The only difficulty was that though the universe had been disposed of, I myself was left over.

Yesterday in class, Matt had a lot of interesting things to say about how Wise Bloodreminds him somewhat of some of the slightly darker cartoons of old, like “Courge the Cowardly Dog” and “Cat Dog”, among others.

"Courage the Cowardly Dog"

I couldn’t agree more.  There is definitely something (many somethings, really) amiss in this world, be it a certain degree of color or a wider variety in senses of people and place.  I feel a deep sense of sympathy for Haze when he feels he desperately wants and needs to run away, or to move faster, at the very least.

In chapter four, when Haze buys his forty-dollar “rat-colored” car, we later hear about how Haze is tearing down the highway through a landscape characterized by the “red gulleys [that drop] off on either side of the road and behind [which]…were patches of field buttoned together with 666 posts” and a “leaky” sky overlooking it all (O’Connor 65,70).  As is expected of Flannery O’Connor, as if a narrow road flanked by huge drops into red abysses wasn’t hellish enough, the “666 posts” are the icing on the cake in solidifying the reader’s image of this place as an equivalent of hell. Just as I felt a disturbing need to get out of wherever Courage the Cowardly Dog lived (out in the middle of nowhere) (though I myself wasn’t ever physically there), I felt an eerily similar feeling of panic (out of sympathy for Haze, I suppose) in knowing that the place I seem to be stuck in (the world in Wise Blood–as if I were stuck in the world simply through reading the novel) is not a pleasant one.

LAS VEGAS, NV

Ah, Vegas: a city grounded in authenticity.  While clicking around trying to find the truest of Vegas pictures, I stumbled upon a blog written by Ben Casnocha (who, as it would seem, has written a book.  Yay, Ben!).  This excerpt is taken directly from his blog (http://casnocha.com/2011/03/las-vegas-authentically-unauthentic.html):

When you visit New York City, you worry about whether you are being a tourist, about whether you are doing as the locals do. Same with visiting Paris, Rome, London. But in Las Vegas, everybody is a tourist. Anybody who’s not a tourist works in the tourism/hospitality industry. There is no real thing. It’s fake all the way to the bottom. The very idea of a sprawling, water guzzling city that sits in the middle of barren desert is too absurd to take seriously.

I have not yet been to Las Vegas, nor did I plan to go.  The idea of it just ticks me off.  Now, though, I’m thinking I should reconsider.  I’ve definitely felt that lack of belonging that creeps in when you look around and feel as though you’re entering in on something special that’s somehow devalued by popularity.  Worse yet, I’ve tried to act like I belong (the reason I say “worse yet” is because it’s bad enough to feel like an intruder but even more awkward when you’re trying to be.  Maybe that’s instinctual, to some extent.  But there’s a definite discomfort or discord in knowing that what you’re showing isn’t real).  So it must be interesting to go to Vegas and — in theory — feel free, because, in a city where everything glitters, maybe it’s easier to know it can’t all be gold.  And I wonder what it might feel like to see through and through, be aware of one’s own presence and part to play in the midst of it all, in a place like Vegas (or maybe just in a place.  Vegas could be anywhere).

Venice, NV

Today, my Theater I class had its first “official” audience–one of the Kindergarten classes–come in to hear us read children’s stories.  Not surprisingly, Dr. Seuss was represented today by “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” one of his famous works and the last story he wrote before his death.

In addition to the I’m-a senior-in-high-school-my-life-will-be-forever-changed-nothing-will-ever-ever-EVER-be-the-same-EVER! feeling a senior is bound to get from experiencing “Oh, the Places You’ll Go”, my thoughts also managed to wander themselves into the realm of Waiting for Godot and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  I became most aware of these thoughts at this turn of the story:

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…

…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.

In the waiting room

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

My question is, what’s worth the wait?  And how can you know so you’ll have at least some chance of keeping up with life?

I guess this reminded me most of Waiting for Godot.  Anyway, a) Dr. Seuss is wonderful, b) his rhyme scheme and rhythm (I just noticed that “rhyme” and “rhythm” look very much alike…hmm) flow briskly (it all seems to go by so fast) and beautifully, and c) the rhyme, the rhythm, the words, the tones, the everything feel like thoughts that would leap out of Ros’s or Guil’s mouths out onto the pages in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (especially so in the first three stanzas).  In a tragicomedies like Waiting for Godot or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go”, I find a similar sort of humorous (fairly sardonic in Waiting for Godot, also sardonic but, in addition, more humorous in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and whimsical while significant in “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”), seemingly-simple or straight-forward “story” very much capable of being neither humorous nor simple (and the only reason why they are in these contexts are because of the ways in which the authors crafted them/approached what they wanted to say) but taking on these aspects to some extent maybe to better reach the rest of the world.

