Bookstove :: Gwendolyn Cuizon

Collections of book reviews I published elsewhere in the web. Do check it out: Bookstove :: Gwendolyn Cuizon  and Embody Greatness.

Ernest Hemingway`s ”The Sun Also Rises”

*Love as depicted and understood by the characters in Ernest Hemingway`s ”The Sun Also Rises”.

Ernest Hemingway`s ”The Sun Also Rises” depicts love in various ways. Cohn's love for Brett, Mike's love for Brett and Jake's love for Brett all present a different slant to the idea of love.

Cohn is the dependent, weak type who clings to love. Mike is the apathetic type who is indifferent to Brett's plight. And Jake, in his silent, self-effacing way, loves Brett but bottle up his feelings.

The object of their affection, on the other hand, seems to draw distorted sense happiness on the influence she wields on men. Men are not people to be loved for her. They are mere conquests. In short, objects that only merit her attention if she is in the middle of chase. Once she captures their poor hearts, she loses quickly interest. Such as the case with all men linked to her in the story Cohn, Mike, Jake and Romero.

Brett is more comfortable in speculating about what she and Jake could have had together instead of committing herself to accomplishing that dream in real life because she knows her limitations. She knows for a fact that she would not be faithful. She says to Jake that she is a "tromper". Aware with the reality of her true nature, she refuses to make a commitment to love to spare Jake of hurt feelings.

Brett arrived at this decision not because she is a noble, philosophical thinker but more so because she is a shallow, pathetic, and ultimately sad figure. Her hedonistic way of living does not prepare her for commitment or deep relationships. She is not capable of exercising wisdom. All her actions stem from selfish intents. There was nothing nurturing about her. She simply takes but does not give. Despite her social interactions, she lost sight of the most important consideration - herself. Her very existence is empty which she tries to mask by company, parties and endless drinking spree. She tries to escape despair by drowning it with her interaction with men. It, ironically, only made her more sad and alone. She is a wounded girl seeking for her real identity. This ultimately makes Brett a very sad figure.

Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story: A Comparison in Themes

The common themes between the two renowned stories.

West Side Story written by Arthur Laurents is actually a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The West Side Story is set in Upper West Side Manhattan. It is about rivalry between two teenage gangs of different backgrounds. Anton, a member of the white gang, fell in love with Maria, the sister of the leader of the rival Puerto Rican gang.

Romeo and Juliet is undoubtedly the most popular romantic love story to ever hit the literary world. It talks about intense passion between the star-crossed lover Romeo and Juliet. Their love was doomed from the start because of their feuding families- the Montague represented by Romeo and Capulet, by Juliet.

The overriding theme, of course, between the two stories – Romeo and Juliet and The West Side Story is love – deep, intense and passionate love. The kind that defies everything even families and loyalties.

The love Tony felt for Maria and Romeo for Juliet made them defy their families, their friends and their social world. Their love is strong and forceful, so much so that it made them revolt against the very world they revolved in and, sometimes, even against themselves.

Intensity of thoughts and feelings dominate both stories. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo’s character takes on intensity to another level. His capacity for deep passionate love is merely an extension of his capacity for intense feelings of all kinds.

His intensity is evident when he sneaks into enemy’s territory to seek Juliet. Or, when he kills his wife’s cousin in a duel. And finally, when he committed suicide upon erroneously believing Juliet is dead.

The same way, Tony of the West Side Story is capable of extreme emotions. This is when he killed his lover’s brother Bernardo in a heated argument. He also challenged Chino to kill him when he thought Chino killed Maria which as we know led to his untimely demise towards the end of the story.

Both male characters seem defined by their extreme emotions and capacity for deep love. This deep intense emotion shared by both male protagonists is what propels both stories forward. Had these male characters, Romeo and Tony, did not have such intensity of feelings in the first place, the love they feel for their women – Juliet and Maria respectively, would not have existed.

The women, on the other hand, exhibit logic, objectivity and strength. Juliet, for instance, showed her determination when she first obeyed her parent’s request to try to love Paris, their favored suitor. The same way, Maria showed force of will over emotions

when she agreed to marry Chino.

Their objectivity comes across when Maria decided to flee the city with Tony to leave the chaos behind them. When Romeo killed Tybalt, Juliet did not follow Romeo right away. Instead she made a logical decision to allow her love for Romeo to guide her priorities.

Both Juliet and Maria, in essence, decided to cut themselves loose from their social connections when they decided to follow their love. Juliet cut herself off from her Nurse, her parents and her social status when she followed Romeo. Maria cut loose from her family, her dead brother’s memory and her social circle when she decided to run away with Tony.

Juliet killed herself upon finding out that Romeo is dead not out of weakness but out of love. She stabs her heart with a dagger which showed a lot more courage than taking down pills. Maria, on the other hand, did not commit suicide upon seeing Tony killed by Chino. She used the tragedy to point out to the feuding groups Jets and Sharks how their hate led to Tony’s death. The two groups declared truce in the process.

There is no specific morale that one can gather from both stories on love and relationships. Both stories seek to portray the chaos and obstacles that surround passion and love.

Violence brought about by love is another theme that permeates in both stories. In both stories, love is linked to death. As in the case of Tony who died at the end of the story in West Side Story. The same goes to Romeo and Juliet, who met untimely death at the end of the story.

