Life is Everywhere by Kundera

"At first this thought only flickered in his head, but now that he had been made aware of his inner originality, he didn't allow the thought to escape (as he had allowed so
many other thoughts to escape previously) but immediately seized it, observed it, examined it from all sides." 

"Aren't we living in a world where headless men only desire decapitated women? Isn't a realistic vision of the world the emptiest of illusions ?"

"His distaste for himself remained down below; down below he had felt his palms become sweaty with fear and his breath speed up; but here, up high in the poem, he was above his paltryness; the keyhole episode and his cowardice were merely a trampoline above which he was now soaring; he was no longer subordinate to his experience, his experience was subordinate to what he had written." 

"For him sleep is not the opposite of life; for him, sleep is life, and life is a dream. He goes from dream to dream as if he were going from one life to another."

"[...] and for the moment the hands existed alone, by themselves; they were miraculous hands in an empty space; hands between two adventures, between two lives; hands unspoiled by a body or a head." 

"He would look at himself in the mirror for a long time, desperately struggling in the immense space between ape and Rilke." 

"Mama immediately recognized that voice; she saw her son's face with her lost lover's voice coming out of it; she saw a face that didn't belong to her; she heard a voice that didn't belong to her; her son stood before her like the image of a double repudiation; that seemed intolerable to her."  

When the mother realizes that the boy is not her own anymore.  

"But Arthur Rimbaud ran away again and again; he ran with a collar fastened to his neck, writing his poems as he ran."

"[…] when he is old a man is no longer obliged to care about his group's opinions, about the public, and about the future. He is alone with approaching death, and death has neither eyes nor ears, he has no need to please death; he can do and say what he pleases."

"In an immature young man, the yearning long persists for the safety and unity of the universe that he alone completely filled inside his mother, and he is anxious about (or angered by) the relativized adult world in which he is now engulfed like a droplet in an ocean of otherness." 

To go back into the womb.  

"How delightful it would be to forget what it is that dries up the sap of our brief lives so as to enslave them to its useless work, how beautiful it would be to forget History!"

"History does not make its way only on the dramatic peaks of our lives but also soaks into everyday life like dirty water; it enters our story in the guise of underwear." 

I like part 6 a lot- how beautiful it is. It is an interlude- a scene- which existed only for a moment. A scene which actually is of no importance- and that is what makes it beautiful. In a way- the redhead and the 40 year old man, exist apart from the story with the poet (the egoist). They have a different life apart from the novel itself. "In this novel, too, this sixth part has been only a quiet interlude in which a stranger suddenly lights the lamp of kindness. Let us keep looking at it a few moments more, that gentle lamp, that kindly light, before the novel's cottage vanishes from our sight."

All the poets are one and they exist at the same time in essence. 

"[...] water is the exterminating element of those who have been led astray in their own selves, in their love, in their feelings, in their madness, in their mirrors and their whirlwinds;" 

Kundera resurrects the scene of Lermontov's death through the poet, I love how he merges what happened in real life with his story. One moment he is talking about the Jaromil, and the next he transfers the names to Lermontov and Martynov. (taken from online)

"He joined the town’s social life, meeting one of his old acquaintances, fellow army officer Nikolay Martynov. Although the two men were seemingly on good terms, Martynov soon became a target of Lermontov’s sharp wit and caustic jokes.
One proved to be a joke too many and Martynov challenged Lermontov to a duel. It left Martynov unharmed – but was fatal for Lermontov. He was killed on the spot on the evening of July 27, 1941, at the foot of Mashuk Mountain. He was just 26." 

Kundera even comments on his comparison, where Jaromil is kicked instead of shot: "O my Bohemia, how easily you transform the glory of a pistol shot into the buffoonery of a kick in the pants!" How witty! And yet he goes even further and gives us what we want, a scene just as it happened. But in the end it doesn't matter: "Tell us, Lermontov! Merely the stage props? A pistol or a kick in the pants? Merely the scenery History imposes on a human adventure?" It's scenery, it's not real. The detail is interesting as well, Jaromil gets shot but the Lermontov in him falls to the ground.