If a coin is weighted,

(and thus is fated, for a weighted coin is assuredly fated)

How must it feel to see this coin

(weighted and, consequently, fated)

land (unabated) same-side up

again and

again and

again,

unmediated

?

With truth-stained eyes

We watch without guise

and surmise 

free will hasn’t a word for goodbye’s.

The sad realization? Everybody dies.

Having just read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, I’ve become attuned to the rhythm of the absurdist play (as much as one having read a grand total of one piece of Absurdist fiction (and still letting the experience of that one settle) can be).  The point of view in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead seems to be the same one used by Beckett in Waiting for Godot – one removed, physically absent from the realm being so carefully observed (similar to sitting in the director’s chair, overseeing his players, I guess).

I feel a slight sensation of something missing, its space unoccupied, waiting to be filled.  Is this something a new level of awareness for the characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to be precise?  Is this feeling agitated when Guildenstern seems to come so close to a realization of his own thoughts and mental patterns, the footprints of his memories.  On pages sixteen and seventeen, we watch as Guildenstern paces back and forth, trying to piece together what is going on so he can try to establish a foundation for understanding how–and why–he and Guildenstern have come to where they are now.  ”And a syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it.  Two, he has never known anything to write home about.  Three, it is nothing to write home about…. Home… What’s the first thing you remember?” (page 16).  It is as if Guildenstern is trying to build up various arguments for various questions he is keen on answering.  On page seventeen, this eager–but is this word too infused with energy?  Somehow, it feels off.  Is Guildenstern desperate?–pondering of Guildenstern’s continues: “(He stops pacing dead.) There was a messenger… that’s right.  We were sent for . . . Syllogism is second: One, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces.  Two, probability is not operating as a factor.  Three, we are now within un-, sub- or supernatural forces.  Discuss” (page 17).  Numbering his thoughts like breadcrumbs by which he can hope to find his way back, Guildenstern seems fixed on coming to some conclusion or mental destination.  His reminds me so much of Lucky’s speech (his response to being demanded to “think” for his fellow characters) from Waiting for Godot.  Both rattle off thoughts (and, in my mind, I see this as rushed, desperate to get it all out before you forget what you were going to say and subsequently feel all the worse for a) losing yourself once more, and b) feeling that you’ve lost a potential key, and that memory might never restore it to you) in a scientific sort of fashion (Lucky’s is very close, however garbled it may seem) that makes you wonder why one would devote such exceeding amounts of time and energy to dwelling on–and desperately trying to catch hold of–seemingly insignificant things, like thoughts just forgotten in the past two seconds or what brought two people–one and his companion–to the place where they now find themselves.

A Female American Goldfinch

We are all born into our respective nests, raised to a certain age, and are expected, one day, to leave.  And so we fly away, make our own nests, raise our own children, and see them off on their own ways.  I noticed so many references to birds in Mrs. Dalloway, especially in regard to women.

We leave our houses every day, step out into the world, and feel, to those of us in-tune with Clarissa Dalloway’s mind, that this moment is “A lark!  What a plunge!” (Woolf 3).  People mill about in the world, sorting and sifting for things they need–twigs for nests, flowers for parties–and eventually come back home with their goods to go about the process of building these new things into their pre-existing lives.  It is a life of gathering that we all seem to live.  In the eyes of some, this is duty, carrying on with the day–a perfectly honorable business.  Others, however, might cringe at thought of upholding such a pattern of monotony, a dismissal of life as a list of to-do’s.  And sometimes we find ourselves on both sides of the line, recognizing the things that “must be done” but not necessarily doing so without reluctance or regret at having to do so.  Peter, a could-have-been of Clarissa Dalloway’s life, seems to lament Clarissa’s apparent choice to live a life of propriety and structure and devote herself to keeping up appearances.  In Peter’s eyes, Clarissa will forever remain the bird who could have flown away but didn’t.  Instead, Clarissa settled, having chosen to hone her “natural instinct” for maintaining “all that interminable traffic that women of her sort keep up” and “that extraordinary gift, that woman’s gift, of making a world of her own wherever she happened to be” (Woolf 75, 74).

