House Rules Disappoints

I was very dissatisfied with the ending of House Rules. I felt that the ending was a complete contradiction to the rest of the book and that Picoult after writing a book about a very difficult and emotional subject, took the easy route out by creating a cheesy "happy" ending.

Picoult spends the majority of the book focusing on Jacob's aspergers and the limitations and problems it presents both him and his family. She focuses on how Jacob's life is defined by rules that must be adhered to for his ability to function. His life and sense of responsibility is completely defined by these rules and he lives his life according to them. It is beyond Jacob's capabilities to act beyond these rules' limitations. This at least is the message I got from Picoult. Jacob's ability to act is incumbent on these rules. However, in the end, Picoult contradicts this by having Jacob stage Jess' murder because he is protecting Theo. While Picoult does state that Jacob is still following the rules at this point, the rule to "take care of your brother, he's the only one you've got," she also implies the happy ending that Jacob can overcome the Asperger's, "To all those experts who say that because I have Asperger's, I can't empathize: so there. People who can't empathize surely don't try to protect the people they love, even if it means having to go to court." However, at least from my perspective this seems to completely contradict the rest of the book. Jacob protects Theo because he applied the rules that govern his life to the situation, not out of love for Theo.

House Rules

I have read Jodi Picoult before and I have never really enjoyed her writing. Unfortunately the same can be said about House Rules. While I was immediately drawn into the story and motivated to keep reading, I have not found the book satisfying. I think this is partially because I finished the book already and was not satisfied with the ending. I feel as though there are a lot of details Picoult throws into the novel for no particular reason and then proceeds to ignore. I think she puts in the details such as Emma writing the advice column and Rich enjoying it to try and temper the serious and largely sad subject matter of the book. However, I just felt as though they were very out of place and disconnected from the story.

I also feel that while Picoult does an amazing job of developing Jacob and his issues with Aspergers for the reader, she doesn't sufficiently address or develop all the issues or characters in the book. At the beginning, I thought that Rich would have a larger role in the story since he is initially focused on quite a bit. However, by the end he seems to serve no real role and his narration is just thrown in as an afterthought. Also, Theo's obsession with breaking into houses is never really addressed although it is central to solving the mystery.

While I may have issues with Picoult's writing, I cannot deny that she does an amazing job with creating the character of Jacob. She obviously has some sort of insight into the world of a person with Aspergers and she does a very effective job of bringing and incorporating the reader into that world. I think that Theo's and Emma's narration that Picoult includes does a lot to enrich the story. They are the characters that the reader can relate to. While we may empathize with Jacob and relate to him on a more superficial level, in the sense of feeling like in outside on occasion, we cannot truly understand him or his disease. Therefore, by including his family's perspectives, the people who besides Jacob are most affected by his condition, Picoult is doing a masterful job of making the reader care about the story and characters.

GWTDT Deconstruction

I think the theme of the victim is a very interesting one in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There are many different opposing representations of the victim. Lisbeth Salander is a contradiction as she has the appearance of a victim, and is viewed as a victim or the perfect candidate for a victim by Armansky and Bjurman, however, she refuses to be victimized or allow herself to be characterized as a victim; her behavior is often that of a hero. Even when she is sexually assaulted by Bjurman, "Advokat Bjurman had chosen her as a victim," she refuses to play the role of one (277). She knows that she has to rescue herself, so she is her own rescuer, her own hero. However, Salander does not just rescue herself but also Blomkvist when he is being strangled by Martin. She rejects the role of the victim.

This is in contrast to the behavior of Harriet Vanger. She is the victim of the sexual abuse of both her brother and her father and instead of gaining revenge like Salander, she allows this victimization to define her. She is so conditioned to the role of the victim that the only we she can escape is to change her identity, she can't fight back.

Wennerstrom and his corporation play the role of the victim when Mikael publishes his initial story about them because it allows them to be viewed in a sympathetic light. Mikael, however, is the true, unsung victim of the company's deceit. He is forced to go to jail for writing a story that Wennerstrom had set up, for falling into the trap.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I have heard many good things about this book and therefore was a bit disappointed with its beginning. It is very slow getting started and I found myself constantly skimming through the seemingly endless impersonal facts presented about the characters. I don't think that it is a remotely effective mode of characterization. I felt both disconnected from the characters and frustrated with the utter lack of dynamism in the plot. I only started getting interested with the introduction of Lisbeth Salander. I think this is due to more personal nature of the description of her from the perspective of Armansky. However, my interest in the story wasn't really incited until the 100th page when Vanger tells Mikael that he wants him to discover who murdered Harriet.

I don't understand Larsson's need build up to this moment in the plot. I feel that it detracts from the book and that it's unreasonable to expect that a reader will keep reading up to that point. If I had just picked this book up and tried to read it I probably would have put it down and given up after the first ten pages. I am also a little confused by the proloque. There seems to be such a disconnect between the prologue and the rest of the book, or at least what I have read so far. However, for all my complaints I do feel intrigued by the story and am eager to keep reading it. My main issue is that this eagerness did not begin until the 100th page.

