The Last Post (of quarter 3)

Life Class by Pat Barker.

As the book draws to a close Paul gets what he wanted; to drive the ambulances. The hospital wad turned against him when he gets an infection that nearly takes his life. Paul is working in the ambulances and he is much happier working there. As far as development goes the war has turned him completely around and he is so much different now. On the negative side he has a harder time relating to people on the outside and he has a hard time going back to life when he leaves the war in the end. Finally though, Paul has something to say and he, in his spare time, is able to paint two works that he believes in. He says, “It had an authority that he didn’t associate with his stumbling, uncertain, inadequate self” (254). Paul has been given perspective from the war and he has taught him about life and about fighting, it has taught him that life isn’t fair; war is just a painful waste of that life. Elinor, who is present in the novel with letters and other people talking about her, is used to show Paul’s growth. He meets Kit twice in this last part, one time angrily fighting Kit over Elinor and the next time, he is hardened and he doesn’t fight Kit over Elinor. These meeting solidify the lasting feeling of jealousy in the book, mostly over women.
Elinor seems shallow in the last fifty pages as she speaks of social outings and painting pretty landscapes. This is seen in contrast to Paul’s war paintings and demanding ambulance job and we think of Elinor as thick. When she does get a job it has nothing to do with the war. We see this as a selfish move but when the reader thinks about it, maybe she just has the most perspective out of everyone. Maybe she realizes the losses and wreckage war causes isn’t worth it. Lewis is also still around and he becomes Paul’s best friend, strong ties of brotherhood created out of sheer need for someone by your side. Lewis is used to bring compassion into the book, but also he says he has never been afraid. We know Lewis does not boast and I think he pulls Paul out of his fear. The final character I need to mention is Catherine. She is not necessarily developed but everyone talks about her as a pity case, she is German living in London and therefore highly criticized. Catherine is used to show how far Elinor is from the war; she defends Catherine’s rights and turns her back on social norms, also showing her strength.
Themes- The most prominent theme would be war in art; is it appropriate. When Paul shows Tonks his war paintings Tonks looks away and says, “…you could never show this anywhere” (296). The art teacher that knows everything about art is rejecting a work on war and so we start to wonder if it is good or bad. It is the first painting that gives Paul any emotion and feeling yet it is rejected by a “master.” Another theme is that love is destroyed by distance. Elinor and Paul like each other enough to call it love and once Elinor leaves Paul and goes home their letters become less and less frequent and when they come they are short and angry. The last theme is created when Paul’s stronghold Lewis dies. Lewis has been a friend growing alongside Paul and the theme that the strong fall first is created. “…he found Lewis’s hand and touched it. It was still warm. He thought he felt an answering pressure before it went slack” (292). Lewis had always brought Paul back to his humanity, remaining strong while he did it. The death of this man was not made a fuss over and he died while Paul did not in the same explosion and so we can draw the conclusion that the stronger leaders in the world are lost first.

Life Class #5

We now understand Paul. Elinor comes to visit him in the studio he rents in a town near the “hospital.” He spends the first night with Elinor when she loses her virginity but then they don’t really know what to do after that. Paul is too detached to really ever love someone and Elinor describes it better than I ever could. She talks about always envisioning Paul looking away, not smiling. We now learn why; his mother committed suicide and he is rather torn up about it, a distant feeling that is ever heightened by his involvement in the war and so she explains why he looks away, “…he is always looking for something, yearning after something I couldn’t see” (213). As we learn this about Paul we can start to understand his lack of anything to say, his walls. This understanding of his mother’s suicide also brings us to know how difficult the suicide case he treated at the hospital must have been for him. While Elinor and Paul spend their time together we also get to see how Lewis is holding up under the pressure of the hospital. Lewis is sent to get Elinor and he seems to have taken to the hospital like Paul had done and very interestingly he “hero-idolizes” Paul as he seeks stability and hope in hopeless times. He seems to have adjusted to the war and when the streets are bombed he is able to return to the hospital like a dutiful little soldier. Elinor is complicated. She is strong and independent and for a moment we think ignorant and cold. She claims to “ignore the war” and go on with her everyday life and it is highly irritating as she seeks to completely block out the war from her vision. At the same time though we see growth in her, saying, if not out loud, that she loves Paul but he doesn’t love her back. Surprisingly she is ok with this and is able to get up and be positive. She thinks, “…and it came to her that he didn’t love her at all… what she loved most about him was the quality of detachment that prevented his ever really loving her” (226), she then goes on to “jump out of bed… eager for the day that lay ahead”. Elinor’s lack of interest in the war is a big part of Life Class because it is not from a lack of interest in humanity but is sprung from her unwillingness to waste energy thinking about destruction.
THEMES BABY. The theme that war should not be captured is a prominent one. War is ugly and Paul thinks it should be seen in all its’ glory. When Elinor asks him what he paints he relies, “…People at the hospital, patients… That’s what I see. Though I don’t know what the point of it is. Nobody’s going to hang that sort of thing in a gallery” Elinor questions why anyone would want to, “People peering at other people’s suffering and saying, ‘Oh my dear, how perfectly dreadful’- and then moving to the next picture. It would just be a freak show” (220). Another theme is that sex without complete love forges ties that cannot be maintained. This is seen when Elinor bangs Paul and immediately realizes he does not love her. Any promise that relationship had is wounded then and would need to be rebuilt.
I don’t know where else to add this but I was incredibly disturbed by the murders of two young boys. One taken by death in a bombing and mourned over by Elinor as the boy dies in the street. The boy is lost and there was nothing that could be done but the boy continues to haunt her as she sees first hand the destruction of the war, proving that no one really hopes for war and that it is no one’s first choice. The other boy is smothered in his sleep as he heals in a hospital. By his mother. The meaning of this is beyond me unless it is really what I think it is; simply showing the destruction, adding to it. His death is the only thing announced about this boy and it unsettled me to read about it. Paul had walked in and seen the mother with a pillow and not realized the gravity of the action. Later when the boy was announced dead by suffocation it replayed in his mind and, therefore, in mine.

