Fragmented self

I am one person but several selves. This was something that was hard for me to accept for many years. I am the gentle self that loves peace and wants everyone around me to live happy lives. I am also the self that has fought martial arts for many years and has never backed down from a fight. I am in one undivided person a peaceful man who is punching someone else in the face. Now the truth is now that I am more peace with myself I find myself less likely to punch someone but when threatened that self still comes out. This is something that can torture someone who is introverted. Unrelenting study of oneself is a dangerous thing. We start dissecting these selves. We find the ways that they conflict and try to rectify them. Kochan does the same thing. He takes the person he wants to be and pushes that self forward. But his unrelenting examination of his other selves is what drives them apart we see a greater divergence in his personality and he eventually has a great split between his "self" and his "mask" I think that both of these characters are equally the same person but the stress that Koch an puts on them puts them at odds with one another and I feel worsens His mental state.so my question is what if he had just accepted all parts of himself? What would happen then?

Sick F***

I found it funny that in the first few discussions about this class we avoided the topic of the sadomasochistic element of "Confessions of a Mask". this I found interesting because I did not know how to approach it myself. So I avoided it. Kochan is obviously not a right boy. At the beginning he is more relatable but as he becomes more and more involved in his twisted fantasies he becomes less familiar to the reader. His fantasies about the violence are scary to me but the fact that he does not act on these and go all "Dexter" on everyone is comforting to me. At least he realizes that although these may be his desires he cannot do them because these desires are wrong. That is why the hiding is partially comforting to me. A say partially because the other side of me is scared because if there where people whose desires where to disembowel for sexual pleasure I would love for them to be open with this so that they might find proper psychiatric help. At this point they pose a threat to society and themselves. But, Kochan is both a comforting and discomforting character in more ways than this. The fact that he rejects himself on a daily bases is comforting when you know what goes on in his head but discomforting when you know what this does to him.

I will not think of a clever title for this but you should listen to the Smiths song... I realize this title is quite lazy.

Smiths video
So, I thought I would start today's post with a link to a music video by the smiths. I was listening to this while reading the book and something stuck a chord with me. i noticed that Antoinette multiple times points out bitter sweet songs in which there is some one singing in an upbeat about dreary subject matter. this is fist pointed out when Christophine is singing to her and latter in the convent when she is taking notice how sister Louise sings about death in such happy manor. the smiths as a British punk anarchist band (I swear the bread these bands in the UK)has truly mastered that dissidence between an upbeat tune and morbid lyrics (they also produce some very keen guitar riffs) but when i got to reading i noticed this type of melancholy was pervasive in the text. the first section is written in the manner of a young woman so the pros seem to rad in an up beat way while the content is rather sad. then again i also noticed the repeating and my mind instantly went to Chuck Palahniuk, or Kurt Vonnegut. both of these authors enjoy repetition and both generally cover come pretty gritty subject matter(seriously if you want to feel like you never want to eat again because your stomach is to knotted up, and your skin is forever crawling read Chuck Palahniuk's "Haunted" you will never be the same it contains things you can't UN-read) but gladly, Rhy's story is much less glum. I was thinking a lot about what maybe waking dreams and also the actually dreams that Antoinette has... the remind me a lot of things that one of my best friends has told me about things he has seen, she is a delusional schizophrenic, and I was thinking about Antoinette and how both her mother and brother have mental irregularities. Knowing Antoinette's eventual fate I am beginning to believe that she may very well have a similar disorder. Then i think about her future and what is to come and I am lead to think about how all of these anxieties may cause enough tension to break her psyche. This of course is only a guess and I doubt it will be affirmed or discredited as the novel goes on. Finally, I am not that far into the new section so do not ruin anything for me but I feel that the writing style used for Rochester's is section is similar to the psyche of a young man.

And here we leave Jane.

So, earlier this week Prof. Hager mentioned that if we know the end of the story we will most likely enjoy it. I was thinking of this at the end of Jane Eyre. I was thinking that Jane being the narrator of the story gives us a pretty good Idea that at least she doesn't die. Furthermore she looks back at this as a journey to an end every struggle she mentions must lead to some form of redemption or growth. That mixed along with many of the clues Eyre (or Bronte if you prefer) has left us along the way leads us to some pretty obvious ends that may come. So, I guess I knew the end pretty early on in the book but I read on because the story intrigued me. I guess such is life, we all know the end but we all seem all to eager to speed through it (forgive the tangent). I was happy that Jane ended up with Rochester; although I knew she would be with him In die time. I was also glad that she separated herself from him enough to let Rochester grow (or get injured qualify it anyway you like) and give herself time to assert her independence. But I guess in the end the whole time I knew that it would end happily, with Jane becoming the virtues, and strong heroine but, I Guess the trajectory of the novel is what got me. It wasn't straight-line form destitution to a fairytale ending. It curved and swooped and made many corrections along the way until we could find ourselves at the end. All in all, I enjoyed seeing the destination of the novel because I got to see Jane’s movement towards and away from this final goal. So, I guess in the end I agree knowing something about the end may make us a little more intrigued with the journey.