This week, I decided to read Bonjour Tristesse by Francois Sagan. Like another student mentioned in their blog, I felt compelled to read it, as i thought i would likely be able to relate to it. This story follows a 17 year old girl named Cecile who is on summer vacation in the south of France. The novel explores, her relationship with her widowed father, his love interests, as well as her own. I assumed that I would like this story because i too experienced a relationship at 17, furthermore I have divorced parents and had to go through the process of watching them both move on to new people. However, after reading the entire novel I found it not as relatable as i had initially thought it might be. Also, i found that my opinions on each of the characters shifted back and forth quite a bit throughout.
The characters that stood out to me the most over the course of the novel were Cecile, Anne and Cyril. At first, I seriously sympathized with Cecile. Her mother had passed away and the new woman that her father had decided to marry wasn’t exactly ideal in Ceciles eyes. Even though Cecile was used to seeing her father having mistresses, his decision to settle down with one that she did not even like, would be an incredibly hard thing to accept. I think i slowly started to lose sympathy for her though, as she became quite manipulative of almost everyone in her life. Creating an incredibly methodical plan to have Anne removed from her fathers life, was surely not the high road i was hoping she would take. That being said though, I was not fond of Anne either. Although she seemed like the responsible role model that her and her father may have needed, I absolutely hated the way she spoke to Cecile. In my opinion she was way out of line trying to completely shift her life. She tried to end her relationship with Cyril, made multiple comments about her weight and appearance, as well as forcing her study, which she had absolutely no interest in doing. Maybe Anne’s intentions were pure but it just came off as controlling and invasive. Lastly, I think the only character that i had lasting sympathy for, was Cyril. He had true love for Cecile and was sadly roped into her deranged plan to get rid of Anne. Her feelings for him were always wishy washy and i had kind of wished that she would either commit to him, or leave him.
Joseph Zobel’s Black Shack Alley tells a story about life in Martinique from the point of view of a black boy named Jose. Even though the novel stresses his process of personal growth throughout, it generates broader implications of contextual consideration in various aspects in terms of literary analysis. It is vital to consider the […]
Sagan’s “Bonjour Tristesse” is about a 17-year-old girl named Cécile who has family issues. Her relationship with her father significantly affects the type of lifestyle she lives. The narrator is emotionally and psychologically connected to her single father, who serves as the main male figure in her life and is the only source of parental […]
This is a coming-of-age book that deals with the complexity of love and familial problems. If I were to describe Cécile’s character I would use the word fragile. She seems to have no understanding of who she is and what she wants. One moment she is in love with Cyril, the next she views their […]
I read Black Shack Alley this week, and here are some of my reading experiences.
For me, Amantine, little Joseph’s grandmother, is the unique character in the article, with a tragic but extraordinary fate. The author describes how his grandmother correctly made little Joseph’s life ordinary and warm in such a poor situation. Despite the hard work on the plantation and how the clothes on his body were worn, little Joseph never touched the ruthless side of reality under the care of his grandmother. As a result, grandmother Amantine’s image of a loving, simple, and hard-working black worker jumped on the page. Later articles tell the story of Joseph Jr. and her grandmother living a poor and miserable life on a sugar cane plantation. Nevertheless, The assertive Little Joseph’s grandmother, Amantine, understood that knowledge was the key to the broader world. She worked hard to get a better life for Little Joseph.
By looking up relevant information, we can learn that Black Shack Alley is set in the French colony of Martinique in the 1930s. In this context, the meagre income and hard life of black workers and various painful histories are described in the book, which makes people move and think about it. In this case, the children in the plantation have always maintained their innocence and childlike fun; the brave struggle to find a wider world and the future expectations that the future grandmother and little Joseph still have. This tragic background has formed a sad and touching life and expressed a kind of awe-inspiring concept. The book’s rhetoric is not gorgeous, but just describing the background of this protagonist is enough to make the reader experience a dull feeling in this heavy and straightforward experience, a reflection on history based on people’s empathy.
In the book, childhood is always cheerful and straightforward. Those children who do not have a clear understanding of the nature of life do not care about rudimentary food and clothes that cannot cover privacy; everything is innocent and funny as if adding a sunny filter to the hard life. Looking at the author’s life from the perspective of his childhood, the cruel life we can feel is softened by such a filter. So this misery, which should have been stinging, became a continuous dullness. My question is: Is it easier for the reader to have the courage to continue reading than to bluntly analyze this tragic experience from an adult’s point of view?
Posted in Blogs, Zobel | Tagged with Joseph Zobel
I read Black Shack Alley this week, and here are some of my reading experiences.
For me, Amantine, little Joseph’s grandmother, is the unique character in the article, with a tragic but extraordinary fate. The author describes how his grandmother correctly made little Joseph’s life ordinary and warm in such a poor situation. Despite the hard work on the plantation and how the clothes on his body were worn, little Joseph never touched the ruthless side of reality under the care of his grandmother. As a result, grandmother Amantine’s image of a loving, simple, and hard-working black worker jumped on the page. Later articles tell the story of Joseph Jr. and her grandmother living a poor and miserable life on a sugar cane plantation. Nevertheless, The assertive Little Joseph’s grandmother, Amantine, understood that knowledge was the key to the broader world. She worked hard to get a better life for Little Joseph.
By looking up relevant information, we can learn that Black Shack Alley is set in the French colony of Martinique in the 1930s. In this context, the meagre income and hard life of black workers and various painful histories are described in the book, which makes people move and think about it. In this case, the children in the plantation have always maintained their innocence and childlike fun; the brave struggle to find a wider world and the future expectations that the future grandmother and little Joseph still have. This tragic background has formed a sad and touching life and expressed a kind of awe-inspiring concept. The book’s rhetoric is not gorgeous, but just describing the background of this protagonist is enough to make the reader experience a dull feeling in this heavy and straightforward experience, a reflection on history based on people’s empathy.
In the book, childhood is always cheerful and straightforward. Those children who do not have a clear understanding of the nature of life do not care about rudimentary food and clothes that cannot cover privacy; everything is innocent and funny as if adding a sunny filter to the hard life. Looking at the author’s life from the perspective of his childhood, the cruel life we can feel is softened by such a filter. So this misery, which should have been stinging, became a continuous dullness. My question is: Is it easier for the reader to have the courage to continue reading than to bluntly analyze this tragic experience from an adult’s point of view?
While I enjoyed this novel and found myself reading it quite quickly, I found the narrator, Cecile, to be highly unlikeable. Cecile’s undesirable attitude is prevalent from the beginning of the novel when she shamelessly describes how her pleasure is solely derived from money and other material items. She goes so far as to say […]
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with manipulation, Selfish, suicide
Agostino is a coming-of-age novel that follows the very short timeline of the main character, a young boy Agostino’s loss of innocence. In the novel, Agostino (13) and his widowed mother are on a vacation in which his mother sparks … Continue reading →
This was a very interesting and enjoyable read. The story delves into the psychological torture that the innocent and timid Agostino must endure as he accompanies his mother on her boat rides. Growing up in a sheltered and conservative household, I saw myself empathizing with him. I felt as if I was right there with […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with Coming-of-age
While reading, ‘Nada’, by Carmen Laforet, I was by far the most emotionally involved I have been since beginning this course. Because of this, I have a lot of different thoughts about this story, and thus my blog post will probably be more disorga…
