Bonjour Tristesse by Sagan has so been my favourite text so far. I love how Sagan used characters we could relate to because of age and gender. The main character was a young girl raised by a single parent. At first, I initially thought that I would relate to this character because I am a young girl who also lost a parent and was raised by a single parent. However, her experience was catastrophically different from mine. Her father was very laid back, and my mother, who raised me, was much more like Anne in the story. My mother was rigorous and always wanted me to put school first before anything. If I put myself in Cecile’s situation, I can see how I would like to push Anne away to keep her hedonistic and chill lifestyle. My younger self always dreamed of having a life with no stress. Raymond, her father, definitely influenced her way of living and the idea of love. Her father had a mistress but also was going to marry Anne. Growing up as a young child, this would have affected her way of seeing and understanding love because we always get the first dose of love by watching how our parents love each other. A question I have is, would Cecile maybe have loved Cyril in the end if she didn’t grow up with her playboy, hedonistic father?
The way that Cecile schemed her plot to get Anne and her father to part their ways was shocking. I would never think she would use her lover to make her father jealous. This surprising plot intrigued me into reading and finding out what happens at the end. Cecile’s story and inner self-thoughts portray her as an immature, scared teenager for her future. As young university students, we can all relate to this, as we are coming of age just like Cecile in Bonjour Tristesse’s text. I can relate to her feelings of self-doubt and worries for the future. As a young student, I am worried about what will happen after I graduate and also just anxious about providing for myself and learning to be an adult and one day take care of my child and raise them. Growing up with someone like Anne has made me appreciate the skills I have learnt, and even though the “hedonistic” life is more pleasurable, I am more mature than Cecile because I was lucky to have a mother who cared about my success.
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with anxiety, betrayal, family, greif, guilt, hedonistic, jealousy, love, power
Bonjour Tristesse by Sagan has so been my favourite text so far. I love how Sagan used characters we could relate to because of age and gender. The main character was a young girl raised by a single parent. At first, I initially thought that I would relate to this character because I am a young girl who also lost a parent and was raised by a single parent. However, her experience was catastrophically different from mine. Her father was very laid back, and my mother, who raised me, was much more like Anne in the story. My mother was rigorous and always wanted me to put school first before anything. If I put myself in Cecile’s situation, I can see how I would like to push Anne away to keep her hedonistic and chill lifestyle. My younger self always dreamed of having a life with no stress. Raymond, her father, definitely influenced her way of living and the idea of love. Her father had a mistress but also was going to marry Anne. Growing up as a young child, this would have affected her way of seeing and understanding love because we always get the first dose of love by watching how our parents love each other. A question I have is, would Cecile maybe have loved Cyril in the end if she didn’t grow up with her playboy, hedonistic father?
The way that Cecile schemed her plot to get Anne and her father to part their ways was shocking. I would never think she would use her lover to make her father jealous. This surprising plot intrigued me into reading and finding out what happens at the end. Cecile’s story and inner self-thoughts portray her as an immature, scared teenager for her future. As young university students, we can all relate to this, as we are coming of age just like Cecile in Bonjour Tristesse’s text. I can relate to her feelings of self-doubt and worries for the future. As a young student, I am worried about what will happen after I graduate and also just anxious about providing for myself and learning to be an adult and one day take care of my child and raise them. Growing up with someone like Anne has made me appreciate the skills I have learnt, and even though the “hedonistic” life is more pleasurable, I am more mature than Cecile because I was lucky to have a mother who cared about my success.
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with anxiety, betrayal, family, greif, guilt, hedonistic, jealousy, love, power
Wow. This book floored me. On its own, it’s an incredibly engaging and well-written novel. However, it’s rendered so much more impressive when you factor in how young Françoise Sagan was when she wrote it. The uniqueness of a teenage author writing this narrative centered on the interpersonal relationships and teen angst of an adolescent […]
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with coming of age, family, love, summer, teenager, youth
While reading “Agostino,” I was struck by a distinct tone of the Freudian; the ways in which maturing from the child to the teenager–and various ventures into adulthood in-between–are contrasted with a love, innocent or otherwise, of a maternal figure central to one’s life. Although one may be tempted to refer to the relationship between […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with Entries, Freud, love, necessity
Okay, so I finished reading Agostino, and I would definitely say that I have some mixed feelings about this novel (to say the least). It is absolutely a novel about coming of age, class, self-discovery, but has some other themes such as love, lust, brutality, and low-key incest. I particularly enjoyed how it was written; […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with acceptance, beach, class, infatuation, Italy, jealousy, love, privilege, Weekly Book Blog
Before reading this novel, I couldn’t help but notice a handwritten note on the pdf version of the book provided to us by our Professor wherein on the title page, an anonymous individual wrote “Ana-Maria is a Femme Fatale.” Upon researching the unfamiliar term, I came to learn it refers to an attractive and seductive […]
