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The Desire to Live : Septimus and Esther Greenwood

Septimus’s journey saddened me, and I was quite shocked when he died. What made his death especially difficult was that throughout the novel, he does not seem to simply want to die. In many ways, he seems to want to get better. Even right before his death, Woolf writes, “He did not want to die. Life was good” (Woolf 226). This moment makes his death especially tragic because it suggests that there is still a part of him that wants to live, but he cannot find a way to escape from the pain and memories. What makes his situation even more painful is that the people around him believe they are helping him, yet they never seem to understand what he actually needs. His doctors focus on controlling his behavior and returning him to what they consider a normal life rather than trying to understand him as a person. Bradshaw tells Septimus that “The people we are most fond of are not good for us when we are ill,” and insists that Septimus “must be taught to rest” and that he and Rezia “must be s...
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Slowing Down the Escalator of Life

When I first started reading Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine , I thought the book was too boring. Very little happens, and I was getting annoyed at the endless footnotes taking up pages. The story follows Howie, an office worker, during his lunch break. Instead of focusing on an ‘eventful’ plot, Baker focuses on Howie’s internal thoughts about ordinary objects, routines, and experiences. At first, I did not understand why someone would write an entire book about such mundane things. The novel begins with him entering his office building while carrying a Penguin paperback and CVS bag. Baker sees escalators and writes, “They were the free-standing kind: a pit or integral signs…they served without struts or piers” (Baker 3). He continues describing the way sunlight reflects off the escalators and the surrounding marble and glass. Instead of simply riding the escalator and moving on with his day, Howie stops to observe it. Throughout the novel, Howie pays attention to things that we migh...
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