The End of the Road: Where does it leave us?

So.

We've read a book with 67 chapters and worth hundreds and hundreds of pages filled with paragraphs that last a page and dedicated to everything from crafty detectives, sad orphans, and mud, mud, shitloads of mud everywhere. That's a long, long road we've traveled, so where does it leave us?

Dickens spent a lot of time giving us things to think about, though without actually making us read essays upon essays of drab, wordy complaints about society. Through an immense amount of characters who represent entire ideas and philosophies, and a carefully, if not overwhelmingly, intricate plot that connect them all together, Dickens has given us something complex. Every connection, every action, every little detail, and especially the time he chooses to make certain things happen to particular people, is done for a reason and speaks about something.

So how has this book changed your perspective? Beyond plot and entertainment, Dickens ultimately had a vision that was meant to inspire some sort of change to your mindset (and mine) on society. What is it?

In partnerships:

We've examined the problems of love vs marriage and relationships for convenience through Lady Dedlock and Nemo/Captain Hawdon, Ada and Richard, and obviously between Esther and John and Alan (we've been on this book so long I feel I have a right to be on a first name basis with the characters).

How does correlate to your own life or your feelings on living for passion and real love vs supposed-realism and being a golddigger (anyone looking for sugar daddies or mamas?) Is the ending with Esther and Alan real? How would it be different if Jarndyce hadn't given them such a merry beginning?

We've seen how things like religion (or particularly religious fundamentalism) have ruined perfectly fine relationships through Ms. Barbary: she ruins the bond she had with her sister, Honoria/LD, she drove LD and Hawdon to split after making a big thing out of Esther's birth and claiming Esther died, and she ruined her own relationship with Boythorn. How else does it affect characters or our own society?


In solving problems:

What about society makes it a failed device? What makes it work? Clearly Dickens has his own ideas about it. In Law we have Bucket as the answer to law enforcement. In Tulkinhorn and Guppy to an extent, we saw law used for personal and selfish goals, and to a larger extent, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce was a device to be used to keep Chancery in such a painful limbo. Do we do the same in modern day? Do we distract or drag out pointless things to take advantage?

In altruism:

How do we help people like Jo with our resources today? Can any of us ever imagine taking in someone to help them without expecting anything in return? Do we push people along? Do we see our Pardiggles and Jellbys in modern culture? Is there any hope for the Jennys and Lizs of our day? Can we, like in chapter 8, ever truly understand people who go through that kind of existence, and, like Esther and Ada, make any kind of difference?


Anything else?

I'm writing alot and this may start to look like an essay or essay questions so I apologize. But if we haven't gotten anything out of this book, except for hopefully a good grade, then in the long run we didn't get much out of this class. This was sure as hell as a long book that wasn't very fun like other huge books (like Harry Potter for Mona) but please share anything you've picked up from the text, our conversations, or even some other form of revelation that dawned on you at the time of this semester through this story.

And, as the final blogger, I can only say that after traveling this long road, it sure as hell feels good to reach the end, rest my figurative feet for the moment, and see what new paths this road has opened up for me.

You've all been fun. Especially Team Handsome. (We're awesome, but so are you). And Prof Reitz. You rock too.

Cheers.



Masoud