Monday, November 3, 2008
Unavoidable Progress
Contradictions and coincidences in this novel are nothing rare. Geoffrey, our narrator, chooses to address Flaubert in a very personal matter, allowing the reader to see the complete truth about the author. One truth we find out in chapter 8 is Flaubert's hate for progress. The train, though mentioned in many of his novels is seen in his mind as the worse source of progress. This pure hatred of something so natural seems completely contradicting to the next chapter in the novel. Barnes writes about Flaubert's life in a sequence, progressing timeline of years. Flaubert seems to progress as a person as the ideas and realities of life start to impact him. This idea of progress is unescapable. Life is a progression in itself. Everything that happens thickens the progression of life. Although Flaubert avoided the direct idea of progress and democracy there was no way he could avoid it.
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1 comment:
Interesting to note that you feel, thanks to the "personal" tone of the narrator, we wind up getting the "truth" about Flaubert's life. Certainly, we're getting a ton of information, but does it really constitute the "truth"? I wonder. Maybe the ultimate instability of these sorts of truth is part of what Barnes is toying around with here.
Good post.
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