/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3859997]

What are the most interesting conflicts you've perceived within a book?

What I mean, is, what books or stories have you read which present a conflict that may be seemingly simple, but in actuality present a confounding problem that is certainly relevant to you?

[Anonymous No.3860014]

>>3859997

One conflict that comes to mind for me is within the book "The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll". It was within the story Ilona. Basically, there was a certain dichotomy between experience and knowledge, wherein experience and the accumulation of learned experiences presents more depth to a person than experience. It was one of many themes within the story-- though it is fiction, the characters are all allegorical representation of certain phenomenological ideas of the spirit and mind.

[Anonymous No.3860033]

>>3859997

Another one that comes to mind is from Candide, where the audience is presented "Turk", a man who seems to have all knowledge. He has a library filled with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of books all of which he has read and understood. However, instead of being an enlightened and upright individual, he is withdrawn, unimpressed, stoic and apathetic to all problems. He objectifies people and emotions and ideas. I think that it is an extremely complex idea given that it was described in the 1700's what has come to light now. Huxley referred to it in Brave New World as well.

[Anonymous No.3860047]

Anyone care to contribute?

[Anonymous No.3860083]

I can't think of any but I want to hear examples of them

[Anonymous No.3860094]

>>3860083

Okay, I'm at work right now, but I will type up some m0ar.

[Anonymous No.3860110]

This is a bit elementary, but in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, as the group of men going through the river venture deeper into the depths of slavery and the use of the tribes, it is found that the forces enslaving the tribes-- the forces that are supposedly "civil" act as animals, while the tribesmen are subdued and obediently do there work. Other tribes not enslaved are seemingly normal and uncorrupted by the savagery the colonists display.

[Anonymous No.3860112]

The near-indecipherable dichotomy between the amorous and pious in Donne's Holy Sonnets.

[Anonymous No.3860116]

>>3860112

Interesting. Please explain m0ar.

[Anonymous No.3860117]

>>3860110
Weird, I always thought that Van Gogh was left-handed

[Anonymous No.3860850]

Guyz, this is OP. Anyone care to contribute? Interested in hearing opinions

[Anonymous No.3861004]

>>3860850

Seriously, lit? Nothing?

[Anonymous No.3861297]

The conflict between individuality in spirit and dependence in spirit between Howard Roark and Peter Keating in "The Fountainhead."

Roark's happiness comes from the fulfillment of his own, independent values. Keating derives his values from other people; he seeks to please others and do whatever it takes to have others see him as "great" and "successful."

At the very end of the novel (which spans 17 or so years from college to middle age) we see that Roark stands triumphantly atop his building with the love of his life. Keating, meanwhile, is now defunct as an architect and without any partner. He goes to start painting again, which was his true passion when he was young -- before being pushed into architecture by his mother -- but finds what he creates to be childish and amateur. He then realizes the complete emptiness his life has because he always did what other people wanted and never did anything for himself.

[Anonymous No.3861343]

>>3861297
hahahahaha ah HA !
that's fiction alright

[Anonymous No.3861398]

I'm going to have to agree with my fellow Rand Fag. Except I found the conflict between Roark and Toohey to be much more subversive. When introduced to Toohey, I thought he was a beacon of hope for Roark, filling the role of new mentor. At the time of reading I was very optimistic and somewhat naive. Toohey is the perfect psychopath, faking his way through life with a faint smile and feeding off his followers and the efforts of others while. I somewhat respect his cunning despite being an effort parasite

[Anonymous No.3861421]

Oh Jesus please god anything but Rand.
I'd be more excited to talk about the relationship between honesty with oneself and honesty with one's lover in The Europeans by James.

[Anonymous No.3861460]

>>3860014
This sounds like some crazy shit.

My contribution is the resentment and distance of being a parent, while maintaining a certain marveled admiration for the act of it, the sheer it-ness of the narrative of your life: I contribute the musings of parenthood by Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse to be a valid questioning of morals, as Mrs. Ramsay is a woman who keeps a great deal to herself however loves her children from her fond but necessary distance, due to her own psychological makeup.

It's really astounding writing.

[Anonymous No.3861538]

>>3861343
What do you mean by this

[Anonymous No.3861541]

>>3861421
Then go on and talk about it.

