When Your Sister Wants to Get Rid of You

One thing which really confuses me about the ending to Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" is Gregor's sister, Grete. Throughout the story, Grete is the only member of Gregor's family who does not abandon him after his transformation. She brings him food, cleans the room, and does all she can to make life easier for him, even going as far as to remove heavy furniture from his room.

For this reason, while I can accept that her job made her too tired to care for Gregor as much as she had previously, it is unexplainable to me why she would be the one to decide that the family must "try and get rid of it" (104). Are Grete and her father mad about being forced to work? Has she just decided it is no longer worth it to even try and take care of Gregor?

What makes it even stranger is that earlier in the story, following the apple-throwing scene, Grete and her mother attempt (and more or less succeed, at least for the time being) to convince Gregor's father that Gregor is, in some way, human and should be treated as such rather than being pelted by apples. Basically, they try to convince Gregor's father to acknowledge the fact that Gregor the insect is still Gregor his son, and that therefore Mr. Samsa should not be trying to hurt him. Yet, by the end of the story, Grete convinces them nonetheless to "get rid of it" by saying that insect Gregor is not the same as human Gregor. Not only does she change her mind about taking care of Gregor, she also uses the exact point she was against earlier as her excuse!

I have thought long and hard about this, trying to figure out what Kafka may have been trying to suggest in writing this character as so seemingly indecisive and hypocritical, but I cannot come up with any good ideas. The best I have been able to think of is that perhaps Kafka is, through his characters, attempting to embody the overall human character: one that constantly changes its mind and is increasingly influenced by outside opinions and its own selfishness.

Does anyone have any better ideas?

Brett and Jake's Relationship

Jake and Brett’s relationship is something we have discussed over and over again, and never completely figured out. Nonetheless, the relationship has a major part in the plot of The Sun Also Rises.

To start out, consider the two parallel scenes at the beginning and ending of the novel. In the original taxi scene, Jake asks Brett, “Isn’t there anything we can do about it,” referring to their non-sexual, romantic yet unromantic, relationship (Hemingway 34). At this point, as reader, we have only just met Brett, and it seems the traditional gender roles have been switched, with Brett as the “masculine player” and Jake as the girl who is trying to turn a one-night stand into a relationship (I am referring to the stereotype of the clingy girl with the player boy, regardless of the fact that Brett and Jake have not had a one-night stand).

In this scene, it seems to me that they have both resigned themselves to this open relationship, but at the same time, they both hope a committed relationship could at some point be successful. When Jake asks Brett if there is anything they can do, her response, “I don’t want to go through that hell again,” seems to imply that they have tried previously and failed (34). These failed attempts have convinced Brett that she cannot have a working relationship with Jake. Simultaneously, however, Brett’s repeating the statement that it’s the way she is, seems to suggest she is trying to convince herself as well as Jake. In my opinion, throughout the entire novel, Brett makes excuses for why she can’t be with Jake because she is scared to commit to a single person. We hear about what happened with her first husband, and it makes sense that this would have scarred her. So, when Jake asks her in the beginning if they could be together, she talks about how she would cheat on him with everyone, and how it would never work.

However, by the end of the book, following several situations in which Brett and Jake’s relationship suffers from her relationships with others (despite the fact that Brett and Jake are only officially friends), it seems like Brett is more open to having a relationship with him. She seems to view him in a better light than the other men (Cohn, Romero), having said he wouldn’t act as badly as they had, and in the final chapter when they are in the taxi, it is Brett who asks Jake about the nature of their relationship. It is not framed as a question, but rather a solemn, hopeful statement. It is hard to tell if Jake is open to a committed relationship at this point, as he responds “Yes. . . Isn’t it pretty to think so?” in regards to her statement about how good their relationship might have been (250). The use of the present tense in his statement seems to imply that he has given up on such a relationship existing, but I suspect, if The Sun Also Rises was to continue another few chapters, Brett and Jake would form a relationship, if not at least grow a lot closer.

Is Clarissa's Marriage to Richard an Act of Defiance Against the Patriarchy?

During the first panel presentation on Monday (9/11) we discussed how Woolf’s characters fight the patriarchy. Specifically, we discussed whether or not Clarissa marrying Richard and rejecting Peter was a direct hit against the patriarchy.

Personally, I do not think it was. First of all, from Clarissa’s perspective, it does not seem as though her actions are planned as a rebellion, but more importantly, I don’t believe Peter’s personality and lifestyle really fit the patriarchal mold.

