Howard's End: The End

Connect

"The building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion."

"Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him."

"Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

The idea of connection exists throughout the novel. However, it is an abstract form of connection, a form that begs for a deep understanding of, and link to, the clarity and wisdom within us all. It is our obtuseness which blinds us to that wisdom. Until we connect, we are all Margaret's charity cases, EM Forster's charity cases, the charity cases of those who see the stain of obtuseness that abstracts our view. Howard's End is beautiful because it viciously swipes at the stain that so easily distracts us to what lies before us.

I would like to bring up an interesting debate that was prompted by our own Ms. Soble and her lovely family. Margaret. At the end of the novel she is living at Howard's End with her sister and husband, Henry. Is she there because she has made peace and accepted Henry's "obtuseness," or is she there because she had the clarity to realize that he had in fact changed and that she was at peace there? Therefore, is Margaret weak or is she strong for staying with Henry at Howard's End? 

But let us not forget Leonard.

When the rich struggle, it is the poor who suffer. I was reminded of The Great Gatsby. Life resumes for the wealthy, who remain seemingly indifferent to the deaths of the down-and-out. And so it made me angry when Leonard was slain and seemingly forgotten by those partially responsible, as Gatsby was by Tom and Daisy.

Perhaps it is wisdom, not indifference, however, in this case that guides our friends. It is not the concealment of a wrong, but the painful discharge of a truth. Why should society dictate proper feelings and behavior? It is Margaret who realizes this. She realizes that "Others go farther still, and move outside humanity altogether... Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It's all part of the battle against sameness. Differences-eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow perhaps, but colour in the daily grey." And she begs Helen to forget Leonard: "Don't drag in the personal when it will not come. Forget him." Is it clarity and wisdom that dictates her words? Isn't trying feel that which does not exist more wrong than ignoring that which does? And if nothing does exist, then why create it for the satisfaction of an idea, at the cost of one's individuality and true nature. At the cost of a color against the daily gray.

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On another note, I plan to write a series of short stories which I will post in a separate blog. I am really excited to begin this project and hope you will follow along! I hope to have a story out by the end of February. The URL is solomonabrams.blogspot.com. Hope to see you there! Thanks for reading! 

Howard's End Halfway Point

 I'm trying a new writing style. It is called the "put it out there" method. I've decided that I spend too much time polishing and rethinking ideas in my blogs. And what does that yield? Not many blog posts! So here I go. Short and sweet. Or maybe long and strong. Who knows?

Today's topic: Howard's End. It is amazing how one's opinion of a book can change so drastically. It happens for me frequently. I'll begin a book and like it very little. As I lay Dying and Invisible Man are two examples of books that I failed to find stimulation in until the last quarter. But my god, that last quarter was heaven. Not only that, but the book as a whole suddenly made sense. The boring parts and the confusing parts clicked. And I'm sure that, if read again, the entirety of the book would read differently. 

Howard's End was boring at first. As a teenager, I cared very little for the story of two London sisters and their misadventures in love, life, and lengthy lame luncheons. But Howard's end is so much more than that. E.M. Forster uses the narrator to share very deep, even spiritual, messages. Let's read a few, shall we? 

"Margaret greeted her lord with a peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire." Wow. Let them reconcile, our conventional side and our "passionate" side in order that they may form a genuine human. 

 "Round every knob and cushion in the house sentiment gathered, a sentiment that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety to the dead, a prolongation of rites that might have ended at the grave." Whitman's "When Lilac's Last in the Door Yard Bloom'd" suggests that death brings suffering not to those it takes,  but to those it leaves. The living are left with memories. The living are left with "sentiment." Sentiment that might have ended at the grave had the individual not been acquainted, loved, or even observed, by others. To die alone is to leave others unfazed by your passing. Alone, you leave behind nothing for others to learn from, to grow from. The lonely that pass away are "food for worms," and only the worms are the recipients of a brain that could have amounted to so much more than a simple snack. But, just as community yields wisdom, it also brings about sentiment and pain. It brings about feelings.

