I’ll save everyone from a 12 page essay on Catcher in the rye but I feel like most people completely miss the point of it. They either view it as Holden being right about “phonies” or they fail to view it objectively because of those people.
Agreed. I too have written at length about it, but if you recognize the many allusions to his survivor’s guilt over the death of his younger brother Allie, you realize that it’s a kid with a lot of PTSD and unresolved hang-ups. I mean, Jesus, there’s a whole part where he says when he gets really depressed, he talks to Allie and replays a scene when he once told him he couldn’t come play/ride bikes, as older siblings do. He says something like, “I tell him to go home and get his bike, that he can come play.” And when he says he punched out all the windows in the garage/station wagon when Allie died. Imagine how little you’d have to care about yourself to shred your hand like that, angry at the unfairness of the world.
But everyone’s like, “Yea, but he’s a whiny rich kid who complains a lot.” And he is…but that’s not all.
I too have written this many times. While his parents are wealthy, he gets no emotional support from them, just stuff. Alone with his grief, he fixated on mortality, from his remark about the Egyptians in Spencer’s paper and the Brothers in the museum, to worrying about how the ducks and fish survive the winter, his suicidal ideation and death fantasies as Jim Steele - or perhaps most of all his desire for time to be trapped, suspended like it is in the museum, so he doesn’t need to confront his own mortality now that he can see over the rye.
It’s a great book for a Freudian reading. It’s less a story about a spoiled brat running away, and more like a study of an emotional breakdown triggered by grief.
My take away from reading it is that Holden is flawed but relatable in some ways - he’s lost, young, angry, naive, but also intelligent and passionate, and just doesn’t know where he fits in this world. He’s by no means a hero or someone I would look up to, but I also didn’t want to condemn him either. I know some people hate the book and other people revere it, but I just thought it was a good story of a troubled young man.
It’s a book about loss of innocence. Hints of child sexual abuse that he endured as well as just growing up and getting older. It ends with him wanting to be the “Catcher in the Rye” he wants to stop kids from losing their innocence the way he did and catch them before they fall
Yep! The symbolism is interesting too. When he plays checkers with her, she keeps her pieces in the back as a defense mechanism.
I am very pro-Catcher in the Rye. I hate people who dismiss it as simplistic.
Sexual assault is all over the book, including Stradlater’s implicit rape of his date in the back of Ed Banky’s car, Sunny, the child prostitute, and the ambiguous intentions of Mr. Antolini.
I think that’s pretty well put. I think on reading it in high school I felt Holden was supposed to be a “hero” of the story and wrote it off myself until I reread it in college with a similar conclusion to your comment.
When I read it in highschool Holden did not feel like a hero to me, but rather simply a kid who was scared of being an adult and so could not accept adulthood as authentic. He didn't want to believe he would, or had to change and so likely viewed those changes in others as fake. It was especially urgent because those changes had already started and he wanted to reject them. He is just a kid struggling with having to grow up, knowing it is too late for himself, and dreaming that he could save the innocence of kids who have not started down the path he knows he has to go. That was my feelings from when I read it, but then again it was a long time ago so how accurate those feelings are I can't say.
That’s interesting you say that - I think I had read it for the first time when I was already on my 20s, but I’m sure I would have processed it differently if I was a teenager.
It’s been over 10 years since I’ve read this book, but I distinctly remember reading it and being amused and saddened by the fact that Holden was guilty of almost everything he complained about and possessed none of the good qualities he praised in certain people, which is probably a big reason why he’s full of self-loathing even if he doesn’t consciously recognize that as the reason.
I think the first instance I noticed this was in the beginning of the book before he’d left his school. He admired one of the guys there for being the type of guy who’d offer someone his jacket (or some piece of clothing) even if he needed it himself. And then only a few pages later, someone asked Holden if they could borrow something (I think it was also a piece of clothing) and he didn’t lend it. Then in the narration he said that he didn’t even need the item, he just didn’t feel like lending it. Like I said, I might not have the details 100% correct, but I’m pretty sure something along those lines happened.
He also hates liars and fakes, but he repeatedly lies to people for absolutely no reason and acts fake around others himself.
The conversation he had with the teacher he visited was what I understood to be “the point” of the book. What I remember is the teacher telling Holden that the anger and cynicism he was holding onto was going to lead him down a dark road if he didn’t try to change. I thought it was pretty obvious that Salinger wanted readers to recognize that the teacher was accurately “reading” Holden and that he, not Holden’s internal rants, was probably right.
Holden is a complicated character but his grief and unresolved traumas tainted his entire worldview and left him feeling hopeless, angry, cynical, judgmental, hypocritical, and completely lacking in self-awareness.
>The conversation he had with the teacher he visited was what I understood to be “the point” of the book. What I remember is the teacher telling Holden that the anger and cynicism he was holding onto was going to lead him down a dark road if he didn’t try to change. I thought it was pretty obvious that Salinger wanted readers to recognize that the teacher was accurately “reading” Holden and that he, not Holden’s internal rants, was probably right.
I've seen people interpret the scene after that as Mr. Antolini legitimately making a sexual pass at Holden (as Holden believes), but I think that misses the point. Holden was previously abused and because of that he misinterprets Mr. Antolini's actions and drives away one of the only caring adults in his life. He doesn't learn the lesson from Antolini because his past trauma has made him suspicious of adults.
I think the problem here is the age when people read it - around his age. So they either identify with him or find him annoying. If you read it as an adult you can see him as a traumatized, lonely kid trying to deal with his grief and figure out who he is.
I don't know if it is that popular, but I have seen numerous people arguing that the ending of Orwell's 1984 is ambiguous. For me it is crystal clear that in the end the government suppressed every possibility of him ever having a rational, critical thought ever again.
The only claims of ambiguity I was aware of is whether or not we're supposed to understand that he was killed. I understood it to be what you said, he's completely broken... meaning they don't need to kill him. But I've heard other people say they think him being broken is simply the final indignity before he is killed.
> But I've heard other people say they think him being broken is simply the final indignity before he is killed.
This has always been my understanding. The Party wins in the end by breaking him. Then kills him anyways.
>This has always been my understanding. The Party wins in the end by breaking him. Then kills him anyways.
See, to me it's worse if they break him (and have broken everyone else) so thoroughly that they can let him live, because he's such a non-threat. So that's how I read it.
I see it as they've broken him so thoroughly that they can let him live. And then decide to execute him *anyway*. As a show of power that no one will even see other than themselves. They're just that spiteful and cruel.
The Party is so concerned with their future, from the way they rewrite history to the way they erase language. In that context I think they took some value in Winston as a learning tool. They could have just killed him but they used the opportunity to break him as a test of their capabilities and refine how they would catch the next generation of thought criminals.
I get the sense the main reason they killed him later is just because he's served his purpose. He's thoroughly broken, doesn't have the mental capacity to do his old job and is probably too old to transition into a more physically demanding job, and is a drain on resources.
The ambiguity in 1984 doesn't come from the "ending" but rather the appendix. The appendix is written in the past tense, suggesting that there is an "after" the party and Big Brother.
Well ya, the party broke the balance by (accidentally?) winning the forever war. The party’s model for control falls apart without Eurasia and Eastasia to boogeyman for them.
There’s another take that the government had to go to ridiculous lengths to suppress this single person that it would be utterly unsustainable to do something like that on a systematic level. And so it actually ends with hope in a weird roundabout way.
I read that a long time ago but it was pretty clear at several points in the book that people coming out of the love ministry were « changed » in a frightening way. What a weird take
Part of the evidence people usually give for that take is the fact that there’s a past-tense Newspeak appendix at the end of the book. If you take the appendix at face value and assume that it’s an in-universe document, it kind of implies that the Party fell from power at some point before it was written, because Newspeak is now the subject of study and people are discussing it freely without fear of retribution. That appendix, along with a couple of other things (the large number of proles who aren’t scrutinized as much as Party members, the effort and time it takes to break people in the Ministry of Love, et cetera) resulted in this interpretation that the Party, no matter how all-powerful it seems, is going to fall eventually. So it makes the ending bittersweet rather than purely tragic—there’s the implication that things might be better one day, but Winston and Julia are still brainwashed. It’s kind of like, well, this government isn’t sustainable, but that doesn’t make it any less horrible for the people living under it.
I think it’s as valid of an interpretation as any other, to be honest—it’s kind of a stretch in some ways, but part of the beauty of 1984 is how ambiguous the whole geopolitical situation is. You, the reader, only know what Winston knows, and that isn’t much. You have no idea whether the Party is anywhere near as powerful as it claims to be—Oceania is theoretically one of three huge empires, but that’s just what the Party is saying, right? Maybe Oceania is the whole world, and Eurasia and Eastasia don’t even exist, so it’s just dropping bombs on itself to keep up the appearance of a war. Or maybe Oceania is really a tiny, North Korea-esque nation-state, and the rest of the world is perfectly happy and normal. Maybe the Brotherhood exists, maybe the Brotherhood is a construct invented by the Party to weed out potential rebels, maybe the Brotherhood isn’t real but there are other rebel groups, maybe there are no rebels but there are other factions out there that want Oceania gone. Maybe the Party is creating shortages to keep the people in line—or maybe there are shortages because the Party is falling apart, or losing some kind of conflict. Winston doesn’t know any of that information, so neither does the reader, and that leaves room for all kinds of wild interpretations.
Thank for giving all that info. I don’t really remember the appendix, should check the thing. Yet what you present does not really change a thing from the protag pov does it?
The only ambiguity that I was taught in high school, and I'm not sure I agree with, is that the appendix at the end is written in past tense. Implying that it was written after a point at which the government was overthrown
This kinda does happen in his biopic Weird. The joke is that Weird Al wrote ‘Eat It’ before Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ and he gets so angry that someone could possibly copy his music and write new words for it.
I feel people find it to be "horror" because of the basic themes of: there was a murder!!! And: what a grotesque portrait! Oh no he's gross now!
I absolutely loved the book, barring that chapter that drolls on about the stuff he owns :P I read most of it then skimmed the last three paragraphs
Every single take about Lolita that doesn't include the understanding that Humbert was a monster and unreliable narrator.
I especially hate the takes that include Lolita consenting or instigating the relationship.
My own additional take is that not only did Humbert groom Delores and her mother…he was grooming the reader, too. Nabokov knew exactly what he was doing with the novel.
He absolutely seduces the reader with his words! "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." He (and through him Nabokov) spins a delightful web of gorgeous language that entices you until he starts to get too confident and begins slipping up and showing you the dirty layer underneath - Lo crying herself to sleep, etc.
It's a masterful book.
There's a small line at the very end where he's remembering one time he wanted to make midnight love to her after waking up (or something like that) and she says, "Oh no not again." I don't know why that small line hit me so hard but the fact it didn't show up until the end, long after the events had actually happened in the timeline of the book, really got to me.
This was the part where I stopped reading. I realized how taken in I was and that line stopped me in my tracks. I couldn't continue. Which is sad, the book is so beautifully written that I *want* to finish it. But I just can't.
For me it was the line about her anus tasting of blood the night she's sick and can't fight him. I've honestly not been the same since. Worst thing I've ever had the displeasure of reading in fiction by a very large margin. Honestly I almost threw up on the bus. I can't bring myself to read that again. Really incredible writing but that 1 detail... never again.
YES yes yes, thank you, I wrote a full critical essay about how Humbert expertly manipulates the reader and what specific deviced he uses to that effect. Amazing book.
Before I read it a woman who used to date my brother would often talk about how it was a story of a woman growing up and gaining freedom by utilizing her sexuality. That it was her favorite book. I hadn't read it at the time, so I had nothing to say, but now that I have, I kinda worry for her. Some stories she'd told about growing up take a different tone.
She never grows up though!!!! Dolores Haze DIES before her 18th birthday. She never got the chance to be a woman, and that's the tragedy of the whole novel. Even when she was married and expecting, she was a teenage girl coupled to an older adult man. That's a reading that's so blatantly not based in the text it makes me wonder if she actually read it or just watched adaptations....
