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Your personal response to, and evaluation of the novel

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Your personal response to, and evaluation of the novel

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I did not like this novel, and I regret having read the whole thing. The story has some good parts, like meeting Nicholas Temelcoff and Caravaggio, but it is buried in thousands of passages about an incredibly boring protagonist. Having this book not be about Nicholas Temelcoff, an immigrant and working man, was a huge mistake. Patrick could easily be swapped out for anyone else and the story would be largely the same, and infinetly more interesting. That said, I do really like how the author uses imagery and metaphors. It is just such a shame that this book is about the worst character featured. Every single supporting character was more interesting, even Commisioner Harris.

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Identify elements of style and explain how they help communicate meaning and enhance effectiveness.

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Identify elements of style and explain how they help communicate meaning and enhance effectiveness.

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"He was a spinner. He was bare-knuckled capitalism. He was a hawk who hovered over the whole province, swooping down for the kill, buying up every field of wealth, and eating the profit in mid-air. He was a jackal." pg 57

The metaphors used in this passage reveals how Patrick thinks of Ambrose. These figures of speech make Ambrose out to be rutheless, greedy, and inhuman, instead of someone that Patrick simply does not like.

"His mind skates across old conversations. The past drifts into the air like an oasis and he watches himself within it... He saw something there he would never fully reach - the way Clara dissolved and suddenly disappeared from him, or the way Alice came to him it seemed in a series of masks or painted faces, both of these women like the sea through a foreground of men." pg 128

This mix of personification, metaphors, and similes gives the feeling of a dream sequence. When mentioning Clara and Alice dissapearing or becoming a construct, it gives the sense that he's hallucinating - it even makes me feel a bit dizzy. This feeling being so bizarre makes it much more effective than simply telling the reader that he was reminiscing about past relationships.

"Clara and Ambrose and Alice and Temelcoff and Cato - this cluster made up a drama without him. And he himself was nothing but a prism that refracted their lives...there was a terrible horizon in him beyond what he couldn't leap. Something hollow, so when alone, when not aligned with another - whether it was Ambrose or Clara or Alice - he could hear the rattle within that suggested a space between him and community. A gap of love." pg 157

These metaphors communicate a hollowness in Patrick that cannot be explained in simple or conventional terms. This passage explains how Patrick is an empty shell, a reflection of everyone else in his life - he is not his own person. There is something tragic that is given here that cannot be shown in telling the audience that Patrick has no personality.

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Identify and analyse any perspective or biases in the novel

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Identify and analyse any perspective or biases in the novel

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In SOAL, there is the prominent bias that it is okay to exploit immigrant workers. Immigrants in this book, primarily Macedonians, are paid much less than they should for the insane amount of hours they work. They are often doing the most taxing and dangerous jobs too. This is shown throughout the whole book, but the best examples are of the dyers and tunnel workers.

Some quotes for reference:

"Exhaustion overpowers Patrick and other tunnellers withing twenty minutes, the arms itching, the chest dry. Then an hour more, then another four hours till lunch when they have thirty minutes to eat... All morning they slip in the wet clay unable to stand properly, pissing where they work, eating where someone else left shit" pg 105-106

"they were twenty to thirty-five years old, were Macedonians mostly, though there were a few Poles and Lithuanians... on average they had three or four sentences of English...they had consumed the most evil smell in history, they were consuming it now, flesh death, which lies in the vacuum between flesh and skin, and even if they never stepped into this pit again - a year from now they would burp up that odour...they would die of consumption and at present they did not know it." pg 131

"What the dyers wanted... was a cigarette... A cigarette, a star beam through their flesh, would have been enough to purify them... they could never smoke - the acid of the solutions they had stepped into and out of so strong that they would have ignited if a flame touched them." pg 130-131

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The theme of theatre in SOAL represents both Clara and Alice, the two actresses. This theme emphasizes and helps solidify how Patrick is an observer, or an audience member, to his life and the world around him. Patrick does not communicate with others and often his relationships, especially romantic, just happen to him instead of him participating or seeking them out.
Passages:
"She was waiting for the light, like a good actress, ready to be revealed."pg 120
"Like an actress unable to return to the real world from a role"pg 132
"She converses with full energy in this theatre of the dinner table" pg 133

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Patrick has little to no communication skills; this is likely a side effect of growing up in a secluded area and only speaking to his taciturn father. This is how Patrick goes most of his life without belonging to a community, until he meets the Macedonians. Just like the non-native speakers, he struggles with english and finds himself practicing his own native tongue with them. This theme of language, especially when comparing Patrick to Nicholas Temelcoff and other immigrants, make it clear how much Patrick struggles with his own language. This lack of communication is so severe, it even ends up causing the death of his lover, Alice.
Passages:
"The only moments his father was verbal was when calling square dances...The unemotional tongue..." pg 19
"He found himself muttering... among the Macedonians...The people on the street, the Macedonians and Bulgarians, were his only mirror." pg 112
"Four women and a couple of men then circled him trying desperately to leap over the code of languages between them" 113
"The men enter and Patrick.. watches them and all language dries up." 184
"By the time I got there, I had nothing in me to shout. Alice! I couldn't even whisper it." pg 240

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The 4 Elements in SOL (mostly fire vs water)

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The 4 Elements in SOL (mostly fire vs water)

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When Patrick is in water in SOAL, he is considered to be safe. Patrick heads to water at the first sign of danger, and he could not worry any less about drowning or freezing. Most of this could be attributed to his childhood, where he went head first into freezing waters, and watched his father at work as a dynamiter. Throughout the book, water has been his saviour, using it to escape being lit on fire or seeking refuge from an explosion. On the other side, Fire has been his downfall. Every instance of fire is a loss for Patrick: blowing up Alice, arson leading to him going to prison, and his explosions injuring him and making his job of blowing up the waterworks remain unfinished.
Passages:
"Patrick puts his head into the water... Patrick will not let go, though he is running out of air... His father is frantically trying to get water out of his ears and off his eyes before it freezes in the air and Patrick... does the same... He can feel the ice on his chin and neck already forming but he doesn't worry about that." pg 13
"He is running along the rock path to the river before he knows for certain he is on fire... He remains in the water, only his head visible, scared to allow his shoulders into the air" pg 94
"Like water, you can easily be harnessed, Patrick. That's dangerous." pg 122
"He hangs, his fingers hooked through the wires of the screen, everything below his waist in water...He has air now...A very small explosion to dislodge the firmly rivetted screen and he will be out." pg 231
"she was carrying dynamite with a timing device, a clock bomb." pg 239

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1. incarnadine = a bright crimson or pinkish-red color.
2. delineated = describe or portray (something) precisely.
3. detritus = waste or debris of any kind.
4. crinoline = a hooped petticoat worn to make a long skirt stand out.
5. regatta = a sporting event consisting of a series of boat or yacht races.
6. jubilant = feeling or expressing great happiness and triumph.