Semester III: Two nights before exam
"Remember the great principle of your century: always be the contrary of what people expect."
It took almost four nights to finish Stendhal's Red and Black as I now take a little walk around the hostel campus. My mind's in a complete state of unrest, and calculating my own future as I contemplate upon the circumstances of nineteenth-century France. Sorel, the pretentious protagonist whom I really detested in the beginning, for all the reasons that made him a hero of the novel, had me change my mind about him now that I'm eventually done reading the text. It is a world of pretension and hypocrisy, not very unlike ours. I can't really blame Sorel for being a complete hypocrite to climb up the social ladder as those already on top are the ones who have the fortune of both money and power and have even less real personae. It is a society where you have to keep up a face, dress accordingly as it's your clothes that define your social position. It's where you can lie as much as you want provided you are an amusement for the bored bourgeois aristocrats of France. So, a provincial like Sorel who aspires to rise follows the norms that would help him realize his ambition. For that matter I shan't really bother to hate him, in fact, he arouses my sympathy. It is the world around him that is worthy of dislike, for it doesn't leave a space for honesty. But perhaps one can buy oneself into it.
Sadly, what is most moving is the truth that those who have the ability and knowledge to hold a position are denied and even punished as they haven't naturally inherited it. And that they'd always remain an out-caste. The ones who cannot earn their bread are left with no other means but to steal have to suffer their predestined fate as a criminal. But Stendhal's tale has the power to inspire ambition. Could it be that though such methods are cruel that they can help you work your way to success? But in the end what does it leave us to be? Who do we become? The question I ask myself is who am I if not defined by my peers? And what is to become of my future if I carry myself around without pleasing others who hold the card to my fate?
As I return to my desk, I have more urgent decisions to make at hand, and that is, to work out a strategy to pass the next exam. Three huge novels lie untouched smelling of fresh paper. Alas! there is no time to read.
It took almost four nights to finish Stendhal's Red and Black as I now take a little walk around the hostel campus. My mind's in a complete state of unrest, and calculating my own future as I contemplate upon the circumstances of nineteenth-century France. Sorel, the pretentious protagonist whom I really detested in the beginning, for all the reasons that made him a hero of the novel, had me change my mind about him now that I'm eventually done reading the text. It is a world of pretension and hypocrisy, not very unlike ours. I can't really blame Sorel for being a complete hypocrite to climb up the social ladder as those already on top are the ones who have the fortune of both money and power and have even less real personae. It is a society where you have to keep up a face, dress accordingly as it's your clothes that define your social position. It's where you can lie as much as you want provided you are an amusement for the bored bourgeois aristocrats of France. So, a provincial like Sorel who aspires to rise follows the norms that would help him realize his ambition. For that matter I shan't really bother to hate him, in fact, he arouses my sympathy. It is the world around him that is worthy of dislike, for it doesn't leave a space for honesty. But perhaps one can buy oneself into it.
Sadly, what is most moving is the truth that those who have the ability and knowledge to hold a position are denied and even punished as they haven't naturally inherited it. And that they'd always remain an out-caste. The ones who cannot earn their bread are left with no other means but to steal have to suffer their predestined fate as a criminal. But Stendhal's tale has the power to inspire ambition. Could it be that though such methods are cruel that they can help you work your way to success? But in the end what does it leave us to be? Who do we become? The question I ask myself is who am I if not defined by my peers? And what is to become of my future if I carry myself around without pleasing others who hold the card to my fate?
As I return to my desk, I have more urgent decisions to make at hand, and that is, to work out a strategy to pass the next exam. Three huge novels lie untouched smelling of fresh paper. Alas! there is no time to read.
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