"The Blind Assassin" Post 3b

What makes this novel so interesting to read? Here are a few of its features which add to it in ways which other novels often don't explore:
- It has parallel story lines. I really enjoy parallel story lines in general: it's so interesting to see them coming together, and to think about what each one tells about the other one. How are these two characters going to act together? Parallel story lines provide you a different perspective on the story, because you are at the hands of the author in this regard: you only know what they deem you should know. With parallel story lines, you can escape from this one viewpoint and see the story through multiple ones. In "The Blind Assassin", the author provides multiple story lines but at the beginning, you really have no idea how they connect. Iris' story is recounting her childhood while Laura's novel is exploring the relationship between two lovers. Even when they begin to collide, it's easy to miss the hints, most noticeably the picture overlapping the two. However, as we enter Iris' married life and meet Alex again, we can see exactly where Laura got her material. I liked this style of parallel stories a lot, because Laura's novel is not only another well-written story but an insight into her character, into Iris' character, and into Iris' situation.
- Iris' tone is at once childish and old. In the section recounting her childhood, one never forgets that she is looking back at her life, the reader is always sure of what time is the present. However, in an effort to portray herself truly from that time, Iris doesn't attempt to hide any of her faults or childish mistakes. She is bluntly honest with her character at that time, and reflects it in her writing: "(I have to admit I was gratified by this. I'd wanted her to suffer too - as much as me. I was tired of her getting away with being so young.)" (97). With Iris' voice, the author simply finds that perfect medium.

"The Blind Assassin" Post 3a

Vocabulary

lugubrious (96): mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially in an affected, exaggerated manner

albatross (102): used as slang for a trap or a deception

Figurative Language

Simile: "Her mouth opened into a perfect rosebud O, like a child blowing out birthday candles in a picture book. Then she began to cry" (97). Iris makes the connection here in the similarity of reactions of sadness and happiness. This fits with her misunderstanding or skewed perspective of human emotions.

Simile: "Then she brought the soda for me, in a cone-shaped glass like a dunce cap upside down; it came with two straws" (100). Once again, something usually thought of as happy (being treated to a soda) takes on a skewed negative aspect in Iris' mind: the shape of the soda glass is likened to that of a dunce cap. Is this foreshadowing her confusion and disinterest into economics? Her connections aren't a problem with her character; it's just interesting to see what she associates.

Simile: "Hands like stumps: those hands could rescue you or beat you to a pulp and they would look the same while doing either thing" (105). This simile is interesting: the author makes the association of the hands and stumps, blunt objects, but continues to talk of two extremes in which they could perform: helping and harming. Perhaps this is the nature of blunt instruments: they must be used generally, there is no fine tuning, they are either saving you or beating you up. 

Quote

"Now I think it was more complicated than that. It may have been a warning. It may also have been a burden. Even if love was underneath it all, there was a great deal piled on top, and what would you find when you dug down? Not a simple gift, pure gold and shining; instead, something ancient and possibly baneful, like an iron charm rusting among the old bones. A talisman of sorts, this love, but a heavy one; a heavy thing for me to carry around with me, slung on its iron chain around my neck" (102). This quote was depressing in its appraisal of love but shows well the experiences of Iris as a child: she doesn't have a way to understand love. For her, it is a burden, an obligation to a family member. Even as an adult, what reference does she have to understand it? Is familial love for her different than romantic love? Does she know any love? She seems to love her granddaughter; why's that? Is that familial love? Why isn't it forced? What about her daughter?

Theme

One can't be entirely independent but one cannot rely solely on others. One has to find a middle ground. 

"The Blind Assassin" Post 2b

"The Blind Assassin", though an excellent read, is an extremely depressing book. Iris' family, like all families, has its own tragedies, but it is its inability to prevent them or even to do anything that makes it so hard to read. She and Laura are constantly being trapped: in their roles in the town as the children of the factory owner, in their father's unrealistic business practices, in their ensuing debt in which they have no training to prepare them for, in Mr. Erskine's teaching (where they are unable to go to their father), and finally in Iris' marriage. The writing also adds to the general mood: it is so straightforward and truthful, but not blunt, just honest. Some of my favorite quotes from this section: 

"That's another thing: my father is now the heir, which is to say he's fatherless as well as brotherless. The kingdom is in his hands. It feels like mud"(76)

"But appearances are deceptive. I could have never driven off a bridge. My father could have. My mother couldn't" (80)

"My father has gone back to gazing out the window. (Did he place himself outside this window, looking in? An orphan, forever excluded - a night wanderer? This is what he was supposed to have been fighting for - this fireside idyll, this comfortable scene out of a Shredded Wheat advertisement: the rounded, rosy-faced wife, so kind and good, the obedient, worshipful child. This flatness, this boredom. Could it be he was feeling a certain nostalgia for the war, despite its stench and meaningless carnage? For that questionless life of instinct?" (81)

"But perhaps Laura wasn't very different from other people after all. Perhaps she was the same - the same as some odd, skewed element in them that most people keep hidden but that Laura did not, and this was why she frightened them" (89)

"I was sulky during these visits. I could see how ill she was, and I resented her for it. I felt she was in some way betraying me - that she was shirking her duties, that she'd abdicated" (93)

"(What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves - our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies" (94).