"And yet, should we laugh at Jaromil because he is merely a parody of Lermontov? Should we laugh at the painter because he imitated Andre Breton with his leather coat and his German shepherd? Was Andre Breton not himself an imitation of something noble he wished to resemble? Is not parody the eternal destiny of man?"


But what does he mean to say about Xavier? Was it a different part of him making love to the filmmaker? And who was he out on the balcony, the Lermontov part of him?

I am entranced by the way he switches scenes, from Lermontov to Jaromil to Xavier... 

And therefore, Jaromil ends with this last confession: ""Actually, I never really liked any woman," he says. "Only you, Mama. You're the most beautiful of all." And that is why Jaromil died a death of water instead of fire: because the water was actually his mother- comforting him from all the suffering he has had- mainly from his own egoism. 

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This was a difficult book for me to read because I can very much relate to this young "poet" for he is a person which I know in my own life. We all have our Jaromil's, even though he is not a poet (in reality). 
Yes, the everlasting "maternal power". I think that his egoism was her own fault, I blame her for all of his faults because she indulged him too much. She overstepped her motherly role, especially when she started confiding in him about her personal problems. She needed him because she was forced into a love-less marriage, and when she understood that- she gave her all to her son, the only thing she had left. That is why she was so overprotective of him when he found other "women" in his life, because she was afraid of losing him. 
Kunder is right to call Jaromil "foolish" because in fact, he didn't understand what impact he had on people, he was always focused on himself and what he believes, and his poetry. In fact, he got most of his inspiration when he made someone live solely for himself, such as the redhead when she was crying (or when he hit her) because she was crying for him. I think in a way, he needed someone to live for him, just like his mother needed Jaromil to live for her. And maybe that is why he loved his poetry so much, because he had power over words, and he desperately needed power. 
Was there anything GOOD about him? I don't really know... he was true to his beliefs, and I admire that. But in the end, he was only faithful to his mother, even though he tried to break out and show his independence, but in the end, it was inevitable that he would come back to her. I think he really was good to his mother, because she was the only one which could dominate him (emotionally) and I think he needed that.


Sorry if I am being too cruel- maybe because at this point in my life, I am biased concerning this particular situation. 

Kundera writes beautifully, and I have always been searching for a "contemporary" writer to resurrect these concepts which have long been dead, and to play with essences that are immortal, such as in this case, Lermontov, the foolish poet. 

One last question: what is the significance of Xavier? Was Xavier better than Jaromil? Was he perhaps the man Jaromil  wished to be but couldn't because he was tied down to his mother? Even Kundera says: 

“Freedom does not begin where parents are rejected or buried, but where they do not exist:

Where man is brought into the world without knowing by whom.

Where man is brought into the world by an egg thrown into a forest.

Where man is spat out on the ground by the sky and puts his feet on the world without feeling gratitude.)”  

Xavier had the power to be whatever or whomever he wished, because he had no history. And history holds us back. Again, I want to repeat my favorite quote of this work: 

"How delightful it would be to forget what it is that dries up the sap of our brief lives so as to enslave them to its useless work, how beautiful it would be to forget History!"

Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

"Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number
of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman)."

"The weighty resolution is at one with the voice of Fate ( "Es muss sein!"); necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value."

"Apart from her consummated love for Tomas, there were, in the realm of possibility, an infinite number of "uncomisummated loves for other men."

It was just mere chance that she fell in love with him- he was one of the many possibilites.Once he realized that, once he realized the coincidences that made up their so called "love", he lost all compassion. "ES KOENNTE AUCH ANDERS SEIN".

Basically the first part of the book deals with the appreciation of moments that do NOT continue. Tomas faced the predicament of either preserving the memories and leaving them in the past or continuing this affair. In the end, he regrets not keeping it in the past because all of his memories were affected by the end. In my opinion- I don't know whether the whole "happenings/coincidence" thing works. Because isn't ANY meeting a culmination of factors? So then- what is REAL? If we would always have an alternative?

"But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away."

Such a REAL example!

