Main goal: Comment on 2 people’s posts and reply to comments on yours. If your collaborator doesn’t have a post 5, comment on another post 5 or one of their previous posts (but if you comment on a previous post, you need to email me to let me know since I don’t check through all posts all the time)
Jadyn and Talen
Kylie and Christian
Hailey and Sterling
Tyler and Bruce
Kaitlyn and Gus
Anthony and Mina
Alli and Donovin
Katie and Matt
Jadyn and Christian
Kylie and Sterling
Hailey and Bruce
Tyler and Gus
Kaitlyn and Mina
Anthony and Donovin
Alli and Matt
Katie and Talen
Section 3: pages 433-642
To continue the thread of my thoughts from the last post, William is probably the worst character I’ve ever read in any book ever. In looking at my annotations from this section, I believe I said no less than three times that I hope William gets killed. At no point does he have redeeming qualities. When Philip talks of him, he said, “when enraged he would be lethally violent” (Follett 463). And I don’t think there is a better description of him, other than a giant (insert bad words here that I can’t write for a school assignment). He is so worried that his power is going to be threatened, that people are laughing at him, that people are taking advantage of him or his family, that he just loses it and does become lethally violent, just as Philip says. Later in the section I came across another quote, from William himself, that encapsulates his opinion: “If people were not afraid of you, you had nothing” (Follett 604). Blegh.
The person who felt the brunt of William’s horrendousness in this section was Aliena. Actually, she was the main victim of a lot. As she heads away from her home, after being assaulted by William, she gets attacked again, and she finally understands what it is like to be on the lower levels of the pyramid of classes that I posted in my first blog. The two quotes that best fit this would be first when it states, “All her life she had had someone to protect her” and then later when she realizes, “People were allowed to beat them and rob them as if they were horses or dogs” (Follett 494, 508).
Aliena is really where I see one of the biggest ‘Big Ideas’ of the book starting to come through. I know last post I talked about the interconnectedness of all of the people, and it definitely continues through this section too (like when the Aliena story line connects with Philip yet again), but the bigger point that is shining through is manipulation. After all of the horrid things that Aliena went through leaving her home, she finally sees her father again, who tells her he gave some gold to a priest. Aliena goes to get that money from the priest and ends up almost cutting out his eyes (holy violence of Medieval times).
However, it says of her, ” instead of feeling ashamed she was overwhelmed by a sense of her own power. She had resolved not to let people make her a victim, and she had proved she could keep her resolution” (Follett 557). Definite tie to the manipulation ideas. However, in the end of the section, she feels that all of the events of this section have in effect manipulated her to be someone she can hardly recognize anymore.
Now, I say Aliena really shows it, and she does, but the first time I really saw this in the section was with Prior Philip (oh, right, he’s now the head guy at Kingsbridge monastery and working toward building that cathedral that the whole story is built around…and yes, it takes a long time because I am MORE THAN 450 PAGES INTO THIS THING AND THEY ARE STILL WORKING ON GETTING IT BUILT).
But back to the manipulation. The narration says about Philip, “He had finished being manipulated. From now on he would do the manipulating” (Follett 467). This is a huge change for him, but it ends quite poorly in this section because he pissed off Waleran (the bishop) and earns an enemy for life. Also, I dislike Waleran, but that should be no surprise as I dislike a lot of these characters. But, besides my negative leanings, I really like the contrast Follett gives between Philip and Waleran when the text states, “Waleran seemed to think he was entitled to use people any way he chose in the service of God. Philip believed that caring for people was the service of God” (Follett 617).
A few good quotes that I can’t fit anywhere:
“Tom was one of those people who kept his religion deep in his heart. Sometimes they were the best kind” (Follett 435)
“Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing that you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically” (Follett 612)
And finally, there is a small breadcrumb of hint at the mystery of Ellen (who returned a year or two after the peeing incident of the last section). Apparently, William’s (the worst character to ever be) parents know who she is and thought she was dead. For goodness sakes, Follett, just give me some answers please and thank you.
**I thought I posted this, but apparently I never actually hit publish. So here is my late post 3…
Section 2; Pages 225-433
The Hamleighs are THE WORST POSSIBLE FAMILY IN EXISTENCE! William is one of the characters whose perspective the author gives in this story, and honestly, every time I read from it, I want to give up on this book. Now, I’m usually ok with violence and dark themes (I mean, just look at some of the things I’m going to assign/already have assigned you to read), but this guy…
He is violent for the sake of being violent. And maybe that’s just the way it was in medieval England, but I think I have too much empathy to really get in to this. Here are just a few of William’s worst issues in this section: 1) constant talk of sexually assaulting women;
2) tortures a knight by hanging him above a fire until his skin starts to cook; 3) constant worry of reputation and a desire for power.
Actually, that last point really reminded me of a few of my other disliked literary characters (Parris of The Crucible fame comes to mind). I really can’t stand characters who have a main goal of gaining power and then maintaining it regardless of who they have to assault, maim, or kill. Sadly, this is the truth of history. Thinking back to Bartolome de las Casas, this is exactly what he described about the Spanish and their treatment of the natives. William’s behavior and personality just makes me think of all of the horrors of history, and it just makes me too sad and then angry.
On a side note, most people in this book (men) treat women horrendously. Even some of the guys I don’t hate as characters. Again, another mark against the book.