Forster on books: "They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination." I found this particularly applicable to my own reading studies. I won't impact your interpretation of this line by stating mine. Read in context, this passage is astounding. Really fantastic.

Wise Forster also states: "One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions."

Alas, just as I have never been privy to one who impacted none, and therefore am unable to truly speak on the hindrance of other's development brought about by the loneliness of one, I see no counterargument to "My mother is a fish." Because, what is a fish?

Rothegut

Rothegut.

Rothegut will likely lead to my institutionalization by age 30. Rothegut will also lead to a fuller understanding of human nature, of the human condition. Rothegut is a drug. And Rothegut is just the beginning.


I was first turned on to Kurt Vonnegut my junior year of high school. I discovered Phillip Roth later in my junior year, after reading the acclaimed American Pastoral. After reading several of Vonnegut's books, and several of Roth's, I was defeated. Their words struck me hard, my understanding of why things were and why things weren't, shattered before my eyes. I was prompted to think unconventionally, to question everything, yet also to accept new ideas. My understanding of the simplest things was altered. I stood in the cafeteria contemplating which flavor of milk I wanted for minutes. My mind would drift while trying to complete the simplest of tasks, rendering me unable even to take the stairs two at a time. Something very real was tweaked. Nothing is the same as it was. Everything is new to me now. I feel as though I am in rehabilitation that never ends. I cannot become proficient at any single task because it seems a different task every time, and I, a different person. Perhaps it is those who see every situation a variation of one they are able to deal with, and therefore deal with it how they know to, that roam in circles. Perhaps those most competent are actually those most swiftly running in circles and chasing the tails of what they comprehend.

 Why I kept reading, why I keep reading, I am not sure.


The authors shed light on darkness. Ironically, the dark space they illuminate is human nature. Roth further illuminates the thoughts that damned such characters as Ilych and Samsa, while Vonnegut elaborates on motivation, authority, and purpose. The potency of Rothegut's sting is tremendous. While the physical experience is slow and painless, the disillusioned self writhes in complacent agony until the end of its submission, usually and quite sadly, upon death of the body. Life and death, purpose and motivation. There are no fragments of existence. It doesn't fit together perfectly because it wasn't meant to. People are not supposed to be happy all of the time. Happy isn't always the right way to feel.

There are gods!

They die so others can kill, They need so others can hoard, They cry so others can laugh.  But we are Them and They are Us and Us is all because we are here and because we are all one people.


Rothegut is reading Vonnegut and Roth,
Rothegut is self-reflection,
Rothegut is freedom,
Rothegut is questioning,
Rothegut is feeling the earth crumble beneath your feet yet remaining supported.

The Point of It

Since my topic for the Literature Review Assignment is the Science of Blogging, I think it would be really interesting if I created a blog post to examine the topic. Ms. Soble has a personal blog that she mentioned my study in, with approval from a parental unit and myself, and received a response by a certain individual who mentioned pamphlets. Now, I’m not exactly sure what he meant, but the thought came to me: Is a blog the new pamphlet? To answer this question, we must ask the computer what a blog is.

What is a blog?

So I don’t bore, short and sweet will be the name of the game. Blog stands for web log, certainly applicable given the function of a blog. Users make “posts” and often times, readers are able to comment back. Ergo, blogs are an interactive and easy way to develop one’s knowledge of a topic from multiple points of view. For me, blogging proves a place of personal reflection on the books I've read. Now that I have teamed up with SuperBlogger Soble, my blog may even be teeming with members of the blogging community who will express their own thoughts. So that is blogging, a rich, interactive, exciting new world in which I will leave my mark on the world forever, likely an insignificant mark, but still a mark all the same.

Christopher Young wrote an article titled In Defense of Literary Blogs, in which he fights to make clear that blogs are essentially wicked awesome. Young implies that the blogging world, despite its abundance of sloppy writers, is still worth the attention. Each viewpoint provides a unique and exciting look into the mind of a human being. Rather than consider the blogging world a junkyard that yields an occasional gem, consider it a bag of gems that yields an occasional piece of rare black opal. What people fail to realize, Young believes, is that blogs play a huge role in bringing inspiring literature to the internet, an otherwise stark wasteland of facts and porn which, trust me, doesn’t hold a candle to the orgasmic and educational literary blogs.


