Drying Tears and Bearing Burdens (My Tribute to LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott) 2 April 2009
Posted by Renette in Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), Louisa May Alcott.add a comment
NOTE: I wrote this essay to join the contest of Powerbooks called “Inspired! A Tribute to the Book that Started It All.” Entries are supposed to be about the book that started one’s love affair with reading. I had a tough time deciding which book to write about, so I was only able to write this on the day before the deadline. Thankfully, I won 3rd place.
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“I may be strong-minded, but no one can say I’m out of my sphere now, for woman’s special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing burdens.” (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott)
It’s hard to remember the exact moment when I realized that I loved reading. All I know is that as a kid, I would read everything in the house – labels on shampoo bottles, my Dad’s theology books, old issues of Reader’s Digest. I discovered the wonders of the school library when I was in kindergarten, and would spend countless hours stretched out on the carpet with a Sesame Street book. By the time I was in Grade 3, I have progressed to illustrated versions of Nick Joaquin’s classics like The Woman Who Had Two Navels. The world of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys opened up to me when I was in Grade 5, and I would take home five books at a time, intent on finishing the entire series in the shortest time possible.
Due to my limited allowance, I would very rarely buy books of my own. I was happy enough to borrow books from classmates and the library, mainly because I don’t often re-read books anyway. One reading is usually enough, so there’s no point in buying my own copy.
I don’t even remember what induced me buy a discounted paperback copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Perhaps it was included in my English class reading list and I got curious. Perhaps I read a mention of it in some essay or magazine article and I thought it would be worth buying. All I remember is that I was in first year high school, I was in a bookstore on my own, and I decided to use my week’s savings to buy the book. That hasty decision started my book collection.
There’s a certain rustic charm about this book which instantly attracted me. From the start, I felt drawn to the character of Jo March – the tomboyish, headstrong protagonist. I got interested in her three sisters as well – Meg (who reminded me of my own sister), Beth and Amy. I loved Marmee with all my heart, and had a crush on Jo’s best friend and next-door neighbor, Teddy Laurence.
I read the entire book in one sitting, and re-read it again the next day (and the day after that and so on). If I wasn’t re-reading Little Women, I would be reading Louisa May Alcott’s other books in our school library, such as Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs and Eight Cousins.
Little Women was not the first book I read, but it was the book that made me realize that reading was going to be my lifelong hobby. It opened my eyes to the fact that I’ll never be happier than when I’m curled up in bed with a good book. It made me understand that there are some books you just have to own, for the pleasure of re-reading it anytime you want.
When I think about it now, I can name two particular reasons why Little Women will always be one of my favorites.
For one, it is a coming-of-age story, and I was lucky enough to read it during the time that I was coming of age myself. I could feel Jo’s rebellion at the thought that she was expected to leave her boyish ways behind to become a “proper” lady. I could feel her discomfort and awkwardness throughout her teenage years. The book gave me hope that indeed, this embarrassing stage in life will pass, and that maybe I could even become a gracious little woman afterwards.
The other reason is that I could relate all too well with the character of Jo, especially with regards to her temper. When her sister almost died because of something she did in anger, a repentant Jo sobbed to her mother about not knowing how to control her fits of rage. Marmee comforted Jo – and me – when she explained that she had the same problem, and was angry nearly every day. The difference is that Marmee was always very careful not to show any signs of irritation. As she explained, “A startled or surprised look from one of you when I spoke sharply rebuked me more than any words could have done, and the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.” She also explained that we must ask our Father in heaven to teach us to deal with our anger and to change our hearts. Reading Marmee’s words somehow made me feel as if a burden was lifted up from me, and I resolved to follow her advice.
Aside from being able to relate to Jo’s temper, I could also relate to her grief when Beth – her favorite sister, her personal “conscience” – died. You see, my own brother died two years before I read Little Women. Something stirred in me when I read one of Beth’s final conversations with Jo – “I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I’m not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.” It made me cry the first time I read it, and I used to avoid re-reading that particular part. Later on, I realized that I had to face my grief some time and let the story of Beth’s death wash away some of my sorrow for my own Kuya’s death.
