Alright, let’s get this ball rolling. Overall, this book has been pretty intense. I think we can pick and prod it apart as much as we want, but I feel like it’s one of those books where we still might not get the entire story. It’s like the author has a masters in psychobabble and we’re all just throwing darts at a tiny target trying to guess the intricacies of Clarissa’s mentality. I feel like we don’t see enough of Clarissa’s mind to know what’s really going through it. Which is a strange thing to say, I guess. But I get this weird, detached feeling. As if Clarissa is shut off from even the readers of the book. I’m pretty sure that’s not intentional by the author. I think I’m going to chalk that one up to the author being slightly off-kilter and having a really unique writing style. But I guess that’s why I feel like we’re never going to be able to really get Clarissa.
Over and over, we keep saying that we don’t approve of Clarissa’s need to leave and run away at the drop of a hat. Yet we understand it, because her mother left. But, personally, I feel like that’s no real excuse in every matter. It was easy for Clarissa to leave Pankaj like she did because they don’t love each other and her father was dead. Period. To quote the amazing book The Perks of Being a Wallflower, “Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it's no excuse.” (By the way, if you have not read this book, you need to. I strongly believe that everyone should read this story before they die.) I’m a firm believer that life is what you make it. It’s like the story of two men whose father was an alcoholic. One man grew up to be 100% sober, having never touched alcohol in his life. He said he never wanted to be like his father, so he abstained from drinking. The other man grew up to be dirt poor, slobbering drunk, proclaiming that he learned to drink on his fathers knee. Or something to that effect. You can either let your home life define you, or you can define yourself in spite of your home life. There comes a time when human beings hold the ability to think reasonably and make their own decisions. When you’re 8, sure, you do whatever mommy and daddy are doing. That’s only to be expected and, sometimes, oh so adorable. But when you’re 28, it’s a pretty pitiful excuse to say that you’re doing something because of your parents from way back in the day. But I’m not a psych student, so I’m not pretending to be an expert on the way people think.
As far as this whole paper thing goes, I’m sad to say that I’m at a loss so far. I’ve been trying to swim through my other homework and throw together an anthropology paper on the evils of binding women’s feet in
But, overall, I think I’m going to wait until after class on Tuesday to peg down my topic for sure. Shameful, I know. But it’s 1am right now, and I have more homework to do before Tuesday than I reasonably have time for.
No comments:
Post a Comment