Books I Read in High School (or before), Part II

William Golding.  Lord of the Flies.
Quick summary: Time... WWII.  Place... an island.  Who... A plane full of young English prep school boys.  Let's just say it's like the original "Lost", but without polar bears or mysterious magnetic fields.  However, there is the same dichotomy of "us" versus "them."  As the young boys try to survive, two leaders inevitably emerge: Ralph and Jack.  They gather followers, and a tribalistic clash ensues.  Some survive.  Some don't.

This was another 9th grade read, or so it seems to me... This is one of those books - like Le Petit Prince - that has different depths depending on the reader's maturity.  On the surface, it's all about the savagery of the society that the boys create, which ultimately reflects back on our own.  Yes, it makes you think about how violent men can be towards each other, but when you consider that these are children, the innate nature of the supposedly most innocent is strikingly cruel.  The backdrop of the novel is the war, from which these children are supposed to be escaping, but in the end, they run towards it most eagerly.

The ending of this novel made me sad and wary.  I don't remember much of the actual plot line, - although I remember the essential scenes - but I do recall the void the book left.  Even at 15, I was depressed and pessimistic.  It's one of those books that leaves you asking: "what is humanity good for?"

Earnest Hemingway.  The Sun Also Rises.
Quick summary: To be honest, this is one of those books that doesn't have much of a plot; it's just a bunch of ex-pat Americans running around 1920s Europe (mostly Spain) drinking their pain away, not really saying what they ought or want to say to each other.  Lots of repressed feelings in this one.

I read this book for the first time in the 6th grade, on my own.  I'm not really sure what gave me the bright idea to attempt Hemingway on my own at such an impressionable age, but I did.  I simply remember that my mom had three green hardback Hemingway titles on our bookshelf: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises.  What made the last title so much more appealing than the other two, I don't know, but I chose it.  I read it fairly quickly and thought that these people were rather crazy and had an awful lot of time on their hands to run around Europe drinking and having sexually frustrated liaisons (I didn't really understand that one until later).

Fast forward... a few years ago, I decided to give this novel another go to see what else I could get out of it.  The drinking and repressed emotions were still front and center, but the culture of the post-war generation meant much more to me.  These were a disillusioned set of folk who had just seen one of the most destructive wars of recent memory, especially for nice, young Americans.  When you read this book in the context of the European artistic and literary movements emerging at the time, the constant tightrope walk between reserve and the rage just under the surface in Hemingway's prose is fascinating.  Take Dadaism, for instance.  This movement was also born out of the destructiveness of WWI, but it is so overtly angry and pessimistic.  The meaninglessness of human existence is always at the forefront for the Dadaists, but for these young folk running around Europe, it's the thing they are trying to escape.

One thing for sure: this book made me realize how restrained Hemingway could be and how startlingly different it was from anything else I'd read from the time in continental literature.