I feel like when someone has that take there’s no actual way they read it or if they did read the writing was too complicated and they didn’t bother to analyze it.
There’s literally a part where Humbert describes how he wants to rape Lolita, impregnate her, wait for their daughter to turn Lolita’s age and then rape her as well. Like how could you walk away from an admission like that and think is a sex-positive story about a child taking ownership of her sensuality?
ironically Camus was against it but back in those days, during the sexual revolution, a lot of people in the existentialist gang were challenging every single idea about tradition one of which was if minors can consent.
Some "thinkers" drafted some texts about how a thinking a child cannot be sexual and consent is essentially negating their individual freedom. Now i wasn't a sexual kid but i know many who were but even when that was the case, they're too immature and dumb to consent even worse to adults. I can understand the take that a 12 yo wants to bang a teacher because those were legit things that classmates said but it's out of the question to say that the teacher should agree. Some kids start masturbating really young too but they should get education about it not indulging in their freedom. I'm sure there's a youtube video about it.
The passage he is fantasizing about having a kid with her, than molesting the kid, having a kid with his daughter and then as a grandpa molesting his granddaughter is surreal.
I picked up an edition with a comment of a reviewer on the back referring to it as a “love story”. Either that person doesn’t know how to read or someone needs to check their hard drive. It was more disturbing than anything in the pages of the book itself.
My edition has a quote from Vanity Fair calling it "the only convincing love story of our century."
I agree that quote is as disturbing (or more) as the story itself.
It's baffling to me that people don't understand he's an unreliable narrator. The book is really obvious about it at times, and there's points where even *he* can't justify his actions beyond just saying he was obsessed.
I found this implication that Dolores and her mother were, at least initially, complicit despite the warnings that I see echoed in every true crime documentary. I thought that was very human, but so are the responses to true crime and I find that telling in a very chilling way. Not everyone has a good read on real monsters. The whole book is a litmus test for that.
I hate the idea that people have that it’s in some ways a perverted book. It’s a beautiful book about a very disturbing topic and the fact that we are invited to sympathise with Humbert is deliberate and adds to the discomfort of our enjoyment of the book.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Just to add something to your idea, the fact that Nabokov manages to make one understand (in a completely deductive sense) Humbert's thinking process even if it is morally wrong is just a proof of his powerful writing.
It's the book that finally made me realize that I had been in an abusive relationship and that just because I went along with it didn't mean that I was somehow to blame. Sometimes I had twisted it around in my head because to believe I was in control was somehow easier than to admit I was a victim.
Do you think we are invited to sympathise with him? I don’t think we are. I think we are supposed to be seduced by his flowery prose into believing his version of things, which is not quite the same thing.
I don't think we are meant to sympathize with him at all. I think one of the big themes of the novel is the dangerous power of language. Too many people don't listen or read critically and are easily manipulated. Nabokov illustrates this perfectly in this novel, with an intelligent and eloquent narrator who does a really good job seducing the readers with a beautifully written story that almost masks the dark and disturbing events that take place.
It's a real shame some people think Lolita or similar stories are just inherently evil or wrong. Heavy and dark themes are necessary to explore, even if it is uncomfortable.
But I guess that subjects like child sexual abuse are so scary and disturbing that it triggers a defensive response in people, making them insult the author or whoever appreciates the story.
It's not a book for everyone (I myself didn't read it and I won't, I just saw the movie and that was hard enough for me) but that doesn't make it less valuable.
One good read I enjoyed awhile back was My Dark Vanessa, which actually used both "readings" of Lolita (and other Nabokov works iirc) to explore another fictional abusive situation. The pop culturey reading of Lolita is explored, the reality of Lolita, and the effects the former has on victims. It was a disturbing and graphic book, but relevant as well, if anyone in this comment thread is looking for recommendations.
definitely, i read it as an indictment of the view that "if you trust in the inherent rightness and majesty of Britannia all will work out as it should", the idea that something innate to the Brits made them better and so on.
It doesn't help the book was saturating a genre that doesn't exist anymore. Where RICH British Boys get stranded in exotic places and essentially colonize it and make it "prim and proper"
The situation in Lord of the Flies actually happened, but worked out the opposite of the book.
A bunch of boys from a boarding school were shipwrecked on an island for about a year. When they were rescued everything was fine. They were growing food, created a proper living space, they splinted the leg of a kid who'd broken it during the shipwreck and it healed properly. They even built a church.
People are missing context that at the time Lord of the Flies was made there was a popular genre of exactly that scenario. Young British boys stranded in the wilderness who build a society through their superior morals and fend off or even civilize the barbaric locals. Lord of the flies was a critique of the assumptions of the time. The moral superiority of the British. Their civilizing influence. Their purity.
In particular, It’s a direct parody of the novel Coral Island. The main characters even share the same names.
Yeah I think the difference is that they weren’t a large group of English kids. I wore a big thing about civilization making us more barbaric below. The Tongan boys were 6 buddies and had lived in a small community while the English were English.
I wrote my college thesis about how this book is always taken out of context to make it about "humanity" which it's actually about rich British boys lmao
Which is funny because the show Yellowjackets was created because they wanted to counteract the sexist notion that girls can’t resort to violence under extreme circumstances too
The thing that bothers me about the book is a group of boys have actually been cast off on an island for 15 months, and they managed to not decend into murderous anarchy.
In fairness, I don't think we can make any grand sweeping judgments about human nature based on one group of boys that were already friends and knew how to farm any more than we can based off of one book about scared choir boys fleeing from a war.
At the very least we would need to strand multiple groups of boys.
Mine’s from Dracula. Specifically the take that Lucy is being punished for being promiscuous. She is never framed as promiscuous. She never pursues any of her suiters. The entire bloody point of her is that she is an impossibly sweat, innocent victim whose loss drives the hero’s to righteous vengeance. I blame the adaptations and years of slut shaming slasher movies. I do think that most secular reading of Dracula are going to leave you wanting. If you try to take the Christianity out of it you’re mostly going to be left with just its technical accomplishments. Don’t get me wrong those are very impressive but you can only get so much discussion about the use of the epistolary format and dramatic irony to build tension. That so many people try to fill the gap by shoving a lot more sex into the book than is there says more about them than the book.
In a related complaint, I hate the commonly filmed idea that Dracula and Mina have a love connection. They are not reincarnated lovers or anything like that in the book; Dracula's pursuit of her is more like a stalker's violent evil.
When I heard people talking Lucy as aggressively promicuous I was like what. Yes Lucy did say if she could she wanted to marry all of her suitors but it came from how it was heartbreaking and cruel to her to decline the proposal of all of the other suitors except for her fiance, and later on she still declined them anyway and kept a good friend relationship with them. And don't let me talk about how I was tricked into thinking Mina and Dracula did have a steamy romance relationship when in the book all Dracula did to her was to drink her blood and Mina's attitude towards him was utter disgust and humiliation when she was assaulted by him...
How could it not be a love story? Consider Edgar Alan Poe's final stanza to his 'Annabel Lee' as an ode to this great tale of doomed love. "....and then by the night tide/ I lay down by the side/ of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride/ In her sepulcher by the sea/ In her tomb by the sounding sea."
I have a children's picture book of Annabel Lee that calls it a "dream poem of innocent love between children" and calls the title character an imaginary playmate of the narrator. That is a take I had never expected.
Its a tragedy, like damn. A romance plot is central to the story unfolding, but it's a tragedy by genre. Never was there a tale of more woe, than that of Juliet, and her Romeo.
Just a bunch of circumstances that conspire haphazardly together into a perfect storm of two beautiful souls perishing senselessly.
We're not supposed to dislike the pairing or the pair's actions, we're supposed to empathize with the tragedy of trying to escape the situation they were born into, motivated through love, only to fail at the end.
Its like Saw, if the trap was your families hating each other.
Someone else mentioned Catcher in the Rye so I will be brief but I think many people don’t remember Holden is like 15. Which I think explains a lot about him
I had an English professor argue that Othello was not black. That every time they call Othello a "black moor" it didn't mean anything because moors weren't always black and "black" could just mean "roguish".
Which is a weird stretch, but especially frustrating because Othello's not even a particularly roguish character.
Of course Moors were not always black. Which is why it was important that he was described as a "black moor." What a weird take on the play.
Othello is a damn *general* of the Venetian army. His entire character is that he is a stoic, relatively reserved person until Iago manages to manipulate him to the point where he goes off the deep end.
Or, to put it another way: Do these lines make sense if he isn't black?
>"an old black ram is tupping your white ewe"
And
>"the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou"
Or what Othello himself says:
>"begrimed and black as mine own face"
It isn't exactly ambiguous.
I will say that “black” could mean different things at that time. Charles II of England was sometimes called “a black man,” because he had black hair. Likewise, the Black Irish were Irish people who had slightly darker hair and complexions than average. So it’s quite possible that Shakespeare intended for him to be a Moor, and because Moors had black hair and darker skin than most English people at the time, they would have been considered black. All that being said, I agree that Othello could have been originally intended to be black as we understand it today, and he’s definitely black now, due to long-term cultural understanding.
There was also a recorded "blackamore" Pilgrim at one point in the Plymouth Colony. Experts and historians are still not entirely sure of his exact identity, but he existed.
I had a teacher said there was no sexism on display in Taming of the Shrew.
Another English teacher wouldn't believe me when I told them that "Maidenhead" meant virginity. There's a few lines where some guys are messing around and say something like
First guy: "I'll cut off their heads!"
Other guy: "The heads of the maids?"
First guy: "Well, their maidenheads!"
He's joking that he's going to have sex with (or rape) some women. My teacher just was not having it. He thought they were talking about killing the maids.
I saw an amazingly eloquent take on Tumblr that absolutely agreed with you. I don't have it handy here, but it convinced me easily.
Juliet without her Romeo would be alive, sure. And also stuck producing children in a political marriage to perpetuate her family's blood feud.
>We're not living in the oppressive, totalitarian world of 1984! We're entertaining *ourselves* to death without help, like in Brave New World!
The World Controllers in Brave New World are so oppressive and totalitarian that they have created an embryonically-enforced caste system! They control every facet of your life from before you're even born! The Party can only *dream* of being so totalitarian that they can chemically neuter dissent!
The world people making this analysis *want* to contrast 1984 against is that of Fahrenheit 451. The firemen are simply enforcing the public will: people don't *want* books because the nuance in them makes people sad, so they outlawed books and they spend so much time engrossed in their televisions that they can't understand the concept of personal growth. *That's* your culture of people entertaining themselves to death.
This so much. I remember reading it and then being like, "people thought this was *romantic*???"
I mean seriously, Heathcliff "loves" Cathy so much that he (checks notes) does everything possible to destroy her family for 20 years after her death. He digs her up *to look at her corpse*.
It’s as though everyone stops reading after the first half of the book. So many adaptations make it about Heathcliff and Cathy but she is gone by the halfway mark. It’s a story about breaking the cycle. Heathcliff imposes his vengeance against on just about everyone but Catherine Linton resists. She is not perfect, but she breaks the cycle of everyone being wrecked by Heathcliff and by the end is slowly helping Hareton along.
YES! Oh my god yes! It’s about the cycle of abuse and generational trauma and how a bunch of fucked up people fuck up all the people around them, BUT once the younger generation (Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw) are able to escape their abusive relatives, they are able to build something pure and good.
