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Monday, February 13, 2017
Beatrice & Virgil Elements--blog task due March 23
Do the abstract and strange elements (pure bricolage) of this novel work for you? It definitely includes much metafiction as well. Write 180+ words.
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1 Wrightsman
As I read along in Beatrice and Virgil, I have noticed all the odd items collected into one big story. The bricolage of everything does make it quite difficult to read but I can almost pick out what he is meaning the whole time. The way he flows from one odd item to another really helps me understand the novel more and more. He is not just putting random things in there with no purpose; he is creating a story out of random things. The way Yann Martel explains and describes each item also really helps the reader understand why he has included that item in that particular place. I get this feeling from the novel that Yann had a very sporadic mind and never really could focus on one thing for a very long time so he wrote about multiple and combined them. Overall I felt that this novel, Beatrice and Virgil, does work for me because I also have a sporadic mind as well and it is intriguing to read about all the interesting things that he has put into the book.
The abstract and strange elements of this novel do work for me and I like the scene with the pear especially. This scene is a scene in which Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice. Beatrice is eager to taste a pear and wants to understand what a pear is. Thus, Virgil describes the pear to Beatrice. However, Virgil did not have to describe a pear. Virgil could have described an orange and Beatrice would not know the difference. This reminds me of the Holocaust. Beatrice is ignorant and doesn’t know what a pear is, but since Beatrice has never seen one before Virgil could describe whatever he wants and make Beatrice believe whatever he wants, taking advantage of him, just like Hitler took advantage of his people. There are many references to the Holocaust in this book as well. For example, the scene in which there were horrible, untrue posters about Virgil. These posters are not true at all and it symbolizes what Hitler did during the Holocaust. He made people believe unreal, untrue things, so they would follow him. He made up lies and the people believed those lies, just as people believed the lies about Virgil. It represents the propaganda in the Holocaust.
The abstract and strange elements of this novel do work for me. I like the scene in particular in which the taxidermist writes about his work. He states that “there is no excuse for bad work. To ruin an animal with shoddy taxidermy is to forfeit the only true canvas we have on which to represent it, and it condemns us to amnesia, ignorance and incomprehension” (96). The taxidermist is really talking about the Holocaust and how if you ruin the only real, true facts or evidence about the Holocaust then you will forget about the Holocaust. There was another equally important quote when he stated that “there was a time when every good family brightened up its living room with a mounted animal...That business has all dried up, not only the collecting but the preserving. Now the living room is likely to be dull and the forest silent” (96). The taxidermist is saying how the knowledge of the Holocaust used to be fresh and ever-present within people, but now, as time passes, the gaining of the knowledge of the Holocaust is “drying up,” or going away. People are not learning or remembering the Holocaust anymore, they are silent.
1 Jeanson To begin this blog task, I must state that this story bores me. The bricolage is made of the randomest of things. Only ten pages left and something exciting has finally happened. If it takes five pages to describe a pear you are thinking too hard about it. None of this story works for me. I understand the use of animals in place of humans and I even understand the oddness of taxidermy, but what I do not understand is how Henry could be so infatuated with a random guy he recieved a letter from and his play about a howler monkey and a donkey. Many events have proven that he is not a person who should have trust given to them. He does not even look at Erasmus. What kind of human being does not even look a dog in their shop? I find no satisfaction in reading this concoction of words and descriptions. Out of the entire book I have only found three sentences that are appealing to my inner artist. “‘Reality escapes us. It’s beyond description, even a simple pear. Time eats everything’”(Martel 115).
Beatrice and Virgil is a wonderfully entertaining book! A majority of the literature we read throughout school focuses on the plights of the main characters and how they handle their situation. Martel’s novel, on the other hand, concentrates on how the primary main characters interpret a secondary set of main characters in the taxidermist’s play. We are gaining an understanding at the same time Henry, a primary character, is understanding. The motif is imparted in a progressive way. It’s not the primary main characters that we learn from but the secondary main characters that primary characters discuss and write about. Aside from plot, the characters feel real and human. The taxidermist is a cold, humorless man who has spent many years in the same profession practicing his art. An existence dealing with dead animals will leave a man without proper social skills. Henry’s fruitless attempts at making small talk makes me just as uncomfortable reading the situation as Henry is in text. Speaking of Henry, his character is a blatant foil to the saturnine taxidermist. Henry is lively, married and social. He works at a chocolate cafe and is apart of a theater crew, both undeniably gregarious activities. Their awkward banter is interesting and a joy to read.
