IDEA: STEPPENWOLF

Laura just told me to check out a book called 'Steppenwolf' by Hermann Hesse for more views on seclusion into one's own mind. I'll check that out sometime soon.

um,

sabrina said...

have you read the new book that is like a sequel to catcher in the rye?

DECEMBER 16, 2009 6:34 PM

Who actually are you? And no I haven't.

DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS.

So two days ago, I went to the State Library in the city to do some research on misanthropy and hermeticism, as well as any other things about isolation and social seclusion that I could find. Although I picked out a few books, I didn't get around to going through all of them, and instead I leafed through one called "Hatred and Civility" by Christopher Lane. I didn't actually get much "research" done, since I was just skim reading, but I did manage to pick up a few quotes that broadened my thinking in terms of the way I'll write my story. I copied them down on a bit of paper because I didn't want to pay the 20c per page photocopying fee.

- "The novel [A Philantrophic Misanthope, by Joseph Somebody] sums up ideas that many Victorians inherited and transformed: love conceals misanthropy, and extreme hatred is a pathology marking a character for death."

- "Numerous Victorians believed 'public affections' and 'love of mankind' could trounce moral evil. But like those whose obsession with cleanliness compels them to unearth more and more dirt, they were pre-occupied by hatred and anxious to eliminate it.

Some bewailed 'the great mystery' of turpitude, fretting 'we cannot be in the enjoyment of good without the knowledge of evil'. Others realized that 'hatred of the old murderous kind' is not, as 'so many of our instructors would have us believe... entirely obsolete - killed by education, and intelligence, and what is known as 'deeper sympathy'."

- "The misanthrope is not merely different from other men. He perceives himself as the representative of a social ideal which others have betrayed, and condemns his fellows for their perversity and hypocrisy. And yet society abides, and it is the misanthrope who cannot fit. He is rigid and surly, a natural target for comic deflation."

- "Hating society, yet impelled to stay on its periphery, they discover that they just can't leave."

I also copied down some book titles to check out for more ideas:
- Monos and Daimonos - Bulwer

- The Secret Sharer - Joseph Conrad

IDEA: ESCAPE

So instead of focussing solely on hermeticism (as I've discovered is the correct term, not 'hermitism'), I've decided to instead focus on the overarching theme of escape. It'll focus mostly on the idea of a mental escape, regardless of whether or not a physical escaping is involved. This will touch on the hermit, or at least, one side of hermeticism, as well as ideas in Catcher in the Rye, about a sort of social detachment; although Caulfield is surrounded by people, he still doesn't connect with anyone. I'm not entirely sure where I'm taking this.

IDEA: HERMITS

So I've decided to bring all my ideas about belonging and identity together, coupled with a sense of escape, and have now decided on the concept of hermitism.

IDEA: LOSING IDENTITY.

I had this idea sometime two years ago when I was just thinking of a story idea, but I'm half-considering it again now: Not that I have a particular storyline cut out, but it would have been basically about an individual who maintains a changing facade in a social environment, and, after years, thinks back and realises that he doesn't feel like himself anymore.

I don't know if I'm going to keep this idea, but I thought it'd be worth putting down.