Violence is very pronounced in both stories as we are being made painfully aware from the very start that the two protagonists come from feuding clans such as in Romeo and Juliet or feuding culture such as in The West Side Story. We have this unshakeable feeling that trouble is brewing as soon as the story commences.

Another theme in the story is the conflict of individual self with society. What the protagonists in both stories Romeo and Juliet wanted were different from what the society expected from them. Romeo and Juliet fought for their private feelings to the end by committing the ultimate act of privacy- suicide.

In the same vein, Maria and Tony fought for their private love but they did not really resort to extreme means. Tony’s death is not brought about by suicide although he challenged the villain Chino to come to kill him when he thought Maria was killed. Still, Tony’s death is not self-inflicted or voluntary as in the case of the lovers Romeo and Juliet.

'What Makes Sammy Run?' by Budd Schulberg

A book review on 'What Makes Sammy Run?' by Budd Schulberg.

'What Makes Sammy Run?' by Budd Schulberg centers on the career of Sammy. Sammy's life is described as a continual "Blitzkrieg against his fellow-men." Sammy came from bottom ranks. His ability to double-cross people, betray his friends, lie to his own family and many other selfish, unscrupulous acts helped him rose swiftly to the top. He first used his wiles in a New York paper. It was there that he first started to work. Then he invaded Hollywood, wreaked havoc as he snaked his way to the top.

 

In the story, Sammy came from Rivington Street. He was a hardhearted person who had quick wits about him. He started as a copy boy on a newspaper. Sammy is ambitious and hard-working. By the time he was 19, he became a radio columnist. Not contented with his lot, Sammy stole a manuscript to be able to penetrate Hollywood. He had no writing abilities but was able to exploit the system of collaboration in Hollywood.

In the book What Makes Sammy Run? Schulberg wants to portray the truth of his life, the way he sees it. It is almost hard to distinguish when the truth begins and the imagination ends in his story because of his journalistic approach. One can read a disclaimer before all his fiction: "only the names of the characters are changed to protect the innocent." But the story about Sammy does not revolved around innocence. As a matter of fact, it is the opposite. Sammy's cunning, ruthless way to approach life is simply unimaginable. Schulberg presents a very grim depiction of Hollywood's skeletons in the closet. Stories about success and failure, a person's maltreatment to others, greed leading human misery abound in the novel. All these plots intertwine to make a very interesting read.

What makes the novel brilliant is its honest depiction of the beliefs and hopes that are apparent during the time. The story flows easily, as if it is not forced. The dialogues among characters are less reserved.

Schulberg's life revolved around the motion-picture. As he brilliantly weaves the story and leads us deeper to the search on what makes Sammy run, Schulberg unmasks his own views about the place. The product is a book which stings Hollywood in its honesty and provides an intimate portrait on the life of Hollywood.

Sammy came from the slums, hence his dog-eat-dog outlook in life. His humble origin had contributed to his ruthless character. The pacing in the novel was fast as it examined Hollywood in great detail. It presented Hollywood as a place where one could gain or lose all in an instant.

Sammy's life was for all to see. Mr. Schulberg spared no detail when it came to Sammy. Sammy's portrait is acerbic but was never dull. This made the book ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’ an important piece of document.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The story behind Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

It is hard to separate the story Uncle Tom's Cabin from the experience of Harriet Stowe because the two are closely linked. Harriet Beecher Stowe witnessed first-hand the religious and political crises during her day. In Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher Stowe honed her material for the book. She got a first-hand experience with slaves. From her dealings with black women from the slave state of Kentucky, Stowe recalled many stories about their lives that she included in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Harriet wrote just like many male American authors, but which so few female writers attempted which is in dialect rather than refined prose. Stowe stressed though that Uncle Tom's Cabin was not really her work. “The Lord himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest of instruments in His hand,” she said. During her time, a woman was forbidden to be proud of her skills except for her motherly role. Stowe's pronouncement was a brilliant way to disclaim responsibility at the same time praise it.

Uncle Tom's Cabin made a lot of readers see that slaves were people. Just like them, slaves bleed. The very heart-wrenching scenes where children were taken forcibly from their mothers and overly emotional plot woke up the sympathies of the nineteenth-century men. It was said that that President Lincoln saw Stowe in 1863, he greeted her and said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” This statement confirmed beyond doubt that Uncle Tom's Cabin was in a way responsible for the strong stand in the North to abolish slavery.A number of Southerners believed that Uncle Tom's Cabin gave a deceptive depiction of slavery. Stowe in an effort to make the book fair to the South made Mrs. Shelby, George Shelby, and Augustine and Eva St. Clare to be very kind figures. The book's villain, Simon Legree, is from New England was the subject of criticism.

Historians like Herbert Gutman (in The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925) and Eugene G. Genovese (in Roll, Jordan, Roll) give a depiction of slavery that is quite similar to Stowe's. Slave owners' treatment on the slaves varied. People like Simon Legree were unusual. But most of slaves did fear being sold to master like Simon Legree. The description on the life on the Shelby plantation is quite accurate. Sam and Andy "s character showed the way slaves shared information about life on the plantation. The book also detailed the existence of a slave community, and that religion was important to them. St. Clare household showed the differences between plantation slavery and slavery in the cities. Adolph and Rosa depicted slaves who considered themselves above other slaves. 

All these and more depicted the local color in Uncle Tom"s Cabin and made it achieved verisimilitude and thus make more credible the novel`s romantic events and support its moral teaching.