Today in the program we watched a film titled The Grand Illusion. In French of course but with the title translated into English. This film made me think of the difference officers and the enlisted men go through. In WWI, officers that were taken prisoner or to interment camps were treated in the highest regard and the film only shows that side of the war. The film may not be about the difference between an Officer and an enlisted man but it does bring to question what happened to the enlisted men. The enlisted men were treated with horrible conditions and were the workers of the labor camp. One of my main thoughts through the films was how could the directors only see the officer side, but then I remembered that it was just only a film.

I come from a line of both enlisted and officers. My grandfather was an officer in the Army during WWII and my brother is currently enlisted in the Army, currently serving his 10th year. I give every man and women that were and are currently in the military a huge credit but those on the front line will always stand out to me more than anyone else, and those are usually enlisted. The soliders that go first in a fight and are the first to die or get hurt are the ones that come first in my mind. They are also the ones that when caught by opposing army’s, are the ones to be killed and pulled for information. I believe that officers do fight but they fight in a way that his men always follow. Officers play out the fight and mentally and physically prepair his men for a fight and when the men go out they are ready. I just feel that the film should of shown this. Shown that the officers and the enlisted men work together and that they would not survive of it was not for each other.

I liked the film overall. It gave light onto what it was like for officers in WWI and how even the french can trick the Germans in so many ways. The film also showed how an officer gave his life so his fellow officers could escape and continue to live their lives. The film always the audience to see the sacrifices in the war, but only one point of sacrifice. That of the officers.

After reading Octavia Butlers Kindred, I started to get a new idea of historical and science fiction in literature. I first read the novel when in 2004, I was only in grade school. It was another novel that my father gave me to read because of its importance to soceity and the knowledge it will bring along with it. As I began to read the novel I remember being confused and not fully understanding the plot or being able to keep up with the characters, mostly becuase I was not very interested in it. When I finished the novel, it was a bit of a mile stone, not becuase I had finished a novel but because I had finished a novel my father gave me. Which was always something to be proud of in my father’s eyes. My father used to ask me to explain to him the novel and the details; including the characters, their backgrounds, their current role in the novel and how they weeved into the plot. When starting to explain to my father I found this quite difficult. I knew all of the answers but becuase it had an element of unrealness, I froze. I finally tried my hardest to explain to my father the exact answered to his pressing questions. I had never thought of the novel after. That was until we read Kindred for In Search of Lost Time.

When I realized that the program would be reading Kindred I had mixed feelings, becuase I had not take a liking to the novel before I had not really remembered that much about it, only the main plot and themes. When rereading the novel I told myself to forget everything I remembered, or thought I remembered about the novel. I began reading the novel as if I had read it for the first time. I finally found something in the text. I found a story that I could follow and charcters that cought my attention. I finished the novel within two days and soaked up everything it had to offer. I understood why Rufus was an important character and why Kevin understood why. Age. Age allowed me to devlop an idea and this idea helped me identify the different characters and their stuggles. I now love the novel and have reread it about three times now. Kindred was a novel that was hard to read, not becuase it was long or had difficult diction, but becuase it made you face the reality if what was. Of what society was like and how not everyone was treated equally.

I am starting to like Proust, I never thought this day would come. When the program first started, reading Swann’s Way, I believed I would love the novel becuase of the praise it has recieved over the years. While reading Swann’s Way, I started to hate the discriptions Proust used to describe Combray and his use of 10 page’s to describe one flower. This past week we had a guest speaker that really showed me the way to follow Proust. Patrick, our guest speaker interpreted Proust and his writing in a positive way and he allowed me to view the characters within In Search of Lost Time, in such a way that I have not before. Before venturing into Proust’s six volume set, I had the state of mind that becuase I love the works of Hemingway and Steinbeck that I would automatically love the work of Proust; I was wrong. While talking to Patrick he opened my eyes to the way Proust uses his personal life in the same why that Hemingway and Steinbeck.