That’s why Little Women will always have a special place in my bookshelf and in my heart. That’s why this book will forever hold a certain magic for me. It’s because through its heartwarming storyline, its relatable characters and its subtle moral lessons, Little Women is capable of drying my tears, and bearing my burdens.
Jumbly Quotes from THE BFG 9 August 2008
Posted by Renette in Book Quotes, Roald Dahl, The BFG (Roald Dahl).2 comments
If you have no idea who the BFG is, you should check out my previous blog entry here. The BFG is a nice, jumbly giant who “kidsnatched” the orphan Sophie because she saw him by accident. She learned from him that he was not a “cannibully” giant who ate “human beans,” which apparently taste differently when they’re from different cities or countries.
“Bonecruncher says Turkish human beans has a glamourly flavour. He says Turks from Turkey is tasting of turkey.”
“I suppose they would,” Sophie said.
“Of course they would!” the Giant shouted. “Every human bean is diddly and different. Some is scrumdiddlyumptious and some is uckyslush. Greeks is all full of uckyslush. No Giants is eating Greeks, ever.”
“Why not?” Sophie asked.
“Greeks from Greece is all tasting greasy,” the Giant said….
“As I am saying,” the Giant went on, “all human beans is having different flavours. Human beans from Panama is tasting very strong of hats.”
“Why hats?” Sophie said.
“You is not very clever,” the Giant said, moving his great ears in and out. “I thought all human beans is full of brains, but your head is emptier than a bundongle….”
“The human bean,” the Giant went on, “is coming in dillions of different flavours. For instance, human beans from Wales is tasting very whooshey of fish. There is something very fishy about Wales.”
“You mean whales,” Sophie said. “Wales is something quite different.”
“Wales is whales,” the Giant said. “Don’t gobblefunk around with words. I will now give you another example. Human beans from Jersey has a most disgustable woolly tickle on the tongue,” the Giant said. “Human beans from Jersey is tasting of cardigans.”
“You mean jerseys,” Sophie said.
“You are once again gobblefunking!” the Giant shouted. “Don’t do it! This is a serious and snitching subject. May I continue.”
“Please do,” Sophie said.
“Danes from Denmark is tasting ever so much of dogs,” the Giant went on.
“Of course,” Sophie said. “They taste of great danes.”
“Wrong!” cried the Giant, slapping his thigh. “Danes from Denmark is tasting doggy because they is tasting of labradors!”
“The what do the people of Labrador taste of?” Sophie asked.
“Danes,” the Giant cried, triumphantly. “Great danes!”
“Aren’t you getting a bit mixed up?” Sophie said.
“I is a very mixed up Giant,” the Giant said. “But I does do my best. And I is not nearly as mixed up as the other giants. I know one who gallops all the way to Wellington for his supper.”
“Wellington?” Sophie said. “Where is Wellington?”
“Your head is full of squashed flies,” the Giant said. “Wellington is in New Zealand. The human beans in Wellington has an especially scrumdiddlyumptious taste, so says the Welly-eating Giant.”
“What do the people of Wellington taste of?” Sophie asked.
“Boots,” the Giant said.
Heehee. That was a long passage (with some parts chopped off – note the ellipses I put in), but I couldn’t resist. The other quotes are a bit shorter, I promise.
“I’m not sure I quite know what that means,” Sophie said.
“Meanings is not important,” said the BFG. “I can’t be right all the time. Quite often I is left instead of right.”
Here’s how the BFG described the other “cannibully” giants:
“All of those man-eating giants is enormous and very fierce! They is all at least two times my wideness and double my royal highness!”
What he means (in case you didn’t quite get it) is that the other giants are twice as wide and high as he is. After all, as the BFG himself says, “Twenty-four feet is puddlenuts in Giant Country.” But don’t listen to everything he says. As he warned Sophie:
“If you listen to everything I am saying you will be getting earache.”