So could one say that Tereza was an idealist? She seems to analyze every "chance" as a explanation of Fate. And here we have it: "She knew then (the birds of fortuity had begun alighting on her shoulders) that this stranger was her fate."

"He called to her in a kind voice, and Tereza felt her soul rushing up to the surface through her blood vessels and pores to show itself to him."

"They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."

Here we have the answer to coincidences:
"It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of Anna, Vronsky, the railway station, and death or the meeting of Beethoven, Tomas, Tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty."

Coincidences are what makes our life beautiful!

"What was screaming in fact was the naive idealism of her love trying to banish all contradictions, banish the duality of body and soul, banish perhaps even time."

"Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to suffer vertigo. [...] It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

We know its inevitable doom- and yet we still want to fall down into it. Why is that?

"She was ready to dismiss the crew of her soul from the deck of her body;" 

So the paradox here was that both her mother and Tomas see her as yet another body, while she has the on-going wish to be an individual- that her soul was different. And what her soul believed- this idealism, this fate- was something she was pushing to make come true. The body in itself is physical (material), and reality was that Tomas did not think of her the way she wanted him to. She tried to force fate to bend a certain way...

"She was in the grip of an insuperable longing to fall. She lived in a constant state of vertigo."

"Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and
where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood."

"But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave."

"While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs..."

"The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us." 

"The obsession of the epic womanizer strikes people as lacking in redemption (redemption by disappointment)."

"Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory."

The same idea Dostoevsky ends with in his "Notes from the Underground": 
"This is the image from which he was born. As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about."

"If excitement is a mechanism our Creator uses for His own amusement, love is something that belongs to us alone and enables us to flee the Creator. Love is our freedom. Love lies beyond 
Es muss sein!'"

It's so sweet- even if he met his perfect soul mate- he would still leave it all for Tereza, because Tereza has an emotional effect on him- he loves her. 

Very curious point about Stalin's son- he concludes that dying for one's country, (no matter which) is less honorable than dying for a metaphysical reason (the contrast between his position and why he died- because of shit. "when there was no longer any difference between sublime
and squalid, angel and fly, God and shit."

"Without shit (in both the literal and figurative senses of the word), there would be no sexual love as we know it, accompanied by pounding heart and blinded senses." 

This is absolutely genius- simple and even ridiculous- but genius. 

Kitsch- the denial of shit in the human existence Basically the "unacceptable". "kitsch is
a folding screen set up to curtain off death."

I love the comparison between the American senator and the Communist party: their smiles were the same. 

"we can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse."

"political movements rest not so much on rational attitudes as on the fantasies, images, words, and archetypes that come together to make up this or that political kitsch."

Great example of anti-communistic KITSCH- with the actress and the singer. It was all for publicity.

"Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."

"What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse. Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars."

That's good :) 

"The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man."

Because he was not yet "man". 

"Her weakness was aggressive and kept forcing him to capitulate until eventually he lost his strength
 and was transformed into the rabbit in her arms."

---

One of the best books I've ever read, definitely in the top 5. The honesty in this book is so refreshing, something one rarely is able to find. I don't want to talk too much about it- in fear of ruining it's meaning.
I only want to comment on the concept of lightness/heaviness. So basically from what I get from the book- the heaviness is positive because it makes us question ourselves and squirm under pressure- only then are we alive. "we believe that the greatness of man stems from the fact that he bears his
fate as Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders." And yet this thing about changing negative to positive is very interesting. I myself don't know whether I fully understand it...

I want to leave off with: ES MUSS SEIN!!

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Yes, I am currently in the phase of reading books I should've read in high school- excuse me- I was reading 19th century literature back then... 

"And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books." 

"We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"

"Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against."

I don't know- the justification for burning the books seems to be a little awkward- and the transition from firemen putting out fires and firemen who start them. It's a bit strange- it doesn't seem to connect smoothly. Just because people are bothered by books is not a strong enough reason to burn them. This type of reasoning doesn't seem to support a woman being burned alive and the men not caring... 

"Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change."

 The charicature of this society is too exaggerated- it doesn't seem realistic at all. 

"The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

"And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of

saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."

