Tag: books

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Review: Psycho by Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch’s portrayal of a seemingly innocent hotel owner takes a dark twist as the murder of a young woman takes place at the hotel.

Norman Bates is convinced his unstable mother was the one who murdered the guest while in the shower, as he suffers from a personality disorder and puts the blame on his deceased mother. A detective is hired to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the murdered woman, Mary Crane, as she has stolen money from her boss and fled in order to hide from her crimes. Norman answers the detective’s questions nervously, making the detective more suspicious of Norman for being a potential suspect to her disappearance.

‘Psycho’ explored the themes of the insanity of a man with a split personality disorder due to his dysfunctional relationship with his mother. He blames her for his dark thoughts, and inevitably blames her for the murder of Mary Crane. I really liked the portrayal of his insanity and how he thinks he is innocent due to his split personality. It reminds me of my favourite gothic novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ – both these novels both explore the themes of good versus evil. I haven’t seen the movie adaptation of the book, which I am looking forward to.

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Review: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

 

Scott Fitzgerald perfectly captures the reality of the American dream in ‘The Great Gatsby’ set in the 1920’s; Nick Caraway lives alone trying to earn a living in the American Dream. Nick lives next to Jay Gatsby who hosts extravagant parties, which he never seems to attend. When Nick eventually comes to know Gatsby, he discovers that, like his parties, he is a very extravagant person with many stories to tell about his life.

 

Jay Gatsby and his long lost lover eventfully meet and their romance blossoms like it did before, as the novel goes on, we see that Gatsby relies on a luxury lifestyle in order for him, Daisy and all the other characters to live a seemingly “happy” life which all comes to a tragic ending.

 

One of my favourite themes in this book is how despite all the luxury of the idealistic American dream, the characters still feel that there is something missing from their lives and the tragic ending shows how despite Daisy’s love for Gatsby, she still let him take the blame for the woman she hit with Gatsby’s car. Fitzgerald’s writing is enthralling: his way of depicting romance is stunning whilst also showing the social themes of the 1920’s when the idea of the American dream was coming to an end. The story of a romance, which falls apart, ultimately ending in murder is symbolic of how the unrealistic goals of the American dream and the over-romanticized view of what life should be like eventually decays and falls apart.

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Review: To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

Book Review 

The brutality and sheer horror of racial discrimination in the 1930’s as told through the eyes of children. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee explores the themes of justice, social inequality and prejudice. The children’s innocence is so contrasting to the social injustice surrounding them in an extremely racist white community.

 

The novel starts off fairly innocent as the children in the novel are almost naive to the racial discrimination surrounding their worlds but as the novel goes on and Atticus Finch defends a black man who is accused of raping a white girl and Jem and Scout are bullied by other children because of this, highlighting the racism and hatred of the white community. Soon the children come to realise that the world they live in is cruel and unjust.

 

Their first judgments of the character of ‘Boo Radley’ is that he is a terrifying monstrous like character but they soon come to realize that he remains in his house for the mast majority of the novel as he is shy and occasionally violent hence why there are so many bad rumours about him which is symbolic to the racism against the black community that the children are almost naive to.

 

He is seen to be a monster to the children which is ironic, as Arthur Radley has seen the cruelty of the people in the community hence why he choses to stay inside. He shows true kindness towards the end of the novel when he saves the children from Bob Ewell.

 

The children soon see a different side of him after the trial when they see the cruelty and power of white men. “Scout, I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time… it’s because he wants to stay inside.”

 

The change in their lives after the trial is reflected on their views of Arthur Radley as they clearly see the clear difference between good and evil and they so wrongly judged him at the start of the novel just as the racist white community wrongly judged Tom Robinson when he is assumed to have raped a white girl and the novel tragically ends with his death due to the wrong accusations of the white men in power.

 

I think the character of Arthur Radeley is very symbolic of people assuming things based on rumours and wrongly judging good people.