Books Of My Life
The shore was fledged with palm trees. The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings.
I lift my chin slightly, squinting at the opening pages of Golding's Lord of the Flies. A group of British boys, ages six to twelve - fair-haired Ralph, fat boy Piggy, Jack, Simon, and a handful of 'Littluns' - survive a plane crash and are stranded on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean.
I'm already captivated by its premise.
Whizzoh! I feel just as excited as Ralph, as he exclaims. Nobody knows where we are. We may be here a long time. While we're waiting we can have a good time on this island.
No grownups! I chirp. I read on, tapping my pencil doggedly.
Ralph stood, one hand against a grey trunk, and screwed up his eyes against the shimmering water. Behind was the darkness of the forest proper. Oh-ho, that's the ominous part.
They're all dead, says Piggy, his spark of hope fizzling with a silent hiss. An' this is an island. Nobody don't know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don't know-- We may stay here till we die.
I'm sorting through my memory, thinking that survival and ultimate rescue can't be the novel's leitmotif (that's literary-criticism-speak for 'theme'). It's too literal.
Sure enough, Prof, straddling the high wooden chair on which he likes to perch, confirms my thought in his assured, elegant way. The central concern of the novel is the conflict between the instinct to live by rules and act peacefully against the instinct to act violently to obtain supremacy over others and enforce one’s will.
Hah! I mutter, The price for your heart's desire is your heart. A life for a life. A world in balance. There are murmurs of agreement among the senior English majors in the 20th Century Literature class.
Wacco! Wizard! Smashing! So those initial exclamations from Ralph and the other boys who have emerged one by one from the bushes simply set the stage for what is to come – and it isn't going to be smashing good. They are simply actors who will play out roles already written for them.
As if reading my mind, Prof intones, his voice becoming brittle. The novel is an allegory. Its characters signify important ideas or themes. He has placed his elbows on the desk and is touching his fingers together. Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization, he continues.
I thought so.
When the conch shell is against his lips, he's in charge, Prof finishes his thought.
Clearly, the conch itself reiterates the same symbolism, I mutter, almost too quickly.
I like Piggy! A junior said, blushing, her voice out of the darkness from the back of the room. He is intelligent and despite his glasses he is the most rational boy in the group. For all his ludicrous body, he has brains.
That's right, Prof agrees. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization.
Catching on with the logic, her seatmate echoes in a husky voice, And his glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in society.
She must have read that from a literary criticism essay, I whisper it like a secret.
Again, Prof concurs. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire.
And yet, despite their best efforts, that understandable and lawful world slips way. Unbridled savagery and the desire for power emerge in their midst. Jack, despite his declaration that they're not savages, leads a group of cloaked boys. Trying to keep his voice down, he hisses, The choir. They could be the Army – or hunters.
So what could the imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stand for? Prof drawls, nonchalant. A grin spreads across his lined forehead as he waits for an answer. None is immediately forthcoming. After an uneasy silence, even from the English seniors, he volunteers the words with sudden ferocity and desperation. It's the primal instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings.
The boys’ behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become, Prof continues to speak quietly, seriously.
Now I understand why, by the end of the novel, the boys begin to treat the 'Beastie' as a totemic god, offering it the 'Lord of the Flies' - the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade. I see the 'observing' sophomore seated on the front row twist in his chair like a diabolical Chinese dragon. The whole class has become uneasy.
We look with narrowed eyes at Prof, as he continues in the same low voice. It becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being.
His face darkened to an ominous hue, Prof hastily adds, Only Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. He grimly reads Simon's line from the book, Beastie. Maybe it's only us.
What ensues is a battle between the two groups of boys. Piggy who has only gone to ask Jack for his glasses, meets his demise. A rock strikes him from chin to knee. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed.
As part of the quest to hunt and kill Ralph, Jack's gang sets fire to the forest. It is this fire of savagery that finally summons a ship to the island.
When the naval officer asks Ralph and the group of bloodthirsty, savage children pursuing him to explain, Ralph begins to weep. He wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. The other boys begin to cry as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.
