Saturday, November 15, 2008
The conjurer
"There are more ways than one of living eternally." This statement of Foe's (told to Susan) following the narration of two tales of two different women is meant to comfort and inspire her. He is asking her to think beyond her present abject conditions, to look at "the big picture". He tells her that her vision and her story are not dull, but that her story "is too much the same". Does he mean that she has not learned from her experiences, that she has not shed "the husk" of her old self, not metamorphosized? Is he waiting for her to evolve a little more?
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9 comments:
Those are interesting questions...I agree that he may be hinting at the fact that she hasn't learned from her experiences. She has not changed in her perspective of the world. Does that make for a good story then? If someone is unwilling to self-examine themselves and change, will people still be interested? I think the story would end up perpetuating the same thing over and over again.
Kudos to whomever created the Wordle....very cool!
posted by Rosario
That is an interesting question indeed. I'm not sure if it is about Foe saying that Susan is not 'evolved' enough for his liking or is it that she should just give up her story and go along with how Foe thinks things should be.
I think it would be interesting for a character to cause SUsan to think introspectively about her values and ideas, particularly about Friday and Cruso but somehow I find it difficult to see Foe in this role. He just seems such a false character to me, wanting to maintain the status quo, but happy to twist things if it rewarded him somehow. I don't find him very likeable, mind you, I also find Susan irritating so many I'm just very difficult to please!!!
posted by Helene
Helene, I agree with you. I do think that Foe is just trying to twist the situation to make it more interesting for his readers so that he can sell his book... if he's even writing one!? I don't trust him, either! He doesn't care about Susan's evolution as a person. He is evading Susan's questions & coming up with excuses as to why the story she's asked him to write isn't getting published anytime soon.
Posted by Darcy
Even though it appears that Foe doesn't care about Susan evolving as a person, she does through her writing. Her thoughts and perspecitve of her experiences change as well. I think that's why many have referred to Susan as "annoying, crazy, and insane", that along with some of her actions.She is all over the place. In the first part of the book, Susan writes in diary form telling of her daily life while on the island, it is detailed and accurate from her perspective.In the second section of the book, Susan through her letters to Foe doesn't speak much of her experience on the island. Instead she focuses more of her life with Friday in London. She knows Foe doesn't think her account of her time on the island isn't exciting enough for the reader and wants him to add "life" to it. Her letters now take on a different tone or perspective, she regrets not talking more about the beauty of the island, "walking in the cool sand and the birds" p. 51 her time there wasn't as bad as he thought it was. The last part of the book is Susan's verbal account and probably the most interesting to Foe because he has instant access to her making the conversation interactive. At this point, Foe has heard Susan's story from various angles and I believe he is just leading her on as well. This makes him feel important and needed.
I think what Foe meant by, "There are more ways than one of living eternally" was to make us the reader think about how we see our legacy. If you think about it, we all write our own story through our lives. We remember momentous moments in our own lives in our own way. There are episodes during the book where Susan's recounting of her time on the island seem distorted and warped, leaving out or adding in details. This is her recollection of her time on the island. It does not matter whether it is true-to-form for us, because it is not our story.
Foe's problem is that he tries to impose his own viewpoint and will on Susan and tell her, "No, that may be how it happened but it is not how I want it to be portrayed and therefore it is not going to be written that way." I think Susan's desire to have a child with Cruso may have been as a result of this uncertainty about what happened on the island. Perhaps, to her a child would be more concrete than all these subjective details.
Anna, I just now realized this: what was Susan writing with on the island? Did she bring a pen with her? Or did I forget something from the book?
Susan thinks that telling her story of a castaway woman and having it published will make her eternal in the minds of the readers. Foe thinks that you can tell your story and live eternally by the way you live your life. As a business man he is pushing Susan to tell him controversial information about her life in Bahia because he thinks her life on the island is not enough to publish a book. Here we see two perspectives on the same subject, none necessarily right or wrong, just different.
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