"All during the service I kept thinking about Dave Masters. About Dave dying in France, and about old Sloane sitting there at his desk, dead two days; like they were the same kinds of dying" (89).
How are they the same kinds of dying?
Also, Stoner general.
>How are they the same kinds of dying?
because they were both dead. He wasn't speaking figuratively.
two separate days and deaths; one of old age and one in war, but ultimately the same.
This, one day you're here and the next you're gone. There are always more things that could have been done.
OP here.
See, I'm only 89 pages into this book, and I really notice a trend in the writing, where Williams consistently points to a sort of contradiction which Stoner, wherein something or someone is familiar or intimate, while at the same time is distant or strange.
The first major example I find of this is the state of his marriage with Edith. They're familiar, they are intimate, yet at the same time Edith is one of the most distant people to him. His marriage is his home to come back to, yet he feels its strangeness in every instant.
There are many more examples throughout, usually explicitly stated.
>I'd be an alcoholic if your mother would let me
This book is fucking depressing.
an artist's job is not to make you happy.
finish the fucking book before asking stupid questions
Literally no questions were asked. I just wanted to spark discussion.
>How are they the same kinds of dying?
>Literally no questions were asked
You could argue that Doctor Sloan was killed by the war, too. He was an idealist, like Stoner, who was lethally disillusioned by the dramatic fact that the world didn't work like he wanted it to. The fact that the majority of people don't care to make the world a better place and help one another. The fact that the work he's doing at the University has no effect on the world around it, or how it's run. He died spiritually long before he died physically.
I'm already sort of satisfied with the answer to that. You responded to my second post with your foul language, so I assumed you were talking about that post, as one would naturally do.
This is the way I was reading it, kind of. I think it's hard for and to say that he means all death is ultimately the same in response to the quotation I posted originally because Finch specifically says "the same kinds of dying." I take this to mean that there are many kinds of dying, and some are different. If he says they're the same kinds of dying, there must be more linking them than the simple fact of death.
I saw it as a comment on Sloane's response to the war, but I also feel like it would be hard for Finch to make that kind of judgment, as he says that he didn't know Sloane very well -- he had just heard that he used to be quite good.
Yeah, you're right on about this. I just finished it last night. Great book.
If you go back to that scene there's a line/sentence or two that describes this exactly on that where she rants at him before he walks out the door.
I'd say this is a good theme to trace throughout the novel. Keep looking into it.
Which scene? You said "that scene" but I didn't mention a specific scene.
Also, there's a lot of self-estrangement in sort of the same vein, as Williams writes things along the lines of "saw himself do x," "as if done by another person," etc. I'm not quite sure what to gather from this, as I'm not even halfway done the book, but it's happening a lot. Even with other characters, like when Edith is lusting for him and Williams describes her hands as having their own mind and not being hers; when Lomax is speaking of his childhood and he tells the story "as if of another person."
The self-estrangement is, I would say, the most striking example of the strange/familiar contradiction, as there is nothing truly more intimate than oneself.
I think it's got to do with the nature of the self.
I think Williams is trying to convey the fact that Stoner has at no point so far been confronted with the self or at any time had to meditate over the question of self. Part of what makes these two characters in particular so very human and relatable (less so in the case of Edith imo) is their ignorance of their own motivations. Many times throughout the novel you will come to see that Stoner does not think about himself very much, especially when he is called on to communicate his plans for the future at any point. Stoner has always simply existed, that's part of what makes his character so organic and it's why we the reader are able to project so much sincerity onto Stoner and at many times the narrative drive of the novel itself.
Is No Longer Human comparable to Stoner? I just finished the first chapter before work this morning and its definitely a lot different. Stoner is a sad story while it seems as if NLH exists to make you feel like shit. I've been a bit bummed all day.
the only similarity between those two books is the fact that they'll bum you out.
The protagonist of NLH is an impulsive crybaby that moans for 300 pages.
Stoner endures his hardships without complaint.
Good post. I read NLH years ago, expected to relate and really didn't but still felt sad about the dudes life. Stoner I relate with and I think is a beautiful character in a book that is so simple and realistic feeling... Stoner is an amazing book. NLH is aight, surprised by hearing it's one or Japan's most cherished desu.
Should have adopted Master's attitude towards academia, would have lightened his mood some perhaps.
I like your interpretation. Thanks for this post.
I assume he meant prolonged death. Dave Masters was wasting away in some trench while Sloane wasted away in his old age and subtle humiliation.
i always thought it was just some sort of anxiety towards being forgotten after you're gone; Dave being a faceless casualty of the war amongst the millions and Sloane forgotten in his room for two days, missed by no-one.
OP here.
Have you read any scholarship on the novel? I've only been able to find one article and it's all about sadness (called "A Sadness Unto the Bone"), and I was looking for more of a philosophical/psychoanalytic reading probably. If you know of anything, can you point me in the right direction?
All dying is the same. Once you dead, you dead.
#deep.
This is correct.
Don't have a page number. But it was one of the first times Stoner hangs with his wife-to-be. When he "calls her" the first time. They're sitting on a couch together, very awkwardly. He gets up to go and she shouts a bunch of stuff at him and he goes back to her. It's described as an "intimate yet distant" or something like that. It's intimate b/c she's revealing all this stuff, but it's just pouring out of her, almost not directed at Stoner.
Oh I know exactly what you mean. I'm about 100 pages past where I was last night when I started this, and goddamn this book just gets sadder and sadder.
It's all right, everything will be fine in the end.