Class is currently in session and I am not there. The reason for this is actually mildly hilarious. I woke up this morning, went downstairs to the gym in the basement of my apartment, and ran on the treadmill for an hour--and then when I stopped running and attempted to walk over to the water fountain, I vomited everywhere.
Gross, I know, but also hilarious. What is not hilarious is the fact that I have just finished scrubbing vomit off of the basement rug for 30 minutes--so naturally, not feeling so good about sprinting over to class in my sweat and vomit stained gym clothes.
This post, therefore, is going to be my means of participating in today's discussion.
Today we are analyzing the ending of The Blithdale Romance, and I have a lot to say about it.
First of all, let me just begin by saying I did not completely hate this book (I know my responses to the material we've read so far in class have been mildly pessimistic, so I purposely approached this novel with an open mind). That being said, while not much happened within the first half of the book, I found it to be much stronger then the extremely dissappointing second half.
The part I would like to talk about specifically is the books' ending. Hawthorne seems to be utterly confused about his purpose for writing this novel. He cannot decide what genre it is, he can't pick a consistent language to use throughout the chapters, and he certainly can't decide if it's meant to be well written. The passage at the beginning of this blog post is a good example of the authors bi-polar tendencies. Here we have an excerpt of Miles Coverdale's Confession chalked full of beautiful language and metaphor. When Hawthorne writes in the voice of Coverdale that, "Frostier heads than mine have gained honor in the world, frostier hearts have imbibed new warmth, and been newly happy," I, as a reader, was touched by the concept of change. A person, no matter how cold, still has the opportunity to find warmth and be happy. Hawthorne writes that life must be owned, and that Coverdale's understanding of life is at an "idle pass."
The reason why I point this passage out is because it accentuates a literary tendency that Hawthorne has implemented throughout the novel that has, up until this point, not bothered me. Hawthorne, in the midst of plot, throws around these concepts and transcendentalist ideas that intrigue me as a reader. He includes on snippets of these ideas, veiling them in story development, and leaving the reader eager for more. The only problem with this, however, is that the story isn't strong. Throughout my time reading this novel, I found myself knowing that had this novel lacked transcendentalist idealism, I would not read it based on plot alone.
This is the reason I am choosing to focus on the ending. For me, this was the peak of my criticism. In Miles Coverdale's Confession Hawthorne includes large concepts about life like the ones listed above that get the reader thinking. He talks about the self, the system, truth, unhappiness as it relates to prosperity, human purpose, morals, emptiness, death, and at the end of it all, concludes with an elementary plot proponent written in the style of a twelve year old. "I-I myself-was in love-with-PRISCILLA."
We knew this. We guessed it. We read it. This is not Coverdale's confession. Coverdale's confession is the deep and sentimental analysis of his own being--the fallacies, the truths--Coverdale contemplates the purpose of human living and finishes the novel as well as his testament to inner exploration with caps lock? Why?!?
I wanted to talk about why an author would choose to end a novel in such an uninspiring way.
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