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A Postcard from the Volcano
A Postcard from the Volcano
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3. What does Max learn from his two relationships with girls?
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John
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Nov 02, 2017 02:56AM
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Manuel wrote: "He has three relations with girls: Anna, Eva and Jane (:-)"Max is a selfish dog he could lend to me one of them *joke*. My friend Alfonseca will understand is a fictional character created by the spanish writer Pedro Muñoz Seca (he was murdered by the republicans in our Civil War. He was a very religious man, and he is considered to be a blessed). Pedro Muñoz Seca wrote a parody of the medieval age The revenge of Dom Mendo, and in one dialogue. A Mendo`s friend comented his success with the ladies with this sentence but Mendo, who gave to the women. The friend did not explain the success of Mendo with Magdalen, Berenguela (The Queen), and the morish Jofaifa :-).
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Jane is his daughter, I don't think his wife is named. Are you thinking of his favorite student, the one he gives the postcard to? I don't think she is named either.
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Jane is his daughter, I don't think his wife is named. Are you thinking of his favorite student, the one he gives the postcard to? I don't think she is named either."
His wife Jane is named at least five times in the prologue:
After the beginning this camp is not so bad. There is music. There is German to speak. There is also Jane. She is a nurse in this camp. This is before he was married. And in the following paragraph he says: After the war more teaching. Better teaching. Better pupils. You, for example. Jane of course. A home. The children. I think this Jane is his wife.
Somewhat later: The funeral service was a Requiem Mass in a nearby Catholic church. His family, a few of Jane’s relations and some pupils and colleagues from the school, none of them Catholic... Strangers carried the coffin down the aisle, and then Jane and the children Again I think it's clear Jane is his wife.
Finally: After a few months, Jane sold the house at a good price, for it was in a part of London that was becoming fashionable. She moved with the children to a cottage in Norfolk close to her brother’s house, where she had grown up. Knowing nothing of Max’s wish, she also sold his violin, for a good deal of money.
I think in all those quotations Jane is his wife, not his daughter.
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His wife fussed in the daytime, and in the evening, as if to hold him back from death, hugged him before he went by himself to bed. His clever, careful son and his high-spirited daughter stopped bickering when he came into the kitchen and from the narrow hall watched him with embarrassed anxiety when he stopped on the stairs to gather a little breath to go up another step.
So Jane is Max's wife and his daughter is not named.
Manuel wrote: "As Max was married after the war and died in 1961, his daughter was just a little girl at his death, as indicated in this quotation:His wife fussed in the daytime, and in the evening, as if to ho..."
Lucy Beckett wrote a sequel, perhaps we must read it to look who is right. Although i bet for my friend Alfonseca. He is a man, who know to racionalize, and he understands better the novels. When we wrote mto me, and i comitted mistakes with the plots of the novel. He kindly check to me.
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Jane is his daughter, I don't think his wife is named. Are you thinking of his favorite student, the one he ..."
You are right - I misread that portion and thought it was a reference to the daughter. I don't believe either the daughter nor the favorite student are named.
I can't comprehend Max's attraction for Eva, who is presented throughout as a despicable character, even if somewhat fascinating. Throughout their affair, I kept yelling at him to stop. Finally her abortion helped him come to his senses, but even then he knew she was so mesmerizing that even in their farewell lunch he took many precautions to avoid making this a "near occasion of sin." I also don't think Eva belongs on the postcard list of his intimate friends (he hints as much when he says his student will have to decide whether they are five or six. I wonder how he found out what happened to all these people during the war and am disappointed that there's almost no discussion of their lives independent of him. I also wonder why he counts only these as friends. Surely in the nearly-30 years he lives in England he could have grown close to others, but even his wife doesn't seem that important to him. The fact that she doesn't know he's a Catholic and sells his violin after he dies reveals how little he has revealed himself to Jane. Sad.There are several references to his left hand being somehow malformed even though he can still play the violin very well. Can anyone trace how this happened?
Jill wrote: "I can't comprehend Max's attraction for Eva, who is presented throughout as a despicable character, even if somewhat fascinating. Throughout their affair, I kept yelling at him to stop. Finally her..."The abort of one of the character is one interesting. Reminded me very much to the character of Sally Boeles, that appeared in Cabaret was played by Liza Minelli. Perhaps Beckett inspired in the Bob Fosse`s movie, or in the story it is based Good bye Berlin by the English writer Christopher Isherwood. The love is blind as Charles Peguy married with an anticatholic girl that he forced to him not practising his religion, and worse thing was that the poor Peguy was married of other, who let him believe in his religion. Unfortunatelly this things happened :-(.
"These things happen" makes it sound like we don't have free will. We can't create or deny how we feel, but we decide whether/how to act on our feelings. Especially since Max has experienced a much purer form of love and self-sharing with Anna, how can he descend to a purely sexual liaison with Eva?
Jill wrote: ""These things happen" makes it sound like we don't have free will. We can't create or deny how we feel, but we decide whether/how to act on our feelings. Especially since Max has experienced a much..."Precisely because he is a human and he has free fate, and when you have free fate you usually commit mistakes.