At first, the strange elements of Beatrice and Virgil were odd for me. After reading certain parts of the book, I thought about some of the scenes for awhile as they stayed in my head because of how unique they were. The scene were Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice was intriguing. I did not understand the scene right away, but realized that the describing of pear is truthful. Since there were no pears around, Virgil could have described it as another food. He truthfully described it to Beatrice, and I thought of this as historians relating truthful facts, through evidence, to people. As the pear was described accurately, I related this to people recalling historical events to others, through the knowledge that they have. If the knowledge is untrue, the historical impact of the event can be downplayed by the people who did not experience it, but only heard of it. I believe Martel is trying to relate this scene to the knowledge that is passed down of the Holocaust. While almost all of the people in the world now have not experienced the Holocaust, they know how horrific it was from accurate tellings of who they learned it from. There are some people who don’t believe the Holocaust happened, or that it was not a terrible event. These people downplay the facts, or spread lies to others, so they believe what they are told. The people that wrongly tell facts because of their opinion are what Martel is trying to convey as bad.
This short novel written by Yann Martel is much different than any other novel I’ve read. For starters, I have never read anything in relation to taxidermy, and this was surely an informative, interesting place to begin. The eccentric description Martel uses to have the readers understand the practice is breathtaking, yet at times disgusting. The use of having Henry (the writer) be just as shocked and astounded by all the different life forms found within the taxidermist’s shop as a reader would be in a similar situation is brilliant. Because, just as Henry “didn’t even know taxidermists still existed,” it is likely readers have the same thought (58). For the metafiction element, I found it very hard to follow in some areas. I was able to grapple an understanding of the allusions being made by Martel, but when one has not read the work being referred to, there is a matter of enhanced difficulty in the reading. However, in a novel such as this, metafiction has a definite reason to be included, especially when relating the taxidermist’s play, which is jumbled as Henry comes to realize the nature of the disturbing man he has been spending so much time with.
As I read Beatrice and Virgil, I have noticed how all the big elements do somewhat connect to one another, but I do not think the connection is strong enough. The book is too random for me to enjoy or rather even follow. I do believe this is a great example of Bricolage, but it does not work for me. The only thing I have found rather amusing is how Henry has trouble with his book because it has no plot, as does the Taxidermist with his novel and the book as a whole I feel has absolutely no meaning nor plot. I found it rather strange how the Taxidermist believes he is preserving the animal's life/spirit, but it so applaud with the idea of zoo’s, but he skins animals? He also takes in animals that were killed for pleasure and hung up like a trophy. The taxidermist justifies his job because of keeping the memory of that specific animal alive, but does not even acknowledge Henry’s dog Erasmus. All in all this book does not catch my attention nor keeps me wanting to read more.
At the beginning of this novel I found it very hard to understand all the different elements that Yann Martel was trying to incorporate. As I began reading more the more knowledge I gained especially through the use of bricolage. The way that he put a small short story inside a story gave me more insight on how the animals (Jews) were feeling. Along with this how he decided to use a donkey and a monkey to portray the people of the Holocaust. One part that especially stood out to me is the fact that the taxidermist was using his story about the Holocaust to show how people are treating animals because neither of them had a voice during this mass genocide. An irony in the story is the fact that Henry and his wife Sarah believe that animals should be adopted from a pound instead of pet stores because they don’t have a voice and the taxidermist agrees with the fact that humans are just using animals for there own reasons but they end of dying because the dog got rabies and attacked the cat. Which shows how an innocent animal can get influenced/infected by a problem. Finally at the most important thing that I believe in my opinion is the fact that the whole short story is on a shirt. This can be interpreted that everyone has a shirt and they wear it so what is stopping a normal person from becoming a nazi or even creating a mass genocide. We may all look different and seem different but if we were put in this situation most people would choose to follow along the leader in order to protect your family.