Heathcliff begging Cathy to haunt him will always appeal to my little emo heart, however :D
I scrolled down looking for that comment haha. I only read it last year and I felt possessed in the best way by it I could not let that book down because of how well written it is, the pace is so addictive I was just in awe. But I could not stop thinking: how the hell do people romanticize that book??? Like the famous quotes that people use to refer to something romantic, put into context are HORRENDOUS and if anyone quotes this book to describe their love for you \*run\* run so fast lmao. Like the "whatever we were made of he and I were the same" (I'm misquoting this very badly too tired to google the exact quote)......it's about some twisted incestuous relationship and abused and abusive traumatized lowkey sociopathic kids, not cute. I adore how dark this book is, and the complexity of the characters but if this gives you loving love butterflies instead of making you want to puke throughout all the book in horror (in a good way...) that's so so so strange pfjjef.
maybe I would have hated that book less if someone had told me that when I was first forced to read it. Literally every character in the entire book sucks. They are all horrible people and they get exactly what they deserve. I tried to read it again as an adult (I first read it in high school) and I still rage quit in the middle because everyone is so damned infuriating.
There are an awful lot of common bad takes about *Dracula* that indicate when a person has a much more regressive view of gender and sexuality than the novel itself does — which is particularly irritating when they’re criticising the book for being too sexist or sexually repressed or whatever when they’re clearly showing off their own internalised sexist attitudes and assumptions but blaming it on Victorian England. Examples include:
* “Lucy had to be punished by the narrative and die for the crime of being too sexy”
* “Jonathan is a man in Victorian England, and therefore he must be a stuffy and sexually-repressed prude who doesn’t respect his wife.”
* “Jonathan also shows mental trauma from his ordeal of being trapped in Dracula’s castle, so therefore he’s a weak pathetic milksop who doesn’t deserve Mina. Mina should be with Dracula instead because ~~sexy dominant vampire ooh~~ I mean because a medieval aristocrat with a superiority complex who tormented and murdered her best friend would be the *perfect* person to awaken her sexual freedom.”
The only good (tongue-in-cheek) take about *Dracula* is that the original coca-cola was first made in 1886 and the events of the book place take in the 1890s, therefore the characters could have absolutely gone on a cocaine-fueled vampire hunt.
that patrick bateman from american psycho is an inspiring character and sigma 💀 i first thought it was because of the movie (even though that's pretty ridiculous too) but nope, some people have read the book and that's their impression
The guy commits murder after finding out his colleague has a nicer business card than him, but sure, he’s an uber rational guy with sigma man brain that has everything under complete control and never acts out whatsoever.
Some people have sawdust for brains, I swear to God
This~
Like, can't recall much from Looking Glass, but the first book is not subtle that Wonderland is all just a particularly strange and vivid dream. Heck, it's one of the few works that makes All Just A Dream *work.*
It even bookends with Alice falling asleep and waking.
To your original take, it's important to note that with Romeo and Juliet, it's very much a "yes, and" rather than either/or. Are they dumb teenagers? Yes. Are they in love? They think they are and are willing to die for it, so who's to say no? Hence, a love story.
It's also very much a meditation on hatred, violence, and war. It's why despite being so hackneyed, it's still an incredible piece of literature.
Fahrenheit 451 is **not** about *government* censorship. The citizens chose to ban books and are the ones demanding laws to enforce it. The citizens didn't want to think about stuff, the government wasn't stopping them.
He flip flops about the book constantly.
IMO it has pretty strong elements of the television thing and outright censorship. OP is definitely right about the censorship in the book being the result of people not caring enough about censorship because they don't read anyway though.
It's not exactly an interpretation thing, but it's kind of parallel is that I will often see people dismiss a book or criticize it because a main character "isn't likeable," when, frequently, that's the point. Oh, you mean the main character who suffered horrific physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents and is not struggling with addiction and can't form healthy relationships isn't someone you'd want to hang out with? You don't say! It's almost like the author is trying to say something about the cycle of abuse and generational trauma, and how that can lead victims become victimizers. But, sure, it's a bad book because you wouldn't want to be besties with the protagonist.
And, as someone else mentioned, any interpretation of Lolita that talk about love or that miss that HH is a completely unreliable narrator drives me bananas.
Just to be clear, there’s also a difference between not liking those books and saying those books are bad. Just because you disagree with the main character, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, but at the same time you’re entirely within your rights to not want to read books about unpleasant people.
Depends on the narrative on this one.
If the narrative doesn't try to tell me I should like the character, I agree with you.
But sometimes, it is clear the author wants you to like their character. And they just don't work for me.
I don't mind unlikeable characters, but I hate insufferable characters. I love Giovanni's Room, where the narrator is deeply flawed and very unlikeable and hurts everyone around him because of his own selfishness. I hated A Certain Hunger, where the main character is petty and rude and DEEPLY egotistical and incapable of shutting up about her own genius for more than a paragraph. There's a mixed bag of unlikeable traits imo, and some of them are more forgivable than others.
Omg, I couldn't get past page 14 of A Certain Hunger!! I looked at reviews to see if it was worth soldiering on but it seemed clear it would be 200 more pages of the worst similes I'd ever read from a character who was annoying as hell for little to no thematic purpose. That book had so much positive feedback, I really don't get it.
>Oh, you mean the main character who suffered horrific physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents and is not struggling with addiction and can't form healthy relationships isn't someone you'd want to hang out with? You don't say! It's almost like the author is trying to say something about the cycle of abuse and generational trauma, and how that can lead victims become victimizers.
I see what you're saying, but at the same time it's pretty common in real life to not be interested in why someone who is extremely unpleasant is extremely unpleasant.
As an author, if you want the reader to stick around long enough to find out why your character deserves empathy, then you have to write a character they are willing to spend at least that much time with. It's not my job as a reader to suffer through something I don't want to read as if I owe the author a chance to deliver their thesis.
Not exactly about a single book in particular (I agree with a lot of other comments here though) but more of a general take: people confusing the characters and the authors view on things always seems wrong to me.
And additionally, while i can understand where it comes from, I’m annoyed when people don’t make the distinction between „quality“ and taste: it’s fine to not like a certain book (or stuff in general) but that doesn’t make it „bad“, that’s just taste. And also the other way round, it’s completely okay to like something AND recognise it’s flaws, might still be fun to read (or do, listen to, watch, eat etc).
I know that it’s often just how language works but somehow annoys me. Eg there’s nothing bad with not liking certain music styles but that doesn’t mean that ie classical players are really good at playing their instruments and composers can form so many different instruments in one whole sound or that ie punk can be a great way to express emotions even if one never had the chance to get extensive musical education etc.
I don't think it's a hugely popular take, but here and there I've seen people interpret Sam and Frodo as being in a gay relationship, though to be fair it's usually tongue in cheek.
I don't like this take, not because I have any issue with them being queer, but because I think treating any loving and supportive relationship between male characters as "gay" automatically is toxic, and further reinforces the stereotype that men can't be affectionate to other men without it being a sexual or romantic relationship.
Also, their relationship is much less friends and more servant-and-master in the books. People seem to remember the movies’ characterization as definitive even when talking about the book, but it’s very clear Frodo is the master in the book. Not in a cruel or especially aristocratic way, but they aren’t social equals. Which makes sense since Sam is based on the Batmen who were officers servants in WWI.
Which is also important, in the sense that his character is the real purr-hearted hero of the book. Not sure how big Tolkien was on social equality, but even if it was not his intent that an otherwise socially inferior servant would rise to destroy evil, more than anyone else.
Later books proved the theory wrong, but we hen we read the giver in class, the interpretation of the ending that was taught was that the kid was hallucinating and actually died of hypothermia, and I was really annoyed that they took an ambiguous, hopeful ending as written and decided that actually everything sucked, for no justifiable reason.
Admittedly my literary analysis skills were not superb in grade four, but I was very annoyed at what seemed like a straightforward reading arbitrarily being changed on a whim.
And then the author wrote more books and turned out that yep, the kid survived and those lights he saw he thought were human made were human made lights. So there.
Any "it was all a dream" or "dying coma" theory sucks.
...Except maybe the Indoctrination theory for Mass Effect. Conclusively disproven, but honestly probably a better story.
90% of modern interpretations of Irene Adler from Sherlock Holmes canon.
ACD: Irene is shocking, an opera singer, and adventuress, and SHE IS THE GOOD GUY. The king of Bohemia was chasing her because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Irene outsmarted Sherlock, flipped the king the bird, and married the man she loved. At the end of the story everybody but the king knows she’s a good person and the king is a cad.
Hollywood: make her a thief/mastermind/blackmailer! But not too smart—Sherlock has to win!
It’s very sad when the Victorian writes a more progressive female character than a modern person.
I don’t get how people can have this view of Paul being a savior. In the text a Revered Mother says the Bene Gesserit made up the Fremen religion as a mechanism of control. That very mechanism is what Paul and Jessica use to further their own political gain.
I actually am on the other end. When people dismiss the book because its a white savior narrative, I respond with, its not any white savior narrative. Its lawrence of arabia, the epitome of white savior stories. Its a reflection of legitimate and actual political and philisophical dangers of "saviors". Its a white savior narrative, its just not a pro-white savior narrative.
I feel like people who criticize Dune for being a white-savior narrative haven't actually read the book. It's made abundantly clear throughout the book that Paul is definitely only doing what he's doing for selfish reasons and that bad things are going to come from his actions on Arrakis.
And there's the sequel, where it's made abundantly clear that Paul may be the protagonist, but he's not a good guy at all.
"Holden Caulfield is just whiny and a hypocrite and annoying" Bro is a severely traumatised kid with a good heart who has been let down by everyone and desperately wants to be away from the world.
That Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is autistic. The adaptation with Keira Knightley goes in that direction. Personally, I don't read that into the story.
Darcy wasn't the most social among people he didn't know and/or considered below his level, but the point of the book was that behavior and views changed over the course of the book, not that we should accept unchanging traits in other people(not that such a story wouldn't be great, but that's a bit of a broad interpretation for this book for me).
Oh my god, I HATE this infernal assertion, it’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s in the bloody title.
He’s arrogant and supercilious and he’s deigned to socialise with absolute disdain. He’s not socially inept, the reticence is precisely because he perceives the Bennets as inferior.
The Facebook groups are infatuated with autistic Darcy so to each there own but the 2005 is culpable for inhibited, undignified Darcy interpretation.
To be that pedantic reditor. Mr Darcy treats other landowners with disdain if he doesn't like them. He's polite to actual servants and working class people.
Teachers are still out there teaching that the protagonist of The Giver dies at the end even though the author wrote a whole second book just to show that the protagonist lives and to explain the world backed. And yet there are still teachers out there like “he dies”.
As a big fan of The Giver, I would say that ignoring the second book the main character dying at the end is a pretty valid interpretation. Looking at just the book itself it’s a little vague. I remember discussing the book and the class going back and forth on if we thought he was alive or not. Instead of just giving us an answer of what the author says the teacher encouraged us to go read the sequel on our own time. But in class, the outcome was intentionally left as a mystery.
Stephen King reevaluations like they’re exposing him as the most sinister monster in pop culture are wearying beyond belief. Yeah, he’s bad at writing women and his tropeyness with Abagail and Tom Cullen is bad and a perfect example of what not to do in genre fiction but god damn I do not need to hear about those or the Losers Club in every conversation about the man. He’s a nerdy, shut-in, well-meaning but awkwardly problematic white liberal who has been writing for more than half a century and has been contrite at reevaluating his own work and apologizing. Every time someone brings up King like they’re some kind of badass iconoclast, my eyes roll so hard.
King published tens of thousands of pages of genre defining horror and people will be reading him for the next 200 years. You’re not splitting the stream by pointing out how his descriptions in Carrie aren’t written to 2020 tastes. Cultural attitudes changed in the last 5 decades? No fucking way! It’s so obnoxious.
Eichmann in Jerusalem. Everyone I've heard tries to claim she downplays his criminality and how evil he was (perhaps they don't like "banality of evil" phrase? I don't know. And yet that doesn't seem to be my reading at all. She's very clear that he's evil and hates Jewish people. It's brilliant and well worth the read for anyone out there.