One of the main reasons I love Hemingway was becuase he took his personal life and twisted it into a way that his novels followed his life. I love the way Hemingway portray’s his feelings and put them into the words that made up his novels. When I starting reading Proust, I believed he was nothing like this but then as I finished Swann’s Way and began Within a Budding Grove, Patrick helped me see that Proust, in his own way, is similar to Hemingway and his writing style. Proust took his personal life and his feelings and put them into his novels. This is what I love and what I am looking for. When I finally finished Swann’s Way I was realieved but then I felt a sense of relief when I started reading Volume II because it was finally what I had been looking for when reading Proust.

While continuing to read In Search of Lost Time, I am finding that I’m starting to understand why Proust uses the specific diction and phrases he does. I hope to continue to enjoy and question Proust in everything he does.

The narrator opens his mind and interpretation when he starts to describe Swann’s love story. The narrator puts his own point of view to the side and opens it to a thrid person point of view, as a reader, this allows me to see in ideas and feelings of Swann. When the narrator begins to describe the way Odettes and Swanns love affair began, it reminded me of the way my love affair began two years ago, well before it ended. Similar to Swann, I was invited over to a ‘friends’ family home for their famous weekly dinner. The families daughter played piano every week and her brother would play the guitar. While I would socialize and be kind I could not help but notice the mothers liking to me and her sons constant gaze in my direction. I learned that her son had taken a liking to me for about two years, his name was Martin. I believe people fall in love in misterious ways and this was one of the most misterious ways I could think of. As the night went on, I talked to Martin and his family, I did not take an immediate liking to him, but there was something about him that drew in my attention, enough to accept his invitation to come back for next weeks dinner. As the weeks turned into months, Martin would play the guitar for me and convince me on why Jimmy Hendrix was so much better than Jim Morrison. It was about three months of weekly dinners and seeing each other at school until he asked me to dinner, but with only him and I. I went to dinner with Martin and finally saw what it was about him that I loved, he was different, he saw the world in such a different way than most people that it amazed me. Similar to Swann and Odette, time was really our only friend. We took time to get to know each other; however, one of the hardest things to go past for our families was our “class difference”. My father was a doctor while Martins’ father was a mechanic. My mother was an accountant while his was a preschool teacher, none of this mattered to me but it mattered to my parents. With Swann being in the higher class and pretending to not be, I understand why he protrayed that persona. As our relationship went on I fell in love with Martin and who he was, everything about him was so new and amazing, I was blinded, I never noticed our differnce in class or race, but my mother and father did. They would constantly tell me I did not belong with someone “like that”, I would cry and tell them they were oblivious to the obvious and only saw what they wanted to see. Time went on and I fell more in love everyday, that was until things started to change. I have not read far enough into Swann’s love story to know if the relationship between Odette and Swann changed but the relationship between Martin and I did. Martin started to become a different and harsher person, he was not the man I fell in love with but I still stayed with him, until about three months ago. When I moved to Washington my eyes finally opened to the relm of posibilities and chances Washington offered, what the world offered. I broke up with Martin and told myself that if it was meant to be then our paths would cross again. I still love Martin very much but I know I did the right thing for the both of us. I still think about him and our memories, similar to Swann, I will never forget the way it felt to fall in love.

Within his own mind, Proust wrote a novel describing the inner workings of mind, body, memory, and personal identity. Proust opens his mind to the memory and identity, how memory affects and contributes to personal identity. When the protagonist of the novel describes the memories of his mother and her kiss, it triggers a similar feeling in me. As a young boy, the narrator goes through an inner conflict of waiting until his mother came up the staircase to kiss her or go to bed without his mothers kiss. Similar to the young boy, I had an inner conflict whether to kiss my mother good night or not. Until about the age of 10, I depended on my mother for everything. She told me when to eat and what to eat, what to wear and how to wear it, and how to live my daily life. I felt like my mother was me, just a larger version. The young boy struggled with his decision the way I struggled with mine, he made a decision based on what his mother would think of him not of what his consequences would be. I would have the same sense of mind, as I grew older the conflicts in my mind regarding my mother ceased to exist in the way they used to. I learned to find myself in a way that I never knew existed, the memory of my mother being everything about me allowed me identify myself away from her. My mother loved me in a way different from she loved my sisters, she always assured that I had everything I needed and wanted. The connection between Proust and his mother opens my mind to how my mothers love was “normal” in its own way. Throughout my life, and in the current moments, I finally realize, I have my own normal and my own sense of identity.