I can hardly hear Prof's closing commentary. His brows drawn together, he speaks of the instinct of civilization as good, and the instinct of savagery as evil.
My thoughts are in disarray. Feeling properly despondent, I rise from my seat and leave the classroom.
Books Of My Life
Monday has dawned gray and cold, matching my mood perfectly. Walking to my 20th Century Literature class, I feel like the sun has set and not risen for five days. I've just finished reading Camus' The Plague. This horrible morning after, what I need is refuge from my own thoughts and emotion.
When leaving his surgery on the morning of April 16, Dr. Bernard Rieux felt something soft under his foot. It was a dead rat lying in the middle of the landing.
This opening scene of the novel has been seared in my mind. The plague has just begun its onslaught on the French Algerian city of Oran. I step gingerly on the pavement, afraid that a big rodent might come toward me from the dark end of the street.
As I enter the classroom, I'm all ears, ready to hear that this haunting tale can't be all that literal. I want to be told that this story of unrelieved horror is a metaphor for something that can be overcome with human resilience. Forget the literal ganglias splitting open like an overripe fruit, men and rats dying on the street in a stench of corruption.
Prof begins reflectively, choosing his words. 'The Plague' is a representation of the philosophical notion of the absurd, a theory that Camus himself helped to define.
I lean forward with interest. I'm already loving it. Trust the European men of letters to come up with such erudite thoughts.
The announcement of death is paramount in Camus' philosophy and his novels, Prof continues in quite a different tone of voice.
Yes, I do recognize that. An uneasy feeling settles in my stomach as I recall old Spaniard M. Michel, his face livid and grayish green, his limbs spread out by tumors, breathing his last in a sudden gasp. I hear it in his senile chuckle, looking at the fleeing vermin, They're coming out, they're coming out. Camus is proclaiming the death of many people in Oran where it has become evident that a real epidemic has set in.
Folding his arms, looking very satisfied, Prof explains, In existential absurdism, the world is senseless and indifferent to human suffering which is unceasing and often tortuous.
Camus' view of life is depressing. He thinks that life has no meaning, and hence there is something deeply farcical about the human quest for such notion. My voice is feeble, as I muse. What is the point of living then if life is wildly illogical and can never have intention?
No answer comes to me. I feel deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I grimace at the thought of an almost empty town shrouded in darkness, palled in dust, seeming like a lost island of the damned.
Prof interrupts my languishing thoughts. Camus avers that individuals should embrace the preposterous condition of human existence while also defiantly continuing to explore and search for its essence.
I get it. Indeed, in the novel, I recall that despite the discontent and hopeless days filled with dismay and darkness, the city residents have persisted in their long, heartrending struggle to survive - content to live if only for the day, feeling the minutes go by, leaden, heavy. Endless. Alone under the vast indifference of the sky.
Prof echoes my thoughts, his voice now quiet and distant. The absurd hero doesn't despair. He clarifies, his lips slightly pursed like he's choosing his words carefully. Instead, he openly embraces the folly of his condition.
I nod slowly. Of course. Dr. Rieux sums it up in his chronicle as the contagion lets up: To state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: there are more things to admire in men than to despise.
Looking indifferently at my watch, I suck in a deep breath. I have to pick up my reserved copy of Lord of the Flies. All brisk and business-like, Prof notifies us, as if reading my thoughts. Next week, Golding.
I feel lightheaded. The perplexity that has settled around me like a heavy fog is lifting now. I look straight ahead to the library, stumbling slightly over my feet.
Books Of My Life
So here we are, Garcin says as the Valet ushers him into a drawing room in the opening scene of Sartre's one-act play, No Exit.
The entire dramatic work takes place in this room with only four characters - Garcin, the Valet, Estelle, and Inez.
As we read and discuss this work, put yourself in that drawing room with two people you hate the most in the world. My Professor in the 20th Century Literature class takes a deep breath and rubs his chin as he instructs us.
Visualization exercise? I give him a questioning look, as I wait for insight that doesn't come.