I don't like the way Montag manipulated Faber to get him to help him- it seems weak and low.

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away."

"Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."

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It was an ok book- I can't really say I was very impressed by it. I didn't really understand in the beginning what the whole "parlor" business was.

I didn't like the character- he seemed like an idiot, and he didn't really make up for it by the end of the book. He was an idiot most of the time... and the questions he began asking himself weren't that profound. For example: what is the meaning of life? To start off with. 

The ending was anticlimactic- the war was there and then disappeared- the city also disappeared. 

I can't say it was worth reading. The message of knowledge is important, but could have been written in a deeper sense and more expounded upon.The one thing that he expressed which I liked was that people love not to think, and want to constantly be entertained (by tv/media). This is true, and I can see that around the world. Books- provide us a way of becoming critical thinkers. Books can save us from this manipulation/brainwashing. As long as we think, we are alive.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

I think I should start a category of "Exceptions" as in- they are not exactly "classics" but are still masterpieces. Because there are some styles that are so original, and connect so much to today's world (and actually my way of thinking) that are worth quoting. Such as this book- I have read it for the second time now. The first time was, I think, at my community college for a Literature class. That man was so eccentric! He basically said, "well you all know that you're taking this class because you want to fall in love". Which was of course in ESSENCE true. I used to doodle (back in my doodling days) his funny remarks on my notes. He was the only honest professor I've ever had- he even admitted that he couldn't believe he had gotten a Ph.D. seeming too easy- as if he didn't deserve it. I remember he was irish- gay and practiced yoga. One of those people it would be a privelege to have a drink with...

Anyway, I love the artistic style of a book- rarely have I seen this mesmerizing play with words- in the physical sense. Too bad I read it on a pdf- :( because I remember the physical book made quite an impression on one emotionally.



"[...] my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it." 


"and instead of singing in the shower I would write out the lyrics of my favorite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs"

"we laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all."


"That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into." 

"'Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.'"

" Grandma believes in God, but she doesn't believe in taxis, so I bled on my shirt on the bus." :) 

" But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say."

Everyone in Oskar's life has lost someone... 

 "Keep thinking. Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me."

"'The boy covered his can with a lid, removed it from the string, and put her love for him on a shelf in his closet. Of course, he never could open the can, because then he would lose its contents. It was enough just to know it was there."

I love how an idea can be put inside something material... 

"When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible. Alas. Your songs. My parents' lives made sense. My grandparents'. Even Anna's life."

Think of the future generations- what you do know affects them to- and what you do now will add to THEIR life... it's all worth it.

" Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment."

Maybe the passage about the binoculars is a key to the title- I've been trying to figure it out the entire time. When he says, " I could see things that were far away incredibly close" and then he proceeds to see a person which he likens to his dad writing something. The fact is that this entire time he was been missing his dad, and the fact that he tries to see him (through the clues) is a way of him trying to cope with his death. His dad is very close to his heart, and yet he is dead. That is something he has to realize. 

"I never went to find him on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, because I was happier believing he was there than finding out for sure."

"I started thinking about the pixels in the image of the falling body, and how the closer you looked, the less you could see."

"And how can you say I love you to someone you love?" 

Maybe he means to say- will it ever express exactly what you feel for that person even if you use the words? 

"I was surprised again, although again I shouldn't have been. I was surprised that Dad wasn't there. In my brain I knew he wouldn't be, obviously, but I guess my heart believed something else. Or maybe I was surprised by how incredibly empty it was. I felt like I was looking into the dictionary definition of emptiness." 

Even when you KNOW something is TRUE LOGICALLY and then it still manages to surprise you- because the entire time you were hoping for the opposite thing...