[Anonymous No.3861589]

protip: outside America NOBODY has ever even heard of Rand. You wanna know why? Cuz her writing is subpar. You wanna know why you're all reading her trash? Cuz some dude purchased copyright and decided to make lots of cash on her material by promoting her as some kind of intellectual powerhouse. You wanna know what happened? As with every other hype, you gobbled it all up like a holy grail of semen.

[Anonymous No.3861593]

>>3861538
It means Roark would fail in real life, and conformist childishness DOES make you success. Therefore, Rand's story is yet another "be your self" American dream masturbation.

[Anonymous No.3861597]

>>3861460
>, the sheer it-ness of the narrative of your life:

the what now?
bullshit detected

[Anonymous No.3861757]

>>3859997

The more I think about Taxi Driver's perfect execution the more Scorsese's other films diminish and pale in comparison. His other films appear as average, regular, run of the mill crime movies compared to Taxi Driver's excellence.

[Anonymous No.3861777]

>>3861589

>tfw the shitty former prime minister of your country said the Atlas Shrugged was his favorite book of all time.
>tfw he's now the general secretary of NATO

>tfw the largest investment bank in said country paid for the translation of Atlas Shrugged into your language.

>tfw when the liberatarian party that they finance actually has members in parliament, arguing shit like closing all public libraries, because they're overused and thus hurts business and competition.

[Anonymous No.3861802]

Problematic relationship of Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic churches during the collapse of Eastern Roman Empire in 1400's, in Mika Waltari's masterful novels The Dark Angel and later released Nuori Johannes, not translated into English for reasons I do not know.

In the grand conflict of realms and religions, the mundane differences between two christian civilizations - The ancient, Platonistic and artistically inclined Greek one, now slowly declining, and the much more powerful mundane, Aristotelian and militaristic. Theological differences between the two faiths are small to say - Word Filioque, existence of purgatory and some other minor issues that seem like very small problems to settle.

They aren't. Caught between the two, Iohannes Angeoulos or Jean Ange, depending to whom he talks to, lives whole life trying to settle these issues. Council of Basel, Ferrara and Firenze are just massive contests of two cultures, faith, hegemonies and so. Death of Greek civilization is imminent - Yet it does not bow at Latin one. Weaker military, economy, philosophy, religion matters not when the pride of Greeks is contested.

Throw into all this inner conflicts of Catholic Church that includes anti-popes, crusading fanatics and heretical sub-factions and Ottoman Turks under masterfully depicted Mehmed II and you have one of the grandest conflicts that takes four hundred pages to solve and another four hundred pages to realize how the solution was worth nothing, for the conflict lived on in the siege of Constantinople.

[Anonymous No.3861918]

OP here, I'm loving what I see so far. Also, people seem to have an aversion to Ayn Rand because objectivism is so highly overrated, and that the conflicts within the book, though far ahead of its time upon its publication, is now a quite simple and rather mundane set up.

[Anonymous No.3862273]

Okay, here's another for you faggots.

In Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", the book is a semi autobiographical account of Hemingway and a few friend's escape to Europe, following what was the horror of WWI. Now, it's difficult to deduce conflicts within this book, simply because Hemingway chooses in almost all parts of the book to use the environment to describe the inner state of the main character, Jake.

Jake and his friends dawdle and waste time, and get drunk, and make fun of a Jew along the book, but the reader gets a sense of the deep depression within Jake. It's an overwhelming sense of anhedonia-- a sense of worthlessness after what's been done, and a struggle to remain afloat amongst the toil of not being able to settle down.

In the end, nothing is resolved. Absolutely nothing. However, the struggle is enchanting, and you get a sense of intimacy from the dialogues, and Jake's idle observations of the environment-- whether it be a bar, a dance hall, or fishing under a hot lazy afternoon

[Anonymous No.3862290]

People will probably start bitching, but I really like Invisible Monsters. The entire concept of a person going to such extremes to force themselves to change, it's actually great.
The back and forth between loving somebody and hating somebody and hating yourself. The entire book was very appealing to me. It's not something I'd actually tell people, because they get weird about it sometimes, but I understand the feeling.
I'm also borderline, so that's probably it, but the idea of utterly destroying yourself, the idea that once you destroy "you", who you are, everything you have- I think there's a freedom there that is terrifying and tempting.