As I can't think of anyone whom I can claim to 'hate the most,' I decide to go in by myself, after taking one last look at the leaves skittering across the pavement outside, pushed along by an aimless wind.
Think about the place you have chosen as your hell, the Professor darts a quick glance at us as he leans forward, putting his elbows on the desk, as if waiting for a magic trick.
You, my reader, may say, Wait, what is this 'hell' thing? Just so there is no confusion as to where this is going - spoiler alert! This play contains the germinal existentialist thought that 'hell is other people,' so the word 'hell' will be referenced many times, though not in its traditional denotation, as you will shortly see.
How does it look? Professor continues to probe, almost in a whisper.
Looking around, I feel a sense of strangeness and belonging all at once. This is what it looks like? I'm mouthing Garcin's words. I'm clearly surprised as well. Where are the instruments of torture? There are no racks and red-hot pinchers and other paraphernalia. The room, in fact, looks ordinary and bourgeois, and yet I've never felt so trapped in my entire life.
The Professor's voice is mesmerizing as he further prompts us in our imagineering. Enter Sartre's space more fully and imagine how it would feel to live there endlessly, day and night.
I force a laugh and shake my head. Oh, I see. No mirrors, I notice. No windows. And nothing breakable. No toothbrush. And no bed, either. One never sleeps. I clear my throat gently against the back of my wrist. So one has to live with one's eyes open all the time.
Can hell be described as too much of anything without a break? Professor wrinkles up his face, folds his arms, and murmurs in a distant voice.
I suppose so. I gesture vaguely, like dispelling fumes. Looking sideways, I soon realize the presence of Inez, Estelle, and Garcin. Avoiding my glance, each has taken a seat on one of the three sofas. I sit there with them, feeling nothing. I can't breathe. It is as if time had stopped.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force my mind to go blank, when I hear Estelle's complaint. Everything here's so hideous; all in angles, so uncomfortable.
Garcin stares at her without blinking. He speaks briskly, hurrying over the words. Whew! How hot it is here!
The pervading mood seems unreal. There I am, with all three damned souls struggling to understand what sin has led them to hell.
Now we have to pay the reckoning, Garcin says bitterly.
We all turn to face him, tipping our heads up to meet his eyes. Then a chilling realization dawns on us. There is no torturer. No executioner. No flames to burn the soul eternally. It’s just the three of them - and I with them! - trapped in a deadlock.
Each of us will act as torturer of the others, Inez blurts out loudly and coughs, her voice rusty.
But thinking that anything will be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses and never hurts quite enough, they contemplate to find an exit.
Oh, yes! - and I'm bolting out with you, I mutter.
Surprisingly, as the door opens, they won't go.
Alone, none of us can save himself or herself; we're linked together inextricably. Garcin shakes his head in a quick gesture of acknowledgment.
I get it. Those in the room are the punishment.
We're inseparables! Inez says, moving her hands expressively. It's no use trying to escape. Night will never come, her voice trails off.
His eyes sunken, hollows in the gloom, Garcin gives a weary nod as understanding emerges. So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE!
SO here we are, forever, Inez says, her face taut.
Forever. My God, how funny! Forever, Estelle repeats weakly.
Garcin's mouth expands into a sudden grin. Forever, and ever and ever. Well, well, let's get on with it...
But I'm out of here, I say under my breath, as I desperately catch the freedom of the open door and exit the drawing room.
Back in my reality, I feel something strange engulf me, an unknown sensation of despair and emptiness. I barely hear Prof's clipped tone, Class, next week, Camus. We'll be citizens of Oran in 'The Plague.'
I nod weakly. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me, a sinner, now and at the hour of my death.
Books Of My Life
As a literature major, I was a fugitive riding on the spine of books, eager to escape into the milieu of fiction and secondhand dreams.
This series features four of my top memorable books and a reconstruction of those glory days in college during which we probed into the minds of great writers, relished ideas, followed intricate thematic rhythms and imagery, and discerned recurring leitmotivs. This was the time when great literature was my solace. Indeed, to this day, it may well be for me the only true magic.
