“With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city of Omelas, bright towered by the sea.”
And so with The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, I continue with my duo short story read which also included The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Both stories have a similar theme and they are wonderful to pair for a comparison. The Lottery was written in 1948 and The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas was written in 1973.
“When I was a girl …. I imagined that life was individual, one’s own affair; that the events happening in the world outside were important enought in their own way, but were personally quite irrelevant.”
“When Louis Trevelyan was twenty-four years old, he had all the world before him where to choose; and, among other things, he chose to go to the Mandarin Islands, and there fell in love with Emily Rowley, the daughter of Sir Marmaduke, the governor.”
My, Anthony Trollope is delightful. I’m convinced that he could write a novel about an ant colony and make it thoroughly entertaining. And entertainment is what we get in this tome about a couple destined to be in a state of conflict, simply because of their own pride.
The Oak and the Reed by Achille Michallon (1816)
~ source Wikipedia
The oak one day says to the reed:
—You have a good right to blame the nature of things:
A wren for you is a heavy thing to bear.
The slightest wind which is likely
To wrinkle the face of the water
Compels you to bow your head—
While my brow, like Mount Caucasus,
Not satisfied with catching the rays of the sun,
Resists the effort of the tempest.
All for you is north wind, all seems to me soft breeze.
Still, if you had been born in the protection of the foliage
The surrounding of which I cover,
I would defend you from the storm.
But you come to be most often
On the wet edges of the kingdoms of the wind.
Nature seems to me quite unjust to you.
—Your compassion, answered the shrub,
Arises from a kind nature; but leave off this care.
The winds are less fearful to me than to you.
I bend and do not break. You have until now
Against their frightening blows
Stood up without bending your back;
But look out for what can be. —As the reed said these words,
From the edge of the horizon furiously comes to them
The most terrible of the progeny
Which the North has till then contained within it.
The tree holds up well; the reed bends.
The wind doubles its trying;
And does so well that it uproots
That, the head of which was neighbor to the sky,
And the feet of which touched the empire of the dead.
“The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.”
A town of around 300 inhabitants gather on June 27th for the yearly lottery. It is alluded to that other towns also do lotteries and the population seems used to this event, convening with an easy, happy camaraderie.
Good Housewife – Frederick Smallfield (1856) ~ source Wikimedia Commons
Well, after so much neglect and inattention, I decided to start up my Deal Me In Challenge again. This time I drew the six of spades ♠️ and what better person to begin with than Samuel Johnson. An essay from Mr. Johnson will always be enlightening and humorous.
“Scarcely had the abbey-bell tolled for five minutes, and already was the church of the Capuchins thronged with auditors.”
Wow! What an appalling book! I had expected something scary but I never expected something quite so perverted. It’s melodramatic and sensational and, while the writing is good, the plot is not necessarily subtle or nuanced. At first, it reminded me of The Mysteries of Udolpho but I soon realized that it was much worse, much, much darker.
Set in Spain during the Inquisition, Lewis’ story follows three main storylines with a cast of intertwining characters.
“The Atlantic wears away our coasts.”
Victor Hugo must have been a pretty amazing person. Not only did he have an exceptional grasp of history, but his attention to detail far surpasses your average person and his descriptions illustrate this unusual ability. Add to that his artistic capacity for drawing, and you have quite an impressive composition of talents. He exhibits all three talents in The Toilers of the Sea, or Les Travailleurs de la Mer.
Running afoul of Napoleon III in 1851, Hugo fled France to Brussels and Jersey, finally settling in Guernsey in 1855 where he purchased Hauteville House in St. Peter Port. He spent 15 years in exile here. In his studio at the top of his house, with a stunning view of the harbour, it is there he finished his most famous novel, Les Miserables. While in Guernsey, Hugo rambled all over the island, often with his son, Charles, and his mistress, Julliette Drouet. In a notebook, he scrawled copious notes about the reefs, tides, currents and absolutely anything that caught his imagination. Les Travailleurs de la Mer was born out of his excursions.
“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
I first read Middlemarch during the summer of 2014 and was mesmerized. The lives of the inhabitants were painted in detail and somehow came alive until I was part of the community and involved in all their celebrations and struggles. I finished it in three weeks and then longed to go back. Well, it’s been over ten years since my last read of it and with some more maturity and the input of others, I was curious as to how I would respond upon my second reading.
“When I reached ‘C’ Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.”
I went into this read with some trepidation. I had some experience with books set in this time period of the early to mid-1900s and I haven’t found them very edifying: The Good Soldier, Testament of Youth, The Great Gatsby, etc. There is some sort of depressing pall that seems to have affected the world after the First World War and authors appear to have contracted an especially virulent dose of it. Nevertheless, I thought I would give Waugh and try and see if he could surprise me.