Abstract and strange elements from the novel Beatrice and Virgil have helped intrigue me to continue reading the book, but also have made it hard for me to completely follow the book. Stories inside stories, past examples that back track to answer a question have made the novel readable for me. For example, when Virgil and Beatrice meet the boy who is a terror, we as a reader find out more about this character (which reveals a surprising plot twist) through back tracking stories and daydreams from Virgil and Beatrice. Now these bricolage elements can enhance a novel, they can also hinder the reader's ability to get involved with the novel. With complex literary devices placed in multitude, a reader can get quiet confused on what is actually happening in the novel. All in all though, I strongly dislike this book. The book bores me, the only really intriguing portion of this book is the last 15 or 20 pages. I relate the play done by the taxidermist and this novel as similar, there is a plot, but it's open and loose.
The abstract and strange elements of Beatrice and Virgil do work for me. I do not casually seek for symbols when I am reading, but I like to see the symbols when they pop out. When the different parts of Henry’s (the taxidermist) story are first told, any reader would be just as confused as an illiterate child who tried to read any book. The different parts make no sense--the dialogue of the pear, the relationship of Beatrice and Virgil, and most of the other details like them living in the country of Shirt. But when the novel is finished, and all of the random bits and pieces fall into place, every seemingly useless detail gets turned into its own elaborate symbol, creating a masterpiece of a story. I appreciate books with strange elements because it forces our minds to work on piecing everything together, but it also grants us the ability to see the world in a variety of ways, not just in ways we see it currently. I really enjoyed Beatrice and Virgil because it was a witty story with a small “twist” that opens the minds of readers.
The abstract elements in Beatrice and Virgil make it a fresh and entertaining book. I actually found myself enjoying being confused for most of the novel, because I knew that when I finally put together the puzzle pieces there would be an intense meaning behind the initial strangeness of the story. One thing that I really love about this book is how open to interpretation every element present is. I have read some other students’ blog posts and agree with their interpretations of certain lines and symbols. However, I also think that the pear that Virgil describes to Beatrice can be seen in infinite different ways; for example, the pear could symbolize the luxuries of normal life that we take as mundane, taken away by the Holocaust. I also enjoyed how vague Martel left the final condemnation of Henry the Taxidermist, forcing the reader to put two and two together--even though Henry the Author says “Here he was, rubbing shoulders with a stinking old Nazi collaborator,” there are still vague elements. Did Henry the Taxidermist write himself into the play as the cruel boy that kills Beatrice and Virgil? Was he simply a witness to the Holocaust who was forced to go along with it for fear of his own life? Was he one of those in power that actually ordered the atrocities? All the reader knows is that he felt enough regret to burn himself alive in a fitting irony.
Konz 1 Entirely confusing to me, I do not like the bricolage in this novel. I think the extremely random elements take away from the continuity of a novel and make the novel confusing. One thing that I really enjoyed in this novel is the elements that make Henry seem like Yann Martel. Henry talks about his previous novel that was an entirely successful book about animals. Immediately this makes it seem like Henry was the writer of Life of Pi the reader starts to wonder if Yann Martel is a pen name. Another thing that I found to be successful in the novel is the vague elements that the author adds. For example, not giving the place Henry’s family moves to a specific name and naming both the main characters Henry may be Yann Martel’s way of saying that this could happen to any “Henry,” or any person, in any city. It makes the story more relatable. As far as the shirt, donkey, monkey, and pear, I am still lost trying to connect these things to each other and the Holocaust in order to fully understand this book. The metafiction adds an interesting element to the novel. The uniqueness of definitely stands out and I think it is interesting that the novel is about the construction of a play, but the play offers much confusion.
When I first started reading Beatrice and Virgil I was very confused with all of the strange elements, their meanings, and how to relate them. With now being half way through the novel, I believe I am slowly connecting the abstract elements to the Holocaust. One connection I have made was with the posters in the play scene. The poster were warning the citizens of the howler monkey, warning that they were untrustworthy, dishonest, ugly, and antisocial. Clearly, from what we already know about Virgil, he is not like any of these words. This reminded me of how the Nazis would spread lies about the Jews by saying they were the reason that Germany lost WW1 and the reason why Germany’s economy collapsed. The bricolage makes this novel very difficult to follow along with what is happening in the story. All of the different elements do not work for me because they are so intermittent and it makes the story hard to connect the dots. Overall, I feel that this novel is not nearly as good as Life of Pi; however, I am expecting to be amazed at the end of the novel when all the these strange element finally come together, like I was after reading Life of Pi.