When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found that he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.
Such is the opening sentence in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. It is the literal depiction of man as insect.
I can picture Gregor, silent, alone in the dark. He rushes up from sleep, fleeing a dozen ugly dreams. The expression on his face is one of anguish. A cold sweat has broken out on his back, which is hard as armor. His squirming, numerous legs are flickering helplessly before his eyes. He wills his body to awake from this nightmare.
The novella has become to me one of the most intriguing masterpieces of modern writing, a hybrid of realism and the fantastic. It is powerfully insane and symbolic, and I relish reading and parsing it to no end.
Analyze and critique. Cooly raising one brow, my professor in the 20th Century Literature class eyes us thoughtfully.
Several are quick to offer their appraisal. Guilt and absurdity. My seatmate's voice is expressionless.
Someone in back of the class grimaces in distaste, Alienation.
The acknowledged guru of the group chooses his words with painful consideration. Existential anxiety. I love this catch phrase. Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice.
I listen to my professor's affirmation, a faint frown coloring his brow. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe.
Perhaps inspired by the thought, a delicate-faced female classmate clears her throat and ventures an explication in a hoarse voice, as if she hadn't spoken in days. Gregor's transformation is a kind of wish-fulfillment. An extended metaphor.
I could have said that. What else can the bizarre transformation of a person into a huge bug be but a metaphor, I mutter, but I keep my mouth shut. Lost in my own gloomy thoughts, I scan my trusty notes. Trapped in a meaningless job and isolated from the human beings around him, Gregor has been thought of as an insect by himself and by others, so he becomes one.
Or maybe the metaphor here is the automated life that Gregor led, another comments. His voice, completely devoid of cheer, is low and blank, almost a mumble.
I recall that at first, Gregor denies his transformation. He tries to find the best way to walk, the best place to sit and sleep, the best food to devour. Why does he not once wonder why he has become what he is now? My eyes warm up as I ask myself the question. At different points in the story, he starts to talk with a squeaking, animal-like voice, loses control of his legs, hangs from the ceiling, starts to lose his eyesight, and wants to bite his sister.
My thought process is halted by a junior who's trying not to betray the excitement of his pronouncement. Feeling of insignificance!
I concur. Gregor has been drifting along for so many years.
Prof interjects thoughtfully, nodding to himself like he has just imparted some deep wisdom. The process of metamorphosis completely breaks all connections between Gregor’s mind and his body. While his body is that of an insect, with all the bodily processes and requirements that a body of an insect would have, his mind remains that of a coherent human.
Someone follows up with an impassioned rant. Gregor's existence is void of any humane appreciation. Cold emotions and failed communication have turned him already into an insect, a working vermin to satisfy basic and material needs, just to provide for himself and his family.
A budding student writer from The Philippine Collegian chimes in with utmost politeness, Isolation. Insecurity.
Perhaps trying to lighten the moment, a non-English major offers with a grin. He's spiraling downward in darkness for a dizzying eternity, like a snowfall blown down a bottomless well.
I scoff at the imagery. A bit delicate, I'm thinking, given the cruel circumstance surrounding the protagonist's dilemma.
Hopelessness, a peer from my core class says in a whisper.
Of course. Gregor has lost control over everything, even the places in his head.
Someone takes a shaky breath and the words stream out. The metamorphosis is a very wicked and harsh critique of human existence, how we run our lives meaninglessly.
By the story's end, the world has closed in, pressing down on Gregor from every side. The cleaning woman sees him on the floor, curled up into himself, his head involuntarily sank down altogether, and his last breath issued faintly from his nostrils. She tears open the bedroom door, whistles, and shouts into the darkness, It's croaked; it's lying there, a total goner. Indeed, Gregor has faded away like an afterthought.
Next week, Sartre's 'No Exit,' Prof announces, patting the back of his chair slowly, like comforting a ghost.
I stash the library copy of The Metamorphosis into my book bag, feeling both horrified and deeply amazed. I sense a chill in the room, pointed toward me. Feeling suddenly fragile, I wobble my way out the door.
