Reading the book Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson got me thinking of what it truly means. I mean everyone has their own opinion and interpretation of the bible and I think this is Anderson’s point of view. Of course it’s not directly book by book interpretation of the bible but it’s pretty close. First, I noticed the way the novel is structured, sectioned off book by book but at the end they all tie into become one story. The bible is the same way starting with Genesis and telling different stories throughout the middle that all tie together as one story and end at Apocalypses. However the interpretation is shown to me mainly through the first book of Winesburg, The Book of The Grotesque. The bible is described to be the word of God, and the first book of Winesburg begins with an old man who is a writer. In literature old men are usually used as an allusion to wisdom, and wisdom gives people power, therefore; I think the old man is God in a way, a leader of all things and the one who knows everything. Later a carpenter is introduced and as in the bible Jesus was a carpenter. The men were never given names in the first book and Anderson referred to them with several different names. I think this could be a representation of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. Jesus helps God spread his word and even though in The Book of The Grotesque the carpenter is only helping the old man raise his bed to see out the window I think it is all a huge analogy. The carpenter has plans to raise the bed onto a platform. When I think “platform” I think of a higher place so that people can see the person on it or vice versa. Therefore I think that the symbolism of raising the bed to the platform is to reference to Jesus showing God to The world so that God could help his people. The window is symbolic in literature as looking through something or looking to someone or something else. I believe it is used here to symbolize God using Jesus to look down onto his people. There was a pretty random line on page three that said “The writer had cigars lying about and the carpenter smoked” I believe that symbolizes what God gives Jesus through his path. In the part that the carpenter is crying about his brother that had passed away it is shown that the raising of the bed that he was going to help the old man with was forgotten. Anderson is trying to show us that God put you and or Jesus in this case first before he puts himself. Later in that book the writer or the old man writes a book that the narrator says that after reading it he gained knowledge of the world and understanding of people. This all ties back to the idea that the old man can be God the Carpenter, who help the old man, could be Jesus, and The Book of The Grotesque could be the bible. The Grotesques are us, human beings, sinners.

So over Labor Day weekend I was relating almost everything to my lit class. The one that really stuck related to the bible. In class we are talking a lot about allusions, and some of the most used allusions are from the bible. My friend is in a different religion than I am and he interprets the bible differently than I do.  It’s interesting seeing two different sides of one piece of literature. The allusion of the bible can be seen in different ways in literature. That’s why literature can have so many different ways of interpreting it. People see what they want to see in literature. They relate it to their own life to make a new meaning. My teacher always asks the class questions and after we discuss it for a while she always says she doesn’t know they real answer.  Which makes sense to me now, literature doesn’t have a right answer the answers are what people depict them to be. The same is true for movies and songs. Whenever people watch movies they pick out the little things they can relate to. This even applies more to songs. In my life if I’m listening to a song during a certain event in my life I will always relate that one specific song to that event. It will always mean to me what I interpret it to be. There are so many ways to read a interpret literature and that’s why there is never a definite answer.  Anything you can think of and come up with a good reasoning to can be your own answer to what a certain piece of literature means. Going back to the bible allusion interpretations can alter the meaning of a work severely.  My friend and I have the same translation of the bible. Which is the same story, however we are in two different religions. Some of his views of the bible do not match up to my views of the bible. It all really depends on the person’s perspective. He believes that there is a heaven but no hell; I believe that there is both a heaven and hell. With only that difference in interpretation it changes the beliefs that we have completely. One interpretation is not better than another, and there’s no one to say that there is a right or wrong answer. We all have different views of literature and life, and when we hear other people’s thoughts and interpretations it only adds to our thoughts and views of life. Later when we interpret literature not only our thoughts will show threw but other peoples thoughts as well.

Over the summer I read Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. It was a great book very well written, however, as far as having literary merit I would say it had little to none.  The book is based on the lives of 42 junior high students who are put into a game called the program. In this program the students are challenged to kill each other until there’s only one man standing. The closest thing to literary merit this novel has is it’s take on society. As I was reading this book I saw it was a bit like Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The take on the government and how the influence of society eventually takes over the minds of the young children was most definitely evident in the novel. However, the way that this is portrayed in the novel is not in a very literary way. There were no allusions in the story, and if there were the only one would be to the Lord of the Flies. The take on government was clearly stated by one of the characters in the book while in Golding’s novel it was hidden in between the lines for us to analyze.  I tried to connect several typical allusions to the novel however there were none. The book was extremely well written and you would think it to have some literary merit but it does not. The book mostly contains a lot of detail and gore and guts.  It’ll keep you entertained but it is certainly not something to analyze. I liked the book a lot! It kept me hooked the entire time that I read it. There wasn’t one slow part or one section that bore me. The novel was very straight up and to the point. The take on society and the government are evident from the beginning all the way to the end. Takami begins with explaining the restrictions within the government and continues to explain them to the very end. The hatred the students have for the government is shown through numerous ways. Some of the students promise they’ll take down the government while others don’t want anything to do with the government, they’d rather be dead than in that kind of society. Certainly this was a way for Takami to express his feelings towards the real government that he lived under but that was all. Just like the book The Hunger Games the story doesn’t stretch far from being a take to the government and corruption of society.  Like many other novels Battle Royale is simply just a good read very interesting with a clear theme but close to no literary merit. The novel The Blind Assassin, by Margret Atwood, on the other hand, has more literary merit. The novel takes us into the life of Iris Chase whos sister has recently passed away in a suicied-car accident. The novel quickly switches and turns into a book within a book. Atwood carfully conects the lives of the girl in the book and the life of Iris by introducing an affair that Iris and her sister laura had with a man named Alex. The book within this novel is named The Blind Assassin as well. The book is written by her sister Laura. The connection made is that the story written by her sister depicts the affair Iris had with Alex. This symbolizes the corruption of society. The literary merit becomes evident at the end of the novel. Atwood describes happiness being a garden with no exit or entrance. This is an allusion to the Garden of Eden ties together the entire meaning of the book, you can never reach happiness. At the end Iris never gets the love of the her grandaughter that she always craved, and the girl that was unamed never gets to spend her life with the man thats she loves. The way Atwood was able to connect this allusion, that was hidden between the lines of the entire novel, with both books inside this one book gives it tremendous literary merit.