And speaking of ears, you may have noticed the abnormally large ears the BFG has.
“They maybe is looking a bit propsposterous to you,” the BFG said, “but you must believe me when I say they is very extra-usual ears indeed. They is not to be coughed at.”
“I’m quite sure they’re not,” Sophie said.
Big ears or not, the BFG needs to eat. Since he doesn’t want to eat “human beans,” he must settle for an “icky-poo” vegetable called the “snozzcumber.”
“If I dont, I will be nothing but skin and groans.”
“You mean skin and bones,” Sophie said.
Sophie didn’t want to taste it at first, and asked if she really had to eat the dreadful snozzcumber.
“You do unless you is wanting to become so thin you will be disappearing into a thick ear.”
“Into thin air,” Sophie said.
But even though he has to live on snozzcumber (that tastes like rotten fish and frogskins), at least the BFG has a sweet and jumbly fizzy drink called the frobscottle. Unlike our fizzy drinks however, the bubbles go down instead of go up. Upon learning of this, the BFG reacted vehemently.
“Catasterous!” cried the BFG. “Upgoing bubbles is a catasterous disastrophe!”
The problem with talking loudly with Sophie inside his cave is that the other giants became suspicious, and asked him who he was talking to, getting “suspichy” that he is keeping “human beans” as pets. The BFG tried to bluff his way out of it.
“You is welcome to go and search my cave from frack to bunt,” the BFG answered. “You can go looking into every crook and nanny. There is no human beans or stringy beans or runner beans or jelly beans or any other beans in there.”
They had a close call with the other giants, who turned out to be not only “cannibullys” (cannibals), but real bullies as well when it comes to the BFG.
“I didn’t like that,” she said.
“Phew!” said the BFG. “Phew and far between!”
Sophie later learned that the BFG was a dream-collector. He took him with her in the pale country where you can hear dreams sailing along if you have such “propsposterous” ears as the BFG.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“We is in Dream Country,” the BFG said. “This is where all dreams is beginning.”
Unfortunately, sometimes what he catches are not good dreams (or “phizzwizards”), but nightmares as well (or “trogglehumpers”).
“Oh no!” he cried. “Oh mince my maggots! Oh swipe my swoggles!”
“What’s the matter?” Sophie asked.
“It’s a trogglehumper!” he shouted. His voice was filled with fury and anguish. “Oh, save our solos!” he cried. “Deliver us from weasels! The devil is dancing on my dibbler!”
While talking about dreams, Sophie made the interesting discovery that most giants only sleep for two or three hours per day.
“When do you sleep?” Sophie asked.
“Even less,” the BFG answered. “I is sleeping only once in a blue baboon.”
After some time, Sophie asked the BFG how he learned how to write, and found out that he had a Charles Dickens novel for the past 80 years.
“I is reading it hundreds of times,” the BFG said. “And I is still reading it and teaching new words to myself and how to write them. It is the most scrumdiddlyumptious story.”
“Sophie took the book out of his hand.” “Nicholas Nickleby,” she read aloud.
“By Dahl’s Chickens,” the BFG said.
The BFG and Sophie, upon hearing that the other giants were off to England to eat schoolchildren, began to hatch an idea to stop the giants. They went to the Queen of England to ask for her help.
“Your Majester,” he said. “I is your humbug servant…. Oh Queen! Oh Monarcher! Oh, Golden Sovereign! Oh, Ruler! Oh, Ruler of Straight Lines!”
I will not give away how the story ends, but it’s definitely worth getting a copy of The BFG.
I is the BIG, FRIENDLY GIANT! I is the BFG! 9 August 2008
Posted by Renette in Roald Dahl, The BFG (Roald Dahl).4 comments
I’m sure nearly everyone has heard of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It introduced me to the work of the famous children’s author, Roald Dahl, and his wonderful illustrator, Quentin Blake. I met Charlie Buckett and Willy Wonka when I was in Grade 5 or 6, thanks to my aunt, Tita Emy, who gave me the book as a gift.
