At-Swim-Two-Birds

This novel seemed to me that it is more about the process of writting a story than about the actually story itself. You seem to get the feeling that the narrator is trying to figure out what kind of author he wants to be or that he is inexperienced because he never really completes a story.  It has humor built into the story, I also find it funny how the characters in the novel don't like to be controlled and they try to rebel against their creator.

Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock is a murder mystery which was a new theme for us to read.  What was not a new theme was the aspect of religion in this novel.  Like many of our books we read the characters seem to apposed to religion, characters like Pinkie are familiar as well he was once religious. When he was younger he was raised in the Catholic church but has completely rejected it now. This seems to be a theme of British novels during this time period.

A Handful of Dust

I find Tony's character  in this book to be very interesting. He is obsessed with restoring his families old aristocracy. He is so obsessed with it that he neglects his own marraige to restore his family home to what it once was. Tony is unwilling to give up his old family home and restoring it, just as England is trying to restore the old aristocracy.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Connie marries Clifford when she is very young, their marraige is one of intellectualism and not of romance.  She always feels inferior to her husband and constantly wishes for something more for her marraige.  This soon leads her to an affair with Mellor, who feels inferior in his marraige as well.  They provide a relationship of equality for each other that they do not recieve in their marraiges.

A passage to India

One of the main themes I  took away from this book that I believe the author was asking, was whether or not  the English and Indians could ever be friends. This question is best represented by Aziz and Fielding, in the begging they dont think that they can be freinds. But after they do become friends they have a falling out ulitimately because of their cultural differences.  Even after they have some sort of reconciliation they still can not find it in them to friends. They decide in the end that perhapse they could be friends at a different time or maybe if they were not in India. There friendship could never work while India was still under the control of England. In this case their cultural differences were to abundant to get past for them to be friends.

Mrs. Dalloway

This was a very different book, it was not set up like most books. It was not broken up into chapters and the book was constantly jumping back to past memories. The book is following Clarissa as she is trying to find meaning in her life. On the surface she has a really great life filled with parties and a glamoures social life. But underneath she is really question herself and the decisions that brought her to this point. She is remembering back to events in her life and specifically she questions her choice of marrying Robert, who was stable and dependent, but not exciting and her choice of not marrying Peter. In the end she comes to the conclusion that while she may not be completely happy with her life, she does have a good life and she should accept that fact.

The Good Soldier

In my opinion no one in The Good Soldier is actually good. Dowell is easily decieved and never actually see's what people are really like. Edward who in Dowell's opinion is the good soldier is not the good soldier, he is only focused on himself and is constantly cheating on his wife. Florence has decieved her husband for their entire marraige and has not been faithful to him. Leonora who is faithful, is aware of her husbands affairs and only cares about keeping up appearences and controling everything in their lives to the point she begins to go mad. All the characters in Ford's book have very serious character flaws and none of them could be considered good.

James Joyce, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is not like any book I have ever read.  It is written as a stream of conciousness which is really hard to read and follow but also makes it very unique.  He writes like this to show that Stephen, the main character, is still growing through out the book. Not only in age but also as an artist.  At the end of the book Joyce does something interesting, he switchs from stream of conciousness to writing as journal if it is a journal entry by Stephen. He does this because he wants to show that Stephen has grown and he is ready to speak for himself.