[Anonymous No.3862351]

>>3862273
Silver Linings Playbook?

[Anonymous No.3862358]

>>3862351

What? I don't watch new movies, so I don't fucking know, faggot

[Anonymous No.3862365]

>>3862358
Oh wow fuck off elitist nobody likes you.

[Anonymous No.3862366]

>>3862365
I'm sort of with him.. wtf did SLP have to do with anything?

[Anonymous No.3862392]

>>3862365

Elitist? Where the fuck did that come from, you plebeian? I gave a description of what I believed to be a good description of a harrowing conflict, and some little faggot replies with a stupid fucking question. What the fuck was he even asking?

[Anonymous No.3862406]

>>3861757
Goodfellas is still really really good, if lacking in depth compared to Taxi Driver. Goodfella's is one of the most entertaining and best-paced movies ever made.

[Anonymous No.3862410]

>>3862392
If you're saying you don't watch new movies because you're too good for them, you're an elitist.
If you're saying you don't because you don't have the time/interest/whatever, then you maybe aren't an elitist.

[Anonymous No.3862411]

>>3862392
Whether that was the plot of Silver Linings Playbook. He called you an elitist because you don't watch new movies. He assumed that you don't do so because you think they're all rubbish, which may be right, but the point stands.

[Anonymous No.3862413]

>>3862406
Yeah, the Simpsons are always spot on

[Anonymous No.3862416]

Plato's Sophist presented me with a problem that still confounds me.

At one point in the dialogue, the Stranger has to explain how it can be that "things that are not somehow are." At stake is how lies or falsehood are possible.

His solution bothered me because it seemed to love open the door to a larger problem: it made it seem that, by his definition of image-making, we are ALL sophists. I don't think that's the impression Plato wanted to leave me with, but there it is.

[Anonymous No.3862424]

>>3862410

No, I don't watch new movies because it's too expensive in the theatres you prick.

[Anonymous No.3862427]

>>3862424
Then you are probably not an elitist
also I am not the same dude from before

[Anonymous No.3862428]

>>3862424
you forgot to use the word "fuck" in that post.

[Anonymous No.3862434]

>>3862428

Ha. I'll admit, I like using the word "fuck".

[Anonymous No.3862445]

Now, can we get back to it?

I'll bring up a less conventional piece of literature-- Ted Kaczynski's manifesto:

He had a lot of Thoreau like ambition and frustrations, with a sort of disturbing fear of what was to become of society.

But he gave his motive, in which he stated something to the effect,

You can't make people aware of the dissociation of your beliefs without creating social tension. Without being able to cause fear, and allow the government to go about it's way of cleaning things up, covering things up, and subsequently shutting things up, people will not understand what the inherent flaws of power are. He said that when forces of power choose to take upon themselves decisive power and the abuse of what they believe is justified action, you simply cannot understand how things work.

[Anonymous No.3862478]

>>3862392
If you're going to dispute someone claiming you're elitist, I'd advice against calling them, or even using the term, plebeian.

[Anonymous No.3862487]

>>3862478

Point well taken. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.3862501]

>>3861589
>Yuropoor delusions
lql keep gobbling up that anti-American propaganda.

[Anonymous No.3862593]

Let's go people, let's add some more conflicts, more ideas. I NEED M0AR

[Anonymous No.3863169]

I really related to Raskolnikov in Crime in Punishment.

I've always been intelligent enough to skate by, to dodge the rules, and basically get away with anything I really needed to. I've also been crushingly poor, abused, etc.

So if anyone could justify seizing supremacy over man and law it'd be me right? Every day I contemplate my part in the social contract, and whether or not I could simply become immune to the bullshit if I realized that I was in fact, an elite.

As a result of my actions and "social experiments" I've hurt some people pretty badly and damaged my own psyche. I have come to realize that I am not elite. If I was, my response to my society would have been dignified ascendancy and noblesse oblige, instead of aimless rebellion for its own sake.

That book has helped me realize that to truly transcend a system, you have to subscribe to a better system, one which completely changes your mind as you do it such that you almost forget the horrible lengths you were willing to go to find any kind of escape-valve transcendence.