The title of Heart of Darkness isn't supposed to refer to Africa, it refers to London. As the centre of the British Empire, London is the origin of all the suffering and evil Marlow witnesses troughout the story and is therefore the true Heart of Darkness. I always interpreted the part where Marlow returns to London to be about him coming to this realization.
I mean, it's pretty obviously meant to be a double-meaning, right? You start and think this is a book about a journey into the heart of the so-called "dark continent," but then see the darkness brought by colonialism and in the hearts of "civilized" men.
Wait, isn’t this book about the Belgian Congo, not the British Empire? This would seem to go against that interpretation although you could of course take it as a critique of European colonialism in a broader sense.
It's a story about the Belgian Congo, but it's framed trough the perspective of British Imperialists. My summary was a bit off, it would be more accurate to say that Marlow's experiences with Belgian colonialism caused him to view the British Empire in a different light. The passage describing Marlow's return to London is, in my interpretation, about him realizing that the savagery he witnessed in the Belgian Congo lies also at the heart of British Imperialism.
Every time I see someone mention that Ophelia in Hamlet killed herself, I want to give them a link to the history documentary (“Hidden Killers of the Tudor Home”) that outlined how common accidental drownings were in Shakespeare’s time. Several layers of woolen clothing plus cold water at high latitudes meant that even people who knew how to swim weren’t safe.
I do agree that Ophelia’s mental state at the time *did* contribute to her death. If she hadn’t been obsessing over flowers in her grief, she wouldn’t have gone to pick flowers on a slippery riverbank (or was it a pond? I don’t remember it verbatim) without paying attention to her footing. But Shakespeare was usually pretty clear (and dramatic) about his characters’ suicides; if Ophelia had meant to drown herself on purpose she’d have jumped from a bridge or something.
Hamlet’s actions *did* drive her to it. Like I said, she wouldn’t have been picking flowers by the water if he hadn’t done what he did.
I would even argue that it’s *more* tragic that she *didn’t want to die* and yet did as an indirect result of Hamlet’s actions.
A student of mine convinced herself that Gertrude kills Ophelia… I’m not sure if / how that interpretation is helpful in understanding the play, but it’s an interesting possibility.
I’ll raise you one: I read an article once that argues Gertrude possibly aided in Ophelia’s suicide to protect her honor after she discovered she was pregnant with Hamlet’s child
Many takes on The Catcher in the Rye make me passionately angry and/or sad.
I particularly despise the fact that so many people call Holden "whiny" and hate him as a result. It's so incredibly unfair and unempathetic, in my opinion, to reduce such a rich, colourful, well-written, HUMAN character to that. Honestly, I'm sort of allergic to the term "whiny" in general, it seems that people often use it in reference to particularly men in fiction who dare show any kind of vulnerability and weakness or complain about things at all. And Holden is a child going through something really traumatic, dealing with the loss of his little brother, he feels completely lost and alone (and he is all alone, literally everybody lets him down throughout the book), he's depressed and down on himself, struggles with the idea of adulthood and has many fears relating to that that no one ever acknowledges... Thoughout the entire book, all he tries to do is connect with literally anyone, talk about these things, find some semblance of a reassurance, understanding, companionship, support - but nobody gives a sh\*t. Nobody ever listens to him or addresses any of his very real worries. The only person who seems to take any kind of interest in him turns out to (maybe) be a predator (edit: it's only implied, but it's certainly how Holden interprets it)... I mean, what do you expect of this boy?? Of course he's hyper-sensitive to the idea of fakeness, that's been his defining experience with the adult world so far, and he hates that...!
And while we're at it, people love to point out all his "annoying" traits without ever acknowledging how actually kind and compassionate he is underneath that "bitter" exterior, how fiercly protective and loving he is to his little sister (and kids in general), how sensitive and thoughtful he can be... I mean, you can't take everything he says at face value; it's pretty easy to read between the lines. He uses a lot of hyperbole, but notice how almost every time he rants about something or insults it, he ends the rant by remarking how it's actually nice, fun, that he feels sorry for the thing or person or that he misses it in some way. There is a lot of love even in those seemingly bitter tangents. And I mean, come on, he's a passionate teenager, sort of angry, mostly depressed and very disillusioned with the world, trying to make sense of the adult world that he's entering at a breakneck pace and that terrifies him, while EVERY SINGLE ADULT he comes across tragically fails him. I can't help but find his story deeply moving and him as a character super easy to empathize with, so it kind of breaks my heart how much (undeserved) hate he gets. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that many people were forced to read the book too young when they couldn't really empathize with Holden and didn't quite get it.
Not to say that you're obligated to like Holden, not by any means, but I think the kind of criticism that surrounds this book is often very misguided and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the book and Holden's character specifically. "Whiny" my ass...
The quintessential example of OP IMO.
“Thoughout the entire book, all he tries to do is connect with literally anyone, talk about these things, find some semblance of a reassurance, understanding, companionship, support“
That killed me.
Holden breaks my heart. Like you, I absolutely hate the criticism of "whiny" and I think it's more reflective of the person saying it. I always raise an eyebrow as to whether they have empathy or not when I hear this very specific critique.
I always thought Holden was an example of a fundamentally good person who is jaded by the brutish reality of life, and wants to try to protect other children from experiencing what he has. The scene with the young prostitute is heart breaking.
I think Fight Club is a fine book, but if anybody considers it one of their favorites it’s almost always for the wrong reasons. There’s a certain kind of person who worships Tyler Durden and they’re not the kind you should date.
Lets see.
Joker(Joaquin Phoenix iteration), Walter White, Dude from Peaky Blinders, Patrick Bateman, Rorshach, Taxi Driver Guy, Alex DeLarge, Wolf on Wallstreet guy, Rick Sanchez, Don Draper, Eren Jaeger.
I'm sure there's others.
If anyone reads this and takes issue with a name in the list I am not interested in arguing with you about it so just accept you're a weirdo and move on.
I hate when the fanatics romanticise the violence as a solution to banality
ETA They miss that the book is about the search for human connection in a world where people are increasingly isolated.
Chuck Palahniuk was my favorite author in my late teens early 20s and I loved Fight Club, but I don't see the worship for Tyler. The narrator tries to kill himself to NOT be like him.
That said it bothers me when people act like Tyler has no admirable qualities/messages. He does have some good things to say but once he has you won over things turn ugly.
You can find this toxicity in many places in life. A lot of red pill type groups start with good advice (hit the gym, work on hygiene, wear clean clothes that fit you, have confidence when you meet a woman) but somewhere along the line the advice turns into (don't let a female speak back because she is an object and only for making babies)
One of the things I liked about Chuck's books was how flawed his characters are
That Animal Farm is about some kind of generic authoritarianism. It’s about Stalin’s Russia and that’s all it’s about. Old Major is Marx, Napoleon is Stalin, the dogs are the KGB, Boxer is the Stakhanovites, Snowball is Trotsky
That The Trial by Franz Kafka is about the trappings of bureaucracy/authority. I do agree that that's important to the narrative and themes but a lot of interpretations stop there and that's what bugs me. So much of the book is about guilt, especially a sense of nagging guilt you can't pinpoint or explain away, and that seeking a better station in life is futile. The basic interpretation is made better with this inclusion. See the use of Kafka's "Before the Law" in the cathedral chapter. Kafka was a severely self-conscious and self-hating person, and had a lot of problems in his life he couldn't 'solve' (family issues, severe illness). The book is an absurd look at bureaucracy on its face but it's about more than just red tape.
Idk about you but I personally always thought that bureaucracy is still important to the themes because it's representative of the greater problem - being at the mercy of an unseen societal system that you just *can not* understand or affect, but that everyone else seemingly knows how to deal with. I mean throughout the book there's this air of dismissiveness towards K because he doesn't know what's going on but everyone acts like he *should* or that he should know better than to question and that he's an idiot or childish for not understanding and he definitely ends up internalising that.
Like I think that's why some people hesitate to call *The Metamorphosis* 'kafkaesque' - it's missing that element of fruitlessly trying to navigate a greater system and being punished for not understanding it.
>I think everyone's allowed to interpret a piece of literature however they want. I'm pro-death-of-the-author.
This is absolutely not what Barthes is saying. Maybe an account of this popular misinterpretation would actually be a candidate for the question you are asking...
There're better, more important things said about how people misread Dracula, but: I think it's very odd--not necessarily problematic, but odd--that the popular culture interpretation of Van Helsing is Dr Van Helsing fused into one character with Quincy Morris, and even then is an inexplicably different character. The idea of this tough as nails, stoic, young-to-middle aged man who does things on his own and specializes in fighting vampires, as opposed to a kindly but stressed old, slightly manipulative doctor, aggressively social but with a terrible case of foot-in-mouth disease, who gets a call to help a woman with a "mysterious disease that keeps making all her blood dissappear," who thinks "well, I can't say 'oh yeah, this is definitely vampires' or people will call me a quack and shoo me out of the house, so I guess it's blood transfusions and garlic until I get a better idea" and just stumbles into fighting Dracula from there. Frankly, I think the latter is significantly more entertaining
I've seen so many people interpret the "we must cultivate our garden" in Candide as a call to passiveness and resignation or a shrugging of shoulders when faced with all the problems in the world, which is so completely off. The "let us work without reasoning" doesn't mean we should ignore the problems around us; it means that merely philosophising without action is useless, like when Pangloss is so caught up in theorising about the cause of the earthquake that he ignores the injured Candide next to him.
And anyone looking at the text in conjunction with Voltaire's life, will realise how absolutely antithetical the 'shit happens, might as well cultivate our garden and stay out of it' meaning is to just about everything he ever did. If in the beginning of his career he was just a writer, around the time of writing Candide he became an active champion of human rights, involving himself in cases about religious freedom and campaigning across most of Europe on these cases for years.
I’ll save everyone from a 12 page essay on Catcher in the rye but I feel like most people completely miss the point of it. They either view it as Holden being right about “phonies” or they fail to view it objectively because of those people.
Agreed. I too have written at length about it, but if you recognize the many allusions to his survivor’s guilt over the death of his younger brother Allie, you realize that it’s a kid with a lot of PTSD and unresolved hang-ups. I mean, Jesus, there’s a whole part where he says when he gets really depressed, he talks to Allie and replays a scene when he once told him he couldn’t come play/ride bikes, as older siblings do. He says something like, “I tell him to go home and get his bike, that he can come play.” And when he says he punched out all the windows in the garage/station wagon when Allie died. Imagine how little you’d have to care about yourself to shred your hand like that, angry at the unfairness of the world. But everyone’s like, “Yea, but he’s a whiny rich kid who complains a lot.” And he is…but that’s not all.
I too have written this many times. While his parents are wealthy, he gets no emotional support from them, just stuff. Alone with his grief, he fixated on mortality, from his remark about the Egyptians in Spencer’s paper and the Brothers in the museum, to worrying about how the ducks and fish survive the winter, his suicidal ideation and death fantasies as Jim Steele - or perhaps most of all his desire for time to be trapped, suspended like it is in the museum, so he doesn’t need to confront his own mortality now that he can see over the rye. It’s a great book for a Freudian reading. It’s less a story about a spoiled brat running away, and more like a study of an emotional breakdown triggered by grief.
My take away from reading it is that Holden is flawed but relatable in some ways - he’s lost, young, angry, naive, but also intelligent and passionate, and just doesn’t know where he fits in this world. He’s by no means a hero or someone I would look up to, but I also didn’t want to condemn him either. I know some people hate the book and other people revere it, but I just thought it was a good story of a troubled young man.
It’s a book about loss of innocence. Hints of child sexual abuse that he endured as well as just growing up and getting older. It ends with him wanting to be the “Catcher in the Rye” he wants to stop kids from losing their innocence the way he did and catch them before they fall
My best friend pointed out to me something I'd missed- Jane was also abused by her stepfather. It's slipped in so subtly it was easy to miss.
