Pip chases this dream of being a gentleman and winning over a girl above his station. I see the romance but ultimately he doesn't find either love or happiness.
i was looking over some of the other posts and bumming that we didn't talk more about 'great expectations,' and i saw eric's comment above. i was ruminating about hixx's thoughts about GE being a romantic book. and then i put the two together and thought "is a happy ending necessary for something to be romantic?"
i don't know. really, i'm probably not the first person to go to about romance. but as i type this, i realize that most people think 'romeo and juliet' is probably one of the most romantic stories evah, and that things is also depressing as hell.
i don't know what i really think romance is. i guess i've always considered it somewhat of a fantasy, an infatuation that by its own device has to have happiness or some sort of dream of happiness wrapped up into it. i don't even know what i'm trying to get at other than ... what IS romance? what makes something romantic? what is *a* romance?
Thursday, August 7, 2008
just wondering
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2 comments:
No, a happy ending isn't necessary. just look at Love Story or if we want to go to classics Romeo and Juliet. Like I said this should all be about opinions and since this is a little different from your other blog, we are talking about things that people really hold close. I mean I'm a big boy, but if someone really dissed Dracula I might not come out of my room for days, Of course that won't happen.
I confess to not knowing much about Al and Gore and his Love Story (except I hate Tipper for PMRC - can't let that one go).
Happy endings are not necessary (or even available depending on the massage parlor) but shouldn't there be SOMETHING?
I love movies where everyone dies at the end - the more the better. An ending where humans become extinct is the best ending of them all.
Yet somewhere along the way I expected to like Pip. I liked Joe. I liked Biddy. I liked Herbert. But never Pip.
Pip wishes to ascend to a better class; Pip makes that ascent and treats folks badly along the way; Pip learns that being in a higher class does not make you a classier person. Pip never gets over his first crush and is then left to mope around either a) like a stalker waiting for the slightest encouragement to continue following Estella around like a pathetic fool, or b) depressed that none of his expectations were satisfied.
What it needed was a lot more bodice-ripping and at least one car chase. Someone call Jerry Bruckheimer.
or give me a good Edgar Allan Poe twist like "Berenice" http://www.online-literature.com/poe/23/
Poe wrote some seriously romantic tales where there was actual love involved. Obsessive love, sure, but real love.
Maybe that was my problem. Pip never found love. That makes me sad, even if he was a whiney bitch.
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