1. I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to play out, and it looks like I'm the first to post...so I'm just going to take a stab at answering some of the questions.
Useful and representative examples of where the writer, Adams, establishes his distance from the character, Henry Adams:
p. 39 "So Henry Adams, well aware that he could not succeed as a scholar..."
p. 46 "...For such a temper, Adams was not the best companion..."
p. 33 "The Class of 1858, to which Henry Adams belonged...."
p. 39 "...and Henry Adams went on writing. No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits."
My impression is that the author establishes more distance from the character when he is critical or negative about himself, which is quite a lot. He seems quite a negative person, never really enthusiastic. It seems even more distant when he refers to himself with his full name, Henry Adams, instead of just Adams. There are times, when using just Adams, that it seems he could just say I .
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3 comments:
I agree I think that at the begging of the essay that Adams seems very distant from himself, while in school and while he first is begging to find out who he is. This is shown by the number of times he puts himself down. But, I think that as the essay goes on that he feels more comfortable with himself and begins to feels closer. For example when he has the group of people over before he leaves and he talks about how he feels that the women are smarter and more capable then the men. I think that this goes hand and hand in what he, as the author is saying, and this shows that as he got older he felt more comfortable with himself. And as an author he feels closer to his older self then when he was in college. It almost seemed that he was somewhat disappointed in his college self, but proud of the man that he became.
I think those are really good examples of his distance. I also agree that he is very negative through most of this piece, but it almost felt like he thought he needed to be. To get the distance of a third person view I think he almost thought he had to be exeptionally critical. He tended to leave out anything that may have had joy to it for fear that if he got too involved he would lose his historic narration. He did get more involved in the end of the piece when it seemed like he found something with a true spark for him. He had a real opinion there and if the whole piece could have had half of that energy to it then maybe I wouldn't have cried just trying to make it through.
Yea, I agree, as I look at the essay more closely, he increases his level of enthusiasm. I agree he seemed rather disappointed with his youth, but more secure with age. Melissa, I am glad you cried, as well. :) Actually, as I go through the questions, though it is getting quite late(meaning past 10pm)I'm finding more to the essay that is actually interesting. I enjoy many of his descriptions or phrases. There are some parts that I really have to struggle to understand--and some that I just have to skim through. I'm thinking in particular of the entire beginning section of 'Vis Inertiae.' I am one of those readers that gets a feel for a book from the first page, and if I don't like it, I don't read further. Basically, lazy or picky. So I think my first read-through was with a bad attitude and a closed mind (tears in eyes, as well.)
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