Fun Home

Fun Home is a characterized as a tragicomic. I think this is very fitting since it is illustrated as though it were a comic book, but has very intense subject material. There is a direct contrast between the comic-like illustrations which to me have the connotation of humor and the actual text with its darker message. I think this illustrates the dichotomous nature of the narrator's memories. The novel is written as a memoir, the narrator is looking back on her life, seeing both the happy aspects of childhood and the dark nature of her father’s suppression of his homosexuality and the effect it has on her family. This is illustrated through the contrast between the comic style and the writing.

An interesting theme that I’ve picked up is one of isolation, yet at the same time connectedness. This is recurrent throughout the novel. Although the narrator is isolated from her father because of his secrets and struggles with his sexual identification, she at the same time is inexorably connected to him because she is also gay. In this illustration the reader sees the disconnectedness within the family. Nobody is interacting; they are all in their own private spheres. The narrator seated in the middle, however, appears to be trying to bridge the gap. She is simultaneously leaning closer to her parents yet also looking away. This depicts her desire to connect, yet at the same time her inability to completely bridge the barriers separating them.

"the-men-came-and-they"

Culture and nationality distinguish people from each other, however, it is language that is the essential unifier or distinguisher, it is the tool that that both connects and distances people. Cleave does a masterful job of creating both this sense of unity and separation through his use of language in Little Bee. Language is a cultural construct, words have meaning because people give them significance; meaning isn’t inherent, therefore, language is fallible. Different languages are considered superior because of their cultural affirmation. Cleave explores these themes through the perspective of Little Bee, a Nigerian illegal immigrant. Through Little Bee’s eyes, Cleave is able to depict how integral language is in the shaping and definition of one’s identity as well as its limitations through his use of italics, the dialogue of the characters, and the ambiguous, constantly changing nature of Little Bee’s name. Through these tactics Cleave explores how the assertion of a “dominant” language and culture over another, causes the blurring of identity.
Cleave’s use of italics and language juxtaposing the reactions of the Nigerian girls back home and the Queen both contrast and unify Nigeria and England and depict the limitations of language. Little Bee is taught that her language is inferior to the “Queen’s English.” The only way that Little Bee can escape “the men” and become a British citizen is to assimilate: “To survive you must look good or talk good, I decided that talking would be safer” (6). She is forced to deny her culture through her rejection of her language. Little Bee must now be defined by her ability to speak English, the way she speaks it, and the necessity of this causes the blurring of her identity. Cleave shows this crisis of identity through Little Bee’s constant comparisons of the reactions of the Queen to the reactions of the girls back home to situations she encounters and her inability to reconcile the two. Little Bee now has the language and cultural understanding of the English, ostracizing her from her village, “And the girls back home, their eyes would go wide and they would say, Weh” (128). Yet she has the skin and status of an illegal immigrant, making it impossible for her to be British, “This woman they released from the immigration center, this creature that I am, she is a new breed of human. There is nothing natural about me. I was born – no, I was reborn – in captivity,” (8). The italicized sections of the novel emphasize this sense of nonidentity. Little Bee does not consider what she, Little Bee, would say she considers what the two representations of culture she is a mix of would say: “The Queen could never say, There was plenty wahala, that girl done use her bottom power to engage my number one son and anyone could see she would end in the bad bush. Instead the Queen must say, My late daughter-in-law used her feminine charms to become engaged to my heir, and one might have foreseen that it wouldn’t end well,” (3). The speech and understanding that characterize Little Bee as Nigerian must be suppressed, she can no longer be that person. This hegemonic assertion of the British culture, the cultural construct of language that is given so much power, causes Little Bee to lose her identity as she is trying to fit into an artificially constructed one.
There is a huge cultural gulf between the people from her small village in Nigeria and the English. This gulf is represented by the different reactions that Little Bee imagines. The reactions generally depict the complete incomprehension the girls from her village would face if presented with English culture, in contrast to the knowledgeable English, “If I mention to you, casually, that Sarah’s house was close to a large park full of deer that were very tame, you do not jump up out of your seat and shout, My god! Fetch my gun and I will go hunt those foolish animals! No instead you stay seated and you rub you chin wisely and you say to yourself, Hmmm, I suppose that must be Richmond Park, just outside London” (128). This depicts the discrepancies between the first and third worlds and the huge cultural gap dividing them. However, these comparisons also serve to show the reader how useless both reactions are to Little Bee. Neither the Queen nor the girls back home can aid her in her present situation. She is stuck between the two worlds and cannot live or fit in either. “Sometimes I feel as lonely as the Queen of England” (80).
The language of the English that Little Bee relies on to survive proves futile. Whenever a moment of crisis occurs, language fails her. It is not language that saves Little Bee but her own strength and the aid of those around her. Cleave is therefore emphasizing the limitations of language. When Little Bee tries to convince the cab driver to take her and the other refugees away from the immigration center she misinterprets what she believes to be a compliment and only ends up insulting him, “Hello I see that you are a cock” (57). In an attempt to evade the police Little Bee, “stood up straight and as tall as [she] could, and [she] closed [her] eyes for a moment, and when [she] opened them again [she] looked at the policeman very coldly and [she] spoke with the voice of Queen Elizabeth the Second,” however, she still ends up getting deported (242). In both these circumstances, Little Bee is saved not due to her mastering of language, but due to the kindness of people. When the cab driver leaves them on the side of the road, a farmer gives the girls shelter. When Little Bee is deported, Sarah comes with her to protect her. The two cultures are unified in Little Bee because the power that people give language is limited and ultimately although language might separate people, humanity still connects them.
The assignation of a name to a person and the way they speak is central to their identity. It speaks about their language, their family, their roots, their nationality. Cleave shows this through the ambiguous nature of Little Bee’s name. The reader never knows her true name, Udo, or peace, until the end of the novel. Little Bee has to change her name and hide her identity in order to survive, “They must make up new names for themselves. It was not safe to use their true names, which spoke so loudly of their tribe and of their region,” (100). However, the ability to change her name, this autonomy, is the most power that Little Bee has, it shows her power over words, over language. She is forced to learn to speak British English and use it instead of her native English, “Learning the Queen’s English is like scrubbing off the bright varnish from your toenails, the morning after a dance. It takes a long time and there is always a little left at the end, a stain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had (3)”. The ability to change her name, this power that Little Bee has over her life, over words, the reminder of her native name and language, is the “stain of red… [reminding her] of the good time [she] had.” It is the last remnant of her identity that she can preserve. Although Little Bee may have to deny her Nigerian name and language, she still has the power to manipulate language; “My name is London Sunshine…The boy blinked at me, and the next moment we were both laughing. This was a good trick. In this moment I very nearly named myself back to life,” (222).
Cleave also emphasizes the identifying nature of language through the dialogue of his characters. There is an onomatopoeic or rhythmic quality to the language that Cleave employs to characterize the refugees, the girls from Little Bee’s village, and Yevette.
“ the-men-came-and-they-
burned-my-village-
tied-my-girls-
raped-my-girls-”
This is the way all the stories of the refugees go, “all the girls stories started out, the-men-came-and-they. And all the stories finished, and-then-they-put-me-in-here” (11). There is a rhythmic, chanting quality created by Cleave’s construction of language that is distinctly different from the language of characters such as Sarah and possibly alludes to a more tribal culture. The language used to characterize Yevette and the language of the girls in Nigeria is very dialectic and onomatopoeic, “He make a few changes on de computer, jus put a tick in de right box yu know, an - POW! – up come de names for release… Dey jus see de names come up on dere computer screen dis morning and – BAM!” (68). This is juxtaposed against the precision of the British English, Sarah’s constant correcting of her son’s grammar, “Is you getting baddies? Are we getting baddies, Charlie. Not is we” (28). However, each of the character’s reliance on their language and their way of speaking central to Cleave’s characterization of each, thereby creating a sense of unity throughout the novel.
It is impossible to refute the importance of language in Little Bee. Cleave constantly uses it as a tool in order to both emphasize differences between his characters and cultures and unify them. Cleave ensures that the reader is aware of the limitations of language and that although it is representative of identity and culture, it is not the only defining factor in one’s identity. Little Bee is a testament to the ability of language, its potential, to connect and distance, however, through her, Cleave also shows his readers that when forced to assimilate, when one culture dominates another, it is impossible for people to remain unchanged, for their identities to be redefined.