Life Class #4

The relationship that Paul had formed with Elinor in the last parts of the book becomes his lifeline to normality now as he works in a WWI “hospital.” The young character we had met in the beginning seems to have dulled in the horrors of the Great War, now a man that speaks of dead men in percentages and one that compassion makes uncomfortable. Paul is working in a hospital with limited supplies and staff when in the beginning of the reading he is sent to go bring in a new volunteer. The hospital has deadened him a bit and he knows the same will happen to the new guy. The new guy is named Lewis, a new bunkmate for Paul and the bane of Paul’s existence as he is put in charge of Lewis’s desensitization to the hospital and dying men in less than Ideal conditions. Paul is now a bit bitter and he is mad that Lewis will soon be the same. The walk to the train station is a struggle for him because of “being plunged back in to the normal world” and the effect that the war has had on him becomes apparent. Paul puts up a defensive wall to protect himself from feeling compassion, a wall that is only removed in his letters to Elinor. Lewis, in a letter to Elinor, is described as “Perfectly pleasant, young, enthusiastic, full of admirable qualities- and he’s driving me mad” (184). Lewis shows us the old Paul and brings to attention the jarring difference from what he was to what he is. As Lewis spends time in the hospital a suicide case is brought in, shot himself, only the irony is he would be sent back to the army to be shot by a firing squad for desertion. This shocks Lewis and Paul, though he refuses to show it, and causes Lewis to become obsessed with this patient. He cannot believe a world lie this exists and it seems to open old wounds in Paul as he experienced it again through Lewis’s eyes. Also as Paul spends more time in the war he is unable to paint and we see him lose more humanity. Elinor, in shocking contrast, still lives at home, painting the countryside. She refuses to change her life for the war though everyone around her has. Her letters to Paul not only suggest a strong relationship between the two but also provide him with a glimpse of what his life used to be.
Themes in the book involve a lot of change and war. To start I think I must mention the theme that to do what needs to be done one needs to let go of the grasp on compassion and feeling. This shocked me in the quote, as he talks of a sister, a holy woman, “Unbending, efficient, detached, halfway to being a monster, perhaps, but she got the job done” (199). The sister is lost to the world, and in her involvement in the war has gained the ability to shun all feeling and just do. Along with admiring this, Paul sees the sadness in this. Another theme is seen as he speaks to Elinor. The theme that love will endure is developed. Paul is solid and desensitized and efficient in other words he has taken precautionary measures to protect himself from feeling for the countless men he sees die. However this coldness is removed when he speaks to the woman he has feelings before the war and still does.
Life Class #4

Life Class Post #3

As Life Class continues I am finding that the main driving force behind actions is jealousy. As the book goes on the more minor characters, Elinor and Neville, become more developed as we learn more about them. Neville, Elinor, and Paul spend the majority of my reading together at Elinor’s house which is strange as they have a weird sort of love triangle. Paul is still the main character and we view him as simply ordinary but as we read we see him transform from friend wanting more, learning about art as he goes, to a man destined for war, winning the love he wants from the beautiful Elinor. Paul is moving from his character flaw of nothing to say to a man with ideas and thoughts and expressive feelings that he can now share. He has had his relationship with Teresa and now as he moves on he is hungrier for experience, then the war starts and he feels he must join. Neville is a man that is in love with Elinor, actually it is closer to in lust. He is obsessed with obtaining her, almost like she is a prize he yearns after. Neville is a jealous, immature artist that creates some of the most beautiful paintings, probably due to the honesty in which he views the world. Our last main character, Elinor, is the object of love for both Paul and Neville but refuses them both. She is a extremely independent woman but also a little childish. She is an artist with big ideas but, when her mom challenges her way of life, she goes out of her way to contradict her mother. Elinor seems to want to prove that she is self-sufficient and she is so desperate to show every one that she denies herself love and fulfilling relationships. The book is a great representation of WW1 times. Also seen is the honest difference between men and women as the women are much more restrained and as Elinor’s mother sits alone, waiting for her husband to come home and he never does, we understand also how man and women interacted in the time period.
Life Class develops several themes; one of them being sex makes life harder and wrecks relationships. This is shown in Neville’s relationship with Elinor. They are split apart by his lust when she says, “There’s nothing to say. I won’t marry you, I don’t want an affair. I’m happy as we are” to this he replies, “Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while” (137). The conflict of sex tears these two apart showing that sex is a bad thing. Another theme is that beauty comes in many forms. As all of these characters are artists, we see their different ideas of what real art and beauty is. “You are explaining it all away. Both of you. It’s to good for that” (110). This Elinor says after Neville calls a painting ugly and explains why and Paul speculates how it was created. This shows that beauty is different for everyone and people are not a constant.

