The Relationship Between Jake and Robert Cohn

In the very first chapter of the novel, Cohn is presented as one of Jake’s best friends. However, among all the details given about his character, veiled insults and criticisms seems to constantly come up. After discussing the idea that Hemingway intended for his prose to be the tip of an iceberg, those insults seems to be more and more significant. The friendship between Jake and Cohn doesn’t seem to be a mutually beneficial relationship; from the way that Jake treats him, it seems as though Cohn is someone that Jake believes he is better than, and being able to constantly put him down makes Jake feel better about himself.

For the first section of the book, Jake seems to beat Cohn in everything—he is well liked, seemingly successful, and witty. But, then Jake finds out that Cohn had gone on a trip with Brett, which is something that Jake is unable to do. After this point, Jake portrays Cohn as more and more inferior. In psychology, we talked about downward social comparison (which basically means that you choose some of your friends in order to feel better about yourself, because you perceive them to not be as good as you), to me, this seems to be the nature of Jake’s relationship to Cohn. Jake chooses to be friends with Cohn, not because he particularly likes or respects him, but because Cohn makes Jake feel superior, despite his injury from the war.

Jake belittles Cohn in many ways; he talks about how he was the champion middle-weight boxer at Princeton (not heavy-weight), about how he went to military school (not the war), and how he is his "tennis friend" (not a real friend, like Bill). And Jake is able to keep his constructed superiority up until the point when Cohn gets involved with Brett. At that point, Jake is forced to see a flaw in his schema (another term from psychology—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)). And his construction gives way to reality and his friendship with Cohn seems to deteriorate rapidly from there.

The Hours (part II)

I don't know if I should feel like I knew the ending to The Hours was coming, or not. I had assumed that the stories were connected in some way, but having the connection be the characters of Richard and his mother was not something that I had initially thought of. 

The parallels between the movie and the book were strong enough that I assumed there would be some sort of death; but I assumed that it would be the mother, who we later find out to be Richard's mother. While I didn't particularly like her character, I thought that she was really interesting. Her husband had gone to war (like Septimus) but, she seemed to be the one with mental health problems. I took her to be an interesting combination of Rezia and Septimus. One one hand, she displays serious signs of mental illness, and fleeting bisexual tendencies (like how there were vague hints at Septimus and Evans in the war). But, she also played the part of Rezia, by trying to be responsible for her family and not really fitting in with her community.

The Hours

Since I was sick on Wednesday, watching the movie, The Hours, in class today was rather perplexing. From what I gathered from my classmates, the movie was already pretty complicated, and starting to watch it about thirty minutes into the story surely made it even odder.

But, I'm not saying that I don't like it so far.

Despite the fact that I'm really not too sure about what's going on, it seems to be a really clever way of doing a movie version of Mrs. Dalloway. Seeing the chronologically most recent set of characters was especially interesting to me, especially after the many conversations in class about who Clarissa should or shouldn't have married. Seeing a version of the story where she ends up with Sally was really strange to me; it was remarkable how similar Clarissa's situation was in the movie to her situation in the book. By that, I mean how she's still giving parties and trying to be the perfect hostess, while having constant doubts about herself.

Clarissa's Party

In the final section of Mrs. Dalloway, the dinner party, that Clarissa has spent all day preparing for, is described. One of the very first things that I noticed about the party itself are the differences between how the servants experience the party and how Clarissa and her guests experience it. The servants are rushed and stressed as they run around, trying to get everything done at the right time and to the proper standards. Meanwhile, Clarissa flits around the room making conversation with her guests, but at the same time she worries that her party isn't going to be a success, despite all of her preparations.


The arrival of Sally Seton or Lady Rosseter, as she is now know, was another thing that really stuck out to me at the party. I was really curious to see how the interaction between her and Clarissa would be after reading the previous mentions of her, and I also was wondering how she would behave as an adult, or a maturer adult than she had been when she had last seen Clarissa. I was really hoping that getting married and having children wouldn't have changed her very much, even though she hadn't been actively in the novel until this point, the picture that had been painted of her character seemed much more interesting and dynamic than the other people in Clarissa's life. At first, she appears to not be the same at all, but then once she starts to interact with Clarissa, it becomes clear that her personality really hasn't changed much.

Something that really surprised me in this section was the appearance of the Bradshaws. I didn't expect the novel to have any sort of direct connection to Septimus after his death, and I thought that it was really interesting how he was yet again tied into Clarissa's story. For most of this novel, I've looked at Clarissa as being a rather superficial and shallow character--mainly because of how she was constantly being put next to Septimus, who was dealing with much deeper issues than guest lists and flowers. When Clarissa goes off on her own and reflects on Septimus's death, I felt like she was starting to agree with me, which really made me change my mind about her. Before I had thought of her as naive and oblivious, I hadn't really blamed her for worrying about seemingly trivial things, but I also didn't sympathize with her. When she was presented with Septimus's death, I wasn't sure how she would respond, but the way that she actually cared so much about a person who she had never met caused me to finish the book with a very positive opinion of her.

Septimus and Rezia

In the section of Mrs. Dalloway that we read for yesterday, Septimus and Rezia were shown in their home away from the chaos of London. It was the first present tense instance where Septimus was functioning normally (although, normal seems to be a very subjective and descriptive word). If the narrative had just jumped to him for the first time, I don't think that any readers would have been able to tell that he had gone through so many traumatic experiences in WWI.

The idea that on his own, or at least almost on his own, Septimus is a very different person, reminded me of the first time that I saw Mrs. Dalloway on her own. When she was out and about, she didn't seem to be anyone other than a content, upper class, woman planning a dinner party; but when she got home and went up to the room where she had been spending her time when she was sick, a different person seemed to emerge. She sunk into a deeply reflective state and all the assumptions that I had made about her on the surface were challenged, and I had to rethink my initial impression of her.

During this last section with Septimus, I found myself doing the same thing. I had thought that I had a good understanding of his character, but after seeing him alone with Rezia, I started to see him a little differently. Before this section, I felt really bad for him; he went through a war and watched one of his close friends die, which would have been bad enough, without the scars of those experiences affecting his present state of mind. Seeing him as he would have probably been, had he not gone to war, almost made me more sympathetic towards his character; it was easy for me to think that he had been deeply affected by a traumatic experience, but this section showing how things could have been for him made the fact that they weren't almost worse than it already was.

Mr. Dalloway

So far, I haven't had strongly disliked any of the characters, but I haven't found myself drawn to any of them either. That is, until Richard Dalloway came into the story.

He seems to be one of the few characters that's more or less content with life. He does reflect on the past, but his reflections have a much different tone than Clarissa's do. While Clarissa dwells on missed opportunities and regrets (although that might be too strong of a word), Richard thinks back fondly on his youth. He also flashes back momentarily to a time when he bought Clarissa a bracelet, that she now never wears. While he wasn't angry about this, he was definitely disappointed. His emotions regarding that incident weren't conveyed very strongly and I found myself wishing that I could step in and stand up for him.

I was actually expecting to really dislike him. From the way that Clarissa portrayed him, I was under the impression that he would be one of the distant husbands that only cares about work and his important, high-class friends. But, I was pleasantly surprised when he was introduced as a fairly laid-back and amiable person.

There was only one section in last night's reading that made me a little irritated with Richard. And that was when he couldn't say "I love you" to Clarissa. I'm sure that she knows that he loves her, but I don't understand why he froze up. That passage definitely stood out to me, but I'm still not quite sure how to interpret it.