCarthy has a prominent theme and underlying issue of sense of reality. So far throughout the beginning of the novel, the man and the boy wander through this space of earth, with memories and emotions from before this apocalyptic world. They travel to find food and shelter in an environment of gray snow, dark sky, and ash on the wind. McCarthy illustrates their loneliness and fight to keep their sanity, knowing that they had a normal, better life before all of this happened. 

“The snow had stopped and it was so quiet they could all but hear their hearts.” (page 35) When I think of being able to hear my own heart, I think of running a cross country race, or in the middle of a basketball game with seconds on the clock and the game is tied. In these moments, life or reality is altered. Time feels slowed down and it seems like you have a lot of more time to think. There is a sense of independence in these times, and quietness, but these times don’t last forever. In The Road, there is the same feeling of time being slowed and a sense of independence and quietness, except it doesn’t seem that it is going away anytime soon, and with no other people around them to help in this time, it seems close to impossible to keep their sanity as time goes on, which brings together my point of their sense of reality and trying to keep their sanity throughout the novel. 

By Sydni Dailey

It is clear to see that even from reading only a little bit of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men,” how talented of a writer he is. Although some of his sentences can go on for multiple lines of a page, he definitely has a writing style that––in my opinion––is similar to Steinbeck. I am not quite one third of the way done with the book yet, but the time frame to me so far is very interesting. The book is set in the last 1930’s, which means that the country as a whole was trying to work their way out of the Great Depression. Willie Stark, or commonly referred to as “The Boss” by the narrator, you can tell is a wealthy man from the beginning. Everyone pretty much everywhere Willie and his crew go knows who he is and what he does. Some see him as a celebrity. What I love about Penn choosing to have a narrator’s point of view over Willie’s is the fact that the narrator is close to Willie, but obviously can’t see inside of his head and think what he’s thinking. His opinions of all the characters are unbiased for the most part, which is nice since we don’t know what the characters think of themselves, but rather how a friend sees them. I think this will be a useful way of telling the story later on in the book, especially towards the climax to make sure that most of the main characters opinion’s aren’t shared to sway the story one way or another.

The Sun Also Rises was written by Earnest Hemingway in 1926. The beginning of the story takes place in Paris during the 20s as a group of authors manage their social lives by partying and drinking and occasionally writing novels. The main characters, Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, and Lady Ashley (Brett), make up the main group of friends. Jake and Brett have a Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanon-like romance; they both love each other but cannot be together for an unknown reason. The reader is inclined to think that it is because Brett is of a higher class than Jake. 

I chose this painting to compare to the beginning of the novel because through many of the characters’ eyes, Cohn and Brett, Paris is “old news,” it is dull, bleak, and boring; however, through Jake Barnes’ view he sees the color. He sees the color of Paris during taxi drives going from one side of Paris to the other as he stares at the architecture, and he sees the color of Paris in the different people he encounters along the way, particularly in Brett. Jake is constantly trying to get away from the drama that surrounds the group, by walking off through Paris by himself and admiring what the city has to offer. Jake does admit that Paris has some bleaker and boring areas which are illustrated by the lack of color in the painting, but he chooses to focus on what color he can find. Similarly, in this painting the eye is not drawn to the grays and blacks, but rather it is drawn to the colors.

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.