jasmeet

Read long ago, The Mill on the Floss is among the first books which introduced to a world that books of this magnitude portray. A lot to relate to the character of Maggie Tulliver... the places, the subdued sentiment of the nineteenth century character and a sensibility I could imagine as that of George Eliot's own, everything is still fresh... In the mind's eye doth cherish the mill and the floss.

Getting a teenager hooked on to ideas of Philosophy, that too diligently wanting to follow its steady arc chronologically, is always going to be an uphill task. But not if you believe in the imaginative power of ideas yourself; certainly not if you figure an ingenious way out to break away from the classroom tediousness, to take those ideas with you and sail across in a boat ride, and then to hold them back just enough until you start again, and even more so if you know how to get dogs deliver them mail for you.

Sophie's World is a fresh way to look at the history of thoughts thought by the most genius minds over the millennia. The innovation in telling the history enjoins the imagination of telling a story; the story of Sophie Amundsen who, could it be argued, is more real than her real counterpart.

The coming of age for Sophie involves the creative play of splitting or rather multiplying her self ... to evolve into her indubitable double. Is it Hilde reading Sophie or the other way round, turned frantically over the pages, truly amounts to the best bits of the book. The postmodernist blend of fiction and history enables the flight of philosophy which the readers, much like Sophie, would be comfortable to take.
About the ‘philosophy' as such, it would be better to hark as much at those other counterparts of the Western world. That the narration jars towards the final scenes is probably an outcome of the literary pull of closing down the circle that deserves to start all over again.
One cannot complain much albeit when at your helm is a girl who knows what is she dealing with and who is firmly taking steps to affirm her journey.

Like being able to breathe freely when one's calling calls it, gliding into a Terabithia is supposed to be everyone's prerogative.
It is the bridges that must be willed into shaping access, entitlement, and expressiveness.

Jesse and Leslie are like those characters who have never not met; their rendezvous are reassuring for the earnest reader beyond requisites or expectations.

Here's to a tiny hidden branch, a modest creek of a stream, an unassuming arch over which to instate even a mere pedestal, for that is reasonably enough.

The heart of darkness that is profusely referred to in this novella could come to mean so many things. And what it really means, what is really meant, why it means so, who means and for whom, to my mind, reflects the appreciations and apparent criticisms of the book.
Man's own capacity; a capacity to corrupt and get corrupted, man's ultimate inability to comprehend and rend the thick shards of ambiguity life catches us in, sort of feeds that impenetrable heart of darkness. Do we not all own it, have it, exhibit it? And then, if that is so, Heart of Darkness is a parable of human nature.
Despite hearing about the reservations on the racist tones and the not so anti-imperialist stance, I feel that there is more to this work than just that. Nowhere am I determinedly able to maintain that the text gives way to an authorial voice depicting a for or against sign, let alone some agenda to obey. If anything, it is a rich and complex novella with a promise to yield thoughtful discussion.
Degradation of human beings, material and spiritual, is what is at heart of the tale. And the language that captures the prose captivates aspect and attention with poetical sensitivity.
Still, I can hear reserved echoes of criticisms leveled against the ‘dark' heart (particularly in its treatment of the natives of Congo, attributed as well to the racist tradition existent in Western literature). But if the dark treatment of Africa is to be considered as representative, what about the ‘light' that is coming from the other side. Is it, in Conrad's view, all the more redeeming or ‘civilised'? And can we say then which does the voice means when it sighs profoundly the word, ‘Horror'? I don't know yet. In that I find the book more open-ended than we presume probably.
Somehow, style is central to narration and is thus worthy of re-readings. The narrative voice is aptly unreliable. Never do we really get to know what Marlow thinks in his own heart; he is a voice telling but somehow devoid of an intimacy towards readers. Perhaps, through what he sees on the outside, he sees the all too dark heart of his own and is unable to reveal it to us as Kurtz does. Marlow envies Kurtz for “He had something to say. He said it.”