Reflection - The Time Of The Doves by Mercè Rodoreda

 The Time Of The Doves was probably my favourite book we have read so far in this class. The book covers some dark topics and is not a particularly happy one and shows a resilient protagonist who is brought to her breaking point, who is then able to overcome it and have hope at the end of the novel.

At first, you start to feel bad for Natalia as her boyfriend Quimet doesn’t really care about her and is very manipulative, but then you remember that she kinda did leave her fiance for him. It was kinda obvious from one of their early encounters that Quimet isn’t a very considerate person, as Quimet was an hour late to the scheduled time and did not even apologize and said the most egregious line to her “if I wanted to be his wife I had to start by liking everything he liked” (22). Even after they get married Quimet always seems preoccupied with something else, like making the dovecote, raising the doves, and going out on adventures with his friends. There are several more incidents of Quimet gaslighting and being manipulative, but if I keep talking about everything bad he has done throughout the novel it would probably span a couple more pages.  It starts to get to the point where it is quite funny to think about how many bad traits he has and you start to question why Natalia even chooses him.  It might be from the fact that Natalia says that her mother had never told her about men and she is somehow ignorant about what a good person is or that her parent's relationship was not a particularly healthy one either and she does not know what a healthy relationship looks like yet. Or maybe perhaps that society at that time expected women to just get married no matter how unhappy they were and were expected to just endure through it for the rest of their lives. 

Life gets worse for Natalia as Quimet’s shop starts getting less work and she is forced to find a job, all while having to care for her two children. On top of this Quimet’s passion project now has invaded their home and there are just doves that live with them. She finally reaches her breaking point and starts trying to make sure the doves' chicks will never hatch by repeatedly shaking them.

As if life could not get any worse, a civil war commences, and Quimet goes to the front lines. Quimet sometimes returns from the front lines to their home for a bit before going back to fight, and Natalia is left wondering each time he leaves if he is ever going to come back. After she receives news that Quimet and Cintet have died in the war, it is hard not to feel her grief alongside her. Even though Quimet was not a very good person, it is still sad to see someone's life taken away, especially for reasons outside of their control and the fact that they are leaving a family behind. 

Things start to look up for Natalia and her family after finally getting a job that saves them from almost dying of starvation. Her boss an older man named Antoni eventually proposes to her and she accepts not really knowing why does. I was concerned that this second marriage would be a repeat of her first one, where she would be stuck and unhappy. However, it seems like Antoni loves their family and is a good person, after realizing this, Natalia seems happy at last after having gone through so much.

My Question for Everyone: 

When Natalia feels like there is no other option, she devises a plan to murder her children and then herself, but she is eventually given a job saving her family from starvation and her plan is no longer needed. Did the fact that tried to go through with this plan change your opinion of her? Or did you already have a negative opinion of her before this point?

Reflection - Deep Rivers by José María Arguedas

 Deep Rivers by José María Arguedas gives a violent and ugly depiction of life while at the same immersing you in the beauty of the world and the natural world. The author spends significant time creating a detailed depiction of the vivid Peruvian landscape and of the different cities and towns that the protagonist Ernesto and his father travel through. He also goes into great detail describing the rich culture of the Quechua people and their love for the natural world, often including poems and songs written in Quechua.  The novel also includes words in the Quechua language when Ernesto is speaking rather than translating them, which I thought was a cool addition. 

The novel focuses on Ernesto’s struggle with identity as he was raised by the Quechua people but is a descendant of settlers (Western side). This struggle becomes apparent when Ernesto is forced to attend a Catholic school and leave his old life behind. Even though the other students and the priests considered him mostly as one of their own because of the way he looks, they often still call him the name “stranger” because of his different upbringing.  

Some of Ernesto’s classmates also make him question what is correct and make him question if the new society he is forced into is really for him. He despises the mistreatment of the indigenous people, when the indigenous people have an uprising and steal salt as an act of rebellion, Ernesto celebrates and chants with them in the streets. Ernesto finds actively himself routing against the colonizers, in a conversation with his friend Antero, he states that he thinks that the Indigenous people's revenge is justified and that “A man who weeps because they’ve been slapping his face for no reason at all can become angrier than a bull that hears a dynamite explosion, that feels the condor’s beak on his neck”, his friend replies that “The Indians must be kept down” and that “You can’t understand because you are not a land-owner” showing the disconnect between Ernesto and the views of the people around him.

Overall, I enjoyed the book but I wouldn't put it among my favorites that we have read in class so far. It did take quite a bit of time to get into it as the first third of the novel is pretty slow and I had not really connected with any of the characters yet. When the story starts focusing more on Ernesto and his time at the catholic school I was able to get more invested in the story and characters.

My question:

One part I thought was interesting is that I didn't find any definite reasons why Ernesto’s dad hates Ernesto’s uncle, the Old Man so much. What do you think the reason is?

Reflection, Alberto Moravia’s Agostino

 I do not think a book has ever made me feel more uncomfortable than Alberto Moravia’s Agostino. The novel follows a young boy Agostino who comes from a wealthy family and how a loss of innocence completely changes his relationship and how he views his mother. The novel explores coming of age, sexuality, and class.

