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I must be ovulating or something because I keep making entries. But ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistful did this fun post here asking [What character] makes your heart wander with them off the page and into a story that was never told?
I encourage participation in that post, but it also made me think about my answer. The main person I thought of was Tom from The Mill on the Floss. (I note, btw, that on the Amazon page Tom is dismissed as the "spoiled and selfish" brother of "free-spirited" Maggie--I protest on Tom's behalf, admitting that maybe this is one of those times when I totally misread the character. It's been a while since I read MotF. Tom was more ordinary but Maggie didn't seem to be able to get from breakfast to lunch without causing problems. In fact, that very description on Amazon is counter-intuitive. Free-spirited is hardly in conflict with spoiled and selfish--more often they all three go together.)
But what I also realized was a thing about Tom was he was one of those characters that somehow got stuck in my head as a...what's the word? A life lesson. Like, he had something about him that was presented as something he thought that lodged in my head and turned into something I thought of a lot. It wasn't exactly the same as reading something and recognizing it as something that you do or think too. More like a fortune cookie fortune you never forget.
I could immediately think of three characters that gave me stuff like that.
They were:
Tom Tolliver from The Mill on the Floss. As I said was a character I liked, but the thing about him that always stuck with me was that he was a character without regret. If Tom got in trouble for whipping a fence post and was punished, he accepted his own whupping as the consequence of his actions. But he could not think to himself that there was something wrong with whipping the post to begin with, because he, Tom, had decided to do it, so he must have had a good reason at the time.
Reading this now, I can see how that attitude might make someone a nightmare, but in context it didn't read to me as self-righteousness but just a lack of regret (which probably felt like a relief since Maggie seemed to be always regretting pointlessly and getting herself into more trouble because of it). To me it was more about looking forward--you accept the bad consequences and perhaps you won't ever do it again having learned that. But you don't waste your time regretting doing it in the first place because you can't change it. Your past self must have had some reason for doing it so accept him and move on.
Harriet M. Welsh from Harriet the Spy. This book wasn't super-important to me the way it is for many others, but I can't count how many times in my life I've remembered Harriet asking her friend Sport to explain something because Harriet was never ashamed to ask a question or not know something since once she got an answer, she'd know it from then on.
Caleb Trask from East of Eden. I love Caleb, but for some reason the bit of wisdom of his I always go back to is this: no child is happy with his or her age. They always want to be younger or older than they are. If you want to annoy them you figure out which one they want to be, and then treat them as the opposite.
Okay, I don't usually use that last bit about intentionally annoying people, but I love the bit about kids wanting to be older or younger. It certainly explains some of my own most cringeworthy (to me) childhood memories. I was indeed getting treated as the opposite of the one I wanted to be.
Those were the three that came to mind. Does anyone else have anything like that? A line in a book, probably associated with a character (but maybe not) that sort of sticks in your mind with regards to the real world? Or yourself?
mistful did this fun post here asking [What character] makes your heart wander with them off the page and into a story that was never told?I encourage participation in that post, but it also made me think about my answer. The main person I thought of was Tom from The Mill on the Floss. (I note, btw, that on the Amazon page Tom is dismissed as the "spoiled and selfish" brother of "free-spirited" Maggie--I protest on Tom's behalf, admitting that maybe this is one of those times when I totally misread the character. It's been a while since I read MotF. Tom was more ordinary but Maggie didn't seem to be able to get from breakfast to lunch without causing problems. In fact, that very description on Amazon is counter-intuitive. Free-spirited is hardly in conflict with spoiled and selfish--more often they all three go together.)
But what I also realized was a thing about Tom was he was one of those characters that somehow got stuck in my head as a...what's the word? A life lesson. Like, he had something about him that was presented as something he thought that lodged in my head and turned into something I thought of a lot. It wasn't exactly the same as reading something and recognizing it as something that you do or think too. More like a fortune cookie fortune you never forget.
I could immediately think of three characters that gave me stuff like that.
They were:
Tom Tolliver from The Mill on the Floss. As I said was a character I liked, but the thing about him that always stuck with me was that he was a character without regret. If Tom got in trouble for whipping a fence post and was punished, he accepted his own whupping as the consequence of his actions. But he could not think to himself that there was something wrong with whipping the post to begin with, because he, Tom, had decided to do it, so he must have had a good reason at the time.
