Traveller’s
Comments
(group member since Jan 14, 2015)
Traveller’s
comments
from the On Paths Unknown group.
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Dec 13, 2015 12:10PM
Yolande wrote: "My reading of Merricat is that, in her flashback of a family dinner in the summer house, her parents seem to have put her high above on a pedestal and I believe that at least most people who are br..."Sure, but, from a slightly different viewpoint, have you considered the possibility that, like her "we're living on the moon" fantasy, that that might have been wishful thinking Merrikat was doing there? I get what you're saying about the spoilt brat bit, but it does seem as if everybody looks completely past Merrikat most of the time, and she seems to be over-shy, rather than the opposite.
I mean, she is constantly trying to hide, and putting up protections and the like, and the way she was responding to the villagers was everything but masterful.
In fact, I am now starting to actually wonder, as I think back over things, who was really the dominant one, since dominance is not always overt, and Constance certainly seemed more socially at ease with visitors.
I am even starting to wonder who really put the poison in the food...
Perils of reading a text narrated by an unreliable narrator, eh?
Charles really just takes over completely, though, eh? What a cheek!
Yeah, I also saw it as a fantasy - almost a sort of magic incantation, and sure, as possible motive too.An interesting thing to notice, is that in most of the story, when she is in the house, nobody even sees or notices Merrikat - it's always Constance first. People even shout Constance's name when they come looking for the girls. I imagine part of it is that Constance is not only older, but also more approachable.
I was reminded a bit of Stephen King's Carrie with Merrikat. She appears to have been on the lowest rung in the household, and therefore I assumed these were the fantasies of grandiosity that tends to go with that kind of frustration - you know, like when a pauper fantasises he'd suddenly find a huge fortune, or become king, etc.
Dec 13, 2015 10:03AM
I see the homo-socialism, but only on Merrikat's part, (though she didn't seem to mind uncle Julian), but I must admit that I don't see the homo-eroticism. Is all love between family members incest, then? In that case, there's a lot of incest going on in in the world.I can see how it can be open to interpretation to be an incestual homo-erotic love, sure, especially since Merrikat's feelings for Constance seem so strong, and perhaps, yes, from Merrikat's side- but not really from Constance, since Constance had started to choose cousin Charles above Merrikat, for example. So Constance is not as dedicated to Merrikat as Merrikat is her.
Dec 13, 2015 09:07AM
Disha wrote: "Also-- the book is an example of legend making. Constance and Merricat become " legends." And thats folklore for you :).."
Yes, exactly - that was what I was trying to say by the townsfolk mythologised the family/sisters. I was thinking: "...so this is how myths are made, and how folklore develops."
Dec 13, 2015 08:13AM
So nice to see you joining in Karin! Welcome and enjoy.Interesting observation about food.
To me, the Blackwood's wealth was a constant presence - all their goodies are of the finest quality - Dresden porcelain, fine silver, watches made of gold, etc, and fine pearls for the mother; a magnificent staircase, and so forth, and yes, that aspect is indeed partly reminiscent of rich Southern plantation owners and also of wealthy European aristocrats.
Dec 12, 2015 02:14PM
As to The lottery, I didn't find it all that great, but maybe partly because videogames like Fallout new Vegas took that theme and ran with it, so it's become a bit passe for me. One must remember the year it was published though, and I suppose I can see why it caused an outrage at the time...
Hmm, since I urged you guys not to read the intro, perhaps now might be a good time to quote a few phrases from it:“The Lottery” and Castle are intertwined by the motif of small-town New England persecution; the town, in both instances, is pretty well recognizable as North Bennington, Vermont. Jackson lived there most of her adult life, the faculty wife of literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, who taught at nearby Bennington College.
Jackson was in many senses already two people when she arrived in Vermont. The first was a fearful ugly duckling, cowed by the severity of her upbringing by a suburban mother obsessed with propriety.
This half of Jackson was a character she brought brilliantly to life in her stories and novels from the beginning: the shy girl, whose identity slips all too easily from its foundations.
So, it seems the story might not be set in the South, but in New England. ...but aside from that, it does seem pretty similar to Southern Gothic, doesn't it?
Dec 12, 2015 05:58AM
Linda wrote: " But I don't think she's completely seated in reality, either. The thought that they could continue living in isolation from others most of their lives....."I agree with you, though for slightly different reasons than her complacency with their situation. The beauty of the story is that by some irony of fate, they theoretically -can- carry living on like that forever - because what was once said more in jest and cruelty by the villagers, has now actually become legend. The villagers have started believing that they're some kind of dangerous supernatural being, and the villagers are keeping them alive with the provisions they set out for them.
But Merrikat is indeed emotionally stunted - I fully agree with you on that. Her emotions with regard to her family seems at a total remove. Even though she speaks of her mother affectionately, Merrikat had acted in an unspeakable manner- had done something a normal child would never do, (depending on the circumstances, I suppose) and it glares at you that she doesn't mourn the death of her family or feel regret for what she did; although I suppose the OCD could be the result of trauma around that whole situation?