In the beginning, young Agostino has a sense of pride as he loves being seen with his beautiful mother. He notices that every time they go on their daily boat ride together, everyone at the beach seems to stare at them, which he takes great joy in. However, one day his mother invites another man to come with them on their boat ride much to Agostino’s surprise as she usually rejects their advances. Agostino is upset about this; he feels like she had accepted this stranger “with the same friendly and spontaneous ease that characterised her relations with her son” (6), which he thinks should only be reserved for him. Agostino also realises that when around this man, his mother, who he describes as a strong and dignified woman would act more playful and clumsy around him.  After this day, the daily ritual between mother and son was now shared with a stranger who she seemed to act differently around. Agostino has now started to hate these boat rides as he feels like his feelings are of no concern to the two of them. Agostino becomes jealous of this young man and feels humiliated because he has been cast aside so easily and the sense of pride he used was taken from him.

Agostino starts to view his mother differently as he becomes friends with a gang of lower-class children, who tell him what is truly going on between the young man and his mother. Agostino no longer wants to view her as a mother but as a woman like his friends do. He now has an “impure curiosity that his continued respect for family made intolerable” (68). Agostino tries to fix this by resolving his curiosity by using the image of another woman (by going to a brothel), then his mother would “regain the motherly significance she once had”. In the end, this plan fails and we are left with an ending implying that things will not change for a long time. 

Agostino also finds himself trying to fit in with his new friends as someone of lower class by wearing different clothes. He even at one point lies to someone saying that he is unable to attend school and is forced to work at thirteen, when in reality that isn’t true. I found this a bit odd because before, Agostino would often boast a little about his family’s wealth and he would act poor when it benefitted him or for his own enjoyment.

One thing I noticed was that Agostino’s relationship with his mother was similar to one of the narrators in Proust’s novel, Combary. They both initially seem to be dependent on their mothers in both novels, however, they start to differ as the novel progresses and Agostino starts to gain more independence. The relationship between the son and mother in  Proust’s novel is more like Agostino's before he loses his innocence and I don’t think he views her in the same way that Agostino does.

My question for everyone, in the novel Agostino pretends to be a young worker and while a father is trying to teach his son a lesson about how fortunate he is, Agostino replies with perfect answers setting himself as a very good example for what the son should be like, when in reality Aggostino is just as or if not more fortunate than the son. Why do you think Agostino does this? Is it because he playing out a fantasy he wishes was true?

Reflection - 'The Shouded Woman" by María Luisa Bombal

While reading “The Shrouded Woman” I found some parts (especially in the middle of the novel)

to be rather confusing, I found that there were way too many characters to remember and some names were very similar (I think it might have been because I read it in multiple days). However by the end of the novel, after I had gained an understanding of what happened and all the characters, I can say that my opinion had mostly changed for the better. I enjoyed how the author explored the relationship between Ana Maria with her friends and family through a new lens and the complexity of the characters which made them feel like real characters allowing us to feel the same emotions as them.

I found myself initially interested in the idea of being conscious while in death, and being able to see all the people you loved and admired throughout your life for one last time. The novel explores the grief caused by death but also shows that it allows for reflection and to be grateful towards those you love, by having the protagonist Ana Maria offer a new perspective on death that is usually only seen from one side, by allowing her to remember the times (both good and bad) she had with the people closest to her.

The novel explores gaining a new perspective, the complex relationship with her first love Ricardo, and how external pressure caused a fracture in their relationship (Her parents didn’t agree with the relationship and he went to study in Europe). Ana Maria only realizes this in death, while Ricardo is looking at her casket the fact that they were never truly separated, as she still saw a part of herself in him. 

A prevalent theme in the novel is rediscovery, like when Ana Maria’s brother Luis visits her casket and they seem to both remember the strong bond they once had that had been long forgotten. Ana Maria even says that if her death makes her brother remember his old lover Elicia by making him remember the times the three of them have spent together, she would have no regrets and would have given her death a new meaning.

Isolation is also a recurring theme in the novel. Maria Griselda’s beauty affects how everybody treats her and how it contributes to her isolation. She tries to be friendly to Sylvia, but Sylvia is extremely jealous of her and eventually commits suicide as a result of actions caused by Maria’s beauty. Even her husband Alberto is jealous of her and hides her away. We also see this in Ana Maria’s own life, from the distant relationship between her and her husband.

My question for everyone: At the funeral, we are supposedly seeing the first time that Antonio, Ana Maria’s husband crying. Due to their strange relationship, even Ana Maria herself debates the reason that he is crying. Do you think he is crying to grieve her death and is it because he has lost something else like Ana Maria hypothesizes?

Reflection - ' Mad Toy' By Roberto Artl

 Mad Toy by Roberto Artl is about a teenage boy named Silvio who is an avid inventor and idolizes outlaws and bandits. The first part of the novel follows Silvio and his friends Lucio and Enrique and their adventures which mostly consist of committing burglaries with aspirations of being heroic outlaws and being able to give back to the poor. After a close call, as a result of committing a robbery, both Silvio and Lucio decide that it would be best for them to disband and lay low for a while, however, Enrique says he will continue even if he is the only one left. The second part follows Silvio who in an attempt to do the right thing and help out his mother, decides to get a job at a bookstore, however after witnessing the horrible conditions and trying to burn the store down (but ultimately failing) he decides to quit. After. In the fourth and final part of the novel, Silvio turns in his friend Rengo to the authorities after he learns that Rengo intends to commit a robbery and has seemingly done the ‘right’ thing.