To conclude, a blog is like a microphone; it allows you to amplify your voice. When everyone speaks through their microphone at the same time, it is hard to hear a consistent statement. Which is what makes blogs so great, we hear snippets of so many different conversations that, in the end, we are left with more questions than answers. And since curiosity stems from questions, by transitive property (if this were math), blogs intensify curiosity! Which is really quite ironic because don’t we turn to blogs for an answer, a reassurance in some field, that what we are thinking is not being thought solely by us, but by others? That we are not alone in the world of thought. And blogs, in their damning way, confirm that we are not alone, but raise a whole new set of questions within us that increases tenfold our search for some sort of verification that we are not

Tour de College

First semester of Senior year is the most stressful time in a High School student’s life. College is looming, school is challenging, and days begin to blur. Weekends are not used as a period of rest, but of homework completion, test prep, and college touring.

College Tours.

As of September 15, I have been on ten tours. But I’m not an r&b artist on tour. I am a terrified child, who believes his future is dependent on college and, as a college tourist, that his trips to Montreal, D.C, New York, and Boston are imperative to his success. Cambridge is a fantastic place to grow up. Harvard and MIT are in our backyard, and other excellent schools lie in Boston and the surrounding area. The touring is easy, close, and relatively stress free. So I toured like a rabid scholar. After my seventh tour, however, the importance of college and the process associated with it began to diminish. In short, I became somewhat of a college tour pro. As a college tour pro, I know their scripts cover to cover. “I’m going to be walking backwards so If I’m about to bump into anything…,” or, “Your roommate surveys are used in order to place you with the most compatible roommate, sort of like online dating.” That one always gets a laugh. I play along, an unenthusiastic automaton feigning a good ole time. It seems that, after taking all these tours, the veil of awe was removed, which left me with the sinking feeling: So what the hell do I do now? Rather than feeling gung-ho at the prospect of entering a new place, I feel disenchanted, lost.

On my latest tour, to a beautiful school just outside of Boston, I decided to focus more on the other college tourists, rather than the always humorous tour guide pumped full of “original” jokes that always seem to be awarded with pitying and nervous laughter from the other veterans, and more genuine, yet still undeserved, chuckles from the rookies. As the contingent grudgingly trudged down the pretty path and learned of the interesting meal plan, I examined the group. It was pretty average, consisting of fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, mothers, fathers, and daughters, mothers, fathers, and sons, fathers and sons, and mothers and sons. That’s the group. That’s always the group. Bored, I examined the crew’s feet. Pudgy feet, skinny feet, the usual feet. Then I noticed something that sent me sprawling against the railing of the “Has anybody seen Harry Potter? Tell me if you recognize this…” artifactual look alike. Did I mention that it sent me sprawling.

They all matched. Their shoes, that is. Father and Daughter wore Sperry’s, mother and daughter wore Sperry’s, father and daughter wore Sperry’s.  In every group, someone wore Sperry’s, save for the Tory Burch family and my own family duo (we wore Toms and Dansko clogs, don’t even get me started on Dansko clogs). I don’t know why it struck me, but it did. And suddenly, the inkling of a thought gave way to a idea. An idea captured in the single, adjectival word: Uniform.

Uniformity not of the colleges, but of the tours. Uniformity not in the school, but in the “selling” of it. Uniformity not of the tourists, but of their “college tour appropriate” footwear. The general outline of any tour across the country is similar, varying only slightly by a lame joke here and there, or by a slightly interesting fun fact about the campus, school president, or sports program.

I began to notice this uniformity in more than college tours. There appears on the face of many things, I noticed, a certain selling point or artificial crux off of which one’s entire perception of the thing is created. But, touring the colleges and exploring, on my own self designated recovery interludes, other parts of the schools, I realized that colleges consist of far more than meets the eye. As do many other things consist of far more than meets the eye. Especially when something is on show, is meant to be seen by you, it is often a show. Dig. Dig at what you think is. You may find that there exists more than what you think.