Little Bee Continues

The more I read of this novel, the more I enjoy it. I read the entire story in one sitting and since then have been going back and rereading sections I particularly enjoyed. I usually find whenever I go back and reread books that I had been caught up in the moment, the drama of the book and after I know what happens, I find myself let down when I reread. However, I feel like my understanding and awareness of the full story only enriches my appreciation when rereading Little Bee.

I find it very interesting that Cleave is not only able to write so convincingly from the points of view of two women, but also that all the male characters in the story are very static and have some flaw that leads or ultimately will lead to their downfall. Andrew is so consumed by his guilt and depression that he ultimately commits suicide rather than face the consequences of his guilt and the enormous problems the world is experiencing. Lawrence also refuses to face his problems and in my opinion takes an approach that is just as cowardly as Andrew's, one that the majority of people also take. Lawrence tells himself that yes, there are issues in the world that are horrible and need to be dealt with, but that's just the way the world is and there is really nothing that he can do about it.

I think that Lawrence is symbolic of the general attitude of England and the rest of the world towards major issues. Rather than focus on the personal aspect, how it would benefit Little Bee to live in England and the horrible fate that awaits her in Nigeria, he would rather hide behind the sterile, dehumanizing argument of the government that she is illegal and therefore, a drain on and detriment to the country. Lawrence recognizes that he is selfish for wanting Little Bee gone because he does not want anyone deflecting Sarah's attention from him, however, he clings to and almost seems proud of that selfishness. The reader also gets the sense that Lawrence will fall apart if or when he loses Sarah. His selfishness will ultimately be his downfall because in trying to hang on to her, he will drive her away.