mathematical waves

Perhaps that's my problem with this one: I'm not so good with math. I enjoy listening to music, getting lost in a melody, but I don't feel the rhythm of this book. I sit down to read and wake up later with the book on my lap or my chest, only a few pages deeper. I've read sparknotes and gotten similar results.

Oh ok I get it. I'm reading with Rhoda's eyes: I'm only ok, only rooted, when I'm calm and alone. In the world, around people, I tend to float within their spheres and lose myself; which makes learning difficult. And since this is such a difficult author to read, I'm not sure how to absorb it. Rhoda is disconnected from herself, a very real and dangerous disorder today, but I'm not sure how it was diagnosed or treated in Woolf's day (maybe she needs more dairy in her diet? Or maybe I do, in a room alone and nothing but milk until this makes sense). Occasionally while reading I pick up a phrase that really speaks to me and I think this book will be different, this time I'll get it, but those phrases are few and far between and the rest of it is outside my capabilities to understand, to internalize and learn it. It doesn't help that everything we've covered this semester has been a superficial reading of complex materials as we fly through as many works as we can fit in to the class. I need more time on each piece to acquire it, to incorporate the traditions into my individual talent.

The Waves--in class

• They are children at the beginning
• the interludes are italicized
• and describe a scene on the beach
• there is a metaphorical connection between the interlude and the episode (of their soliloquies)
• --time of day and how old they are or what's going on in their lives
• --first interlude, morning; first episode, childhood
• --afternoon, leaving for school

What breaks this book from conventions of novels?

• there are 6 narrators
• all 6 are main characters, growing and changing
• no minor characters
• both more characters (more major) and fewer overall (most novels have more characters, major and minor)
• Characters reveal themselves from the outside and the inside simultaneously
• no real 'setting'--where is it taking place?
  
• written to a rhythm, written as an arc not just a linear plot
• rhythm of life
• no winners or losers
  
• no good v bad
• what do they look like?
• narrators switch with rhythm, too, not just back and forth
• play-poem: listen! there are different voices in the novel
• reading this is like listening to a piece of music (like the Ring Cycle, the German version of the poetic eddas)
  
• 
  

bildungsroman--coming of age, formation or educational novel



Bernard is the storyteller, the phrase-maker, the normal one
observant of people-notices Susan is upset, rushes to help; mediator: brings people together; imaginative: makes up the games; language becomes his method of keeping track of reality; Elvedon-imaginary place where they play (or Virginia's room of her own), the place where the characters look into the world of the author;

Susan is earthy, passionate, love/hate extremes
Associated with Vanessa, Virginia's sister and an artist
episode 1--observant of nature and natural things, loves nature and natural things; traumatized by the kiss between Jinny and Louis; jealous, love/hate strong emotions, fierceness of maternity; focus on home; looks at eyes, differentiates others by how their eyes look and how they look through their eyes;

Louis is never good enough, associated with Eliot (hence the yellow, like the yellow fog) and Prufrock! cares deeply about tradition and history, doesn't feel like he's part of any of it, loves Egypt and elephants
all alone, loneliness; different from others because his father is Australian (lower-class); great-beast stamps are his motif, great chained beast; lives a repressed life and the 'great chained beast' is his inner 'lion'; women are attracted to him, in spite of his loneliness, and it doesn't alleviate his loneliness;

Neville is emotional and 'tight', always questioning himself, associated with knives, in love with Percival?,
thinks about things that are not concrete; too delicate; doesn't talk about himself as much as the others; positive recluse, doesn't feel lonely; sickly and weaker than the others; the thing about the apple tree, death among the apple trees forever (primal fall); frozen traumatized; occupied with thoughts of things outside his control, worried about the 'big stuff': life, the universe, everything; ideas of order; though he ends up being gay, he's more of a traditionalist than the others

Rhoda is reclusive, stuck inside her own head, separate from everyone, unhappy, has no relationship to her body and has no face, dissociated/disconnected, female Septimus, intense/prophetic dreams, never figures out how to function in the world; outcast, attracted to the color white; moon-like and vacant; emptiness; sees herself as nobody, has a fragile identity; doesn't have a face; outside the loop; metaphysical-outside time and space, disconnected; totally lost and unable to relate to reality; the others experience physical alienation but Rhoda's is total, complete; always lagging behind; the only one of the group who doesn't have a father (which makes her different), and not a part of the patriarchy; constantly flying/falling/floating, not rooted at all (like Susan is rooted and oriented and attached);

Jinny is the pretty girl, the party element
all body, totally into her physical self; body and physical sensation are the center of her identity as words/bernard, beast/louis, home/susan;
comfortable in her own skin, less alienated than the others; free-spirit; self-confident; Carpe Diem; the cost of being a social butterfly: in the dark, when she's alone, she has no idea who she is; emptiness at the core of her and erodes her as she ages;

summaries

Prufrock and Chaucer

The author of this article compares Prufrock's attire with the clothing described in Chaucer, particularly the Monk's physical description in the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales. The similarities may seem coincidental because the Edwardian style clothing was hardly uncommon but there is a certain rhyme-scheme in both that parallels. This article also offers research from the OED on the history of the word 'pin' and how it relates to Prufrock's self-worth.





Fool from Hamlet and Prufrock

The only available fool in Hamlet is already deceased, and Prufrock lives till human voices wake him and he drowns, but he exists in a sort of living death, paralyzed by his fears of rejection and he is never fully alive. The entire passage that begins "No! Am not Prince Hamlet..." contains ambiguous references to many characters in the play. Yorick mocked the meaninglessness of his world as Prufrock moans and frets over the futility of his own life, measured out with coffee spoons. Yorick appears as only as a skull; Prufrock sees his own head upon a platter.



Hamlet and Prufrock

Beginning epigraph if Prufrock, Guido's words, sets the stage for the macabre scenes of one man's sorrowful lament that he cannot reach out to his fellow humans, similar to the brief encounter between Hamlet and the ghost of his father. The epigraph allows the reader a glimpse into the Other Side, similar to the ghost of the old King Hamlet in the beginning of the play. Hamlet and Prufrock are both perplexed by an overwhelming question with similar results though the questions differ; both feel as though their world is stale and lost meaning, exist within the yellow fog. Prufrock and Hamlet also share a difficulty relating to women and spent much of their time preparing their faces to meet others, and share an intrinsic hesitancy, a wobbling back and forth on the proverbial fence before making a move.
They differ in that Hamlet does take action eventually; Prufrock dies a 1000 times before his death because he never makes his move.
Prufrock may also be compared to Ophelia as both characters drown.