Quarter 3 blog 3

In the latest section of reading, I have noticed the theme of how self image effects relationships emerge. It starts with the bumbling Kit Neville, who cannot seem to keep himself positive in the face of Paul’s easy conversations with Elinor on a bike trip. Kit, who struggles to move his large body up a gentle hill, envies Paul’s fitness and good looks, comparing his own body to Paul’s and drawing his own negative conclusions. As he puffs along, he thinks “What a clown I am...he was perpetually on the lookout for disparaging remarks even when they came from himself” (Barker 104). He also goes on to admit he is constantly “...putting himself into situations where he showed to poor advantage and then, instead of learning from his mistakes and avoiding those situations, doing it again and again and again” (104). This shows that Neville, when he is hard on himself, takes it an extreme that leads to a sour temper and a mind quick to jump to conclusions.

Elinor is another victim of this vain thinking, even though she tries to keep a though exterior, she also wonders why she can’t be like everyone else. When we first meet her, she is full of spunk and determination, trying to overcome the oppression of her mother by chopping off her hair and going to art school. In front of her watchful mother, though, she is reduced to a self-conscious and pouting schoolgirl, worrying about her outfit, thinking “-I’m happy as I am. –Are you? I don’t think you are...More to the point, what was she going to wear tonight? She had the one evening dress....”(Barker 117). This mature woman reduced to dressing up to impress her peers shows that her self image is horrible and ruins the confident image the other characters had seen her as.

Quarter 3 Blog 2

While reading Life Class, a theme that has caught my attention was jealousy. For example, the character Paul is caught feeling jealous of his new friend Kit, who can paint in a way that Paul could only dream of. When invited to Kit’s house, where he lives with his parents, Paul’s own envy swells. At the sight of Kit’s lavish house, his luxurious lifestyle, Paul’s anger reaches its peak “So this maturity of vision in a man whom he found distinctly childish in many respects bewildered him. Living at home, spoiled, self-pitying, moaning on because his mother doesn’t pay him enough attention-for God’s sake! The work and the man seemed to bear no relation to each other” (Barker 53). Here Paul’s own incompetence is rubbed in his face by a rival he doesn’t consider worthy. The blow to his pride is great, and so to retaliate, he contents himself with shallow insults and wallows in self pity. Later, Paul gets tangled up in the jealousy of an ex-husband who still loves his wife. Teresa, whom Paul has been dating for some time now, has an ex-husband, Halliday, who stalks her every move, and now that she is with Paul, is wildly jealous. Instead of stalking Teresa, Halliday takes a day to follow Paul around and confront him about his affair with Teresa “For a moment Halliday’s grin disappeared in a blaze of misery. Almost immediately, he was smirking again. Paul could have understood anger, but despite Halliday’s words what he saw in his face was not anger but a kind of jeering complicity. He seemed more like a pimp than an outraged husband” (Barker 80). Halliday’s refusal to let go of his relationship with Teresa, combined with his stalking behavior, leads the reader to feel that Halliday is merely jealous of Teresa’s new life.