I ask, because I`m wondering in what sense are we free to reinvent ourselves, faced with what Robert Bly, when talking about our shadow selves*, calls the `long bag` of our past lives. I`ve often agreed that hell is other people, and can see that I can be anyone I want, in my own head. But to live it is another matter.
I`m reading Great Expectations for the first time, having previously steered clear due to the many film and tv adaptations seen. I do have distinct memories of reading both Little Dorrit and Bleak House, and recall being so shocked by Mr Merdle`s suicide I had to re-read this more than once, as I didnt understand what was happening. I mean I thought it couldnt be happening. (Yes, I know it wasnt real, but within that bubble the reader creates, it was all true.) I`m intrigued by how much of Dickens work revolves around characters being haunted by the past. So I`m with Pip, in his struggle to be more than his past will allow, and curious about Jean Paul`s attitude to this kind of seeming fatalism. If I`ve understood, then for Sartre, all choice starts with the dawn of self-awareness, and from that moment on we are free. This rankles. It makes me itchy. Because I want to know how that freedom can be acted upon, if the past has, let`s say, laid down neural pathways, just to be up-to-the-minute about it, which inform and affect behaviour to such an extent that the individual is imprisoned, in some sense. And that`s just on a personal level. Then think about the rigidity of human societies, and what might happen if freedoms acted upon are at odds with the status quo. Sartre would have none of it, I`m sure. Taking responsibility at a deep level takes committment and a large dollop of insight. Pip doesn`t appear to have these requirements, so his attempts to reinvent himself as a `gentleman` are doomed to fail. And anyway, is his claim to a supposed better/higher station in life even authentic? I guess, if you examine the hypocrisy surrounding English societal structure at the time of the novel`s setting, not. So Sartre wins this round.
Then I think it`s very hard to disprove Sartre. I end up feeling he`s wrong. Not sure this counts.
* Robert Bly `A Little Book on the Human Shadow`
I`m reading Great Expectations for the first time, having previously steered clear due to the many film and tv adaptations seen. I do have distinct memories of reading both Little Dorrit and Bleak House, and recall being so shocked by Mr Merdle`s suicide I had to re-read this more than once, as I didnt understand what was happening. I mean I thought it couldnt be happening. (Yes, I know it wasnt real, but within that bubble the reader creates, it was all true.) I`m intrigued by how much of Dickens work revolves around characters being haunted by the past. So I`m with Pip, in his struggle to be more than his past will allow, and curious about Jean Paul`s attitude to this kind of seeming fatalism. If I`ve understood, then for Sartre, all choice starts with the dawn of self-awareness, and from that moment on we are free. This rankles. It makes me itchy. Because I want to know how that freedom can be acted upon, if the past has, let`s say, laid down neural pathways, just to be up-to-the-minute about it, which inform and affect behaviour to such an extent that the individual is imprisoned, in some sense. And that`s just on a personal level. Then think about the rigidity of human societies, and what might happen if freedoms acted upon are at odds with the status quo. Sartre would have none of it, I`m sure. Taking responsibility at a deep level takes committment and a large dollop of insight. Pip doesn`t appear to have these requirements, so his attempts to reinvent himself as a `gentleman` are doomed to fail. And anyway, is his claim to a supposed better/higher station in life even authentic? I guess, if you examine the hypocrisy surrounding English societal structure at the time of the novel`s setting, not. So Sartre wins this round.
Then I think it`s very hard to disprove Sartre. I end up feeling he`s wrong. Not sure this counts.
* Robert Bly `A Little Book on the Human Shadow`
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