The next time I read anything by Roald Dahl was when I was in Grade 9 or 10, during the Speech Fundamentals class of one of my favorite teachers, Ms. Marj (Margaux) Gutierrez (I know she’s married now, but I don’t know her new last name). We performed snippets from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes – one was Whirligig Beetles and the other was Cinderella. It was so much fun! I’ll probably write something about Revolting Rhymes some other time, when I’ve bought a new copy (I lost my old one).
Sometime last year, I was feeling pretty bored so I went to PowerBooks and read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator at the bookstore. It was an easy read, and I finished the book in less than an hour. It was fun as always, but not as good as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
I read The BFG this week courtesy of Mike R, who was cleaning out his library and sending all the books he didn’t like to me. I read it in about an hour, as I couldn’t put it down. It was so hilarious! It officially made Roald Dahl one of my favorite authors, and The BFG one of my favorite books.
The BFG (Big, Friendly Giant) captured an orphan girl named Sophie in the dead of night when she happened to see him. Unlike the other nine giants – namely the Fleshlumpeater the Bonecruncher, the Manhugger, the Childchewer, the Meatdripper, the Gizzardgulper, the Maidmasher, the Bloodbottler and the Butcher Boy – the BFG didn’t eat “human beans.”
Before you can fully appreciate the wonderful words of the BFG, you must remember that he hasn’t had much education, and has major problems with his grammar and use of idioms. As he explained sadly to Sophie after she tried to correct him for the nth time, “I is never having a chance to go to school. I is full of mistakes. They is not my fault. I do my best.”
To read more about The BFG (including my favorite quotes), please click here.
Straight from the Devil’s Mouth: Quotes from THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (Part 2) 1 July 2008
Posted by Renette in Book Quotes, C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (C S Lewis).5 comments
As mentioned in a previous entry, I have been re-reading THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS by C S Lewis, and have finally finished the book yesterday while waiting for my 4- year-old niece Rizpah at her school. Here are my favorite quotes from letters 11-31. I must warn you though that there are spoilers, so if you don’t want to know what will happen to the man which Wormwood is tempting, you may want to pass up on the last quote.
“All these, as I find from the record office, are thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and worldlings who without any spectacular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortably towards our father’s house.”
Well I’ve always known all along that hell is not only the destination of serial killers and child rapists – but of those who have done no “spectacular crimes” yet have not received Christ. That’s scary.
“And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognised, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn’t been doing very well lately. This dim uneasiness needs careful handling. If it gets too strong it may wake him up and spoil the whole game. On the other hand, if you suppress it entirely – which, by the by, the Enemy will probably not allow you to do – we lose an element in the situation which can be turned to good account. If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient’s reluctance to think about the Enemy.”
How often do we feel the same uneasy feeling that we’re not doing what we should? Now we know what that’s about!
“Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
“The characteristic of pains and pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality.”
Screwtape goes to much pains to explain to his nephew Wormwood that it is always dangerous to let people experience real pleasure because it can always be used by God.
“The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents-or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”
This reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes quote on modesty or false humility being as much a departure from truth as an exaggeration.
“Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable states of mind.”
Two things to avoid – unneccessarily fearing something or putting on a false bravado.
“Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ’suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches… The search for a ’suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.”
I know a lot of people like this. Church critics and connoisseurs.
“What does He stand to make out of them? That is the insoluble question.”
In the Screwtape letters, C S Lewis gives a creative reason behind the fall of Lucifer – the devil could not understand love, and could not comprehend how an infinite God can love mere mortals so much.
“For as things are, your man has now discovered the dangerous truth that these attacks don’t last forever; consequently you cannot use again what is, after all, our best weapon – the belief of ignorant humans, that there is no hope of getting rid of us except by yielding.”
What a common defeatist thought that occurs to everybody at one point or another!
“But here, as in everything else, the way must be prepared for your moral assault by darkening his intellect. Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury.”
This particular mode of attack by the devil makes a very interesting read.
