Let me just apologize for picking a novel that ended up being so inaccessible for some of you. I had no idea! For those of you who did manage to get a copy, I hope you enjoyed it. Let us know what you thought about it in the comments.
I'm just going to leave two quotes that I really liked, taken from Part II of the book. I think Orual becomes very self-aware and articulate in these final pages.
"The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning - only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound."
"I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Til that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"
I thought this was a beautiful book, and liked the reconciliation at the end. I think the whole "You also shall be Psyche" bit was a little ambiguous but very symbolic of Orual's anguish as Psyche accomplished the tasks, maybe? Any thoughts on that?
Oh, and for you legal folk, I totally think you should try to work "the complaint was the answer" into your work somehow somewhere. So confusing and yet so...literary. Thanks, everyone!
1 comment:
Lily, thank you for picking this book. It really was an excellent read and, although I could tell that there was a lot of symbolism that I was missing, I feel like I learned a lot. I thought Orual's change of perspective at the end was very powerful. I found a lot to relate to in that. More than once I have been boiling with "righteous" indignation at someone or some situation and something will shift my perspective just a little bit and I'll realize that I didn't actually know as much as I thought I did and my "high horse" was actually more the size of a Shetland pony. Those humbling experiences are so painful but so necessary.
I also found very interesting the idea that sometimes loving someone and devouring them is the same thing; that if we aren't careful, we can end up using people up or sucking them dry by the demands we put on them in the name of friendship and love. I thought that was so powerfully and poignantly demonstrated in Orual's relationships with The Fox and Bardia.
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