A Goldfinch Nest

Maybe this settling is only natural, though–simply a matter of where and with whom one chooses to roost, rather than whether or not one settles at all.  Peter, I think, views himself as less of a restraint on–and perhaps even an advocate for–Clarissa’s individuality.  Maybe it’s Clarissa Dalloway’s having nestled into a life separate from his that laces tragedy into Peter’s view of the woman he loves, not the fact that she did, after all, fit herself into a particular nook of life.

Hi!  First off, sorry for not italicizing the title.  I’m technologically worthless, and, quite frankly, it takes me so long to synthesize my ideas or write anything in the realm of decency that I probably can’t afford to waste time (like this) trying to figure it out.  So, that aside, here goes.

Sight, Seeing, and Foresight

The concept of sight in this novel is one that I am really enjoying—characters gazing out over or across the land, eyes going blank, or looking like “burnt-out cinder” (p. 32) or “wooden” and “pale” (p. 18), sight reaching further than what lies directly in front of us, and further still past the land, touching on a “distance beyond the land” (p. 27), and so on.  I love how chapters “told” by different characters allow for a more comprehensive view of what’s going on with the Bundrens (AutoCorrect is offering “Burdens” as a replacement… just a thought).  I suppose that’s the default description of what varying narrators do for a story, but I’m finding Faulkner’s implementation to be particularly good.  One thing I really enjoy is the different ways characters see one another.  Cora’s view of Darl is one that reflects the opposite of the impression I’ve gotten of Darl thus far in the novel.  She views him as a saint, a boy utterly devoted to his mother and torn apart by the thought of his seeing her for the last time, with no goodbye.  Yet it seems that Darl, not Jewel (as Cora had been led to believe by Mr. Tull), was the one encouraging the wagon trip in the first place, repeatedly reminding the others that the trip “means three dollars.”  And in Cora’s first chapter, we are told that Darl walked straight past the room holding his mother in her deathbed without so much as a glance.  Furthermore, Cora’s take on how Darl simply stood back at the threshold of his mother’s room and watched her, rather than letting her note his presence and saying goodbye to her, seems fairly biased.  She interprets Darl’s actions as those resulting from a “heart too full for words”, when really Darl seems to me to be a character not so much moved to tears by his foresights as voluntarily distanced from the unfortunate fate that awaits his mother.

Quick (And Poorly-Done) Thoughts on Characters and Their Respective Feelings Regarding Death

Darl is a character who sees more than others and hopes for no more than what his eyes reveal to him; Darl accepts what he knows is inevitable and isn’t particularly devastated by it, either.  His father, Anse, on the other hand, does seem to be devastated by realities he knows he cannot fight.  He repeats the sentence “No man ever misliked it more” time after time, yet doesn’t resist death’s approach as Jewel does.  And the motives for Jewel’s violent reactions against waiting for, expecting, and accepting his mother’s death aren’t entirely selfless.  Despite Cora’s account of Jewel supposedly being a horrid child to his mother, Jewel still seems to be the most affectionate and feeling of Mrs. Bundren’s sons.  But it could be the case that Jewel’s resistance to anticipating his mother’s death stems from his own sense of a desperate need to avoid, to deny, death.  Cora accepts not knowing, putting her faith in God, while Dewey Dell is frustrated at not knowing what will happen, what is to come.  Dewey Dell also seems to victimize herself, saying repeatedly that she “could not help it,” “she cannot help it.”  This could provide yet another bit of insight into how each character views and copes with the contemplation of death.

Relationships

The interrelationships of all characters — human, fish, or horse — is another intricacy that I feel is becoming well-developed by the various voices of the novel.  I see ties between the horse Jewel fights and many other characters:  Jewel’s “leech-like” straddle of the horse could be threaded with the mentions of buzzards eagerly awaiting death, leeching off of what’s left of hope.  In addition, Darl’s mentions that Mrs. Bundren “always whipped [Jewel] and petted him more”, as if her feelings for him were a mix of love and hate.  Similarly, Cora mentions how Jewel was a devilishly difficult child and how raising him was so hard on Mrs. Bundren.  Perhaps Mrs. Bundren is like Jewel in this case, and Jewel like the horse.  Finally, in Tull’s chapter, a character named Vardaman is further discussed.  Vardaman caught a fish “durn nigh long as he is,” according to Mr. Tull (p. 30).  Vardaman “slings” the fish over his back with a “manly” victory spit over his shoulder, later trying to haul the fish away but struggling with the fish’s sliminess, its “hiding into the dust like it was ashamed of being dead, like it was in a hurry to get back hid again” (p. 31).  Faulkner continues to say that Vardaman “cusses it (the fish) like a grown man, standing a-straddle of it” (p. 31).  If the “interaction” between Vardaman and this fish was difficult to tie to Jewel and the horse’s interaction, the vocabulary is far from vague in connecting the two.