[Anonymous No.3863185]

I don't know if it counts, but in Foucalt's Pendulum I enjoyed the conflict between connections drawn, between ideas, places, people, times, events etc. to prove a perceived point, to justify a conspiracy one believed strongly to exist but didn't, and those connections drawn to reveal a very real conspiracy, slowly revealing it, as connections are made, as an archaeologist brushing thousands of years worth of sand and sandstone from an Egyptian relic to reveal its carved face, and with it understanding. I enjoyed the difficulties at time in distinguishing the two.

I imagine I'm not expressing myself very well. I'm awfully tired, and I have terrible hayfever, and I'm just not thinking straight, so I apologise in advance.

[Anonymous No.3863202]

>>3863169
so you also have self-loathing qualities? sucks bro that you have to prove to yourself your own self-worth and to justify why you exist

[Anonymous No.3863213]

OP I admire your effort, but trying to incite actual literary discussion on /lit/ is like trying to get /pol/ to stop being racist.

[Anonymous No.3863214]

>>3863202
to be fair this big revelation happened in high school and I started doing things to improve myself and help others. My life got a lot better during/after college.

People underestimate the value of English class.

[Anonymous No.3863217]

>>3863213
Maybe you should take a break from jerking off your ego and facile sense of superiority, and try reading the fucking thread.

[Anonymous No.3863225]

>>3861777
>arguing shit like closing all public libraries, because they're overused and thus hurts business and competition.

Holy shit. That's fucking dystopic.

[Anonymous No.3863553]

>>3863217

oh lawdy. dat retort

[Anonymous No.3863589]

Most of Mishima's books are driven by characters torn apart by irreconcilable reality and idealism. I like how Mishima makes the conflict so ambiguous. I found the end of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion to be really inspiring, but when you think about it it's not just about a frustrated person destroying a symbol of control and repression, but it's a person who, out of necessity, destroys a beautiful work of art because it is so beautiful that it is rendered disgusting because of the bleak reality of the world it inhabits. Then you had Ryuji in the sailor who fell from grace with the sea. He's certainly happier with Fusako, but his happiness comes at a price of giving up his dreams of achieving glory and honor on the sea. Of course the reader starts out looking at Ryuji as extremely narcissistic and delusional, but at the finale of the book when he is about to die and his last few thoughts turn towards the life and aspirations he gave up it causes a moment of empathy for the reader.

[Anonymous No.3864621]

OP again.

I present Rudolpho Anaya's "Bless Me, Ultima". Now, to anyone who has read this, me included, their first instinct is to be disgusted with the fact that it is essentially a Chicano version of James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." My first thought was that it was unoriginal, but it got me thinking.

You see, it follows an anologous story, except the young boy is a Mexican tied between secular and old christian, mystical beliefs.

Anaya created different themes than Joyce, making a more modern appeal to spiritualism and the balance of beliefs.

In one hilarious conflict, him and his schoolmates are performing a nativism scene in front of an audience. It is a fiasco. One kid throws up, the baby jesus falls apart, the background falls down, and the kids all cuss and start to fight each other, much to the teacher's disgust.

It goes on, but Anaya subtly hides the idea that religion and education should never be mixed. Any attempt to include spiritual dogma into education will yield disastrous results.

[Anonymous No.3864688]

Let's go /lit/, imma need some m0ar.

[Anonymous No.3864706]

>>3863169
Those were exactly my feels too, man. I loved Crime and Punishment

[Anonymous No.3864713]

>>3863169

Goddamn son. Imma pick this book up asap.

[Anonymous No.3865203]

/lit/, you're disappointing me. I'd love to add more conflicts, but I really want to hear from you faggots.

[Anonymous No.3865681]

>>3862406

Casino was also really good. It's plot is analogous to Othello

[Anonymous No.3865722]

>>3863169
I liked Crime & Punishment a great deal. I arrived at a similar conclusion....but via a different path.

I understood Raskolnikov as as a failure. He obviously wasn't beyond the bounds of morality despite being an appreciatively extraordinary person. He was dragged down by social pressures and conditioning and collapsed into his faith as a retreat. That dies not mean that morals exist nor does it validate the existence of god...rather - - it validates the need for god and morals. People are better off operating within the confines of an objectively false system being themselves deficient in their powers.

