Romeo and Juliet: Connecting With Characters

So far I am really enjoying Romeo and Juliet. I think for me, as a teenager, it is very easy to identify and connect with both Romeo and Juliet. To begin with there's Romeo, your stereotypical teenager. He claims to have "fallen in love" with Rosaline at the beginning of the story, (this infatuation, by the way, seems to be largely based on appearance) and then becomes depressed when faced with rejection. Teenagers, thanks to our stupid hormones, usually must deal with unrequited "love" at one time or another. We understand how difficult "love" is for Romeo and some of us can sympathize with him about experiencing the pain of rejection for the first time. Then there's Juliet. She, like many teenage girls, has "mommy issues". Juliet's mother, Lady Capulet, pressures her to get married as quickly as possible and have children. She wants her to marry Paris, whom Juliet does not love, but this seems to not matter to Lady Capulet. Juliet is stuck dealing with what most teenagers experience, especially today. Pressure from their parents. Not only this, but Juliet also seems to be dealing with something that girls at this age usually must go through. The strange idea that having a boyfriend, husband, whatever increases your worth and is what you must strive to have. I know I should be more forgiving because this was true for women during this time period, but I see this even today with girls at Olympia high school, and it bothers me. And so despite not being a huge Juliet fan ( I think she is a far too passive character) I do sympathize with her.

I enjoy reading this book at home. If there's something I don't understand I can usually check the word definitions given to us in the book or check Sparknotes to see what's going on. But I actually prefer reading it in class. I find stopping to analyze what the characters are saying with my classmates and the teacher really helps me understand the material. It's also a lot of fun listening to people read the book aloud. I definately think reading it in class is more effective.

It's Over!

Okay, not that you'd know by the title, but for my last blog post (hopefully) about Great Expectations I am supposed to be writing about theme. That's kind of hard to write about because the book had so many messages it was trying to get across to the reader. I think the main theme though was that the only way to be happy is to keep the people who love you close to you and not to choose to surround yourself with people based on their wealth and social class. Kind of simple. And there are other more complicated themes in the book, but this is the one that stood out for me the most. In the beginning Pip is not thrilled with his meager life but he is content because he has Joe, his only friend who loves him very much. Pip loses his happiness when he meets Miss Havisham and moves to London. Pip only regains his happiness when he meets Magwitch, his "convict" and benefactor. Pip's friendship with Magwitch is the first one Pip has made not based on wealth or class since moving to London. Pip ultimately learns his lesson in the end and returns to the true friends he abandoned. The end. People are supposed to learn from Pips mistakes that money cannot lead to happiness, only caring friends.

My Opinion of Great Expectations

Wow. Long book. I have read Charles Dickens in the past and I have to say, I do genuinely enjoy his writing style. I love how detailed his figurative language is. He describes so vividly the sights and the smells and the colors that you almost feel as if you are a part of the story. My favorite example of his use of figurative language is from his story A Christmas Carol, one of Dickens' most beloved and well known stories, and rightfully so. His writing is absolutely captivating. When he describes the feast lying before the ghost of Christmas present my mouth begins to water. When he describes the market on Christmas eve I can feel the bite of snow and smell pine and cinnamon wafting in the air. I liked A Christmas Carol better than Great Expectations, even though his writing style is virtually the same in both books. I think this is simply because A Christmas Carol is so much shorter than Great Expectations. Dickens' writing style is just better for short stories than five hundred page books. His vivid wording, while beautiful, can become tedious to read and can even begin to distract from the plot, which is what made reading Great Expectations so difficult. Not only that but his use of language, as it comes from a different era, can also be hard to understand. I became so distracted by how he wrote that I had trouble keeping track of what was going on. Another annoying thing Charles Dickens did was introduce seemingly insignificant characters in the beginning and then two hundred pages later, he expected you to remember who they were and what role they were playing in the story. Altogether, Dickens' writing style almost made me lose all incentive to finish the book. But not only was I pulling my hair out over how the book was written, I was also increasingly hating the main character as the story progressed. He was at first lovingly innocent. It was almost impossible for the reader not to feel sorry for Pip. I myself almost had the urge to wrap Pip in a blanket, give him a cup of tea and tell him everything would be okay. But right away, all of Pip's likability disappears when he receives his expectations and becomes a superior egotist who turns his back on the only people who were ever kind to him. When he spends his time in London feeling miserable and guilty, I don't feel sorry for him. I feel his pain is rightly deserved. And maybe what I hate most of all about Pip is his utter stupidity and ineptitude with women. He is rude to Biddy, an intelligent independent girl, perhaps one of the only females whose ever been kind to him, and only decides to marry her when he feels he has no other choice. And yet throughout the entire book he actively pursues Estella, a cruel bitch who has made it explicitly clear to Pip several times that she is trying to break his heart. I can't help but think that Pip is a complete idiot. As a modern day female, I was so frustrated I wanted to shake Pip and yell at him for being so impossibly stupid. Even when Pip "redeems" himself at the end of the story and learns his lesson, I can't forgive him. The moral of the story is very simple. The only way to be happy is to keep the people who are kind to you close to you. Well, no duh. I have no sympathy for a character who didn't know this in the first place and had to go through an exhausting amount of trials and mistakes to learn it. And that is my main problem with this book. It is almost impossible to enjoy a book when the main character is so unlikeable. True, this is a matter of personal preference, and maybe I am being a little hard on Pip. But come on, how do you expect me to care about, and much less like, a character who abandons all of the people who love him to pursue a frivolous superficial life and a cruel bitch.

So to recap. I like Dickens' writing style, but I don't believe it is suited for this long of a story. The book was a tedious and exhausting read and I despised the main character.

But other than that, great book.

I read this book at night before I went to bed. If there was something I didn't understand, I would look it up on Sparknotes the next day. I hated annotating, but hey I shouldn't complain. I'll probably be doing it for my entire school career and may as well get used to it right? I thought the class discussions were very helpful for understanding the book.