Throughout the novel, we witness Silvio getting older and constantly struggling to do the ‘right’ thing. We witness his family's struggle with poverty and Silvio who wants to be an inventor and his aspirations of making something out of himself. As soon as Silvio seems to be making progress towards his goals it suddenly all falls apart and he ends up back at square one. The novel has you constantly wondering which path Silvio will end up taking and how long will his determination last.

The part that stuck the most for me was when Silvio met his friend Lucio a couple of years after their group disbanded. Lucio, who is now a police investigator, then tells Silvio that Enrique never stopped committing burglaries and has now found himself in jail as a result. I found this interesting as Silvio himself was constantly having trouble choosing which path to follow and could see firsthand the results of his friend's choices. 

The novel also makes you rethink what is considered ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Even though we can declare one side as being ‘right and the other one ‘wrong’, both Enrique and Lucio have ultimately gone down different paths with the same goal of survival. Also, when Silvio turns Rengo in after having done something that is deemed ‘right’, he himself thinks that he has done something unforgivable.

My question for everyone:

At the end of the novel, Silvio states his reasoning for turning Rengo in is that  ‘There are times in life when we need to be pigs, to wallow in filth till it seeps inside us, to do some vile deed, I don’t know . . . to destroy a man’s life forever . . . and having done that, we can go calmly on our way’’. Do you think Silvio really turned Rengo in order to ruin his life? Or did he have another reason for doing so?

Reflection - 'Combray' By Marcel Proust

 My initial thoughts on the novel while I was reading it was that I found it to be rather confusing. However, I was having trouble finding precisely why it was such a hard read. I think that even though the level of the vocabulary was not overly difficult, the style of writing was rather confusing as certain sentences seemed to be strung together even though they did not have much of any relationship to each other making it hard to make sense of what was happening. In one sense this sort of makes sense as oftentimes when remembering something in detail your mind tends to wander or go on a tangent, however without context, it becomes a bit hard to follow what is happening. One of the other reasons (at least for me) was that the author would often shift from the past to the present without any real indication. It was also difficult for me to figure out if the author was reflecting on the events of his past as an adult or whether he was conveying how he felt as a child during that time.

Despite being a hard read there were a couple of parts that I enjoyed or found interesting. For example the great-aunt's perception of class and the way she negatively viewed people who would venture outside of their respective social class and how this influenced her treatment of monsieur Swann.

The narrator's relationship with his mother was also one of the focal points of the story that I enjoyed reading about. I found that it was interesting to see how both his parents had different ways of handling their child’s behavior. And that his father, instead of getting mad at his child for sneaking out of his room to be comforted by his mother, he suddenly able to see for himself the true scope of the loneliness and sadness that his child felt. Even though there was no mention of his father changing his harsh treatment of his son by pushing this expectation of how he should act, it was still nice to see that he still had a heart. I found it hard to agree or disagree with how harsh the expectations his father has for him as his age at the time of these events is never explicitly mentioned in the text.

My question to everyone: Do you think the narrator's parent’s treatment and the expectations they have for him are justified? Would his age at the time also affect your answer? 

Introduction (First week)

 Hi everyone, my name is Marcus and I am a third-year computer science major.

I was born and raised in Vancouver and have lived here my whole life. I enjoy playing soccer, skiing, and making/playing video games in my spare time.  I also have a cat. I used to read a decent amount when I was younger but I just kinda stopped as I grew older.

To be quite honest, I am taking this class to fulfill my literature requirement but out of all the options this one seemed to be one of the ones that interested me the most. Also, French is my second language, and am excited to read some literature originating in French (And any other language for that matter :) ).

I am excited about this class because I think it will be a good break and change of pace from the mostly math-based/math-adjacent courses that most of my undergrad so far has been comprised of and am excited to have the chance to study something different in a university setting. Even though I'm ultimately taking this class to check off a requirement for my degree, I also do not want to pass on the chance to improve my skills in literature comprehension, writing, and learning something new.

As for my expectations for the course, I don’t have very many but I would like to be able to read something I enjoy or maybe find a new appreciation for literature from the texts that are assigned or that I can choose to read.

For my expectations for myself, I am probably going to aim for an A-, not only for the sake of the GPA but to challenge myself to do something I am not completely comfortable with yet and to hopefully get better at reading challenging texts, analysis, and writing while doing it.

From the lecture videos, I found it very interesting that the idea of romance studies focuses less on how the romance languages relate to Latin which is what all the romance languages have evolved from, but rather focuses on their similarities and differences because they have evolved from Latin. Also from the conversation lecture when it was mentioned that by knowing a language in a certain linguistic family you are essentially learning a small part of the same large language. I found this interesting because I also understand some small bits of Spanish just by being able to speak French.