To be honest this book sucked in my opinion. I am not saying that the book was terrible for everyone, but in all honesty I don’t like a book that you may have to research to understand or the book is so slow that it takes several pages to describe a creepy old man’s story. I respect what Yann does with his novels, but the aspects of this story bore me. The only part I liked in this book was that he showed a message of truth through the pear. The world lacks honesty and this truly conveys a good message that people need to introduce into their own lives. Virgil could have told Beatrice that the pear was gross and did not looked as how he described it. The fact that the old gross never explains what he really wants disturbs me. I also do not enjoy the fact that he kills the dog when he believes in preserving animal life. The dialogue would be more interesting if the man was not socially awkward. I also wish the setting would have expanded out of the shop even more than around the corner.
Waldera 3 As I continue to get further and further along in the book, I have realized that a large plethora of objects that do not usually go together are presented. I personally see this as a new and interesting way of writing. I enjoy the use of abstract elements, as I believe it keeps the reader guessing and wanting to read more to reveal the meaning behind the unnecessary objects presented. I enjoy how Yann Martel uses these foreign and random things to represent other things in a less graphic manner, true literary genius. For example, I believe the story first presented by the taxidermist about the man killing any and every animal in his way clearly represents the Holocaust. The boy blinded by what he was doing and the impact he was creating mirrors Hitler and his motives of killing everything in sight. This technique allows the reader to piece things together and to retrieve the meaning of the of the objects, through the book, themselves, forcing readers to pay close attention to details throughout. However along with the objects I do know the meaning behind, Yann has presented a few that I simply can not explain. I do hope that my confusion will be cleared up during the forum Friday.
6 Mendoza The strange and abstract elements completely work for me, as a matter of fact, I really quite enjoy it. The junction of stories within the stories are quite fascinating. You have the story of Henry the writer, the story of Beatrice and Virgil, and the story of the taxidermist. I have never even heard of a taxidermist before I encountered this book. I found it very ironic that a man who skins and works with animal remains is writing a play regarding the holocaust. His justification for his line of work is that he is preserving the beauty of the animals, for when they go extinct there is a visual representation of the animals, which grows in connection with the play. The taxidermist wants to preserve the horrendous actions and murders of the holocaust through theatre. Every detail of the book represents and symbolizes something greater. The structuralism of the book is magnificent. Simple objects like pears and shirts contain symbolism beyond the text. I admire Yann Martel’s writing style and his ability to make his novels seem so real. Throughout the novel you are in utter confusion and awe until the end, where it always comes together.
I felt as though it was hard to follow the story because of how seemingly random the story was. It was harder to follow the play the taxidermist made than to follow Henry's story. The abstract and strange elements in the story definitely kept me from knowing the end of the story. The ending was nothing that I expected it to be and it seemed completely random to me. In the beginning it was definitely harder to understand what he was trying to say but as I kept reading it got easier to follow both stories at the same time. I did not really like the book and the randomness did not work for me until the end when all the randomness came together to create a very interesting ending. This book did not compare to Life of Pi and did not keep my attention the way Life of Pi did. The story was not as intriguing and I did not enjoy how random the book was and I really did not enjoy how he portrayed the taxidermist. The taxidermist to me was boring, annoying and rude. I felt as though the book was pretty static, boring and honestly not interesting up until about the last ten pages of the book where I finally gained interest.
7Huska I personally do not care for the abstract and strange elements of this novel. I found the novel to be, in my opinion, quite pointless until the last few pages. It was a hard read and the use of all the descriptions made everything so boring. Things were thrown at you left and right and there were so many injections of that stupid play that I was left annoyed, confused, and bored. There were a FEW things that I did like. I did like the context clues that helped me guess what would happen at the end--which might I add was the only interesting part of the book. I also thought the lowkey allegory towards the holocaust was another thing that did work. The signs saying what a horrible person Virgil was, the striped shirt, the description of the pear, the horrors, and how everyone acted during and after were perfect representations of the holocaust that made you think and compare the book to those events. The taxidermist kind of reminded me of Hitler in where people (in both his writing and in real life) were both caught off guard at how he acted while others were blinded.