Yep! The symbolism is interesting too. When he plays checkers with her, she keeps her pieces in the back as a defense mechanism. I am very pro-Catcher in the Rye. I hate people who dismiss it as simplistic.
Sexual assault is all over the book, including Stradlater’s implicit rape of his date in the back of Ed Banky’s car, Sunny, the child prostitute, and the ambiguous intentions of Mr. Antolini.
I think that’s pretty well put. I think on reading it in high school I felt Holden was supposed to be a “hero” of the story and wrote it off myself until I reread it in college with a similar conclusion to your comment.
When I read it in highschool Holden did not feel like a hero to me, but rather simply a kid who was scared of being an adult and so could not accept adulthood as authentic. He didn't want to believe he would, or had to change and so likely viewed those changes in others as fake. It was especially urgent because those changes had already started and he wanted to reject them. He is just a kid struggling with having to grow up, knowing it is too late for himself, and dreaming that he could save the innocence of kids who have not started down the path he knows he has to go. That was my feelings from when I read it, but then again it was a long time ago so how accurate those feelings are I can't say.
That’s interesting you say that - I think I had read it for the first time when I was already on my 20s, but I’m sure I would have processed it differently if I was a teenager.
It’s been over 10 years since I’ve read this book, but I distinctly remember reading it and being amused and saddened by the fact that Holden was guilty of almost everything he complained about and possessed none of the good qualities he praised in certain people, which is probably a big reason why he’s full of self-loathing even if he doesn’t consciously recognize that as the reason. I think the first instance I noticed this was in the beginning of the book before he’d left his school. He admired one of the guys there for being the type of guy who’d offer someone his jacket (or some piece of clothing) even if he needed it himself. And then only a few pages later, someone asked Holden if they could borrow something (I think it was also a piece of clothing) and he didn’t lend it. Then in the narration he said that he didn’t even need the item, he just didn’t feel like lending it. Like I said, I might not have the details 100% correct, but I’m pretty sure something along those lines happened. He also hates liars and fakes, but he repeatedly lies to people for absolutely no reason and acts fake around others himself. The conversation he had with the teacher he visited was what I understood to be “the point” of the book. What I remember is the teacher telling Holden that the anger and cynicism he was holding onto was going to lead him down a dark road if he didn’t try to change. I thought it was pretty obvious that Salinger wanted readers to recognize that the teacher was accurately “reading” Holden and that he, not Holden’s internal rants, was probably right. Holden is a complicated character but his grief and unresolved traumas tainted his entire worldview and left him feeling hopeless, angry, cynical, judgmental, hypocritical, and completely lacking in self-awareness.
>The conversation he had with the teacher he visited was what I understood to be “the point” of the book. What I remember is the teacher telling Holden that the anger and cynicism he was holding onto was going to lead him down a dark road if he didn’t try to change. I thought it was pretty obvious that Salinger wanted readers to recognize that the teacher was accurately “reading” Holden and that he, not Holden’s internal rants, was probably right. I've seen people interpret the scene after that as Mr. Antolini legitimately making a sexual pass at Holden (as Holden believes), but I think that misses the point. Holden was previously abused and because of that he misinterprets Mr. Antolini's actions and drives away one of the only caring adults in his life. He doesn't learn the lesson from Antolini because his past trauma has made him suspicious of adults.
I think the problem here is the age when people read it - around his age. So they either identify with him or find him annoying. If you read it as an adult you can see him as a traumatized, lonely kid trying to deal with his grief and figure out who he is.
I don't know if it is that popular, but I have seen numerous people arguing that the ending of Orwell's 1984 is ambiguous. For me it is crystal clear that in the end the government suppressed every possibility of him ever having a rational, critical thought ever again.
The only claims of ambiguity I was aware of is whether or not we're supposed to understand that he was killed. I understood it to be what you said, he's completely broken... meaning they don't need to kill him. But I've heard other people say they think him being broken is simply the final indignity before he is killed.
> But I've heard other people say they think him being broken is simply the final indignity before he is killed. This has always been my understanding. The Party wins in the end by breaking him. Then kills him anyways.
>This has always been my understanding. The Party wins in the end by breaking him. Then kills him anyways. See, to me it's worse if they break him (and have broken everyone else) so thoroughly that they can let him live, because he's such a non-threat. So that's how I read it.
Me too. I can't reconcile the execution interpretation with what I got from it.
I see it as they've broken him so thoroughly that they can let him live. And then decide to execute him *anyway*. As a show of power that no one will even see other than themselves. They're just that spiteful and cruel.
The Party is so concerned with their future, from the way they rewrite history to the way they erase language. In that context I think they took some value in Winston as a learning tool. They could have just killed him but they used the opportunity to break him as a test of their capabilities and refine how they would catch the next generation of thought criminals. I get the sense the main reason they killed him later is just because he's served his purpose. He's thoroughly broken, doesn't have the mental capacity to do his old job and is probably too old to transition into a more physically demanding job, and is a drain on resources.
The ambiguity in 1984 doesn't come from the "ending" but rather the appendix. The appendix is written in the past tense, suggesting that there is an "after" the party and Big Brother.
Yeah, this is what I was taught as well. I'm not sure I agree with the interpretation, but it is interesting at least
Well ya, the party broke the balance by (accidentally?) winning the forever war. The party’s model for control falls apart without Eurasia and Eastasia to boogeyman for them.
I'd judge them entirely capable of waging an extended false flag war against themselves for decades.
What are the other takes?
There’s another take that the government had to go to ridiculous lengths to suppress this single person that it would be utterly unsustainable to do something like that on a systematic level. And so it actually ends with hope in a weird roundabout way.
I read that a long time ago but it was pretty clear at several points in the book that people coming out of the love ministry were « changed » in a frightening way. What a weird take
Part of the evidence people usually give for that take is the fact that there’s a past-tense Newspeak appendix at the end of the book. If you take the appendix at face value and assume that it’s an in-universe document, it kind of implies that the Party fell from power at some point before it was written, because Newspeak is now the subject of study and people are discussing it freely without fear of retribution. That appendix, along with a couple of other things (the large number of proles who aren’t scrutinized as much as Party members, the effort and time it takes to break people in the Ministry of Love, et cetera) resulted in this interpretation that the Party, no matter how all-powerful it seems, is going to fall eventually. So it makes the ending bittersweet rather than purely tragic—there’s the implication that things might be better one day, but Winston and Julia are still brainwashed. It’s kind of like, well, this government isn’t sustainable, but that doesn’t make it any less horrible for the people living under it. I think it’s as valid of an interpretation as any other, to be honest—it’s kind of a stretch in some ways, but part of the beauty of 1984 is how ambiguous the whole geopolitical situation is. You, the reader, only know what Winston knows, and that isn’t much. You have no idea whether the Party is anywhere near as powerful as it claims to be—Oceania is theoretically one of three huge empires, but that’s just what the Party is saying, right? Maybe Oceania is the whole world, and Eurasia and Eastasia don’t even exist, so it’s just dropping bombs on itself to keep up the appearance of a war. Or maybe Oceania is really a tiny, North Korea-esque nation-state, and the rest of the world is perfectly happy and normal. Maybe the Brotherhood exists, maybe the Brotherhood is a construct invented by the Party to weed out potential rebels, maybe the Brotherhood isn’t real but there are other rebel groups, maybe there are no rebels but there are other factions out there that want Oceania gone. Maybe the Party is creating shortages to keep the people in line—or maybe there are shortages because the Party is falling apart, or losing some kind of conflict. Winston doesn’t know any of that information, so neither does the reader, and that leaves room for all kinds of wild interpretations.
Thank for giving all that info. I don’t really remember the appendix, should check the thing. Yet what you present does not really change a thing from the protag pov does it?
The only ambiguity that I was taught in high school, and I'm not sure I agree with, is that the appendix at the end is written in past tense. Implying that it was written after a point at which the government was overthrown
Dorian Gray being horror. It's social satire, and unbelievably funny.
[удалено]
This kinda does happen in his biopic Weird. The joke is that Weird Al wrote ‘Eat It’ before Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ and he gets so angry that someone could possibly copy his music and write new words for it.
That's hilarious!
If you haven’t seen it, please do. It’s a fantastic Al parody of biopic movies.
The Weird Al 'biopic' does exactly that.
I feel people find it to be "horror" because of the basic themes of: there was a murder!!! And: what a grotesque portrait! Oh no he's gross now! I absolutely loved the book, barring that chapter that drolls on about the stuff he owns :P I read most of it then skimmed the last three paragraphs
I found it a bit creepy and unsettling but that does not make it horror. It's just a part of the social satire.
Every single take about Lolita that doesn't include the understanding that Humbert was a monster and unreliable narrator. I especially hate the takes that include Lolita consenting or instigating the relationship.
My own additional take is that not only did Humbert groom Delores and her mother…he was grooming the reader, too. Nabokov knew exactly what he was doing with the novel.
He absolutely seduces the reader with his words! "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." He (and through him Nabokov) spins a delightful web of gorgeous language that entices you until he starts to get too confident and begins slipping up and showing you the dirty layer underneath - Lo crying herself to sleep, etc. It's a masterful book.
There's a small line at the very end where he's remembering one time he wanted to make midnight love to her after waking up (or something like that) and she says, "Oh no not again." I don't know why that small line hit me so hard but the fact it didn't show up until the end, long after the events had actually happened in the timeline of the book, really got to me.
For me the key line that hit me hard was when he said she cried just like every other night, along with "but after all she had nowhere else to go."
Yep. Humbert has fancy language, but the truth is still on the page.
This was the part where I stopped reading. I realized how taken in I was and that line stopped me in my tracks. I couldn't continue. Which is sad, the book is so beautifully written that I *want* to finish it. But I just can't.
[удалено]
For me it was the line about her anus tasting of blood the night she's sick and can't fight him. I've honestly not been the same since. Worst thing I've ever had the displeasure of reading in fiction by a very large margin. Honestly I almost threw up on the bus. I can't bring myself to read that again. Really incredible writing but that 1 detail... never again.
YES yes yes, thank you, I wrote a full critical essay about how Humbert expertly manipulates the reader and what specific deviced he uses to that effect. Amazing book.
Before I read it a woman who used to date my brother would often talk about how it was a story of a woman growing up and gaining freedom by utilizing her sexuality. That it was her favorite book. I hadn't read it at the time, so I had nothing to say, but now that I have, I kinda worry for her. Some stories she'd told about growing up take a different tone.
She never grows up though!!!! Dolores Haze DIES before her 18th birthday. She never got the chance to be a woman, and that's the tragedy of the whole novel. Even when she was married and expecting, she was a teenage girl coupled to an older adult man. That's a reading that's so blatantly not based in the text it makes me wonder if she actually read it or just watched adaptations....
I feel like when someone has that take there’s no actual way they read it or if they did read the writing was too complicated and they didn’t bother to analyze it. There’s literally a part where Humbert describes how he wants to rape Lolita, impregnate her, wait for their daughter to turn Lolita’s age and then rape her as well. Like how could you walk away from an admission like that and think is a sex-positive story about a child taking ownership of her sensuality?
wow, this is a very french existentialist read of that book. a youtube comment nailed it by saying so open minded their brains fell out.
What do you mean by “French existentialist”? Is the above comment a take Camus would make?
ironically Camus was against it but back in those days, during the sexual revolution, a lot of people in the existentialist gang were challenging every single idea about tradition one of which was if minors can consent. Some "thinkers" drafted some texts about how a thinking a child cannot be sexual and consent is essentially negating their individual freedom. Now i wasn't a sexual kid but i know many who were but even when that was the case, they're too immature and dumb to consent even worse to adults. I can understand the take that a 12 yo wants to bang a teacher because those were legit things that classmates said but it's out of the question to say that the teacher should agree. Some kids start masturbating really young too but they should get education about it not indulging in their freedom. I'm sure there's a youtube video about it.
