Max Bolton's Bookshelf of Literary Babble

  Clarissa & Birds          In Mrs. Dalloway , Woolf consistently alludes to birds during narration involving Clarissa. Let's explore a couple of scenes to analyze Woolf's purpose of describing Clarissa using this bird-related language.           As Clarissa heads to the flower shop, we enter the perspective of an observer named Scrope Purvis, a long-time neighbor of the Dalloways. Watching Clarissa approach the flower shop, Mr. Purvis describes her appearance: A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright. (Woolf 4) In this quote, Scrope Purvis describes Clarissa's appearance as similar to a bird's, mentioning th...

  Howie's Child-Adult Duality         Howie exhibits traits of both a child and an adult in  The Mezzanine  by Nicholson Baker, showcasing both maturity and immaturity at times. On page 8, Howie first reveals his self-consciousness as he talks about his present childish habits, saying, "I liked other people to see me as a guy in a tie yet carefree and casual enough to be doing what kids do when they drag a stick over the black uprights of a cast-iron fence. I especially liked doing one thing: I liked walking past a parking meter so close that it seemed as if my hand would slam into it, and at the last minute lifting my arm out just enough so that the meter passed underneath my armpit" (Baker 8). In this quote, Howie describes his parking meter and arm flailing habits that persist today, highlighting immature actions he still does. He also prefers to complete these childish acts publicly because he "liked other people to see [him] as a guy in a tie...