[/co/mrade visiting /lit/ No.3865725]

Master and Margarita.
The devil making a show which shows the evil behind men.
He shows them the thing they crave, but the craving for those things come from the humans.
Also the devil being a good guy, a force for good, even though he never does anything objectively good.
Are these good examples, OP-anon-san?

[Anonymous No.3865730]

>>3860112

NOICE. I thought it was crystal clear and didn't need explication myself.

[Anonymous No.3865785]

Wow, for the first time in a long time /lit is really impressing me. My heart cockles are all aglow. Yes I am a gigantic faggot.

A couple conflicts came to me while reading the thread. One is the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury. The conflict is passed, over. The quasi-static description of a destroyed world is really powerful.

The other one that came to mind was the conflict between the brothers' perspective of Caddy and her actions. Benjy's time has stopped at a few moments (Damuddy's funeral, Caddy playing in the Branch, climbing the tree to peek in the house, out-braving all the boys, Caddy cuddling him to sleep, his negotiation of the three deaths of the family in the creation of his own private boneyard), and he is literally stuck in time. Anything that deviates from the things that re-present these moments causes him to wail "like the suffering of all the world in one sound" or something to that effect. Quentin, on the other hand, smashes his heirloom watch to symbolically freeze time, although his obsession with shadows and water shows that he understands that time marches - perhaps a better word is flows - on, and he wants no part of it. Caddy's embrace of life is intolerable to him. Jason Compson uses Caddy's lasciviousness as a pretext to rob Quentin of the money Caddy sends for her abandoned child's maintenance. Faulkner said that he's the only rational Compson, and he sees the world in the terms of dollars and cents, gains and losses. His rationalism is without heart, though, and is therefore irrational. To show this, in the appendix Faulkner tells how this cold, calculating bachelor repeats Caddy's "sin" by hosting a fuckbuddy from Memphis on the weekends. Benjy, the idiot Christ (he turned 33 on Good Friday), Quentin (a Stephen Dedalus figure), and Jason all respond to loss differently. Bellow, suicide, violence. Dilsey is the only real human bean.

[Anonymous No.3865799]

>>3865785
>Wow, for the first time in a long time /lit is really impressing me

You're welcome,

OP

[/co/mrade visiting /lit/ No.3865806]

Oh wait I think I got an actually good one this time.
In Lovecraft's works, a guy named Kuranes dreams of Celephais, a beautiful city. He always went there on the same path in his dreams, with it ending in him jumping into an abyss-type portal to the city. He slowly starts to believe it's really, and starting to form a physical body in that realm.
3 dreams, then it's over, he can't dream of it again.
One day he sees the path from his dreams,follows it, righteous horsemen follow with him out of nowhere, it gives a nice feeling to it and everything.
He jumps into the abyss, and never wakes up again. He committed suicide, jumped off a cliff, but he lived forever in Celephais from that night on.
Next time we see him in the Dream-quest to Kadath, he's sitting as a king, and is forming the world with his mind, trying to remake his home... old England from his childhood, if I recall correctly.
A conflict between what we want, and what we have. Would you sacrifice everything you have, for your dream?

[/co/mrade visiting /lit/ No.3865813]

>>3865806
Here you can see a map.
Celephais in the middle, and right below it...it says Cornwall... the land that King Kuranes made.

[Anonymous No.3866380]

Keep this going, guyz. I'm going to sleep, but tomorrow when I get to work I will continue with this thread. Also, my name is Zyed. So if you see another thread in /lit/ with OP's name Zyed, you will know this is a thread of super fun time.

Remember that name, /lit/ fags, because I'm here to stay.

[Anonymous No.3866455]

I've been reading some books and most of them just look people putting random obscure words just to appear intelligent.

[Anonymous No.3866554]

The conflict between utilitarianism and "fancy" in Hard Times, while crude, is pretty interesting.

On the one hand, as a modern reader with a possibly scientificish understanding of the world (me when I first read it), you can sympathise with some of Bounderby and Gradgrind's more autistic/objectivist/seriously-ignorant-of-experience remarks, but it gets too much for you. I don't think almost anyone could emerge from that novel with much undifferentiated faith in modernity, technology, rationality, quantifiability and happiness as a value.

