Category: Character

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Character

The Final Betrayal in Mad Toy

I spent my week reading this book, sometimes on the bus, sometimes lying on the bed. I genuinely could not read this piece all at once, as the events and the plot twists made me feel bad for Silvio.

I can hear distant voices, brilliant fireworks, but I am here alone, held down in my world of misery, as if by nine stakes (77).

When I was reading the book, this line drew my attention, as I thought it alluded to Les Misérables, since Silvio lives in a very similar situation to the protagonist of that novel. From various pages, I found that Silvio is really knowledgeable. He has read many books and invented things that impressed the board officer and lieutenants, but the jobs he eventually got are unstable and do not reflect his talents. He also loves poems and inventions, which are typically hobbies of well-educated people.

I felt exceptionally upset for him when the captain expelled Silvio from the army after he had just encouraged Silvio to study more to become someone. Like Silvio, I do not understand the reason for his expulsion, because Silvio has not done anything wrong. For that entire chapter, Silvio was looking for a job, but the positions accepted him are extremely low-status and none of those discovered Silvio’s intelligence. At the end of the chapter,  when the captain recognizes Silvio’s talents, I feel so happy for him, but it turns out to be a cliff hanger. The chapter ends quickly, and it is clear that there is no plot twists anymore. The next time I see Silvio, he becomes a paper salesmen.

At the end of Chapter 4, Silvio went to the house of an engineer. Even though Silvio is depicted as having talent and an interest in becoming an engineer, there is never an opportunity for him to do so. So I think this is an interesting design for the person who look down to him to be an engineer.

From the first a few pages of this book and this part, I notice that Silvio feels he is above Rengo for having a better morality. He reported Rengo to the engineer, but this action did not bring him respect from the engineer. The engineer thought he had betrayed his friend, which made Silvio feel that his dignity had been insulted.

Well… Silvio sounds like a complex character to me. How do you guys feel about the “betrayal”? What do you think is the reason of Silvio doing that?

Categories
Character Combray Food

Foods in Combray

Hi! Welcome to my first blog for RMST 202. We read Combray by Proust this week. As the recorded lecture spends most of its time explaining what modernism is, I did not recognize that during my entire time reading it 🙁

When I was reading it, I found myself unconsciously skipping the paragraphs written under the modernist perspective. I really wanted to follow the PLOT, like the part where the great aunt looks down on little Swann, but he turns out to be really successful. Jon said in the recorded lecture that this kind of novel makes us become better readers. I AM feeling that, as I have to force myself to read it several times just to make sure I am not behaving impatiently and skipping pages.

When I was skipping pages, the description of foods attracted my attention. From the description of the insomnia in the first few pages, I recognized Proust’s skills of description, which definitely fit with what my high school English teacher wanted from me: show instead of tell. With the “refined voice,” the language he used for describing foods and desserts grabbed all of my attention. Therefore, for the rest of the post, I want to discuss that.

  1. Madeleine

From page 45 to 48, Proust described in detail his feelings after having some tea and a piece of madeleine. I think I am able to divide that into multiple stages:

a. “A delicious pleasure” that came after the first bite, but the happiness was diminishing as he took more bites.

b. Because of the diminishing pleasure, Proust asked himself a few questions about where the pleasure came from and figured out that the pleasure did not come from the drink and the dessert, but from himself.

c. He then kept asking himself questions about where the pleasure came from, and he noticed that it was from a little piece of madeleine he had in Combray that was provided by his aunt Léonie.

d. He then concluded that even though he had seen these cakes on the shelf of a pastry shop, the reverie was not evoked. But a taste of cake and a sip of tea did, as memory of smell and taste is attached to the soul.

I am feeling connected to this because I have experiences of having something I had in my childhood that immediately made me think back to those old days. There was once when I accidentally added too much salt to my pineapple and realized that it was exactly the same taste of pineapple that my grandfather used to buy for me.

2. Foods in Combray

I also want to discuss foods in Combray. At the end of the first section, Proust talked about the madeleine, which brought him his childhood memory in Combray. In Section 2, there are some paragraphs written about food again, and some of those are tied to the portrait of a character, Françoise. She is a servant of the narrator’s aunt Léonie. With the author’s portrait, she has “her own genius” in the menu, where she was able to make everyone in the family love the foods she made. For example, the narrator’s father loved the chocolate custard, which is stated by the narrator as “a product of Françoise’s personal inspiration and attention.” Also, the narrator once showed his love toward cream cheese, and Françoise was able to bring that to him when he was there.

At the same time as being talented, she also had a bad temper. She yelled “Vile creature” while killing a chicken. The narrator said he wanted them to “dismiss” her “immediately.” He did realize that she was killing the chicken for their meals, but seeing her killing the chicken made him “tremble.” Overall, I believe Françoise is an important character who is worth discussing more. From the angle of seeing this novel as a recollection of memory, the narrator at that time is not the same person as the writer in the present. I divide this instance as follows: the one who trembled and the one who wanted to dismiss Françoise is the little boy in the past, but the one who realized that Françoise killed the chicken for them was the present writer. My question is, from the characters in Combray, do we see any more examples like this?

Thank you for reading my blog this week. Hope you are doing well!

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