First and foremost, The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker is a weird book. With its interesting way of describing mundane life in an office and excessively long footnotes, it takes a dive into the world of our main character, Howie. Howie is a sometimes relatable character, who we see delve into the most lengthy stories about the most boring things anyone could imagine. The first chapter with his shoelaces, no one would necessarily think about their shoelaces that much, heck I don't even know if I've ever had a pair of shoelaces break on my shoes in my lifetime. I would have said Howie is completely relatable if it weren't for the footnotes. On pages 108 and 128 we see Howie's darker side, where in the first footnote on page 108, we find out Howie stabbed his best friend at the time in the neck with a pair of scissors. Why did he stab him you ask? He stabbed him over the 64 pack of crayons his friend had gotten, and wouldn't show Howie how the p...
While reading Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway , I couldn't help but think about the mental health aspect of the story, and it led me to think about other stories involving such topics. First and foremost, the representation of mental health in Mrs. Dalloway is one of the better ones I have seen, quite possibly because it was written by someone who knows what it's like to endure these feelings. If we take a look at another book that doesn't do it any justice, we can clearly see the difference between experience and wanting to make something young people will eat up and pay for. Thirteen Reasons Why , by Jay Asher is a good example of a bad thing. Jay Asher wrote about Hannah Baker, a high school freshman girl and why she commits suicide. Jay Asher has no experience with any of this, and if you read the book it's very obvious how much he doesn't know what he's talking about. Comparatively, Virginia Woolf has these experiences of mental health strugg...
In Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, Jason Taylor explores the life of being bullied in school. He is not very high in the social hierarchy, but not the lowest of low. In this spot, there isn't much you can do to improve or really drop in ranking, but if you start acting cool and confident and make people notice you, then you might shift. Just like in BSG, real life has these hierarchies as well. In my years of school, I have noticed certain people tend to "shine" more than others, and it made me really take notice of the social construction around me. At every school, there are those core people who stand out more than others, and everyone seems to know them. In BSG, that is the exact same thing we see. I believe that there are very defined cliques in BSG as well, and in our real life setting of Uni. People tend to stick to their groups, not really branching out to other groups, but with Uni there is a little flexibility. Everyone knows each other, and it isn't ...
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