--- 

Great book to reread... It taught me so much- rereading it at this specific time of my life. My favorite thing about Oskar is that he is so honest about all of it- even though he doesn't specifically admit to it. He looks at the world with such a curiosity and sincerity... And he is the one who is trying to find the truth, to try to find his dad because he misses him. It is such a beautiful optimism, such a hope for life! Yes- he is having a hard time with it all- the shrink telling him that maybe something GOOD can come out of his dad's death, his mom having Rob in her life, how everyone is moving on- and he cannot. He cannot- because I think he didn't say his final goodbye... not the way it was supposed to be anyway. And so he instinctively is trying to fix the problem, to make his dad come alive again. And for this amount of time- his dad is. And that is why it was so important for Oskar to hear from Abby's ex-husband what he was LIKE, because he just wanted to hear someone ELSE praise him, to tell him the things he already knew. Sometimes people can be reincarnated through our impressions about them- a part of them is still alive because they continue to live in our own world. These impressions give them immortality. 

And the most poetic part of it is that both Oskar and his Grandma (who had also lost her husband) both wish for things to go backwards- all of it to REWIND to a point where they felt safe, and to live within that moment forever. And in a way though, they DO, because they do not forget about it. I think it lives within them and IS them because they loved these people with all of their heart, these people were their WORLD and gave them meaning in life. Grandma gave up everything and joined her husband into being stuck in time... and in a way they BOTH lived for the Anna, whom they both loved more than they loved each other... and that is to the point where she wanted to return, back to where they were in bed- back to the childhood- back to a regret-because the same thing goes for Oskar- instead of I LOVE YOU at the end of the story, he said: 
"Dad?'

'Yeah, buddy?'

'Nothing."

I don't know if that is a huge part of the story- but I still think it's important. Maybe they both don't regret it, just that they CANNOT say these things. Which I mean I agree, for me it is the same as well.  But you know, if you could go back, knowing all the things you know now, I think you should live, like the grandfather says, "why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future". It's not that we should party and go crazy (referencing the whole YOLO culture of today). But understand that everything can change in a moment, "Everything in the history of the worldcan be proven wrong in one moment." We are temporary! And we must live that way! I think one of the messages is that we should tell the person what we feel at that time, for it can be the most important thing we could have done in our life. 

Speaking of feelings, it is very interesting that so many characters are incapable of telling each other their feelings. Looking at the grandma/grandpa relationship. One cannot say that it is ABNORMAL in any way, it's just that so many things would have been different, YEARS could have been saved, if they would have communicated correctly, instead of hiding away from each other, and maybe from themselves. It is a journey, it is a process, I sure know, to tell one what you really think. They both wrote pages and pages (some blank), but could not take them from the "inside to the outside" because they saw this BARRIER (as with the bookshelves filled with books). So grandpa stopped talking, and grandma never really addressed the problems. As opposed to Oskar, which we should admire here, is that he also has problems being truthful TO HIMSELF, but yet- he still tries to find a solution in his own way- which is going about town calling up every person unde the last name of Black. That is more than grandpa/grandma have every done... Anyway they kind of finally figure things out at the end- ironic that a death brings them back to "life". 

My question is though: what is the Extremely Loud part of the title? Maybe when Mr. Black first heard sound for the first time, and experienced the most humble appreciation for life? How life can be so spontaneous and just breathtaking. The first sound he heard was the wings of birds flying... 
I think this book gives us an apprection for life- while dealing with a death. That life DOES move on, that we DO keep on living, and yet, remember all of those memories, all of those experiences that make us US... I'm not sure whether that makes any sense...but all the same! 

1984 by George Orwell

Yes I thought I should read it- might as well... 

"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened
— that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?
The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He,
Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short
a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own
consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others
accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale —
then the lie passed into history and became truth. ’Who controls the past,’ ran
the Party slogan, ’controls the future: who controls the present controls the
past.’"

It is a very scary thing, when history could be erased just like that- and then we end up questioning ourselves whether it REALLY happened? Even though we have our own human experience speaking out against the lies... how strangely and easily we can be manipulated and made unsure... 

"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date."

"There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian
literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced
rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and
astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental
songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind
of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section —
Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak — engaged in producing the lowest kind of
pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member,
other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at."

"In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words — in reality,
only one word."

The power of language! It can even affect in what language we THINK- and if you can influence that, then you can influence thinking.

"Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

"It was not the man’s brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck." 

"Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?"

"Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."

"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy."

"I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones."

