Good Soldier

“Good Soldier” by Ford Madox Ford is a novel that is divided up into four parts describing the events of what happened to a couple, John and Florence Dowell when they were acquainted with another couple, Edward and Leonora Ashburnham. In Part I we see the two couple meet in a health spa where they begin to establish a friends ship that would last for nine years. Leonora realizes that Florence and Edward are having an affair but later we discover he had many affairs in the past. At first John thought it wasn’t true be cause he wasn’t aware of Edward’s past but soon he’d realize that it was and their friendship would be over between the couples. Leonora brings along Mrs. Maiden so that Edward would have a good mistress but when she finds out she dies of a heart attack because of how disgusted she is with what is happening.
Part two begins with a brief flashback about John and Florence’s meeting and marriage and their trip to Europe. While they are in Europe Florence begins to develop a fake heart condition which would lead to them staying in Europe. John begins to explain how Florence had an affair that he didn’t know about with an artist named Jimmy. After this affair a couple years later when Edward and Leonora met with the Jimmy and Florence their friendship became tainted because Florence was having an affair with Edward for the whole nine years the couple were friends with one another. When we get back to present time Florence was planning on divorcing herself from John but she saw Edward courting a girl named Nancy in a park. She immediately ran home then poisoned herself because when she got home her husband John was informed of her affair with Jimmy.
Part three is describing how both Edawrd and John are trying to make Nancy fall in love with them after Florence’s death. Leonora, Edward, John, and Nancy all go to Branshaw Manor in England where Leonora would break down and make an educated guess that Edward is in love with Nancy. We learn that Leonora had been putting up with Edwards unfaithfulness but after his last affair with Florence she claims that their love is dead.
In the Last Part of the book Nancy breaks down and tells Leonora that Edward is a horrible husband and that he was trying to get with her even thought that the Ashburnham’s are her ward. John tells Nancy and Leonora to torture Edward and he suffers so greatly that he sends Nancy back to India to live with her father in hoping that she will miss him. When he finds out he is wrong he commits suicide. Leonora meets someone knew who she claims is the perfect man and marries him and when Nancy goes psychotic John takes her in to live with him in the Branshaw Manor permanently after he buys it.
In Good Soldier there are two main themes that stick out normality and reality. Throughout the novel John, the narrator of the novel judges people as either normal or abnormal. He talks a lot about what normal really is because something normal to you may not be normal to someone else. This theme seems to stick out the most and the theme is reality. In Good Soldier John thinks to know the people around him very well and gives people trust but in reality they aren’t what he thinks, for example he trust Edward enough to leave his wife with him but secretly he’s having an affair with John’s wife.
The author’s language was easy to comprehend but still had a good vocabulary. The book was written in a first person narrative in the life of John Dowell and it gave me a good sense of the emotions he felt and others as well in great detail.
There were many issues in this book that pertain to adolescents but one that stands out the most is faithfulness in relationships. In “ Good Soldier ” a lot of the book is about affairs in relationships. Dating in relationships first begins in the adolescent stage of a person’s life. Since people are young, inexperienced, and ignorant some people chose the path to be unfaithful and there are consequences, which are evident in this book.
I have not noticed any similarities thus far with our completion of this course.
I found that the author did a great job of writing this novel and the only way he could have improved his novel is if he gave more points of view rather than just John Dowell’s. I would recommend this book to many teenagers because it demonstrates how severe the consequences can be of being unfaithful and dishonest.
There is plenty of evidence of symbolism in this book and the two most obvious ones are “shuttlecocks” and Martin Luther’s protest. Shuttlecock means to be tossed back in forth like a badminton birdie and when Nancy loses her mind that’s all she can say is “shuttlecocks”. The symbolism behind this is throughout the book many characters go through emotional ups and downs and goes back and forth like a shuttlecock. Florence begins to talk about Martin Luther’s protest and how it represents soberness, honesty and industrious. It is symbolic because Martin Luther’s speech separates two different groups of people just like how Florence is separating herself and Edward from Leonora and John.

Seize The Day by Saul Bellow

This novel is called “Seize The Day” by Saul Bellow and this book is centered on a man in his mid forties named Thomas Wilhelm. Thomas has temporarily moved in to a hotel called Gloriana in the North West side of New York. As the novel progresses we learn about Thomas’ situation and how he is broke. Thomas had been fired from his previous job and only had a small amount of cash left in his name. Thomas would then head down to dinner to eat breakfast with his father and ask about financial aid from his father. His father would then thwart his attempt and say that he would no longer fund “a failure”. Because his father wouldn’t help him he sought help and met Dr. Tamkin who is a psychologist and claims to know a lot about the stock market. As their trust for one another strengthens Thomas entrusts the rest of his savings to Dr. Tamkin to play the stock market. Soon all of Thomas’ funds would be wasted with no profit and Dr. Tamkin was no where to be found. Thomas began to feel like he was “suffocating” and claims he “could not breathe” because of his stress and his financial issue. He goes into desperation after not being able to find Dr. Tamkin and asks his father one last time, his father replies by saying no in a more disappointed manner. When Thomas goes back up to his hotel he calls his wife and they begin to argue about their children and he tells him he can’t be with her anymore and storms out of the hotel on to Broadway. There he sees what he thinks is Dr. Tamkin and sprints towards him, then get sucked into a crowed going to a funeral. While he is at this funeral he begins to cry “with all his heart” and he is no longer “suffocating” because those tears he is shedding are the tears of his new start to a new life.
This novel has two outstanding themes in this work, one being human life and the other being isolation. Human life is a big theme because the novel is written in third person but also has points where Tommy’s thoughts and emotion are expressed in his voice. Because of Saul Bellow’s style of writing in this book it makes it so that Tommy’s life is portrayed and easily understood giving the reader a good sense of how Tommy is dealing with his ups and downs through out the novel. Isolation is an evident theme in this book because through out a lot of the book he is describing because he is a jewish American he isn’t the same as everyone else. He also says this for two other reasons, one being everyone that surrounds him seems to have a life that is in check while his isn’t, he also describes how he stays in a hotel where plenty there are plenty of retiree and he cant seem to relate to them.
What I thought most effective about this style of writing the author uses is third and first person writing styles and uses a vocabulary that was difficult sometimes to comprehend but still made it easy to describe the story.
An issue raised in this book that pertained to me personally was somewhat indirect. Tommy turns to his father for financial aid to support him because he is broke. I am constantly asking my father for money because I don’t have a job for me to have my own and Tommy doesn’t have a job either.
The author could have made the ending a bit more clearly to the readers to improve the book. I would also recommend this book to an audience who likes climax.
Symbolism is evident in multiple areas of this book but two symbols stand out water and clothing. Water is a symbol because water can be dangerous and multiple times in the book Tommy makes references to how he is suffocating and that he can’t breathe. He has this image in his head he is surrounded in this underwater world and he is drowning but at the end of the book when he is crying it is like his new life begins through the tears he cries. The other symbol, clothing is important because it describes how Tommy always tries to layer himself up with clothes to be someone else hiding from himself.