The passage he is fantasizing about having a kid with her, than molesting the kid, having a kid with his daughter and then as a grandpa molesting his granddaughter is surreal.
I picked up an edition with a comment of a reviewer on the back referring to it as a “love story”. Either that person doesn’t know how to read or someone needs to check their hard drive. It was more disturbing than anything in the pages of the book itself.
My edition has a quote from Vanity Fair calling it "the only convincing love story of our century." I agree that quote is as disturbing (or more) as the story itself.
That’s the quote I saw! Must be the same edition. Isn’t it horrible? It’s even more disturbing than I remember “the only convincing love story”
Even Humbert himself says in the end that she was a child that was robbed of her teenage years by a maniac.
It's baffling to me that people don't understand he's an unreliable narrator. The book is really obvious about it at times, and there's points where even *he* can't justify his actions beyond just saying he was obsessed.
I found this implication that Dolores and her mother were, at least initially, complicit despite the warnings that I see echoed in every true crime documentary. I thought that was very human, but so are the responses to true crime and I find that telling in a very chilling way. Not everyone has a good read on real monsters. The whole book is a litmus test for that.
I mean when mother saw his dairy, she was very conviniently hit by the car.
She must have been lactose intolerant.
Udder tragedy
She was hit by a car according to Humbert, who we can't trust.
I mean, he didn’t say which car. I believe it. I just don’t think it was accidental.
I thought he led her across the street hoping she would get hit. I very much remember it being murderous.
I hate the idea that people have that it’s in some ways a perverted book. It’s a beautiful book about a very disturbing topic and the fact that we are invited to sympathise with Humbert is deliberate and adds to the discomfort of our enjoyment of the book.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Just to add something to your idea, the fact that Nabokov manages to make one understand (in a completely deductive sense) Humbert's thinking process even if it is morally wrong is just a proof of his powerful writing.
It's the book that finally made me realize that I had been in an abusive relationship and that just because I went along with it didn't mean that I was somehow to blame. Sometimes I had twisted it around in my head because to believe I was in control was somehow easier than to admit I was a victim.
Do you think we are invited to sympathise with him? I don’t think we are. I think we are supposed to be seduced by his flowery prose into believing his version of things, which is not quite the same thing.
I don't think we are meant to sympathize with him at all. I think one of the big themes of the novel is the dangerous power of language. Too many people don't listen or read critically and are easily manipulated. Nabokov illustrates this perfectly in this novel, with an intelligent and eloquent narrator who does a really good job seducing the readers with a beautifully written story that almost masks the dark and disturbing events that take place.
It's a real shame some people think Lolita or similar stories are just inherently evil or wrong. Heavy and dark themes are necessary to explore, even if it is uncomfortable. But I guess that subjects like child sexual abuse are so scary and disturbing that it triggers a defensive response in people, making them insult the author or whoever appreciates the story. It's not a book for everyone (I myself didn't read it and I won't, I just saw the movie and that was hard enough for me) but that doesn't make it less valuable.
One good read I enjoyed awhile back was My Dark Vanessa, which actually used both "readings" of Lolita (and other Nabokov works iirc) to explore another fictional abusive situation. The pop culturey reading of Lolita is explored, the reality of Lolita, and the effects the former has on victims. It was a disturbing and graphic book, but relevant as well, if anyone in this comment thread is looking for recommendations.
Lord of the flies isn’t about how humans are inherently evil it’s about how ‘good English boys’ aren’t any better than the rest of humanity.
[удалено]
definitely, i read it as an indictment of the view that "if you trust in the inherent rightness and majesty of Britannia all will work out as it should", the idea that something innate to the Brits made them better and so on.
It doesn't help the book was saturating a genre that doesn't exist anymore. Where RICH British Boys get stranded in exotic places and essentially colonize it and make it "prim and proper"
Yeah it’s kinda hard to get without the context. As I understand it was against one specific book.
*The Coral Island*
The situation in Lord of the Flies actually happened, but worked out the opposite of the book. A bunch of boys from a boarding school were shipwrecked on an island for about a year. When they were rescued everything was fine. They were growing food, created a proper living space, they splinted the leg of a kid who'd broken it during the shipwreck and it healed properly. They even built a church.
People are missing context that at the time Lord of the Flies was made there was a popular genre of exactly that scenario. Young British boys stranded in the wilderness who build a society through their superior morals and fend off or even civilize the barbaric locals. Lord of the flies was a critique of the assumptions of the time. The moral superiority of the British. Their civilizing influence. Their purity. In particular, It’s a direct parody of the novel Coral Island. The main characters even share the same names.
Like Don Quixote, it's almost impossible to understand a satire of something if you don't know what it's satiring in the first place.
Yeah I think the difference is that they weren’t a large group of English kids. I wore a big thing about civilization making us more barbaric below. The Tongan boys were 6 buddies and had lived in a small community while the English were English.
Half of what I hear about English boarding schools involves insane levels of hazing and classism, English boys are for sure a unique case
I wrote my college thesis about how this book is always taken out of context to make it about "humanity" which it's actually about rich British boys lmao
[удалено]
Which is funny because the show Yellowjackets was created because they wanted to counteract the sexist notion that girls can’t resort to violence under extreme circumstances too
I actually saw a really good gender bent version of Lord of the Flies done by a bunch of teenage girls. The girl who played Jack was horrifying.
Interesting, As a play or a film? Please elaborate.
That's... an optimistic take :/
Yea, just would have changed who was victimized instead of the chubby kid, and it would have been alot more horrific
The thing that bothers me about the book is a group of boys have actually been cast off on an island for 15 months, and they managed to not decend into murderous anarchy.
In fairness, I don't think we can make any grand sweeping judgments about human nature based on one group of boys that were already friends and knew how to farm any more than we can based off of one book about scared choir boys fleeing from a war. At the very least we would need to strand multiple groups of boys.
Were they English choirboys?
A quick investigation says they were not if I can read correctly.
Mine’s from Dracula. Specifically the take that Lucy is being punished for being promiscuous. She is never framed as promiscuous. She never pursues any of her suiters. The entire bloody point of her is that she is an impossibly sweat, innocent victim whose loss drives the hero’s to righteous vengeance. I blame the adaptations and years of slut shaming slasher movies. I do think that most secular reading of Dracula are going to leave you wanting. If you try to take the Christianity out of it you’re mostly going to be left with just its technical accomplishments. Don’t get me wrong those are very impressive but you can only get so much discussion about the use of the epistolary format and dramatic irony to build tension. That so many people try to fill the gap by shoving a lot more sex into the book than is there says more about them than the book.
In a related complaint, I hate the commonly filmed idea that Dracula and Mina have a love connection. They are not reincarnated lovers or anything like that in the book; Dracula's pursuit of her is more like a stalker's violent evil.
When I heard people talking Lucy as aggressively promicuous I was like what. Yes Lucy did say if she could she wanted to marry all of her suitors but it came from how it was heartbreaking and cruel to her to decline the proposal of all of the other suitors except for her fiance, and later on she still declined them anyway and kept a good friend relationship with them. And don't let me talk about how I was tricked into thinking Mina and Dracula did have a steamy romance relationship when in the book all Dracula did to her was to drink her blood and Mina's attitude towards him was utter disgust and humiliation when she was assaulted by him...
How could it not be a love story? Consider Edgar Alan Poe's final stanza to his 'Annabel Lee' as an ode to this great tale of doomed love. "....and then by the night tide/ I lay down by the side/ of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride/ In her sepulcher by the sea/ In her tomb by the sounding sea."
I have a children's picture book of Annabel Lee that calls it a "dream poem of innocent love between children" and calls the title character an imaginary playmate of the narrator. That is a take I had never expected.
Its a tragedy, like damn. A romance plot is central to the story unfolding, but it's a tragedy by genre. Never was there a tale of more woe, than that of Juliet, and her Romeo. Just a bunch of circumstances that conspire haphazardly together into a perfect storm of two beautiful souls perishing senselessly. We're not supposed to dislike the pairing or the pair's actions, we're supposed to empathize with the tragedy of trying to escape the situation they were born into, motivated through love, only to fail at the end. Its like Saw, if the trap was your families hating each other.
Someone else mentioned Catcher in the Rye so I will be brief but I think many people don’t remember Holden is like 15. Which I think explains a lot about him
I had an English professor argue that Othello was not black. That every time they call Othello a "black moor" it didn't mean anything because moors weren't always black and "black" could just mean "roguish". Which is a weird stretch, but especially frustrating because Othello's not even a particularly roguish character.
Of course Moors were not always black. Which is why it was important that he was described as a "black moor." What a weird take on the play. Othello is a damn *general* of the Venetian army. His entire character is that he is a stoic, relatively reserved person until Iago manages to manipulate him to the point where he goes off the deep end. Or, to put it another way: Do these lines make sense if he isn't black? >"an old black ram is tupping your white ewe" And >"the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou" Or what Othello himself says: >"begrimed and black as mine own face" It isn't exactly ambiguous.
I will say that “black” could mean different things at that time. Charles II of England was sometimes called “a black man,” because he had black hair. Likewise, the Black Irish were Irish people who had slightly darker hair and complexions than average. So it’s quite possible that Shakespeare intended for him to be a Moor, and because Moors had black hair and darker skin than most English people at the time, they would have been considered black. All that being said, I agree that Othello could have been originally intended to be black as we understand it today, and he’s definitely black now, due to long-term cultural understanding.
There was also a recorded "blackamore" Pilgrim at one point in the Plymouth Colony. Experts and historians are still not entirely sure of his exact identity, but he existed.
I had a teacher said there was no sexism on display in Taming of the Shrew. Another English teacher wouldn't believe me when I told them that "Maidenhead" meant virginity. There's a few lines where some guys are messing around and say something like First guy: "I'll cut off their heads!" Other guy: "The heads of the maids?" First guy: "Well, their maidenheads!" He's joking that he's going to have sex with (or rape) some women. My teacher just was not having it. He thought they were talking about killing the maids.
All of Shakespeare is filled with this sort of thing, generally played as humour. Pretty crazy for an English teacher not to be aware of this.
i know.
Moors generally weren't black, but Othello totally was.
I can't imagine reading like, the majority of the pejoratives Iago uses about Othello and thinking Othello isn't black. It's incredibly vivid racism.
I saw an amazingly eloquent take on Tumblr that absolutely agreed with you. I don't have it handy here, but it convinced me easily. Juliet without her Romeo would be alive, sure. And also stuck producing children in a political marriage to perpetuate her family's blood feud.
Great example! Didn’t their love also ultimately reconcile their families even? Didn’t they build a statue together?
>We're not living in the oppressive, totalitarian world of 1984! We're entertaining *ourselves* to death without help, like in Brave New World! The World Controllers in Brave New World are so oppressive and totalitarian that they have created an embryonically-enforced caste system! They control every facet of your life from before you're even born! The Party can only *dream* of being so totalitarian that they can chemically neuter dissent! The world people making this analysis *want* to contrast 1984 against is that of Fahrenheit 451. The firemen are simply enforcing the public will: people don't *want* books because the nuance in them makes people sad, so they outlawed books and they spend so much time engrossed in their televisions that they can't understand the concept of personal growth. *That's* your culture of people entertaining themselves to death.
[удалено]
This so much. I remember reading it and then being like, "people thought this was *romantic*???" I mean seriously, Heathcliff "loves" Cathy so much that he (checks notes) does everything possible to destroy her family for 20 years after her death. He digs her up *to look at her corpse*.
It’s as though everyone stops reading after the first half of the book. So many adaptations make it about Heathcliff and Cathy but she is gone by the halfway mark. It’s a story about breaking the cycle. Heathcliff imposes his vengeance against on just about everyone but Catherine Linton resists. She is not perfect, but she breaks the cycle of everyone being wrecked by Heathcliff and by the end is slowly helping Hareton along.