"’When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’"

Sex is the antidote!

"It was as when Winston had gazed into the heart of the paperweight, with the feeling that it would be possible to get inside that glassy world, and that once inside it time could be arrested."

"What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself."

"If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them." [...] But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable."

What it means to be HUMAN. 

"You will never have anything to sustain you, except the idea."

"In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent."

"In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere
near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another."

"But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded."

"The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living."

"But you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body, and passed on the secret doctrine that two plus two make four."

"’How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ’How can I help seeing what is in frontof my eyes? Two and two are four.' 'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three.
Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’"

"We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves."

Basically doublethink is making solipsism true- that everything which you THINK in your mind will become reality. And if you can control that- you control reality. "What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens."

"Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on
an enemy who is helpless."

THE STATE

"’Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?’
’I don’t know. The spirit of Man.’"

"For a moment he had had an overwhelming hallucination of her presence. She had seemed to be not merely with him, but inside him. It was as though she had got into the texture of his skin. In that moment he had loved her far more than he had ever done when they were together and free."

---

Very scary book- just imagine that this could be the future. And up until the end I still held some hope that MAYBE he was STILL human inside- that it was just hiding from himself.
I am sure many books were written about this one, and how they analyzed every single detail about it. But reading this- it just made an impression on me, that this COULD  become real... that WE could be like these people... and is there anything to stop it? The main answer- as I got from it- is being human, and being compassionate, and loving... But even that- as we have seen- can be exterminated extremely easily- it is very flexible... But I think- it is in the soul- and something beyond us that makes us human. Something out of our control... and our soul will never die- it is immortal. Yes, I know, it is a very simple answer, but it is what makes us ALIVE and not just "alterable minds". It gives us us our peculiarity. And when you bring in the spiritual world into this, it just opens it up so much more. For there are spirits around us which are beyond our power. It's strange that God was not very seriously mentioned here- and that Winston did not believe in Him. I am not a crazy christian or anything (trust me, I used to be) but I think maybe if he had hoped in something that does not lie in himself but which will exist even if he won't- such as God... then I think he would have at least kept some essence of humanity. Sorry- if anyone would disagree. I do realize that this may be too naive... but in life- when things are just so out of control and everything dominates you- EVEN your THOUGHTS and all that makes you YOU- where can you run to? Into yourself? Because you will only find more confusion... but if you have something that exists outside of you with whom you can connect with- then you cease to become a human- but exist in spirit...

The concept of erasing history in this story is essential- I think, because it is one of the things that is happening today- realistically. One needs to remember the past, because that is how we can even have the slightest hope of changing the future and affecting the oncomming generations.

Also- war is something we can relate to today. War has become a business- and portraying the extreme (where war is continuous and the image of the "enemy" is irrelevant to WHO the enemy actually is) gives us a good picture of what things are truly like today. Enemies are very flexible, tomorrow these people are terrorists, the day after they are our allies and we support their newly-installed governments... nothing is really true anymore. The enemy is a convenient excuse for carrying out business and making money...

So! What conclusion can we derive from this? LET'S BE HUMAN! Let us think let us live let us feel let us make mistakes let us regret let us love let us hate let us cry... let us CHOOSE whatever we feel like doing and let us do it quickly- for we may not have much time!

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Read it on pdf

NO EXIT AND THREE OTHER PLAYS BY JEAN PAUL SARTRE

No Exit 

"GARCIN: Yes. And that way we—we'll work out our salvation. Looking into ourselves, never raising our heads. Agreed?" 

This seems to be a comment on finding one's answer within himself- much good that would do- in hell! 

Why the absence of glass? Maybe because it could show one one's soul and that is the last thing one should see in hell? Ah yes:

"ESTELLE [opens her eyes and smiles]: I feel so queer. [She pats herself] Don't you ever get taken that way? When I can't see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself

just to make sure, but it doesn't help much." 

and

"GARCIN: I'd give a lot to be able to see myself in a glass."

