{"id":924,"date":"2015-05-05T13:49:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.evergreen.edu\/losttimerose\/?p=57"},"modified":"2015-05-05T13:49:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:49:54","slug":"journal-entry-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/journal-entry-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Journal Entry #10"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the close reading our guest did on Thursday I have been thinking about action and passivity. \u00a0The narrator, at this point in the book, seems to be a very passive participant in his own life. \u00a0He spends much of his time watching others and waiting for others to do what he wants. \u00a0When things don’t go as he hopes he is let down and is upset. \u00a0However, if he never puts something into action himself how is he going to get the result he expects? \u00a0I was particularly stuck on the sentence on page 595 of Within a Budding Grove<\/em>\u00a0when the narrator says “My whole plan was wrecked.” \u00a0The plan he’s referring to is his plan to look indifferently at pottery and hope that Elstir will introduce him to the little group of girls. \u00a0However, he only tells Elstir after the fact how much he’d like to meet them. \u00a0I was stuck on his notion that waiting for someone to do what he wanted was a plan. \u00a0To me, not doing anything and expecting results is typically not a very effective plan.<\/p>\n

The more I thought on his passivity I realized there were two events in Combray where the narrator made a plan and followed through. \u00a0The first was when, as a child, he writes to his mother while she’s at dinner to have her come kiss him goodnight. \u00a0He even confronts her in the hallway. \u00a0His plan works, she even spends the night with him, but he’s miserable. \u00a0The second plan he acts on is when he works out a way to visit his old uncle Adolphe without his parents. \u00a0He sneaks over to visit his uncle so he can meet some of the beautiful women his uncle hangs out with. \u00a0While his uncle seems irritated, it seems as though this plan has worked. \u00a0However, the narrator tells his parents what happened. \u00a0This causes conflict in the family and uncle Adolphe no longer visits them.<\/p>\n

In both instances the narrator made a plan and acted. \u00a0In both instances he got the result he wanted. \u00a0And in both instances there were negative consequences that overshadowed the victory of enacting his plan. \u00a0This may have taught him as a child that action isn’t the best way to go about things. \u00a0It makes more sense now that as a teenager the narrator opts for waiting and watching rather than jumping in and doing anything. \u00a0I’m interested as the novel progresses to see if the narrator continues to be so passive in his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the close reading our guest did on Thursday I have been thinking about action and passivity.  The narrator, at this point in the book, seems to be a very passive participant in his own life.  He spends much of… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}