(Nothing Remarkable)

In closing, I REALLY like this book, and I’m eager to see what else will arise from Faulkner’s converging narrations.

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
      Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
      What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
      Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
      Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
      What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
      By any other name would smell as sweet;
      So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
      Retain that dear perfection which he owes
      Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
      And for that name which is no part of thee
      Take all myself (II, ii, 40-51).

What is the significance of a name? What does it really mean?

Juliet seems to be belittling the significance of names, saying that it makes no difference, really, what our names are, because, in the end, we’ll all look and smell and act and seem the same. Our identities remain constant regardless of what happens to our names. But is this really true, in all cases? Perhaps in Juliet’s: a case where love at first sight comes into play, and names really have nothing to do with the matter. If you grow feelings for another person without having ever known their name, its impact on your feelings is really quite little. But if you’ve always known someone by one name, and then that name changes, doesn’t that change the situation at least a little? Might you feel as if you’d lost something – however little – in no longer having the only name you’d known for a person fade away? Juliet could very well be right in thinking that our names don’t reflect our characters as accurately as our characters do themselves, but, to some extent, the names by which others call us and with which others associate us, identify us, do influence the lights in which we view ourselves, and the playing field changes. Naming has always been a measure of power. In knowing another’s name, you have some semblance of power and control over this other person. One of the most famous Monotheistic stories is that of Jacob’s wrestle with God, in which Jacob demands to know God’s name but God refuses to relent, thus maintaining the upper hand in his relationship with man in keeping up his elusive and mysterious identity a secret. But God does do one thing for Jacob: he renames him, further emphasizing the level of control God has over mankind. Jacob is renamed “Israel,” which translates to “one who struggles with God.”

The same sort of thing can be seen in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon in regard to both Macon Dead and Milkman’s feelings about their names. Macon loathes the nickname “Milkman.”  He is in the dark as to the origins of the name, and, perhaps as an attempt to gain more control of the situation, Macon attempts to guess at the meaning behind his son’s nickname, saying of the name that, “it sounded dirty, intimate, and hot… wherever the name came from, it had something to do with his wife and was, like the emotion he always felt when thinking of her, coated with disgust” (Morrison 16). A great part of Macon’s aggravation with his son’s nickname comes from this uncertainty as to how it started. This is a feeling we see frequently in Macon: his hatred for the lightly-taken, almost carefree approach to naming and to life itself. Macon is deeply troubled by the fact that his son’s name — and his own name — are results of either joke or drunken thoughtlessness. But despite Macon Dead’s disdain for the nature of his family’s inheritance of the name, he is still very concerned with how others view him and how his name stands in society. The same can be seen with Milkman. Though he’s always hated both his name and his nickname, he nonetheless felt the need to defend both when he perceived Pilate to be insinuating that there were only “three Deads alive” (Morrison 39). Milkman says during this scene that, “even while he was screaming he wondered why he was suddenly so defensive — so possessive about his name” (Morrison 39).  Another interesting thing about Pilate, though, is the aura of power she seems to possess.  This could be a result of her powerful appearance, strong and mystical; however, I think one of the most fascinating aspects of Pilate’s character is the box earring she wears with her name in it. Milkman even thinks that there’s more than just Pilate’s name in it, saying to Guitar that he’ll ask Pilate about Hagar’s last name because he thinks, “it’s in that dumb-ass box hanging from her ear. Her own name and everybody else’s. Bet mine’s in there too. I’m gonna ask her what my name is” (Morrison 89). Pilate possesses the names, the secrets, the keys to the identities of everyone. She seems nearly lord-like in her possession of this box, holding something from — maybe even against — others who aren’t powerful enough to possess such a breadth of knowledge as hers.

