Tag: Lord Byron

BR#Ten – The Old Man & The Sea

Hamar Williams1 Comment

There is a certain romanticism in literature. Not always the stories themselves but sometimes the stories of the stories, the stories of the creators of the stories. I understood that for the first time when a friend of mine told me the life of Lord Byron and proceeded to explain why I didn’t need to read any of his work, his life was the work. Ernest Hemingway is one of these people. He is there in the echelons of folk lore, another author to define an art and inspire a craft. This is actually my first Hemingway and considering my interest in and admiration for those involved in the Spanish Civil War, how I’ve not read For Whom The Bell Tolls is beyond me.

The protagonist is an old man called Santiago who has now gone eighty-four days at sea without catching anything and is seen as unlucky. On his eighty-fifth day, which is also a number of special significance apparently, he hooks the largest Marlin he has ever seen and allows it to pull him and his skiff, tiring itself out in the process for three days. This is a titanic battle between two great warriors who have lived and survived in their respective worlds up until this point, finally coming face to face. He needs this in a way and while he talks to himself of the money he will make it is evidently never really about this.

The Old Man & The Sea is a fable. There will surely be multiple essays and books upon what the lesson within it is but for me it is one of heroism, determination and acceptance. Acceptance in a way despite the fact he doesn’t accept defeat at any point until he has no choice. His acceptance comes from life and experience at sea; knowing that defeat can happen, but we fight until our last and then some more and if success doesn’t come we just carry on as it’s all part of everything.

Hemingway creates an air of romanticism around Santiago and it is easy to imagine him sitting by the harbour when in Cuba and watching the weather beaten old fishermen going out and if not knowing their stories then creating them. It is one of epic proportions in three days and one hundred pages. His simple use of language allows for you to easily get into the story but it is also this language which reveals all the hidden meaning as the story progresses. It definitely makes you want to jump in a skiff and set sail. The sea is a powerful and unforgiving mistress but she will teach you all you ever need to know.

An animation by Aleksander Petrov

BR#5 – Frankenstein

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

From time to time as adults we throw a little classic in to our reading. The kind of story that spawned others and has passed the test of time. The kind you could have studied at school. That last one in a way makes it sound unappealing considering we don’t always look back on the book we studied at school fondly. Frankenstein though isn’t one of them, it’s one of the ones you wish you had studied at school. It has so many of those moments you could see yourself analysing in a class, it has layers. It is also very simple and obvious. A main uncomplicated but unbelievable story. Take it at face value and that’s it.

The writing feels like it could be updated although it shouldn’t ever happen. When things are translated they are also updated in language and in a subtle way style. A book written in English will forever be ageing. I would love to know how Tolstoy sounds to a Russian than he is in the latest translation I read. In that sense I can tell it was written in the early nineteenth century. While that’s not a problem it will be one day.

Shelley approaches all sorts of ideas and concepts throughout the book. They are too numerous to go into detail in just five hundred words but she discusses justice, the role of god, she approaches ideas of personhood and what is is to be a person, our understanding of ethics, even existentialism but this was long before it had become an ism. This is an entire philosophy course for a year covered. There are many essays written on it. I imagine it’s a common understanding too that there is the potential schizophrenia angle which relates in a way to ideas of duality in the book. They need each other, the monster never tries to hurt him and when he dies the monster goes off to die too. Did Frankenstein give a part of himself in the creation of the monster. In a way the monster shows more of what we call humanity than Viktor Frankenstein who in the end becomes a monster himself in a sad way. In a contemporary sense we could think of the development of Artificial Intelligence. The monster has not only an ability to learn but has self-consciousness, the ultimate stage of creating free thinking robots. I could go on and on.

Quite interestingly the book has nearly as interesting a back story. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the revolutionary thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of the poet Percy Shelley. In the ‘Year Without Summer’ of 1816 when they were visiting the exiled and infamous poet and writer amongst many things, Lord Byron in Switzerland, the weather forced them to stay indoors and Byron came up with the idea they all wrote horror stories. In a dream over the next few nights the story of Frankenstein and his monster came to Mary Shelley.

Along with all this and not to be forgotten it’s actually quite a good story. You don’t just read it to learn and look smart, you read it to enjoy. I assume they teach it in schools still and if they don’t can’t think why. It’s so full of everything it would be a waste. I ended it really feeling happy that I had just read a good book. We all should, we may just learn a little eloquence and humanity from a monster.