[Anonymous No.3866558]

There's a latent conflict that really fucking annoyed me in Foucault between things that are created as objects by discourse and what the rest of reality is/if there's a rest of reality. TELL ME. I MUST KNOW.

[Anonymous No.3866593]

>>3861777
Wait, that's my country!

I could imagine Anders Fogh would like Ayn Rand, he had this neo-liberalism going on in the nineties. When he became prime minister, he gave up all those ideas, all the ideas he had explained in his book 'From Social State to Minimal State'.

Denmark will always be mid-centered, and every pary just puts us closer to the middle.

Anyway, on thread topic, I think the Seducer's Diary by Kierkegaard had some brilliant themes in it, if you understand what Kierkegaard is writing. You have to stand before choice, not choosing either / or, but just live.

Basically every good book i have read lately has interesting themes in it, The Master and Margarita or Sickness Unto Death was very stimulating

[Anonymous No.3866609]

>>3863169
>>3865722
I'm reading it at the moment, just started it.
I had to read the second page about ten times because it described my life so well.

I read it slowly, but i take every part in.

It is brilliant because it does not just advocate one ethical system over another, it is somehow dialectic, and shows us both sides. It doesn't give an answer to me, but it shows what the answer can be, in a negative way.

[Anonymous No.3867028]

>>3866455

Have you considered that you may be a moron?

[Anonymous No.3867050]

>>3867028
No but I don't hear a lot of people using parallelepiped to describe themselves.

[Anonymous No.3867060]

Waiting for Godot


Does value require meaning?

[Anonymous No.3867744]

>>3867050
>No but I don't hear a lot of people using parallelepiped to describe themselves.

What does that even mean?

[Anonymous No.3867755]

>>3867744

"double-dicked"?

[Anonymous No.3867810]

>>3867755

Okay... so what exactly does that have to do with your inability to understand the significance of authors and their writing?

[Anonymous No.3867842]

Okay, next on the list in Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell builds upon the thesis that success, unlike our conception of it being dependent on the merit of the person, is in actuality more a causality of opportunity, the people whom the successful person associated with, and the specific time in which they launched their ideas.

And so, while not exactly a conflict in its conservative definition, Gladwell repeatedly pushes the idea that success is exclusive, and very much dependent of consequential factors outside of a person's merit. In almost all cases, he presents a duality-- a person of potential who had supporting factors, against a person of near tantamount potential who did not have the equivalent support of extenuating support. In almost all cases, the former gains reputation and momentum and is able to spread his influence, while the latter wither stays in stagnation or is never able to actually successfully launch his visions.

[Anonymous No.3868346]

Don't let this thread go anywhere behind the first page.

[Anonymous No.3868941]

Guize?

[Anonymous No.3868981]

>>3868941
What?

[Anonymous No.3869106]

>>3859997
I like the idea of how much a man would sacrifice for personal gain

[Anonymous No.3870803]

>>3869106

Any specific literary examples?

[Anonymous No.3871235]

Keep this going faggots.

[Anonymous No.3871242]

>>3869106

Jason Compson.

[Anonymous No.3872212]

>>3860110
>do there work
>there work
>there

[Anonymous No.3872687]

>>3867744
I'm just saying they use words that people usually don't say.
The characters are irrealistic.
What is the point of obscure 2deep4u references when its most likely people aren't going to get them?
I don't want to read 10 books for every book I try to read just to get the references.

[Anonymous No.3872702]

Plato's Ion. It just seems like Socrates was in a really bad fucking mood. Also we went over it in classics class where our prof didn't really attempt to say anything about it. After we had gone over it in class he sort of went "Well, I guess Plato doesn't like poets!" and we moved on.

[Anonymous No.3874971]

bump

[Anonymous No.3876032]

Hey guys, this is OP, sorry I was banned for the past three days, but I'm back. Let's get this thing revved up again.

Harrowing conflicts. Endearing characters, adroitly overcoming. Unstoppable forces, and immoveable objects.

I need m0ar.

[Anonymous No.3876034]

>>3872212

Simple mistake. Not intentional

[Anonymous No.3877404]

I'm not giving this thread up.