Monthly Archives: March 2022

Review of Soldiers of Salamis

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When our original beliefs are defeated by reality, is it that we have changed, or is the society that is the way it is, it is only when we grow up that we realize the most primitive self. “Soldiers of Salamis” is a classic war novel. I like this book very much. Although I am against war, we can still learn a lot from war. It tells stories about Sanchez Mazasn in the Spanish Civil War and how he survived after being captured by the enemy (Republican), people believe he is a hero. After the war, he became a minister in the first Franco government. However, he soon felt despair about his government and politics, so he left and became a writer. How is a hero made? This is one of the questions that has been on my mind since I read this book. Is Sanchez Mazasn truly a hero? He supported violence when it came with glory. But he never really fought for his glory. He was talking at the top of his voice to let people know the necessity of regime change, but he didn’t do anything when he got great political power. Who is the real hero? The author uses long paragraphs to track who set Mazasn free and tries to ask the reader who is the true hero. Answers vary from person to person. I personally think neither of them is a true hero. I hate what Mazasn did. He is a coward. He has great ambition but small resolve, with great power comes great responsibility. He could have done a bunch of great things to achieve his ambition, but he escaped. His behavior reminds me of the words, “What he talks about is ism, what he thinks about is business.” The soldier who let Mazasn free is not a hero either; he is a traitor. He lied to his comrades and failed his mission intentionally. Even with a dash of wartime adventure, a book about a minor fascist would be uninteresting on its own, but the tale of its creation adds depth, emphasizing the complexity and ambiguities of history made me think a lot about heroes. What is a hero? I have no clear answer, but what I believe is that a hero is a sign, a lighthouse, or a conviction that inspires and guides generation after generation of people. Let us believe that, despite the seemingly endless darkness, we can and do seek the light. My question is, what is the definition of a hero?

Review of Amulet

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When I was sitting there reading Amulet, it felt like someone was sitting in front of me, quietly reading her story, a story like a poem, but the content of this book is about violence. This is like a combination of violence and cause, showing the sad atmosphere to the reader bit by bit. From page 6, she talked about a vase. When she looked into the darkness inside the vase. I couldn’t help but think of what Nietzsche once said, “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” It’s like some people are always attracted to the unknown but forget about the potential harm it can bring.

It seems that before September 18, 1968, she still claimed to be the mother of poets, wandering among various scholars, and her life seemed to be full of chaotic stories about poets. A life like this doesn’t seem real, and when poetry and violence meet, everything seems to be waking up. What’s interesting about this book is that Don Quixote is also mentioned. When she saw herself in the mirror, she felt like a female Don Quixote. I think she seems to be saying that what she did in this city, what she went through, was like Don Quixote, against oppression, out of reality, and finally having to return to reality.

The fate of young poets seems to be tragic in this movement against students in Mexican towns, and their lives have lost enthusiasm and are full of confusion and panic. So, some turned into corpses that stink and turn black and lay in the river, and some went to prison and gradually became a member of the secular world. The literature and poetry mentioned throughout this book are like amulets. She described her perception, her hearing, as if she heard their singing, barely rustling, where there were young people, there were children, side by side in the abyss. They cry out in this abyss, hoping someone will come to save them. Even in such an environment, they want to use literature to redeem the world, and literature is like that dust, which is omnipresent and inexhaustible. Like a thin barrier protecting them from the precarious ones. The brutal crackdown that took place in 1968, the history written in blood by the students, set the novel’s brutal, dark tone, as it stated at the outset.

Why did the author name the virtual protagonist he constructed as the “mother of poets”, and what does this show?

Review of Old Gringo from Carlos Fuentes

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I think the historical background of this novel is a bit difficult to understand for readers who do not know the history of the United States and Mexico, so I also read the events of that period while reading the book. Carlos Fuentes’ depiction of the desert is almost treasured, as if I, too, am referring to the place where no grass grows, watching vultures circle, flying sand, and a dying old man travelling alone to his death.

Old Gringo doesn’t even have a name. In the eyes of those commenters, “old gringos” are a group of people who cross the border with indistinguishable faces. “I’m afraid that each of us carries the real frontier inside.” In the first part of the article, I thought that the core vocabulary was still the frontier. In order not to cause too much trouble, the old man went to Mexico with a simple heart and a Don Quixote novel. And he himself, like Don Quixote, is a contradiction, just like his pursuit of death is a very absurd behavior, so that he has a very good performance after joining the army because he is not afraid of death.

From the old man’s conversation with General Tomas Arroyo, we know that the old man fought in the Civil War fifty years ago. And when this old man shows up in Mexico, it’s rotten, just like in Chapter 5. He complains that Mexico makes him sick and his diet is full of rotting worms, just like the people of Mexico are going through.

Ironically, the protagonist’s identity is not revealed until the end of the novel, which is by the American writer Bierce. His end is sad, but it can still be told by Harriet Winslow’s recollection of his experience. I like the author’s description of the experiences of different characters; as if General Arroyo is like a newspaper and the old man is history, they exist in different ways. It’s like the diverse methods of thinking about sensitivity and love in different places and nations, notably the United States and Mexico, when combined with the position of female instructor Harriet Winslow. For this general in Mexico, his relationship with the old man is a bit like competition. He may have some inferiority complex towards this old gringo from a country that creates nightmares for Mexicans, and the old man regards him as a son.

This novel’s tale is enthralling, full of voices and time. Flashbacks are included in the story’s structure as well.

So my question is, in the end, the old man died, and how do we, as viewers, see his death, and what did his death bring?

Reply on “W or the memory of childhood”

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The novel’s structure is novel, as if Island W tells one storey and my childhood memories another, seemingly unconnected but merging in places. What I think is the interest of this book is the certain contents of its description. Everything described is like a real scene, but it’s actually just existed in the author’s memory. It is uncertain whether the things that appear in memory can be regarded as real or not. He also incorporates many elements, similar to war and death. These two stories are dispersed throughout one book, and the other is from the odd same appointment. Finding a link between them was often difficult for me. The title of “champion” is like an acknowledgment of the winner in W’s village division of Olympic sports, and even the names of athletes. Whether at athletic events or battles, the victor receives preferential attention.

In W, or the Memory of Childhood, there are so many characters in the chapters, such as Gaspard Winckler, George, Cyrla Schulevitz, Caecilia Henri, Esther, Berthe, and so on. This part of my memory seems to be more tragic. George’s father was a soldier who died in World War II, while his mother was slaughtered in Auschwitz in a tragic manner during the war. Just like the beginning of chapter two said, “I have no childhood memories.” This seems to contradict the title of the novel. But then read the following content. You can see that his knowledge of his parents mainly comes from objective things like three pictures of his mother and his aunt’s description of his father. Perhaps like many children in the war, he also had a yearning for a happy family relationship, as if page 30 described his imaginary mother’s life.

However, when he talked to the man who wanted to be a lawyer, the picture jumped to the island that he had conceived of.

The sports activities that happened in W and its dietary system are part of the social system of W village. Talk about what benefits the winner can get. On this island mountain, people, or athletes, fight for fame and privilege in this arena. And this Olympic spirit is particularly cruel, because the result of winning or losing affects the treatment they are about to receive, so it has become a world of the jungle. This seems to be more than just a few villages on an island; it looks more like what the world really looks like.

Whether it is the deaf boy named Gaspard Winckler or the protagonist who later inherited his name, it appears that they are all children who are lost and fighting alone in the sea.

I don’t know if you have any questions about the name of this novel. Why is it not called “W and the Memory of Childhood” but with “OR” as the connection?