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.