{"id":60,"date":"2024-04-09T12:34:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T19:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/?p=60"},"modified":"2024-04-09T12:36:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T19:36:27","slug":"rmst202-in-a-nutshell-shitty-men-intrusive-thoughts-and-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/2024\/04\/09\/rmst202-in-a-nutshell-shitty-men-intrusive-thoughts-and-death\/","title":{"rendered":"RMST202 in a nutshell: Shitty men, intrusive thoughts, nameless characters, and death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alas, we have reached the end of this course! This course was strangely nowhere near what I expected but in the best way possible. I think the texts we have read and the discussions we have had, truly make me think about literature in different ways which was one of my main goals for this course. Often times I usually just take the text for what it is, but it was interesting to apply the context of the environment and time period to truly understand some of the intentions of these novels.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think if I had to pick a favourite novel for this course, it would be <\/span>Nada <\/span><\/i>by Carmen Laforet, which is strange because I remember that not many people chose that book. I felt like I experienced every emotion possible while reading that book. Seeing such a significant change in Andrea\u2019s character and her own narrative perceptions of herself truly stuck with me the most. I also think it was so interesting how Laforet\u2019s writing made me love a character on one page, but then absolutely despise them on the next. Usually, I feel like when I have a perception about a certain character, it is really difficult for a book to change my mind about them because I either want to defend them or absolutely trash their entire existence, but for some reason, this book gave me whiplash the entire time. I found myself being able to justify certain characters who I know deep down are still horrible people, and despise characters who I initially liked. Looking back on it now, Andrea\u2019s friendship with Ena kind of resembles Elena\u2019s friendship with Lila in <\/span>My Brilliant Friend <\/span><\/i>in terms of dynamics, jealousy, and reliance (although I will admit I liked Andrea and Ena\u2019s friendship way more).<\/span><\/p>\n

My least favourite book without a doubt has to be <\/span>The Time of the Doves <\/span><\/i>by Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda. Honestly, I feel like I don\u2019t really have a good reason for hating this book other than I simply just didn\u2019t like it. I felt like I was so frustrated the entire time that it just wasn\u2019t enjoyable for me. Every single character made me angry to the point where I didn\u2019t really care much about them or about what happened to them so I never got invested in the novel. I noted how it has similar themes to <\/span>Nada <\/span><\/i>regarding changes in perception and character after one goes off to fight in the war, but every time I think about that damn tapeworm in a jar I need to take a few minutes to meditate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I mentioned this in one of my previous blogs but I literally had to start keeping track of how many Judas metaphors there were in these books and out of the 11 books that I read there were a whopping 6. Which doesn\u2019t seem like a lot but it\u2019s quite interesting to notice. I realized that most of the times they would pop up as metaphors regarding betrayal obviously, even though it could be recognized as one of the more subtle themes across these books. I am not a religious person myself, but I do enjoy the Lady Gaga song therefore to describe my experience of this course, I would use that song.<\/span><\/p>\n

Question: What song would you pick to encapsulate this course and why?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alas, we have reached the end of this course! This course was strangely nowhere near what I expected but in the best way possible. I think the texts we have read and the discussions we have had, truly make me … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,47,15,16,55],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-betrayal","tag-death","tag-love","tag-nada","tag-time-of-the-doves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/modernandpostmodernliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}