3 Wheeler I have to say that I did not like this book. It is not often that I do not like a book. However, the vagueness and the absolute mishmash of elements in this book did not appeal to me. I am a rereader. I reread everything. I also rewatch movies, TV shows, I’ll listen to the same song on repeat for 5 hours and still not hate it the next day, and I’ve redone the same 9 jigsaw puzzles so many times I’ve nearly memorized the pieces, but I do not think I will ever reread this book unless it is asked of me by a superior. I did not like the absolute over kill of description and imagery, and I did not like the lackadaisical approach to setting in the “real” parts of the novel. It was random, and while it all came together in the end, I spent the majority of the time listening to the novel confused. I cannot count the amount of times I yelled at the speaker while listening to this book in the car. However, this is not to say that I did not appreciate this book. I can see why other people would appreciate it’s randomness and rambling descriptions. All of the descriptions were quite beautiful, and the abstractness of a lot of them was objectively pretty. However, as someone who is easily distracted and the posterchild for ADHD, it was very difficult to focus on this book because of those abstractions. The mishmash of elements gave me a headache, to be frank. But I will not deny that this was a interesting story, or even a good book.
The abstract and strange elements of this novel do not work for me very much. I can see where some people may like it because it is different from other novels that can become trite with their themes, however, I think this novel is not as fun to read. It seems like more of a commitment. I’m sitting down specifically to read it and finding myself not wanting to read it in my spare time. Though I’m only halfway through the book right now, so I cannot be too judgemental of it, not a lot has happened. The most interesting part to me was the play that was sent to Henry, which is odd because it is not even part of Yann Martel’s book technically (it is a play within a book). I think he is over thinking things a lot and describing unnecessary things. I find it fascinating that later on he will become so infatuated with this letter he has received. I am excited to see what the ending of the book is like because other people are saying that the ending is the best part. I think this specific book is lacking in spirit compared to Martel’s Life of Pi, which is a let down to me, but hopefully it will pick up pace.
This book, once again, was created seemingly for the analysis of it and all of it’s largely allegorical symbols. Personally, I feel that in a sense, the level and in that the amount of symbolism can very easily become gratuitous. Though I don’t possess the intellect that many of my peers do, I find it difficult to follow certain pieces or nuances within the story. That is, in the immense layered “onion” of a narrative that this is -- if you will -- I find it quite easy to misconstrue the attempted meaning. All in all, if in a very real sense.. I wasn’t such an idiot, this book would certainly have been immaculate. The meaning behind it is something horrifying, and the powerful allegorical description of it grants that meaning a holistic tangibility. Looking back on it, there is no question in my mind, that if I’d taken the time to read between the lines as it were, I would have gathered more from it. Perhaps not, after all, isn’t the author's intent to leave the perceived meaning of the story to that of the reader?
6 Sorenson Beatrice and Virgil is a book that requires me to analyze it. If I do not analyze it, I have a confusing story with random objects in it. At the very end of the story, Henry says that Beatrice and Virgil is the story of his stabbing. But the stabbing only takes up a page or two of the book. Therefore, I must dig deeper into the seemingly random objects throughout the book, because this is not simply a story of how Henry was stabbed. The objects are intriguing and can possibly be interpreted many different ways. I like that because it allows the story to mean different things to different readers. People can get what they want out of what they are reading. I like the metafiction more than the symbols. The fact that there is a short story within a story, a play within a story, and a story about writing itself is incredibly fascinating. I was not expecting Beatrice and Virgil to be as meta as it is. Ultimately, I think that Yann Martel successfully discussed the holocaust in fictional way that portrays the psychological and emotional side of the events that happened. He presents a historic event in a new light that helps keep the Holocaust relevant.