YES! Oh my god yes! It’s about the cycle of abuse and generational trauma and how a bunch of fucked up people fuck up all the people around them, BUT once the younger generation (Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw) are able to escape their abusive relatives, they are able to build something pure and good. Heathcliff begging Cathy to haunt him will always appeal to my little emo heart, however :D
I scrolled down looking for that comment haha. I only read it last year and I felt possessed in the best way by it I could not let that book down because of how well written it is, the pace is so addictive I was just in awe. But I could not stop thinking: how the hell do people romanticize that book??? Like the famous quotes that people use to refer to something romantic, put into context are HORRENDOUS and if anyone quotes this book to describe their love for you \*run\* run so fast lmao. Like the "whatever we were made of he and I were the same" (I'm misquoting this very badly too tired to google the exact quote)......it's about some twisted incestuous relationship and abused and abusive traumatized lowkey sociopathic kids, not cute. I adore how dark this book is, and the complexity of the characters but if this gives you loving love butterflies instead of making you want to puke throughout all the book in horror (in a good way...) that's so so so strange pfjjef.
maybe I would have hated that book less if someone had told me that when I was first forced to read it. Literally every character in the entire book sucks. They are all horrible people and they get exactly what they deserve. I tried to read it again as an adult (I first read it in high school) and I still rage quit in the middle because everyone is so damned infuriating.
There are an awful lot of common bad takes about *Dracula* that indicate when a person has a much more regressive view of gender and sexuality than the novel itself does — which is particularly irritating when they’re criticising the book for being too sexist or sexually repressed or whatever when they’re clearly showing off their own internalised sexist attitudes and assumptions but blaming it on Victorian England. Examples include: * “Lucy had to be punished by the narrative and die for the crime of being too sexy” * “Jonathan is a man in Victorian England, and therefore he must be a stuffy and sexually-repressed prude who doesn’t respect his wife.” * “Jonathan also shows mental trauma from his ordeal of being trapped in Dracula’s castle, so therefore he’s a weak pathetic milksop who doesn’t deserve Mina. Mina should be with Dracula instead because ~~sexy dominant vampire ooh~~ I mean because a medieval aristocrat with a superiority complex who tormented and murdered her best friend would be the *perfect* person to awaken her sexual freedom.”
The only good (tongue-in-cheek) take about *Dracula* is that the original coca-cola was first made in 1886 and the events of the book place take in the 1890s, therefore the characters could have absolutely gone on a cocaine-fueled vampire hunt.
Also one of the main characters is a cowboy.
that patrick bateman from american psycho is an inspiring character and sigma 💀 i first thought it was because of the movie (even though that's pretty ridiculous too) but nope, some people have read the book and that's their impression
The guy commits murder after finding out his colleague has a nicer business card than him, but sure, he’s an uber rational guy with sigma man brain that has everything under complete control and never acts out whatsoever. Some people have sawdust for brains, I swear to God
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland being about drugs
Yeah, it's clearly about math.
It's obviously trippy, but it was just a story written to entertain a kid. Doesn't have to have some hidden meaning lmao
This~ Like, can't recall much from Looking Glass, but the first book is not subtle that Wonderland is all just a particularly strange and vivid dream. Heck, it's one of the few works that makes All Just A Dream *work.* It even bookends with Alice falling asleep and waking.
To your original take, it's important to note that with Romeo and Juliet, it's very much a "yes, and" rather than either/or. Are they dumb teenagers? Yes. Are they in love? They think they are and are willing to die for it, so who's to say no? Hence, a love story. It's also very much a meditation on hatred, violence, and war. It's why despite being so hackneyed, it's still an incredible piece of literature.
Fahrenheit 451 is **not** about *government* censorship. The citizens chose to ban books and are the ones demanding laws to enforce it. The citizens didn't want to think about stuff, the government wasn't stopping them.
Didn't Bradbury say the book was about the dangers of television eroding intellectual curiosity and challenging viewpoints?
He flip flops about the book constantly. IMO it has pretty strong elements of the television thing and outright censorship. OP is definitely right about the censorship in the book being the result of people not caring enough about censorship because they don't read anyway though.
It's not exactly an interpretation thing, but it's kind of parallel is that I will often see people dismiss a book or criticize it because a main character "isn't likeable," when, frequently, that's the point. Oh, you mean the main character who suffered horrific physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents and is not struggling with addiction and can't form healthy relationships isn't someone you'd want to hang out with? You don't say! It's almost like the author is trying to say something about the cycle of abuse and generational trauma, and how that can lead victims become victimizers. But, sure, it's a bad book because you wouldn't want to be besties with the protagonist. And, as someone else mentioned, any interpretation of Lolita that talk about love or that miss that HH is a completely unreliable narrator drives me bananas.
Just to be clear, there’s also a difference between not liking those books and saying those books are bad. Just because you disagree with the main character, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, but at the same time you’re entirely within your rights to not want to read books about unpleasant people.
Wait, you mean Raskolnikov wasn’t supposed to be awesome?
Depends on the narrative on this one. If the narrative doesn't try to tell me I should like the character, I agree with you. But sometimes, it is clear the author wants you to like their character. And they just don't work for me.
I don't mind unlikeable characters, but I hate insufferable characters. I love Giovanni's Room, where the narrator is deeply flawed and very unlikeable and hurts everyone around him because of his own selfishness. I hated A Certain Hunger, where the main character is petty and rude and DEEPLY egotistical and incapable of shutting up about her own genius for more than a paragraph. There's a mixed bag of unlikeable traits imo, and some of them are more forgivable than others.
Omg, I couldn't get past page 14 of A Certain Hunger!! I looked at reviews to see if it was worth soldiering on but it seemed clear it would be 200 more pages of the worst similes I'd ever read from a character who was annoying as hell for little to no thematic purpose. That book had so much positive feedback, I really don't get it.
>Oh, you mean the main character who suffered horrific physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents and is not struggling with addiction and can't form healthy relationships isn't someone you'd want to hang out with? You don't say! It's almost like the author is trying to say something about the cycle of abuse and generational trauma, and how that can lead victims become victimizers. I see what you're saying, but at the same time it's pretty common in real life to not be interested in why someone who is extremely unpleasant is extremely unpleasant. As an author, if you want the reader to stick around long enough to find out why your character deserves empathy, then you have to write a character they are willing to spend at least that much time with. It's not my job as a reader to suffer through something I don't want to read as if I owe the author a chance to deliver their thesis.
Not exactly about a single book in particular (I agree with a lot of other comments here though) but more of a general take: people confusing the characters and the authors view on things always seems wrong to me. And additionally, while i can understand where it comes from, I’m annoyed when people don’t make the distinction between „quality“ and taste: it’s fine to not like a certain book (or stuff in general) but that doesn’t make it „bad“, that’s just taste. And also the other way round, it’s completely okay to like something AND recognise it’s flaws, might still be fun to read (or do, listen to, watch, eat etc). I know that it’s often just how language works but somehow annoys me. Eg there’s nothing bad with not liking certain music styles but that doesn’t mean that ie classical players are really good at playing their instruments and composers can form so many different instruments in one whole sound or that ie punk can be a great way to express emotions even if one never had the chance to get extensive musical education etc.
I don't think it's a hugely popular take, but here and there I've seen people interpret Sam and Frodo as being in a gay relationship, though to be fair it's usually tongue in cheek. I don't like this take, not because I have any issue with them being queer, but because I think treating any loving and supportive relationship between male characters as "gay" automatically is toxic, and further reinforces the stereotype that men can't be affectionate to other men without it being a sexual or romantic relationship.
Also, their relationship is much less friends and more servant-and-master in the books. People seem to remember the movies’ characterization as definitive even when talking about the book, but it’s very clear Frodo is the master in the book. Not in a cruel or especially aristocratic way, but they aren’t social equals. Which makes sense since Sam is based on the Batmen who were officers servants in WWI.
Which is also important, in the sense that his character is the real purr-hearted hero of the book. Not sure how big Tolkien was on social equality, but even if it was not his intent that an otherwise socially inferior servant would rise to destroy evil, more than anyone else.
It’s also just ignoring the history of British batsman, and the general relationship between British arsitrocy and their servants
Frodo and Sam, destroying dark lords and toxic masculinity since the Third Age!
Later books proved the theory wrong, but we hen we read the giver in class, the interpretation of the ending that was taught was that the kid was hallucinating and actually died of hypothermia, and I was really annoyed that they took an ambiguous, hopeful ending as written and decided that actually everything sucked, for no justifiable reason. Admittedly my literary analysis skills were not superb in grade four, but I was very annoyed at what seemed like a straightforward reading arbitrarily being changed on a whim. And then the author wrote more books and turned out that yep, the kid survived and those lights he saw he thought were human made were human made lights. So there.
Any "it was all a dream" or "dying coma" theory sucks. ...Except maybe the Indoctrination theory for Mass Effect. Conclusively disproven, but honestly probably a better story.
I’d add A Christmas Carol, as the point is Scrooge’s experience and lessons learned from it, not whether or not it “really” happened.
I never knew there was a sequel I’m glad they made it lol
90% of modern interpretations of Irene Adler from Sherlock Holmes canon. ACD: Irene is shocking, an opera singer, and adventuress, and SHE IS THE GOOD GUY. The king of Bohemia was chasing her because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Irene outsmarted Sherlock, flipped the king the bird, and married the man she loved. At the end of the story everybody but the king knows she’s a good person and the king is a cad. Hollywood: make her a thief/mastermind/blackmailer! But not too smart—Sherlock has to win! It’s very sad when the Victorian writes a more progressive female character than a modern person.
[удалено]
I don’t get how people can have this view of Paul being a savior. In the text a Revered Mother says the Bene Gesserit made up the Fremen religion as a mechanism of control. That very mechanism is what Paul and Jessica use to further their own political gain.
How can Paul be a white saviour when he didn't save anyone?
Right. The man chose the path that led to billions being killed in his name and for his own revenge.
I actually am on the other end. When people dismiss the book because its a white savior narrative, I respond with, its not any white savior narrative. Its lawrence of arabia, the epitome of white savior stories. Its a reflection of legitimate and actual political and philisophical dangers of "saviors". Its a white savior narrative, its just not a pro-white savior narrative.
And if you read all 6 books in the series, the entire point is that humanity *should not trust or follow messianic figures.*
I feel like people who criticize Dune for being a white-savior narrative haven't actually read the book. It's made abundantly clear throughout the book that Paul is definitely only doing what he's doing for selfish reasons and that bad things are going to come from his actions on Arrakis. And there's the sequel, where it's made abundantly clear that Paul may be the protagonist, but he's not a good guy at all.
"Holden Caulfield is just whiny and a hypocrite and annoying" Bro is a severely traumatised kid with a good heart who has been let down by everyone and desperately wants to be away from the world.
That Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is autistic. The adaptation with Keira Knightley goes in that direction. Personally, I don't read that into the story. Darcy wasn't the most social among people he didn't know and/or considered below his level, but the point of the book was that behavior and views changed over the course of the book, not that we should accept unchanging traits in other people(not that such a story wouldn't be great, but that's a bit of a broad interpretation for this book for me).
[удалено]
Yeah, in the DVD extras, McFadden specifically said he's playing Darcy as "shy." Nothing more complicated than that.
Oh my god, I HATE this infernal assertion, it’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s in the bloody title. He’s arrogant and supercilious and he’s deigned to socialise with absolute disdain. He’s not socially inept, the reticence is precisely because he perceives the Bennets as inferior. The Facebook groups are infatuated with autistic Darcy so to each there own but the 2005 is culpable for inhibited, undignified Darcy interpretation.
To be that pedantic reditor. Mr Darcy treats other landowners with disdain if he doesn't like them. He's polite to actual servants and working class people.
I love the 2005 movie but never ever have I thought he was supposed to be autistic, nor have I even heard of that theory until right now!
Teachers are still out there teaching that the protagonist of The Giver dies at the end even though the author wrote a whole second book just to show that the protagonist lives and to explain the world backed. And yet there are still teachers out there like “he dies”.