Reading this now, I can see how that attitude might make someone a nightmare, but in context it didn't read to me as self-righteousness but just a lack of regret (which probably felt like a relief since Maggie seemed to be always regretting pointlessly and getting herself into more trouble because of it). To me it was more about looking forward--you accept the bad consequences and perhaps you won't ever do it again having learned that. But you don't waste your time regretting doing it in the first place because you can't change it. Your past self must have had some reason for doing it so accept him and move on.
Harriet M. Welsh from Harriet the Spy. This book wasn't super-important to me the way it is for many others, but I can't count how many times in my life I've remembered Harriet asking her friend Sport to explain something because Harriet was never ashamed to ask a question or not know something since once she got an answer, she'd know it from then on.
Caleb Trask from East of Eden. I love Caleb, but for some reason the bit of wisdom of his I always go back to is this: no child is happy with his or her age. They always want to be younger or older than they are. If you want to annoy them you figure out which one they want to be, and then treat them as the opposite.
Okay, I don't usually use that last bit about intentionally annoying people, but I love the bit about kids wanting to be older or younger. It certainly explains some of my own most cringeworthy (to me) childhood memories. I was indeed getting treated as the opposite of the one I wanted to be.
Those were the three that came to mind. Does anyone else have anything like that? A line in a book, probably associated with a character (but maybe not) that sort of sticks in your mind with regards to the real world? Or yourself?
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That's cool--that it's good to think of that when your own personality goes the opposite way. I wonder if a lot of these kinds of phrases are things like that, things we remember because we need to hear them in some way.
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"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."
On my first reading (I was savage as a child) I thought Gandalf was being a total wuss, but it stuck in my head, thank goodness.
Except in those moments when I'm dealing with a couple of my relatives whom I will not name, in which case I'd like to change my vote from Tolkien to Jane Austen.
Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.
From Sense and Sensibility. A noble sentiment it's not, but it's socially useful and widely applicable, as befits Austen, my personal Goddess of Snark.
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There's one I quote to myself all the time, from Stevenson's "Catriona":
“Well, it seems it’s hard to ken folk rightly,” said I. “That was just what I forgot when ye came in, Mr. Balfour!” says the Writer.
It's not the lushest prose but it's such a nice moment: David (the 1st person protagonist) has just found out a positive thing about an old enemy; while Stewart the Writer has been revising his negative opinion of Our Hero. It always pops into my head to remind myself that people are probably painting inaccurate pictures of me at the same time as I am of them!
That's the first one I thought of, anyways.
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Reading this now, I can see how that attitude might make someone a nightmare, but in context it didn't read to me as self-righteousness but just a lack of regret (which probably felt like a relief since Maggie seemed to be always regretting pointlessly and getting herself into more trouble because of it). To me it was more about looking forward--you accept the bad consequences and perhaps you won't ever do it again having learned that. But you don't waste your time regretting doing it in the first place because you can't change it. Your past self must have had some reason for doing it so accept him and move on.
Inner geek-alert but this reminds me so much of what the character Kahvi and her Go-Back tribe in Elfquest always represented for me, and it's one of the main reasons for why I love them so much. Already when they're first introduced, you get this short and concise; the main characters, the Wolfriders, have been attacked by trolls and one of them has been killed. His life-partner is all over his corpse, devastated, and out of nowhere Kahvi comes riding elk, carrying her up, saying something like "no use for that, little mourning-bird, dead is dead. It's better to live." And then they help the wolfriders fighting off the trolls, basically saving their lives.
And as the story goes on and we get to know them better, this attitude remains in tact. Kahvi manages to piss off the Wolfriders within ten minutes, with her very practical on down-to-earth attitude: "oh that one looks like he's done for any minute, don't waste room or fur on him!" They take it as lack of empathy, and to a certain degree it is, but I've always seen it as more of the necessary stone-heartedness you must have if you live in hard conditions and look after the well of the group rather than the individual.
It gets especially clear when her own daughter is killed, having stayed too long to fight off the trolls in battle. She sheds a tear for her, but wastes no more time mourning, concluding that she (the daughter) chose to die a glorious death (which she did), and that when they get back to the camp they "will dance for her". Because that's what the Go-Backs do -they look forward, never back, and they seem to have a fundamental belief that there's a reason everything that happens, happens, so there's really no point to dwell on it. The only thing you can change is the present.
As someone who tends to dwell back too much, I find the attitude wonderfully freeing and refreshing.
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