...but in that sense, Constance seems complicit - she knows and seems quite okay with it....
Besides that, both of them seem to suffer from social phobias and agoraphobia, Merrikat perhaps worse with the former and Constance with the latter.
Dec 12, 2015 02:41AM
Hmm, I'm not too sure if I agree 100% with that. Their actions do tend to follow -some- kind of logic, albeit a twisted one, or one based on a logic that, in the case of schizophrenics, might be based on delusions. (view spoiler)...but in the case of Merrikat, I don't think she has schizophrenia. She never has actual delusions; she is never incoherent either. She doesn't hear voices, she doesn't see or imagine things that aren't there. Sure she has a fantasy about living on the moon, but I think she knows that is just a fantasy. Most people living in difficult circumstances have some fantasy they would like to disappear into.
...and as to the enmity of the villagers, I think the entire point, the twist in the tale is that Merrikat was, after all NOT delusional about them as the reader is led to suspect at the start of the tale. (view spoiler)
So, yeah, her act there was indeed a sociopathic one, and she does seem to be sociopathic in general, but there are too many things that point to her having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and a sociopathic personality, rather than schizophrenia.
Schizophrenics can become incoherent and mixed up, (depending which "kind" of schizophrenic they are) (catatonic, disorganized, paranoid, residual, or undifferentiated) and cannot always tell the difference between reality and delusion, but I think Merricat has her finger on reality all the time, despite her need to "check" on her psychic safeguards all the time, the latter which have more to do with the anxiety-ridden rituals of OCD sufferers.
Dec 11, 2015 02:08AM
I hope it's not illegal for me to do this, but anyway, I saw it here: https://sites.middlebury.edu/individu...and here: http://fullreads.com/literature/the-l...
An audio version online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuXNy...
These are just quick references and readers are still encouraged to either buy or borrow the actual story - It's widely anthologized in collections of short stories.
Yolande wrote: "Merricat seems to have trust in irrational things for protection - the gate lock that can supposedly be broken by a child and all the things she buried in the yard. Perhaps also a symptom of OCD? ..."I think so, especially seeing that it is highly ritualistic, of course. (OCD revolves around anxieties and rituals to placate that anxiety). Superstitious people do this kind of thing all the time, and I suppose it is behavior like this that gave religion a lot of it's power.
Also, note, though that she feels a compulsion to perpetually check that various gates are still locked- that's a clear symptom - I've done some reading on OCD and, for example, certain people will have certain anxieties - for example, one man would keep worrying that he had driven over a person or a dog, and would have to keep stopping his car to check.
I suppose it makes sense that if Merricat feels unsafe - and she seems to have various reasons rooted in reality to feel unsafe, that she would create rituals around personal and psychological safety.
Yolande wrote: "I'm thinking of the scene right after the tea when the guests leave. Before that we are told that Constance was acquitted of the murder and yet she bought the arsenic and washed the sugar bowl befo..."To me that's part of the charm of the story- we are fed info bit by bit at just the right pace for us to grab onto this new piece of information and turn it around and around, wondering how it fits in with the other info.
At the start, Merrikat keeps saying she wishes all the villagers are dead, but they do tease her mercilessly and she seems like a sensitive teen and their hostility obviously bothers her, so one can understand why she kept saying she wishes she was on the moon or that the villagers would just all fall dead. I mean, she certainly comes across as paranoid at the very first, but then you see that the villagers do give her a hard time, and you conclude that she's simply shy/sociophobic and going through a bit of teenage angst.
And yet, also, there's the feeling of the "unheimlich" like Linda had mentioned.
In the case of Uncle Julian, I thought he was attempting to be entertaining - after all, the villagers want to hear the grisly details just as consumers of TV , internet and newspapers are after the 'grisly news' as entertainment; and indeed Mrs Wright seemed a very eager consumer, despite Mrs Clarke's protestations.
I'm not sure if a link to this interesting site revolving around censorship and freedom of speech has been posted already: http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/liste...
What did I do? You’ll find out soon enough. Jump pages. Jump time. Skip through the rest as if it were a park pathway on a Sunday afternoon, and you eager to feed the ducks at the far end, in Voss Bender Memorial Square. But I haven’t written the path yet, and you’d get lost without it—and, paper cuts aside, I’ll find ways to make you wait.Yeah, yeah, Janice Shriek/Jeff Vandermeer, by now I know that you will. *yawn*
Sadly, I'm finding it to be boring and self-indulgent waffling at this stage. Not nearly as good as his short stories. :(Maybe it's just me...
I loved the bit about the golden threads and the bit about the machine, but then there seems to be a lot of aimless meandering after that.
At least it's usually quite dark in the cinema. ;)