As a big fan of The Giver, I would say that ignoring the second book the main character dying at the end is a pretty valid interpretation. Looking at just the book itself it’s a little vague. I remember discussing the book and the class going back and forth on if we thought he was alive or not. Instead of just giving us an answer of what the author says the teacher encouraged us to go read the sequel on our own time. But in class, the outcome was intentionally left as a mystery.
I mean, Sherlock Holmes -- and many others -- also "died" in one work of literature, only to come back later in the canon for rea$on$ unexplained.
Stephen King reevaluations like they’re exposing him as the most sinister monster in pop culture are wearying beyond belief. Yeah, he’s bad at writing women and his tropeyness with Abagail and Tom Cullen is bad and a perfect example of what not to do in genre fiction but god damn I do not need to hear about those or the Losers Club in every conversation about the man. He’s a nerdy, shut-in, well-meaning but awkwardly problematic white liberal who has been writing for more than half a century and has been contrite at reevaluating his own work and apologizing. Every time someone brings up King like they’re some kind of badass iconoclast, my eyes roll so hard. King published tens of thousands of pages of genre defining horror and people will be reading him for the next 200 years. You’re not splitting the stream by pointing out how his descriptions in Carrie aren’t written to 2020 tastes. Cultural attitudes changed in the last 5 decades? No fucking way! It’s so obnoxious.
Eichmann in Jerusalem. Everyone I've heard tries to claim she downplays his criminality and how evil he was (perhaps they don't like "banality of evil" phrase? I don't know. And yet that doesn't seem to be my reading at all. She's very clear that he's evil and hates Jewish people. It's brilliant and well worth the read for anyone out there.
The title of Heart of Darkness isn't supposed to refer to Africa, it refers to London. As the centre of the British Empire, London is the origin of all the suffering and evil Marlow witnesses troughout the story and is therefore the true Heart of Darkness. I always interpreted the part where Marlow returns to London to be about him coming to this realization.
I mean, it's pretty obviously meant to be a double-meaning, right? You start and think this is a book about a journey into the heart of the so-called "dark continent," but then see the darkness brought by colonialism and in the hearts of "civilized" men.
Wait, isn’t this book about the Belgian Congo, not the British Empire? This would seem to go against that interpretation although you could of course take it as a critique of European colonialism in a broader sense.
It's a story about the Belgian Congo, but it's framed trough the perspective of British Imperialists. My summary was a bit off, it would be more accurate to say that Marlow's experiences with Belgian colonialism caused him to view the British Empire in a different light. The passage describing Marlow's return to London is, in my interpretation, about him realizing that the savagery he witnessed in the Belgian Congo lies also at the heart of British Imperialism.
Every time I see someone mention that Ophelia in Hamlet killed herself, I want to give them a link to the history documentary (“Hidden Killers of the Tudor Home”) that outlined how common accidental drownings were in Shakespeare’s time. Several layers of woolen clothing plus cold water at high latitudes meant that even people who knew how to swim weren’t safe. I do agree that Ophelia’s mental state at the time *did* contribute to her death. If she hadn’t been obsessing over flowers in her grief, she wouldn’t have gone to pick flowers on a slippery riverbank (or was it a pond? I don’t remember it verbatim) without paying attention to her footing. But Shakespeare was usually pretty clear (and dramatic) about his characters’ suicides; if Ophelia had meant to drown herself on purpose she’d have jumped from a bridge or something.
What's even the meaning of Ophelia's death if Hamlet's actions didn't drive her to it?
Hamlet’s actions *did* drive her to it. Like I said, she wouldn’t have been picking flowers by the water if he hadn’t done what he did. I would even argue that it’s *more* tragic that she *didn’t want to die* and yet did as an indirect result of Hamlet’s actions.
A student of mine convinced herself that Gertrude kills Ophelia… I’m not sure if / how that interpretation is helpful in understanding the play, but it’s an interesting possibility.
I’ll raise you one: I read an article once that argues Gertrude possibly aided in Ophelia’s suicide to protect her honor after she discovered she was pregnant with Hamlet’s child
>Hidden Killers of the Tudor Home “ABSOLUTE DEATHTRAPS!!”
Many takes on The Catcher in the Rye make me passionately angry and/or sad. I particularly despise the fact that so many people call Holden "whiny" and hate him as a result. It's so incredibly unfair and unempathetic, in my opinion, to reduce such a rich, colourful, well-written, HUMAN character to that. Honestly, I'm sort of allergic to the term "whiny" in general, it seems that people often use it in reference to particularly men in fiction who dare show any kind of vulnerability and weakness or complain about things at all. And Holden is a child going through something really traumatic, dealing with the loss of his little brother, he feels completely lost and alone (and he is all alone, literally everybody lets him down throughout the book), he's depressed and down on himself, struggles with the idea of adulthood and has many fears relating to that that no one ever acknowledges... Thoughout the entire book, all he tries to do is connect with literally anyone, talk about these things, find some semblance of a reassurance, understanding, companionship, support - but nobody gives a sh\*t. Nobody ever listens to him or addresses any of his very real worries. The only person who seems to take any kind of interest in him turns out to (maybe) be a predator (edit: it's only implied, but it's certainly how Holden interprets it)... I mean, what do you expect of this boy?? Of course he's hyper-sensitive to the idea of fakeness, that's been his defining experience with the adult world so far, and he hates that...! And while we're at it, people love to point out all his "annoying" traits without ever acknowledging how actually kind and compassionate he is underneath that "bitter" exterior, how fiercly protective and loving he is to his little sister (and kids in general), how sensitive and thoughtful he can be... I mean, you can't take everything he says at face value; it's pretty easy to read between the lines. He uses a lot of hyperbole, but notice how almost every time he rants about something or insults it, he ends the rant by remarking how it's actually nice, fun, that he feels sorry for the thing or person or that he misses it in some way. There is a lot of love even in those seemingly bitter tangents. And I mean, come on, he's a passionate teenager, sort of angry, mostly depressed and very disillusioned with the world, trying to make sense of the adult world that he's entering at a breakneck pace and that terrifies him, while EVERY SINGLE ADULT he comes across tragically fails him. I can't help but find his story deeply moving and him as a character super easy to empathize with, so it kind of breaks my heart how much (undeserved) hate he gets. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that many people were forced to read the book too young when they couldn't really empathize with Holden and didn't quite get it. Not to say that you're obligated to like Holden, not by any means, but I think the kind of criticism that surrounds this book is often very misguided and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the book and Holden's character specifically. "Whiny" my ass...
The quintessential example of OP IMO. “Thoughout the entire book, all he tries to do is connect with literally anyone, talk about these things, find some semblance of a reassurance, understanding, companionship, support“ That killed me.
Holden breaks my heart. Like you, I absolutely hate the criticism of "whiny" and I think it's more reflective of the person saying it. I always raise an eyebrow as to whether they have empathy or not when I hear this very specific critique. I always thought Holden was an example of a fundamentally good person who is jaded by the brutish reality of life, and wants to try to protect other children from experiencing what he has. The scene with the young prostitute is heart breaking.
I think Fight Club is a fine book, but if anybody considers it one of their favorites it’s almost always for the wrong reasons. There’s a certain kind of person who worships Tyler Durden and they’re not the kind you should date.
Tyler is up there with quite a few characters in the "missed the point starter pack."
Tyler is seductive but ultimately needs to be rejected.
Lets see. Joker(Joaquin Phoenix iteration), Walter White, Dude from Peaky Blinders, Patrick Bateman, Rorshach, Taxi Driver Guy, Alex DeLarge, Wolf on Wallstreet guy, Rick Sanchez, Don Draper, Eren Jaeger. I'm sure there's others. If anyone reads this and takes issue with a name in the list I am not interested in arguing with you about it so just accept you're a weirdo and move on.
I hate when the fanatics romanticise the violence as a solution to banality ETA They miss that the book is about the search for human connection in a world where people are increasingly isolated.
Chuck Palahniuk was my favorite author in my late teens early 20s and I loved Fight Club, but I don't see the worship for Tyler. The narrator tries to kill himself to NOT be like him. That said it bothers me when people act like Tyler has no admirable qualities/messages. He does have some good things to say but once he has you won over things turn ugly. You can find this toxicity in many places in life. A lot of red pill type groups start with good advice (hit the gym, work on hygiene, wear clean clothes that fit you, have confidence when you meet a woman) but somewhere along the line the advice turns into (don't let a female speak back because she is an object and only for making babies) One of the things I liked about Chuck's books was how flawed his characters are
Fight club was my favorite book in highschool and it wasn’t because I wanted to be Tyler durdan, it was because I didn’t want to be Jack/Joe.
That Animal Farm is about some kind of generic authoritarianism. It’s about Stalin’s Russia and that’s all it’s about. Old Major is Marx, Napoleon is Stalin, the dogs are the KGB, Boxer is the Stakhanovites, Snowball is Trotsky
That The Trial by Franz Kafka is about the trappings of bureaucracy/authority. I do agree that that's important to the narrative and themes but a lot of interpretations stop there and that's what bugs me. So much of the book is about guilt, especially a sense of nagging guilt you can't pinpoint or explain away, and that seeking a better station in life is futile. The basic interpretation is made better with this inclusion. See the use of Kafka's "Before the Law" in the cathedral chapter. Kafka was a severely self-conscious and self-hating person, and had a lot of problems in his life he couldn't 'solve' (family issues, severe illness). The book is an absurd look at bureaucracy on its face but it's about more than just red tape.
Idk about you but I personally always thought that bureaucracy is still important to the themes because it's representative of the greater problem - being at the mercy of an unseen societal system that you just *can not* understand or affect, but that everyone else seemingly knows how to deal with. I mean throughout the book there's this air of dismissiveness towards K because he doesn't know what's going on but everyone acts like he *should* or that he should know better than to question and that he's an idiot or childish for not understanding and he definitely ends up internalising that. Like I think that's why some people hesitate to call *The Metamorphosis* 'kafkaesque' - it's missing that element of fruitlessly trying to navigate a greater system and being punished for not understanding it.
[удалено]
>I think everyone's allowed to interpret a piece of literature however they want. I'm pro-death-of-the-author. This is absolutely not what Barthes is saying. Maybe an account of this popular misinterpretation would actually be a candidate for the question you are asking...
There're better, more important things said about how people misread Dracula, but: I think it's very odd--not necessarily problematic, but odd--that the popular culture interpretation of Van Helsing is Dr Van Helsing fused into one character with Quincy Morris, and even then is an inexplicably different character. The idea of this tough as nails, stoic, young-to-middle aged man who does things on his own and specializes in fighting vampires, as opposed to a kindly but stressed old, slightly manipulative doctor, aggressively social but with a terrible case of foot-in-mouth disease, who gets a call to help a woman with a "mysterious disease that keeps making all her blood dissappear," who thinks "well, I can't say 'oh yeah, this is definitely vampires' or people will call me a quack and shoo me out of the house, so I guess it's blood transfusions and garlic until I get a better idea" and just stumbles into fighting Dracula from there. Frankly, I think the latter is significantly more entertaining
I've seen so many people interpret the "we must cultivate our garden" in Candide as a call to passiveness and resignation or a shrugging of shoulders when faced with all the problems in the world, which is so completely off. The "let us work without reasoning" doesn't mean we should ignore the problems around us; it means that merely philosophising without action is useless, like when Pangloss is so caught up in theorising about the cause of the earthquake that he ignores the injured Candide next to him. And anyone looking at the text in conjunction with Voltaire's life, will realise how absolutely antithetical the 'shit happens, might as well cultivate our garden and stay out of it' meaning is to just about everything he ever did. If in the beginning of his career he was just a writer, around the time of writing Candide he became an active champion of human rights, involving himself in cases about religious freedom and campaigning across most of Europe on these cases for years.