The sense of approaching awfulness is what may well stop me from finishing it. In RL there's a limit to the awfulness possible; in this one, as you say, he has the opportunity to go for broke, and precisely because he isn't a genre writer like King or Koontz it'll be that much worse. No, don't spoil me for what happens; but right now I'm reading Wodehouse to get some sun back in my head.
Submissive to one's fate? If you look at it that way. I just see passive people who know there's nothing to be done in the face of the way things are. No explanation needed- it's a congenital approach to the world. I've known a lot of 'Okay- whatever' one year olds, that it was almost a relief when they hit the terrible twos eighteen months and began to lash out at the arbitrary world.
Sorry to interup the literary discussion going on here but I was curious...are there such things? I fear mine went straight to the terrible twos, threes and sometimes I think they haven't left there still!
I'm terrified when I have a moment (which doesn't happen often thank god) and think of the future sixteen year olds I will have! ^__+
There are such things- easy-going agreeable kids who smile at everybody and eat what's put before them and wander about in an incurious fog. Bumblebees. Whether it's purely a cultural thing or what, I don't know, but that kind of kid worries us a bit. Lack of individual assertion is unnatural in this society- and the trusting everybody part of course is flat out dangerous. To be honest I can only think of one or two cases where those personality traits have survived past three. They may just have been late in their development.
Psychologically inert, yes. Thing is I do find other characters in English novels with some of the same characteristics. A kind of frozenness to them and a lack of struggle. It's been too long since I read Villette, but Lucy Snow is sort of an example of that. Just, the western tradition has trouble writing a story where nothing happens because the characters don't act. Thus we usually get indications of dissatisfaction to rpovide inetrnal action of some kind.
The difference is indeed that Ishiguro's characters seem to accept the givens as simply the way things are and adapt themselves to them, so that he manages to tell a story about people who are by our standards impassive doormats.
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Submissive to one's fate? If you look at it that way. I just see passive people who know there's nothing to be done in the face of the way things are. No explanation needed- it's a congenital approach to the world. I've known a lot of 'Okay- whatever' one year olds, that it was almost a relief when they hit the terrible
twoseighteen months and began to lash out at the arbitrary world.no subject
Sorry to interup the literary discussion going on here but I was curious...are there such things? I fear mine went straight to the terrible twos, threes and sometimes I think they haven't left there still!
I'm terrified when I have a moment (which doesn't happen often thank god) and think of the future sixteen year olds I will have! ^__+
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The difference is indeed that Ishiguro's characters seem to accept the givens as simply the way things are and adapt themselves to them, so that he manages to tell a story about people who are by our standards impassive doormats.