"The Blind Assassin" Post 2a

Vocabulary

bowdlerized (69): to expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable

tam (69): a woolen cap of Scottish origin, short for tam-o-shanter

Figurative Language

Simile: "He's in his uniform; his medals are like holes shot in he cloth, through which the dull gleam of his real, metal body can be seen" (76). This simile acts to further the reader's understanding in several ways. Firstly, it gives us a perspective of Iris in which she has her own fantasies, such as her father as a robot, a metal man. As the book continues, these notions are dominated by Laura and Iris is left to be the sensible on, but she has her own unique way of looking at things as well. Additionally, this simile shows the man that Iris' father has become: cold, hard, stiff, not someone one would imagine as a loving father and husband. The image of holes in his uniform reminds the reader of what he has just been through, but one doesn't truly forgive him for the pain this is sure to inflict upon the rest of his family.

Simile: "It was as if they'd drunk some fatal potion that would keep them forever apart, even though they lived in the same house, ate at the same table, slept in the same bed" (78). This simile shows the transformation in the relationship between Iris' parents. After the war, each had changed in ways that the other could not comprehend even if they had tried. They were stuck knowing only a part of the other, not able to break away or learn of the other part.

Personification: "I think of my heart as my companion on an endless forced march, the two of us roped together, unwilling conspirators in some plot or tactic we've got no handle on. Where are we going? Towards the next day" (83). In this personification, Iris talks of herself and her heart as separate entities bound together to soldier on unwillingly towards a perhaps empty goal, "the next day". This shows the disconnect that she feels throughout her telling of her story, between her current condition and her past self. She is old now, but she does not have that view of her inside self. She is bound to her body, but not willingly. Perhaps not in the sense that she wishes to die: more that she cannot believe quite how time has passed. 

Quote

"There. It's over. The guns are silent. The men who are left alive look up at the sky, their faces grimed, their clothing sodden; they climb out of their foxholes and filthy burrows. Both sides feel as if they have lost. In the towns, in the countryside, here and across the ocean, church bells all begin to ring. (I can remember that, the bells ringing. It's one of my first memories. It was so strange - the air was so full of sound, and at the same time so empty" (75). This passage was particularily affecting because, although it is describing a supposedly joyous event, the end of WWI, it reminds the reader that the ending of the war couldn't account for the losses, the atrocities, and other tragedies which it had brought.

Theme

It's better to do something or almost anything, to have motion, to have the possibility of escaping, than to do nothing, to be stuck. 

"The Blind Assassin" Post 1b

When I first turned the page and entered the novel within the novel, the Blind Assassin by Laura Chase, I was confused. Not that I hadn't been expecting it: every review of the book that you read flaunts this unique fact. Its abruptness was what shocked me, the immediate entrance with no warning into a completely different story. This one relates to two lovers, just first beginning to know each other. Both seem to recognize their status as lovers as an eventuality, it's just attaining that state that may take some time. The male seems to write science-fiction stories as a career, and their meetings result in him telling her a story that he is making up, that she has requested of him. Its interesting to note in these segments that we never learn the couples' names. Iris' tale is quite explicit in telling us the names of the characters, but this one fails to mention them. Perhaps the author felt that their names weren't important in this novel and wished their awkward interactions to take the center stage, or for the reader to be able to imagine any person in their situation, not making it unique to them. Possibly they don't know the other's name, and the author is pointing out their unfamiliarity with the other. However, the constant omitting of the names actually draws more attention to their absence. Maybe the author is actually drawing attention to our need for a name, to label the characters. Why do we need to name things? Is it simply to remember them better, such as "red-haired Menelaus"? Or do we hold certain connotations with different names, and wish to apply these to a name itself? Names have almost become a thing of value, as calling someone "boy" or "woman" has become a derrogatory way to refer to someone. Its interesting how the absence of something draws attention to it.

"The Blind Assassin" Post 1a

Vocabulary

"Sibyl in the bottle" (42): a tale from Greek times by Ovid concerning a nymph forever imprisoned in a bottle to grow old but never die.

"enervating" (65): to weaken, deprive of force or strength

Figurative Language

Simile: "The orange tulips are coming out, crumpled and raggedy like the stragglers from some returning army" (42). This simile is interesting because spring and the return of flowers, especially tulips, is usually remarked upon as a joyous occasion, celebrating the beauty and return of life. Here, Iris remarks that her flowers are barely hanging in there, even in the spring as they begin to blossom. Perhaps she is remarking as to her own similar state, as she continues in the next line: "I greet them with relief, as if waving from a bombed out building; still, they must make their way as best they can, without much help from me... I can't kneel very well any more, I can't shove my hands into the dirt" (42). 

Metaphor: "I prefer to be upright and contained- an urn in daylight" (43). Iris is speaking of how she feels a desire to be melodramatic about the end of her life, as well as looking back on it, or "romantic" as she describes it. Instead, it's more her style to be "classical" like an urn in daylight: proud, on the verge of putting on a face, things concealed without be sly about it as in the darkness.

Simile: "They killed as softly as a moth brushing against your neck" (22). This simile of the blind children working as assassins builds a great but disturbing picture in the reader's mind: one can imagine how their killing would be gentle, delicate, just a little slice with their capable hands. At the same time, the idea of children working as killers is so horrible because death and destruction is something their innocence shouldn't be tainted by.

Quote

"That's unnecessarily cruel, she says coldly.

When is cruelty necessary? he says. And how much of it? Read the newspapers, I didn't invent the world. Anyways, I'm on the side of the throat cutters. If you had to cut throats or starve, which would you do?" (23)

This quote was interesting in the questions that it raised. When one says unnecessarily cruel, does that mean that cruelty to a certain level is "necessary"? Or at least to be expected? And if one was presented with the situation of stooping to acts not thought of as moral in order to survive, what would one do? Is cruelty "necessary" there because of the circumstances?

Theme

Cruelty is a fact of the world.

The Odyssey: "Girl Sailor" The Shins

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