Sense and Sensibility

For my book I read Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I was not planning on reading it, but I got the whole Jane Austen collection for Christmas, so I decided to. The reason I picked Sense and Sensibility is because I have seen the movie over 10 times because I love it so much, so i figured I should read the book. The book is now one of my favorites, which I figured would happen since it is such a great story. While I was reading the book, I decided to track all the times they use the word sense and the word sensibility. I thought it was interesting because the older sister, Elinor is the one who is supposed to have sense, while Marianne, the middle sister has the sensibility. First I looked up what each word meant. Sense: sound practical intelligence; Sensibility: keen consciousness or appreciation. At first the two words seem alike, which does not make sense because the two sisters are so unalike. 
Elinor hides all of her emotions. She supposedly is an "old maid" because she is 19 and has not married yet, but "she was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be" (Austen). She is in love with Edward Ferrars, but she does not show it. She does not want to let her emotions show because she is worried that she will be disappointed. She is very careful in everything that she does. "Sense will always have attractions for me" (Austen). But doesn't she also have sensibility? She definitely has sense; she is very smart and practical. She sees the negative in things because she understands that they are there.
Meanwhile, her sister Marianne is the opposite. She falls in love with Willoughby, and everyone knows it. Instead of hiding her feelings, she lets everyone know them. She falls deeply in love in a matter of days and she has a strong appreciation for art and music. She is a romantic and always described with sensibility. "Her sensibility was potent enough!" (Austen). When Willoughby leaves her, she becomes an emotional wreck, crying all the time and not getting out of bed. She fell in love with him because he also had an appreciation for art and music. He loved Shakespeare. "His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story; and in his carrying her into the house with so little previous formality, there was a rapidity of thought which particularly recommended the action to her. Every circumstance belonging to him was interesting" (Austen). For Marianne, Willoughby was a hero to her and she immediately fell in love with him. For Elinor, she truly fell in love with Edward. He was very nice to her family and did not care about being distinguished. He was funny, but not very handsome. Elinor did not care because she had the sense to see his true character, which is what she fell in love with. Marianne always told Elinor that Edward has no sensibility because he had no appreciation for anything. He didn't appreciate art, or music and that upset Marianne, but it did not bother Elinor. These sisters are so different in so many ways yet the two words used to describe them are almost the same. 
If somebody were to have both sense and sensibility they would be a very well off person. I think that Elinor has both of these traits and although Marianne always told her she needed to be more emotional, Elinor understood what made her happy and she went with that. Marianne had the sensibility, but she did not have the sense. "Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims" (Austen). In the end, both girls end up getting married. Elinor marries the man that she had always loved, Edward. MArianne marries Colonel Brandon, who she at first wrote off as being way too old because she did not have the sense to understand that he was truly right for her and loved her deeply. By choosing Colonel Brandon, she finally shows that she is capable of having both sense and sensibility.


This book was very good and I am very happy with my choice!


 

Close Passage Analysis Chapter 5 and 6

The passage that I analyzed was:

"But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing" (105).

This passage is about who Gatsby really was before he became Jay Gatsby. This is what he dreamed his life would be like; one of "grotesque and fantastic conceits" (105). He wants to become rich and live in this society that is supposedly so great. He is against time and nature; "A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor" (105). The clock represents time and the moon light represents nature. The "universe of ineffable gaudiness" is society, so while Gatsby is thinking and dreaming of society he is against time and nature because society is a "turbulent riot" (105). Once he becomes part of this society though he no longer feels part of it. "He looked out the window at it, but judging from his expression I don't believe he saw a thing" (89). he is completely detached from the man he used to be. Society has "provided an outlet for his imagination" but it is not reality.

'The unreality of reality" is how Gatsby is living his life. He is not true to himself or the people around him. The possessions he owns are just things of substance; they do not actually mean anything to him. Daisy is the only person who wakes him up from this unreality, yet she too puts him into a haze. "Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs" (97). Gatsby has been living in this "unreality of reality" for so long that nothing can bring him to an actual reality. Daisy makes him re-evaluate his belongings and see that they are not actually real or important, but he is "dazed" when she is around. Therefore he is in so deep, that nothing can bring him out of the "universe of ineffable gaudiness"

Finally "a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing" is very important. A fairy's wing is very thin and not strong, so why is the rock of the world founded on a fairy's wing? This shows the fragility of society and its members. The members live in constant fear of their worlds falling apart, because in reality nothing is real. As Nick says, "I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards  and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so" (110). They are all fooling themselves from the truth of what their lives are really like. Gatsby denies who he really is and West Egg denies that is a part of a whole. Because of this, "the rock of the world" is very fragile because nobody is in actual agreement and therefore it is on a fairy's wing.