When Macon yells at Ruth, “Anna Djvorak don’t even know your name! She called you Dr. Foster’s daughter! I bet you one hundred dollars she still don’t know your name! You by yourself ain’t nobody. You your daddy’s daughter!” Morrison reveals an interesting concept: how do names relate to ourselves (Morrison 67)? Do names truly “belong” to us, or are they merely methods of identification, oftentimes only in relation to others, not ourselves? Do names further define us, or do they drive us away from definitions of ourselves by defining us in terms of others, rather than viewing us as individual, unique people, independent of the family name with which they might be associated?  What is the True with a capital T relationship between identity and one’s name, anyway? Does one define the other, or constrain it? These are the questions I’m eager to keep exploring as I become more familiar with the Deads.

To be completely honest with you, I’m not sure how I feel about The Handmaid’s Tale.  I feel furious and hurt and scared at the ideas Margaret Atwood presents in the book, and, to some extent, there must be something powerful in a person’s writing if they are able to move readers to such feelings.  The problem is that I dislike a number of other things about Atwood’s writing, and those things amass to a greater influence over my experience in reading her novel than that of the appreciation of her ability to evoke powerful emotions through her words.

What has been irking me the most thus far in The Handmaid’s Tale is the way in which certain aspects of Atwood’s crafting of her book seem to take away from the expression of one of her key thoughts: that women in the Republic of Gilead are more bound and made slave to their reproductive systems than what we ever could have possibly imagined capable of American society.  Let’s just say that Margaret Atwood never saw a comma she didn’t like.  I keep finding that commas seem to worm their ways into places all over the page, in spots where their presences really aren’t necessary (and oftentimes don’t even make sense) and, in the end, wind up distracting and even aggravating the reader.  Here’s an example from chapter five: “But the walk may be a whim of hers, and they humor whims, when something has gone this far and there’s been no miscarriage.  Or perhaps she’s one of those, Pile it on, I can take it, a martyr.  I catch a glimpse of her face, as she raises it to look around.”

Woman and the Moon

Another thing that I feel takes away from Atwood’s telling of the story is her heavy-handed symbolism.  I wish she would have let some of the symbols she incorporates into her writing settle on their own, rather than forcefully hash out every single symbolic moment until the reader is so sick of hearing about the stems of tulips and their reddish tint that any original appreciation of the symbolism is gone.  There are points throughout the book where I feel bored and even somewhat ripped-off because the author kept beating a dead horse with her symbols.  Gardens and flowers, the color red, the different levels of a birthing stool, the color blue, the color white, the moon, children… they’re are beautifully unique to this story.  I only wish that these symbols had been given time to mature on their own rather than having been pushed into the realm of overkill by Atwood.

Finally, I really dislike some of Atwood’s flushed-out descriptions.  They seem to be too much all too often.

With all of these things bugging me about the novel, it’s hard for me not to wonder why she chose to write a book rather than stick to a short story, where Atwood could have kept her idea in a purer form, one left uninhibited by writing preferences of the author.  But then again, with an idea so big and hugely important to the history of mankind as a woman’s role in society, maybe a book was necessary to do her idea justice.

I always save my English homework for last.  Always.  I get into my car with my sister at the end of the school day, turn my radio to 90.7 WFAE, and drive home.  Then I haul in my backpack, change into bearable clothing, and settle down somewhere to work.  And I always save English for last.  On a good day, I’m working quickly, and I have a good chunk of time later in the evening to devote to English.  It’s like my dessert time.  Just then, I was about to write, “I relish it, this time when I can turn of my mind and let myself wander.”  Now I’m thinking something else, though.  What if, when we turn off our minds, it’s the only time when our minds are fully awake?  With control comes a sense of order comes a sense of a pattern comes a sense of monotony comes a sense of drifting off to boredom.  Our thoughts begin to increase in complexity as we allow ourselves to let go and our thoughts to dwell on things from which we’d normally have to pull our minds away.  Maybe that’s nothing more than a nice way to explain why young women (and all women, really, and all people, really) obsess over little things like why she gave you that look, or why he said this instead of that.  Even if it is, it’s an interesting way to look at the way Emma Woodhouse thinks.

Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:

Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information.^[1][2] All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs.^[3] For example, vision involves light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by odor molecules and hearing involves pressure waves.