Switching gears, I’m over 250 pages in to this book that is supposed to be about building a cathedral and honestly, other than Agnes making Tom promise he’ll build one as her dying wish (maybe she should have made her dying wish, don’t leave our son to die on my grave, but I digress), there really hasn’t’ been much action on that front. Most of what Follett has focused on (a possible big idea for me to watch/trace as I read) is the intertwined nature of humanity. All of these people, Tom Builder and his fam (including Ellen, even though at the end she peed on some religious texts as the higher-ups of the monastery other than Philip kicked her out for the rumor of her being a witch -but I think it has something to do with the secret of her past and the connections to Waleran),
the Hamleighs, Philip and the Kingsbridge monastery, Waleran, the newly introduced family of the Earl of Shiring, just consistently make choices that impact everyone else.
I don’t know how to tie in the following quote to anything I’ve said yet, but maybe it ties in to my tracing of life at this time and how crappy it must have been. Ellen’s son who lived in the woods with her for his first 12 years of life, after experiencing life following Tom and his kids really learns this craptastic nature of society (ooh, tie to individual and society here…). The narration explains, “Now that he knew about hunger, and cold, and danger, and desperation, he would always be afraid of them” (Follett 340).
At least by the end of this section, the cathedral will begin to be built (because Jack burned down the chapel of the monastery, yet again an example of how intertwined all of these seemingly disparate people are).
(And just in case you are wondering, Grammarly’s tone detector has informed me that I am mainly disapproving in my writing here, which honestly is the truth…)
Remember, I am expecting to see you interacting with at least two people’s blog posts. If your commenting collaborator doesn’t have something up by Saturday, pick anyone else so that you have two comments up. Also, respond to comments from others to keep up some form of communication when that’s really all we’ve got for us right now…
Jadyn and Sterling
Kylie and Bruce
Hailey and Gus
Tyler and Mina
Kaitlyn and Donovin
Anthony and Matt
Alli and Talen
Katie and Christian
Section 1; Page 1-225
Well, like I said in my previous post, I’m at least farther this time in reading the book than the first time, but I’m just not sure about the book. Yes, it is interesting to learn things about the 12th century (for instance, a chimney while building a home was a radical idea rather than just a basic, yes, we should have a way for the smoke to go out thought about constructing), but I don’t know if I like these characters.
First off, there is Tom Builder. His last name is his job, which is interesting as a way to think of how last names came about. He is a mason who builds things, so why not just call him that. I guess I would have at some point come from both a free man (my maiden name) and a man whose father was named John. So I have been thinking about this aspect lately.
But he seems to make a lot of really bad choices to start off. First of all, maybe don’t get a rich man mad at you.
Yeah, he fired you and almost ran over your daughter, but he seems like someone who you don’t want to be on the bad side of. Rich, land-owning people at this time have ALL the power (and maybe still a lot of power now, but let’s not get into that here…) and there really aren’t any social safety nets in England 1137.
For instance, after Tom made William mad, Tom wandered with his family for months without work, without money, and his wife Agnes was pregnant the whole time. AND THEN he decided that he needed to chase down the man who stole their pig. Granted yes, this pig was worth at least a year’s worth of money, but waiting for a whole day in the rain to end up killing this guy…
Again, I wonder why I’m reading this book.
But that isn’t even the part of my first section that was the most difficult to read. When Agnes died after giving birth in the forest in the winter (what a horrible horrible way to go), I thought that was bad enough. But then Tom decided that they needed to leave the LIVE BABY ON THE GRAVE TO DIE –
I was done with him. Done.
But I kept reading and he decided this was a bad idea (duh, dude) and then went back, but the baby had disappeared (luckily we learned that a monk had found the baby and was took him (the baby) to the monastery). So all of this plot info (and my opinion of it all) really was leading up to an idea I have about what Follett is trying to say here. Maybe there is an overall theme of the fragility of life, or of the harsh reality of life in the 12th century.
Most of the first section focused on the story from Tom’s perspective, but then it switched to Philip, the prior of the monastery that found the baby.
He is probably the only character that I really like. He was on a trip to visit the archdeacon of his whatever (there were a lot of church terms in this part) when he encountered Tom and Ellen (a lady he met after Agnes died who he is now in a relationship with…apparently in this time period you don’t really mourn dead people too long because people die all the time of everything, and you just move right on to the next lady to help you raise your children).
Ellen was in the prologue of the book as a pregnant lady who cursed a priest, monk, and some others for hanging the father of her unborn child. This was actually really intriguing and this mystery of why these men hanged the boy and why they fear Ellen continued to come up. Follett does a great job of keeping my interest (even though I don’t like many characters, and I think life during this time period is horrific, and the book makes me feel angry a lot). When the archdeacon Walerean (who was the black haired priest that was cursed in the prologue) sees Ellen, he is TERRIFIED and talks to himself about how she can be alive and all of that. I want to know the deal with her and her connection to Walerean and why they hanged her baby’s (Jack is the kid’s name) dad. So I guess I’ll keep reading until the next time.
On a final note, I now know what a trencher is.
In Romeo and Juliet, one of the servants uses the term and I’ve never actually known what it is. But here it is: “yard-long loaves of white bread” cut “into thick slices to be used as trenchers — edible plates.” The more you know…
Jadyn and Bruce
Kylie and Gus
Hailey and Mina
Tyler and Donovin
Kaitlyn and Matt
Anthony and Talen
Alli and Christian
Katie and Sterling