Post 2 of Quarter 3

As I continue to read Life Class by Pat Barker our main character, Paul, transforms entirely through the coarse of less than a year. Life Class is a demanding novel showing how relationships can be deceptive and depicting a young man’s life through the use of art in the early 20th century. Paul, a young man studying art, is moving through the year, developing relationships as he goes along. In the novel he has developed a relationship with a woman named Teresa, a good friend of a woman he likes named Elinor. As their relationship progresses, Teresa tells Paul about her husband she has left that still follows her. When her husband, John, comes and attacks Paul and Teresa their relationship ands and with Teresa’s leave we understand the purpose that Teresa served in the novel. She was introduced into Paul’s life to give him ideas and introduce him into a different life, but also, as she leaves, bring a connection to his mom, a story which we have yet to learn. “Paul watched them to the end of the street… It was like the day they came and took his mother away, though he hadn’t witnessed that” (97). Finally this section of the book was used to show Paul the truth. In the beginning he was just a young man, with very little perspective and nothing to say, but as he grows and experiences, he learns and gains ideas as he begins to love. He has almost decided to give up on art after his instructor had said, “I don’t get any feeling that they are yours. You seem to have nothing to say” (37). Then, as Teresa rides away, he decides to paint for honesty, not quality, and he seems to finally grasp the concept of art and we see him move along.
Some arguable themes discussed in the novel seem to circle around the topics of; art, women, and the idea that everything can be stripped down to show true colors. Art challenges Paul like nothing else does and he just can’t seem to figure it out. It makes it worse that everyone surrounding him happens to excel at expression in certain forms. “These paintings were the fruit of a trip up north to seek out the same smoking terraces and looming ironworks that Paul had turned his back on every Sunday, cycling off into the countryside in search of Art” (53). As he looks at a friends’ paintings he is upset that these were the very things that he grew up with, that he failed to see the art in. Art supports the theme that people are essentially selfish as he cannot be happy for his friend but only jealous as he cannot do the same. The theme that women represent is that; what you can’t have you want more. “He felt a spasm of dislike that did nothing to lessen his desire” (77). As he is denied by Elinor he cannot stop liking her but instead likes her more. My final theme is that things can be disguised to be better than they are but when the illusion is gone, you are left with nothing but the truth. This is represented by love, and when Teresa leaves Paul and the love is gone he walks around her newly emptied apartment and sees the ugliness of it. “The glow he remembered had always been an illusion, created by lamps and a few brightly colored shawls and rugs. All the time, underneath, there’d been this cold squalor” (96).

THIRD QUARTER post #1

For third Quarter I chose to read the book Life Class by Pat Barker. This book’s main character is a man named Paul that is in an art class called the life class. As Paul rushes out of class in the first few pages he is developed as not very artistic as he wonders why he is there. The book is in the time period of the early 20th century and therefore the relationships that develop in the first bit are more restrained and very different than we see now. As Paul tries to figure out what he has to say he admires a woman named Elinor and, as he befriends her, meets a friend of hers named Teresa who he gets to know and then has relations with. Paul is a very interesting character, here to learn a new art and meeting new people, but can be seen somewhat regretting his change as we see through the words of his conscience that appears in the voice of his deceased grandmother. Paul is a kind, gentle man that worries about those around him, “Are you responsible for this?” he asks a man taking advantage of a young woman. He goes on to ask the man to leave the woman alone and we see his kindness and caring nature as he protects a complete stranger. His “girlfriend” Teresa is a big alteration in his character but only for this bit of the book. She is a beautiful woman and her relationship with Paul shows him about women and her difficult life gives him a different perspective.
Life Class is an engrossing novel with many arguable themes. One topic the author seems very interested in is women. As three women enter Paul’s life in this first small piece it is a reoccurring topic. The theme that seems to be presented by women is that things are never what you expect them to be. The Beautiful Teresa is a poor city girl with a bad past and the enthralling Elinor is a shallow little girl. Finally the little girl in the park, looking so innocent at first, is hurt and drunk, needing the assistance of a stranger. Another theme has to do with dangerous men harming the women he meets. They support the theme that violence in men deserves punishment as he throws the cane of the man who preys on the young woman in a pond and then, as he hits him in the face, fights back. I think that this will be a very interesting theme considering Paul goes to war later in the book and it will be interesting to see how this theme corresponds to the violence of war.