The Great Gatsby Chapter 2

"The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke and from time to time groaning  faintly. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight  Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name" (Fitzgerald 41).

This passage is a perfect description of society in this novel. This "little dog" can be represented as any person within society because he is "looking with blind eyes through the smoke." This society is "an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight" (27). They don't want the members of society to see what life is really like. Nothing is completely set in society. "People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other." They do not know what is actually going on. "Everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it" (33). Society does not let the members live a true life because they become so wrapped up in believing what society wants them to believe. They begin to lose who their true selves really are. "He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive" (30). The members become "little dogs" who sit on the outside of their own lives and watch with confusion; society is the reason for this.

This passage sets the scene for the rest of the novel. Whether it is about the life of Gatsby or the life of Nick, the reader is not sure, but either way, one of them will live a "hazy" life under the constraints of society. This passage also reminds me of Prufrock's poem when he says, "the women come and go talking of Michelangelo" (Prufrock). Their discussion is artificial, they come and go because they do not actually have importance. In this story, "people disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away" (41). like the women in the poem, these people also have no significance. They are not noticed because they are not individuals, they blend into a crowd known as society.

I think that if I read the novel with this passage in mind it will help me understand the novel better. That i why I picked it.

Henry David Thoreau "Where I Lived and What I Lived for"

Henry David Thoreau is an author who is "a public servant, offering the English-speaking public the fruits of his experience" (711). He was an abolutonist who cared very much for nature. In one of his books The Maine Woods there is "very little satire" and the most "heightening passage" is "Thoreau's realization that the Maine woods were 'primeval, untamed, and forever untameable Nature'" (710).  Why is this the most heightened passage and what does it truly reveal about nature, or humans? How does this relate to Thoreau's abolitionist ideas and what he saw the world as in general?

Support, refute, or modify this quote: "No good reader will ever be entirely pleased with him- or herself or with the current state of culture and civilization while reading any of Thoreau's best works" (713).

Houskeeping Discussion

During today’s discussion, there were many interesting ideas brought up. One that struck me the most was Rebecca’s idea that Ruth and Sylvie reached their final destination and in doing that they reached death because it is impossible to find a final destination. When she said that I agreed with her, but then Ms. Parrish asked, “What was there final destination?” and Rebecca said the other side of the bridge, away from Fingerbone. I had a different idea of what their final destination could be. Going along with the idea that Ruth is in fact dead through the novel, I went back and looked through for textual evidence and I found this quote; “We would make a circle, and never reach a shore at all, if there were a vortex, I thought, and we would be drawn down into the darker world, where other sounds would pour into our ears until we seemed to find songs in them. And the sight of water would invade our bowels and unstring our bones, and we would know the seasons and customs of the place as if there were no others” (Robinson 150). To me this seems as if their final destination is the lake. Any body of water, including a lake is always moving somehow, just like a transient, so it makes sense that Ruth says she becomes a traveler, because she is always moving with the water. The lake would be a suitable place for her to die because her mom and her grandfather both died in it. This would all make sense if she was actually dead. She had always been surrounded by water living on Fingerbone, so for her to finally be completely encompassed by water seems  right.

"The Raven" By Edgar Allen Poe

In "The Raven" Edgar Allen Poe writes about melancholy. Melancholy is a feeling that experiences two very different emotions at the same time. This emotion is very confusing for the protaginist. He is not sure whether the raven is good or bad; the raven is both "stately" and "ghastly grim and ancient" (Poe 1-2). Poe's use of rhetoric in this poem, causes the reader to understand conflicting emotions; "Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow" (Poe 1). He wishes for two different things, just like the raven tells him two different things. It is because these confusing emotions are acceptable and Poe is trying to tell his readers that. He is using Pathos to write this peom; he uses his own emotions through the character and the raven and his own emotions are confused. But it is okay to be confused and that is why the raven keeps telling him "nevermore" (3). There aren't always going to be clear meanings to understand. Poe's poem describes the confusion of life and interpretation and the idea of conflicing emotions.