From the beginning of the novel, Peter does not seem to match the “proper man” of the time. Sure, he has “nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman,” as Clarissa describes him, but he also “married a woman met on the boat going to India” and has an odd habit of opening and closing his pocket knife (Woolf 6,8,39). Additionally, Peter, like Septimus, seems to lack the confidence and masculinity needed to succeed in the patriarchal world.

Also, similarly to Septimus, Peter does not bother hiding his emotions to match the stoically masculine image of a man. The section where this is the most noticeable is when he tells Clarissa he is in love with Daisy. “‘Millions of things!’ he exclaimed, and, urged by the assembly of powers which were now charging this way and that and giving him the feeling at once frightening and extremely exhilarating. . . he raised his hands to his forehead” (Woolf 43). In this situation, Peter is seemingly overcome by emotion and does not try to hide it (though one could, of course, say it is due to his familiarity with Clarissa).

On the other hand, Richard seems to be the perfect example of a polite, successfully masculine man. He is a politician, “happily” married for at least 18 years, invited out to lunch by a very politically active General’s great-granddaughter, and, possibly most importantly, he is rich. He is “made of much finer material,” as Lady Bruton says, though she is comparing him to “the admirable Hugh” (Woolf 101,5).

It seems to me, that, out of all the characters in the novel, other than maybe Hugh, Richard bears the largest resemblance to the proper patriarchal man. For this reason, I think it absurd that Clarissa would be fighting the patriarchy by marrying Richard. Quite the opposite, in fact, in my opinion, by marrying Richard and rejecting Peter, Clarissa is relinquishing her life to the patriarchy. There is no doubt in my mind Woolf has strong opinions on the patriarchal society as well as many other aspects of life depicted in “Mrs. Dalloway” and it would definitely be interesting to explore further whether Woolf intended to have Clarissa side with the patriarchy when she narrated her choice of Richard over Peter. 

The Straw

While reading “The Mezzanine” this summer, one particular passage caught my eye, and I think I reread it at least three or four times. It was Howie’s footnote on straws, starting on page four and continuing onto page five. It intrigued me, because of the amount of history it included. I have no memory of paper straws to begin with, not to mention “floating straws,” which required you “to bend low to the table and grasp the almost horizontal straw with your lips, steering it back down into the can every time you wanted a sip” (Baker, 4).

It is quite possible the reason this footnote stuck with me is that it is the first real view the reader gets of the detailed examinations Howie will give every seemingly mundane object. Yes, the first page or so preceding the footnote gives a good sense of Baker’s style, but you have not fully experienced the totality of it until a footnote has been read. I wonder, was it Baker’s intention to start his novel off with such a memorable footnote? If so, he did an amazing job. Only one page into the novel and I was already going online to look up if these straws really existed! [1]

I think Howie/Baker’s footnote, full of facts about the history of straws followed by opinions concerning how things are wrong and how to make things better, really summarizes Howie’s character very well, as well as summarizing the message of the novel as a whole. A (nearly) complete study of paper and floating straws emerging merely from the cashier asking if he wanted one! A small, seemingly unimportant question which required a detailed thoughtful paragraph to answer.

Though when I first read this, I did not really understand how these thoughts could all come to mind in a single moment (though, is this really a single moment? Another topic that would be lovely to discuss), I think I finally understood it when I was at Panera’s last Wednesday. I had ordered a Mediterranean Sandwich with no pepper and no feta, and a cup of water. When I got my water, I put a straw in and instantly had a Howie moment. The straw was nearly twice as tall as the cup, and even then, I found it extremely ironic as I was imagining all of the other kinds of straws I had ever had and how they would have compared to the extremely tall straw in my glass.

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[1] I found several interesting facts on the drinking straw Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_straw) that were quite interesting:

(a)     The oldest drinking straw was made of gold, decorated with lapis lazuli, and discovered in a Sumerian tomb from 3,000 BCE

(b)     Sumerians used straws to drink beer (this article is really interesting, you should take a look at it)

(c)     About 500,000,000 (five hundred million) straws are used DAILY in the US alone

(d)     Howie would probably really like extendo-straws (also described in the Wikipedia page)

(e)     Howie is considered a drinking straw expert, as the Wikipedia page contains links to the pages for Nicholson Baker and “The Mezzanine” as well as writing that “The Mezzanine (1988), includes a detailed discussion of various types of drinking straws experienced by the narrator and their relative merits.”

(f)      The paper straw was invented by Marvin C. Stone in 1888 while drinking a mint julep (a cocktail usually containing bourbon, ice, water, and fresh mint)