"INEZ: To forget about the others? How utterly absurd! I feel you there, in every pore. Your silence clamors in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out—but you can't prevent your being there. Can you stop your thoughts? I hear them ticking a way like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and I'm certain you hear mine. It's all very well skulking on your sofa, but you're everywhere, and every sound comes to me soiled, because you've intercepted it on its way."

"Anything, any thing would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and ca-resses one and never hurts quite enough."

"GARCIN:[...] So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. Youre-member all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burningmarl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!"

---------------

Fascinating dynamic- in the end they all needed each other. For one would complete the other in some way, but the third is in the way. They are so close to salvation, and yet would never achieve it. So they are doomed to live with their evil, without ever getting rid of it. 

The Flies

 "What, moreover, could you give them in exchange? Good diges-tions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah, the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content." 

"ZEUS: Oh, that's nothing. Just a parlor trick. I'm a fly-charmer in my leisure hours. Good day to

you. We shall meet again. [Exit ZEUS.]" 

Lol :)

"A MAN [falling on his knees]: I stink! Oh, how I stink! I am a mass of rottenness. See how the flies are teeming round me, like carrion crows. . . . That's right, my harpies, sting and gouge and scavenge me; bore through my flesh to my black heart. I have sinned a thousand times, I am a sink of ordure, and I reek to heaven." 

This is very much like Dostoevsky's Bobok. Where the foul smell represents people's sin.

"Forgive us for living while you are dead."

"ORESTES: I know. Not yet. I'm still too—too light. I must take a burden on my shoulders, aload of guilt so heavy as to drag me down, right down into the abyss of Argos"

The king uses remorse as a way of ruling: 

"AEGISTHEUS: You saw what happened? Had I not played upon their fear, they'd have shaken off their remorse in the twin-kling of an eye."

Zeus plays the part of the devil. 

"ZEUS: You have. The same as mine. The bane of gods and kings. The bitterness of knowing men are free. Yes, AEgistheus they are free. But your subjects do not know it, and you do." 

"ORESTES: Neither slave nor master. I am my freedom. No sooner had you created me than I ceased to be yours." 

"ZEUS: Poor people! Your gift to them will be a sad one; of lone-liness and shame. You will tear from their eyes the veils I had laid on them, and they will see their lives as they are, foul and futile, a barren boon.

ORESTES Why, since it is their lot, should I deny them the de-spair I have in me?

ZEUS: What will they make of it?

ORESTES What they choose. They're free; and human life begins on the far side of despair." 

---------

 Absolutely sublime ending. It's interesting he brings in the flute-player leading all the ratas away just as in the story Pied Piper. I never thought much about it- it turns out he is the scapgoat for everyone's sins, taking all the filth away. It is also somewhat like Jesus, taking upon all humanity's sins on himsef.  And yet he doesn't deny them the despair. It was the fashion of the city to broadcast their sins, and yet not feeling remorse for them. Only one day of the year would they confront their fears, and forget about them the next day until the next year. In this way, Orestes gives them the OPPORTUNITY to LIVE with their remorse. I love the way he justifies it- that something new will come out of it.

In a way the king needed the people's regret in order to rule them, just as the King in the Pied Piper story needed the rats- to keep the people in such a state, a low state, so that they need the king.  And yet they all needed each other- like in the Pied Piper I believe that they loved their filth and did not want a change. Just as in this play, the citizens would not know wha tto do with their freedom- lthey liked to be slaves. 

 

What do the flies symbolize? They are the filth of the people, the regrets, the evil surrounding them. And they prey on rotten filth, carcasses, because the people are dead inside. They are slowly killed by their remorse. 

Orestes leaves them with "Try to reshape your lives." Maybe they will, but I believe he has too much faith in this despair. Because sometimes, despair destroys and does not give birth to anything new. 

Dirty Hands

" What if we die and discover that the dead are alive and are simply playing at being dead? We'll see."

"What a shame he didn't marry you! He needs a resolute woman. He could have stayed in your room ironing your underwear while you went out throwing bombs in the square. Then we should all have been very happy."

I like Jessica- the first character, a wife, which has a great personality.

-- I didn't end up finishing it- the whole Soviet/German thing became boring... sorry...