I found the author's "inner voice" comments to be unrealistic. Personally, I've never had a moment inside where a voice comes to me and tells me, "I'm right here. What can I do for you?" (53). Gilbert does say that she doubted it at times, but then found herself writing, "Who are you talking to then?" (54). I just don't think that the author couldn't know that she was writing something. The words can't write themselves, so she must have been aware. Do you agree?
I also thought it was interesting that the author mentions that she becomes obsessed with one thing in her life at a time. For instance,she has trouble balancing her interets in Rome. She writes, "The culture of Rome just doesn't match the culture of Yoga, not as far as I can see" (55). I agree that the cultures are different, but I think that it would have been healthier for her to break out the Yoga mat in Italy. Her obsessive behavior is also shown with the way she handles her relationships. She disappears into the person that she is dating, to the point where she actually begins to act like her boyfriend. This doesn't seem healthy. I hope that by the end of the novel, she knows how to separate and balance her interests.
The final thing I was interested in was that in this section she reveals personal details. I agree with what you were saying, that she didn't want to share details about her husband because they weren't hers to share, but the exact opposite happens in this section. She writes about how disappointed she was with the husband of her friend at a cocktail party of her friend, which seems personal to me. What do you think? Is this different than what she didn't want to reveal about her husband?
I agree that her obsession with 'inner voice' is a bit bizarre. It all seems kind of Harry Potter-ish to me (no offense Ali and Kim (; ). I understand the whole religious aspect of it; I'm religious as well. But this isn't Moses' time when bushes would spontaneously combust and an angel's voice would come down from the heavens and guide you. That's not how it works.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it seems to me that she thinks she's special and has the privilege of receiving divine intervention. An increasingly large amount of couples are getting divorced nowadays, and I personally have heard of many divorces that seem to be much uglier than hers. I understand how awful it is and I'm not trying to play that down, but Gilbert seems like she feels that she is the only person in the world who has ever been in such a tragic situation. Maybe I'm just insensitive, but I think she's a bit of a drama-queen.
>:|
Oh, and could somebody be so kind as to make me a contributer? :)
ReplyDeleteI do not think her inner voice is bizzare. I believe it is her way of talking to herself. When she does have the "inner voice" it is in situations when she needs to relax and stop being so hysterical. Like in the bathroom, here she is on the floor balling her eyes out in the middle of the night. Gilbert just needed a way to calm down, so she talks to herself. When I golf I do it as a soothing method so I do not overreact to the situation.
ReplyDeleteWith the part about the husband, I do not think that this is too personal. She is very broad this point, and does not give off a lot of information to the reader. Who knows, the husband could have been half asleep and not even remembering saying that. She is not providing personal details here, she is just laying out the situation and commenting on it.
I found talking about the yoga mat very interesting. I thought it revealed a lot about her. Gilbert is living in Rome for 4 months and she is here to learn to speak Italian and eat the food. I am sure all the food she eats is not healthy for her one bit (ie the gelato or however you spell it), so she trys exercising by doing yoga. Obviously, she does not actually preform yoga that day, and never brings out the mat again while she was in Italy. The cultures were too 'different' to preform both. From reading this I get the feeling that Gilbert is not very adaptive. It seems that whenever she runs into a problem she does her best to avoid it instead of tackling it head on. Like with David, they are a constant on and off again relationship. All relationships have problems, so when Gilbert runs into hers, she seeems to just run away from them. I think she is very much a coward in this sense.
I definately agree that she's over dramatic. But I think that her inner-voice could be viewed as realistic, because she isn't saying that it's neccessarily from God, but that it's coming from within her. I think that this means that she knows what is right for her to do, but in order to bring these feelings to the surface and figure things out, she has to write it down because that's what she does. Kind of the whole transcendentalist idea of God being within oneself, but even more simple in a way, because once she was honest with herself she knew what to do. This is shown when her friend says to her, "tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth" and then she knows what to do.
ReplyDeleteAnd Kierstyn, the part about her friend's husband also struck me as personal. I couldn't help but think what those friends would say if they happened to read the book and realize she was reffering to them.
Referring to the inclusion of personal details in the book... I think she is trying to spare the feelings of everyone involved, but I also think that she feels a responsibility to tell her story the right way. I mean, she was paid up front for this book and for her travels, and I think that makes her want to tell as accurate of a story as she can. If she wants people to really connect to herself and her book, she needs to put herself out there and do whatever she can to help people understand her. While she excludes details that are painful for all involved and irrelevant to the story she is trying to tell, I think the moment with the friend's husband was a really important turning point in her life. It was what finally made her realize that she didn't want to be living the way she was living--so while she is trying to spare people's feelings and tell the gossipy, subjective experiences as little as possible, if something was that important to her life and to her decision to go on these trips that the entire book is about, it is, in my opinion, understandable that she would tell about that.
ReplyDeleteAs for her weird God experience... not so weird for me either. She says herself that she is not a Christian, so her methods of contacting her God would be very different then those of Christian faith (14). Nothing close to the realm of burning bushes and angels voices has happened to her. Maybe she believes that divine intervention happens more often then you believe it does, Audrey. I don't really know much about religion, but I do know that different faiths have very different ideas about the involvement of whomever (or whatever) created the universe in people's everyday lives. We don't know what happened in her marriage, either, so for all we know she could actually be going crazy. I just feel like it's not exactly up to us to determine the validity of her religious experiences.
And finally... Audrey, if you send me your email I would be happy to make you a contributor.
I think that there's a difference between stating our opinions towards Gilbert, and determining the validity of her religious experiences. While you make a good point that her views on religion aren't too conventional and that she never said that she was truly a Christian, my skepticism remains.
ReplyDelete