RMST 202

Aragon’s “Paris Peasant” was a strange experience to read. The text describes venturing through the Passage de L’Opéra, which includes cafes, theatres, and small shops. The journey is rather imaginative due to its ambiguity. A consistent theme in this book is its surrealism. There are illogical scenes combined that make the text so unordinary. For example, the gardens become a place of dreams and for mad invention. Similarly, during the night, the parks become places lurking danger yet also a sensual delight. Surrealism uses techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, and I think this is what Aragon was trying to do with his writing.

Another feature of this text I noticed was that it does not follow a timeline. This is most likely why I felt like the text was dragging on, with no real goal. As Jon explained in the lecture, most stories have a sequence of events, even if there are flashbacks in the text, it makes sense because it follows the storyline and contributes to the plot. I prefer this because in these types of books actions have consequences, everything that happens in the story is meaningful because it impacts the main story, builds character development, or contributes to the story in some other way. In this sense, we read with reason and do not have to invest ourselves in lines that have no impact on the story. In this book, however, we are reading about the mundane, with a surreal twist. We are subject to reading about the ordinary, there is no particular climax or purpose, but we are viewing the mundane through a new lens. Perhaps this is Aragon’s way of getting his readers to appreciate the everyday and see it in a new light, pushing us to think outside of the box and create fiction out of reality, as this text does.

Surrealism is demonstrated by Aragon in his portrayal of the gardens and parks as previously mentioned. During the time that Aragon wrote this book, I’m sure that he received a variety of responses. As he implies on page 85, lawyers would not think so highly of his untraditional novel. My question is, why are we so opposed to new concepts and techniques? Though I believe this is more true in the past and we are more open to new ideas today, why is our initial reaction to reject it? What has made us more open to new writing styles today?