blog#7 – a woman and her Cockroach — Reading The Passion According to G.H. was one of the closest moments that I felt like I was reading a well-composed transcript of my own thoughts. The way the Clarice Lispector seamlessly yet abruptly changes from concept to concept is mind-bogglingly impressive – all the while articulating […]
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with 4th wall, agency, anxiety, Brazil, cockroach, death, divinity, existence, human, life, maid, monologue, neutral, Rio, The Passion According to G. H, time, Womanhood
This novel seemed to be a bit more engaging for myself compared to the others I’ve read for this course. I think I was able to find certain passages of Lispector’s writing to be overdramatic and borderline humorous, with immense detail to totally picture it happening. The best example of this would be the beginning […]
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with cockroach, confrontation, disgust, Drama, fear, introspection, overdramatic, Romance text, self-reflection
This was a difficult read for me and I struggled to grasp the true meaning of the book. However, the novel was beautifully written, and almost sounded or flowed like poetry. Lispector’s use of poetic style created a mystical and eccentric atmosphere when reading. It appears as if the narrator, “G.H”, is going through an existential …
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with attentiveness, cockroach, crisis, structure, third leg
I found this novel exceedingly difficult to read. Sure, I liked individual lines amid the stream-of-consciousness style of prose, such as the early line, “I thought that throbbing was being a person” (6). However, for the most part, I found it to be an unnecessarily redundant read. Point blank, it said a lot of nothing. […]
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with cockroach, confusing, crisis, identity, prose, roach
To be honest, I got really sleepy as soon as I started reading the first page. I was already kind of tired when I sat down to read this book and the way it was written literally lulled me to sleep. Although the process of getting through this book was slow, I did think that the voice of the author was interesting. It was a style of writing that stands out as one that I don’t often come across.
The passage that stuck with me the most is the description of the cockroach’s features that the narrator gives after closing the closet door on him. She comes face to face with this thing that grosses her out so much, and she really stares into him. I’m also terrified of bugs and this close up description was not something that I ever needed or wanted to read.
“It was a face without a contour.”
“The long and slender whiskers were moving slow and dry.”
“Its black faceted eyes were looking.”
“… had cilia all over. Maybe the cilia were its multiple legs. The antennae were now still, dry and dusty strands.”
What an intimate moment between the narrator and her object of greatest disgust. It was not so much the descriptions themselves that weirded me out, but the morbidly fascinated way in which she drank in the reality of this half-squashed cockroach. Throughout the rest of the book, she is horribly drawn to this creature that she has almost killed. Inside of this cockroach, inside of it’s oozing guts, she sees beauty, revelation, death and life. She sees an “ugly and sparkling being.” It’s fascinating and gross seeing it through her eyes, like a fever dream that I’m trapped in. The narrator literally solves the world’s philosophical problems, sitting on the floor next to an almost-dead cockroach. This is why I think the writing was boring but also genius. Every sentence was a beautiful, nonsensical string of words.
On another note, how must the cockroach have felt knowing his killer was eating little bits of his insides? I’ll probably re-read this book when I’m not feeling tired because I think it’s one of those creations that deserve more than one read.
This is the question I am posing for this week: Has the narrator reached a state of pure mental freedom, something the rest of us can only hope to ever achieve, or is she just a little crazy?
To be honest, I got really sleepy as soon as I started reading the first page. I was already kind of tired when I sat down to read this book and the way it was written literally lulled me to sleep. Although the process of getting through this book was slow, I did think that the voice of the author was interesting. It was a style of writing that stands out as one that I don’t often come across.
The passage that stuck with me the most is the description of the cockroach’s features that the narrator gives after closing the closet door on him. She comes face to face with this thing that grosses her out so much, and she really stares into him. I’m also terrified of bugs and this close up description was not something that I ever needed or wanted to read.
“It was a face without a contour.”
“The long and slender whiskers were moving slow and dry.”
“Its black faceted eyes were looking.”
“… had cilia all over. Maybe the cilia were its multiple legs. The antennae were now still, dry and dusty strands.”
What an intimate moment between the narrator and her object of greatest disgust. It was not so much the descriptions themselves that weirded me out, but the morbidly fascinated way in which she drank in the reality of this half-squashed cockroach. Throughout the rest of the book, she is horribly drawn to this creature that she has almost killed. Inside of this cockroach, inside of it’s oozing guts, she sees beauty, revelation, death and life. She sees an “ugly and sparkling being.” It’s fascinating and gross seeing it through her eyes, like a fever dream that I’m trapped in. The narrator literally solves the world’s philosophical problems, sitting on the floor next to an almost-dead cockroach. This is why I think the writing was boring but also genius. Every sentence was a beautiful, nonsensical string of words.
On another note, how must the cockroach have felt knowing his killer was eating little bits of his insides? I’ll probably re-read this book when I’m not feeling tired because I think it’s one of those creations that deserve more than one read.
This is the question I am posing for this week: Has the narrator reached a state of pure mental freedom, something the rest of us can only hope to ever achieve, or is she just a little crazy?