What if, with every communication between two people, a light strikes, or a scent is released, or a wave is emitted, and Emma’s mind jumps on it and from her quick perception of this sensation her thoughts bloom into one

Emma's Mind

huge field of ideas and thoughts and possibilities?  Where any normal person would see that Mr. Elton was hardly in love with Harriet, but, rather, had his eyes set on Emma all along, Emma refused to let herself perceive it.  It’s as if she set a tone for only a certain breed of thought to grow in her head (a thought that, naturally, would have to agree with whatever new scheme Emma’s imaginings had conjured up).  The endless slew of thoughts that seems to flourish from Emma’s mind whenever something mildly stirring occurs must represent only the thoughts that she allows to grow within her mind; other thoughts — ones that might have picked up on Mr. Elton’s odd level of cheer despite Harriet’s being ill or Mr. Churchill’s (who, admittedly, is a mysterious man, and so it makes a little more sense why Emma would go so far with her suspicions in his case) tendency to somehow always wind up talking about,visiting, or speaking with Jane Fairfax — are simply not permitted to root themselves securely in Emma’s mind.  And, in Frank Churchill’s case, since Emma has convinced herself that Mr. Churchill must be madly in love with her, absolutely bursting at the seams to say something, his parents practically begging for their marriage and Mr. Churchill stealing every possible chance to make himself as near to Emma as is possible, there is no possible way that Emma’s intricate web of thoughts reinforcing the idea of Mr. Churchill’s love for Emma could ever allow the teeniest thought of Mr. Churchill actually having some sort of an interest in Jane Fairfax to plant itself.

What I’m wondering is if this will change in Emma.  Could Emma one day think as objectively as Mr. Knightley is capable of doing?  At the beginning of Chapter 41, we’re reminded of Mr. Knightley’s initial (and seemingly inexplicable) distaste for Frank Churchill, and we’re further shown that Emma isn’t the only one whose thoughts are busy at work trying to break though a barrier to come to some realization about one person or another (in this case, Mr. Churchill).  Everyone (according to Emma) has it in their heads that Frank Churchill has made Emma his “object.”  This runaway thought of Emma’s seems to actually have some reason to it, considering the fondness which Frank Churchill seems to have towards her, his ridiculous encouragement (and entertaining!) of her obsessive thoughts, being a little overjoyed by so much as running in to Emma at the store and willfully sitting by her at social occasions like the Coles’ party.  Emma’s speculation is fully ripe; however, there still exists another possible explanation for Mr. Churchill that Emma has failed to reveal to herself: a possible connection between Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill.  Nothing more than a feeling of annoyance at not being able to see Jane’s reaction to Mr. Churchill’s talking with her registers with Emma while they are at the Cole’s party.  Emma doesn’t think for a moment that perhaps Mr. Churchill intentionally blocked her from seeing his conversation with Jane because there was something going on between the two of them, just as Mr. Knightley seems to believe.  But Mr. Knightley, having no personal investment in a relationship between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax (unlike Emma, whose pride is partially staked in thinking that Mr. Churchill is enchanted by her), is perhaps more able to see clearly the events that unfold in front of him and lead him to believe that Mr. Churchill has feelings for Miss Fairfax.

As the novel continues, there is a tighter and tighter connection being drawn between Emma and her Mr. Knightley.  Not only are we beginning to see interesting reactions from Emma with regards to Mr. Knightley (like how adamantly opposed to Mrs. Weston’s suspicion of an interest between Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax), but now, in the latest chapter we’ve read (ch. 41), we are privy to what is perhaps the greatest revelation of Mr. Knightley’s inner thoughts and mental workings, as we read about major hints towards a “thing” between Jane and Frank Churchill that Mr. Knightley has perceived and analyzed.  And Mr. Knightley himself makes sure to acknowledge the imaginative nature of his thoughts regarding Mr. Churchill and Jane as dangerously similar to Emma’s “errors of imagination” (Austen, 324).  So, while both Emma and Mr. Knightley are making guesses as to the romantic intentions of Frank Churchill, only Mr. Knightley actually notes that his thoughts are all presumptuous, whereas Emma keeps striding forth, utterly confident in her suspicions and dangerously blind to the perfectly plausible suspicion of Mr. Knightley.  Will Emma ever be able to entertain a suspicion of hers without investing completely in it?  I’m curious to see how Emma’s character will finally evolve, if she will at all.

(And now I’m thinking about how utterly random the beginning of this blog was…)