“I have looked up this girl’s dossier and am horrified at what I find. Not only a Christian but such a Christian – a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss. The little brute. She makes me vomit. She stinks and scalds through the very pages of the dossier. It drives me mad, the way the world has worsened. We’d have had her to the arena in the old days. That’s what her sort is made for. Not that she’d do much good there, either. a two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she’d faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile. A cheat every way. Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who’d find ME funny!”
A really great perspective on true Christians from the point of view of the devil.
“There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least – sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us.”
Here’s something we should remember – the devil can twist anything so that they’ll go from harmless to harmful.
“A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.”
“On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything-even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience.”
“It is always the novice who exaggerates. The man who has risen in society is over-refined, the young scholar is pedantic.”
“When this, or any other distraction, crosses his mind you ought to encourage him to thrust it away by sheer will power and to try to continue the normal prayer as if nothing had happened; once he accepts the distraction as his present problem and lays that before the Enemy and makes it the main theme of his prayers and his endeavours, then, so far from doing good, you have done harm.”
“I sometimes wonder whether you think you have been sent into the world for your own amusement.”
“He has been very frightened and thinks himself a great coward and therefore feels no pride; but he has done everything his duty demanded and perhaps a bit more.”
I hope I’d be the same when something happens to me. Just as the cabby Frank said to Aslan, “A chap don’t exactly know till he’s been tried. I dare say I might turn out ever such a soft ‘un. Never did no fighting except with my fists. I’d try – that is, I ‘ope I’d try – to do my bit.”
“Make full use of the fact that up to a certain point, fatigue makes women talk more and men talk less. Much secret resentment, even between lovers, can be raised from this.”
Haha what a warning! I never knew this before.
“There was a sudden clearing of his eyes (was there not?) As he saw you for the first time, and recognised the part you had had in him and knew that you had it no longer. just think (and let it be the beginning of your agony) what he felt at that moment; as if a scab had fallen from an old sore, as if he were emerging from a hideous, shell-like tatter, as if he shuffled off for good and all a defiled, wet, clinging garment… he saw not only them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you, is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a Man.”
What a lovely way to think of death – finally meeting Jesus face to face!
Straight from the Devil’s Mouth: Quotes from THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (Part 1) 28 June 2008
Posted by Renette in Book Quotes, C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (C S Lewis).add a comment
THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS was actually the first book by C S Lewis that I read, way before The Chronicles of Narnia. I’d have to say a big thanks to my dad for giving me an old 1941 copy of the book when I was about eleven. The book is composed of several letters from a devil named Screwtape, who is an under-secretary to who knows what department in hell, addressed to his nephew named Wormwood, who is a junior tempter. Now I know it sounds devilish and scary, but it is actually a highly entertaining read. It is a look at things from the perspective of a devil, with all the dry wit you’d expect from the author.
The book is dedicated to another favorite author, J R R TOLKIEN (author of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, which I’ll write about as soon as I can buy new copies). The book begins by setting the tone with the following quotations: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn,” by Martin Luther, and “the devil… the prowde spirite… cannot endure to be mocked,” by Thomas More.
I’m currently re-reading THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, and here are my favorite quotes from the first 10 letters (there are 31 in all). I have a separate blog entry for my favorite quotes from the other 21 letters.
“I do not expect old heads on young shoulders.”
Well I’m sure this is applicable both to devils and to humans.
“The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain to our lives.”
What a way to think of the glory of God from the perspective of the enemy!
“And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.”
Contented worldliness. Hmmm. Something we should all watch out against.
“There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy.”
Here, the Enemy being referred to is God of course.
“All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.”
A warning to people with obsessive compulsive tendencies like me!
“He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
This is one of the most beautiful passages ever written on faithfulness. It reminds me of Trufflehunter the Badger from PRINCE CASPIAN (book 4 of The Chronicles of Narnia).
“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.”
A very good reminder about how the devil can use innocent pleasures for his own good.
“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all – and more amusing.”
A great point.
“All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.”
This reminds me of a quote from THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW (book 1 of The Chronicles of Narnia): “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
