The whole rant that Jeanette goes on pages on 93 - 95 are very interesting and truthful. Within this particular passage, there are significant one - liners that encourage the reader to nod his head in agreement because he cannot help but fully agree. The first line of this long passage, "Time is a great deadener" (Winterson 93) is a great opening sentence. From this sentence, she is basically time gets old, people move on from the "used to be norms"; and on behalf of Jeanette's case, when approaching the end of this novel, she realized that upon returning to her home town after some years, times changed - the normal life of the town was no longer normal, but bored and tired. Winterson's whole opinion on history is very intriguing as well.
Winterson keeps on repeating the idea of how we as human beings like to deny our history and that we chose to "story tell" our history just so we can conform it into what we believe history should be. When talking about history, Winterson mentions that "We pointed the finger..." (Winterson 94). As a human society, it's only human nature for the world to blame the past for what has happened to us in the past - it's a safe excuse. It is true that we will never be able to escape from the past but that doesn't mean we cannot learn from the vast history of our world. "So the past, becaus it is the past, is only malleable where once it was flexible" (Winterson 95).
Yeah, this is all i got....
Final Evaluation
16 years ago
I agree with your views and your thought process on this passage. I also believe that we like to point fingers around to blame bad things that happened to us. For example, Jeanette's mother blamed the devil for Jeanette being different. It was the only way for her to find a way out from blaming herself and her teachings.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about blaming the past is very true. We do tend to blame the past or our circumstances, instead of taking the responsibility of our actions upon ourselves.
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