1 Koehn When I first started reading Beatrice and Virgil I did not like the book whatsoever. All of the strange elements that Yann Martel included in this book confused me. I did not understand how a book about a taxidermist, a donkey, and a monkey would teach me any value or lesson. When I came upon the five page description of the pear I thought this may be the worst book I've ever read. However, my opinion on the book began to change. Once I started to realize that these strange elements and bricolage had actual meanings behind them I started to really enjoy this book. This book created suspense whereas I was always trying to predict what each element meant. For example when they were talking about the posters that were spread about Virgil and how he was seen as ugly, and unworthy of trust this made me think about how Hitler portrayed the Jews in a negative light. I also enjoyed how the whole story took place on a striped shirt. A striped shirt is a very common piece of clothing that everyone could have in their closet. Therefore by having this as the setting I believe Yann Martel is trying to say that anyone in this time period could have become a Nazi. We like to think that we wouldn't, but in reality we would have done anything to survive.
7 Johnke The strange symbols that are presented in the book somewhat work for me. There are a large amount of them and some just stretch a little too far for me to understand the full meaning of I feel. The setting of being on a striped shirt is unique but I feel that it is something that is merely thrown in to make reference to the Holocaust as the landscape Beatrice and Virgil walk on is not even remotely designed to embrace the shirt. The pear, however, I do like. Out of all the fruits to describe that would be harder and more fun, a pear is analyzed and critiqued to be something juicy and flavorful. Truthfully, after reading that portion of the book, a pear sounded very delectable. Right after Henry meets the taxidermist, I felt uncertainty and a strange feeling--like I was worried for the protagonist. It seems that the build up until we learn of the identity of the taxidermist is slow, but necessary. After the building is destroyed and the play along with the taxidermist, I felt upset for Henry. I thought that the flip book that he tries to publish would work well if the essay was replaced by the play.
When I first started reading this book, I thought the book was quite strange and honestly boring. As I got to the middle and end it got better and actually turned into my second favorite book we have read in this class behind Life of Pi. I think that the strange and abstract elements of the novel worked for me. The abstract elements made me analyze the novel more than I had with the previous novels we have read and I like how this novel kept me guessing on what was going to happen. I think Martel did a wonderful job of adding different elements and descriptions throughout the beginning of the novel that help explain the odd items enough but not enough that it gives away the importance at the beginning. As I read the book the one thing that stuck out to me the most was the taxidermists personality. At first, I felt a little leery of the taxidermist and was wondering why Martel chose to write about the taxidermist. As I read on I saw how his personality changed when he was alone with Henry, when he was talking about the play, and also when he was in public and also at the I realized why a taxidermist. As I read I tried to pick out the importance of his changing personality and why he got so excited about talking about the play and what the significance of his play was. I realized after I was done with the novel that I was actually analyzing the taxidermist way more than I had any other character of a novel before and I credit to all the strange elements placed throughout the novel that worked for me.
Corcoran 6 This novel is really giving me a challenge in trying to grasp, correlate, and comprehend all the different elements meshed into this surreal tale. I felt hesitant at first, but came to embrace wholeheartedly all the strangeness, and dreamlike movement of the story. I want to for the very life of me become satisfied in my research as I make attempts at breaking down the themes, symbolism, and messages. My mind quickly turns to putty as my brain is overloaded with frantic reaches to meaning that I cannot confidently say I understand. Though the research to me is what makes the novel worth it, for if I had just read this as is and made no attempt to find a deeper meaning I would absolutely hate the book, and find the ending abrupt, time-wasting, and offensive. It is the probing, and the occasional “ah-ha!” that reignites that interest and allows me to valiantly seek what lies between the lines. The clues and breadcrumbs left by Martel beckon me with each new discovery, slowly fastening pieces to a jigsaw puzzle that I believe will always, and purposefully remain unsolved.
I oddly enjoy yet hate this book. My ID, my inner ego and rebellious side of me enjoys this book quite a bit but my superego, the side of the "studious" student and by-the-book personality hates this book. There is nothing in this book. It rehashes the same thing over and over again and again. Nothing gets answered, nothing happens, the book isn't finished but thats what is so great about it. It makes little to no sense. At some points you don't know which Henry is speaking or doing. It's up for interpretation. It gives the reader the choice of picking one, none, or both of them to do said thing. Its great yet awful. Henry claims that Henry's play has no plot, nothing to move it forward much like this book. Yann Martel is something else, calling himself out in the his own book. But it works for him. I feel like he over hashes his ideas in his stories. Three Religions, Three holocaust-(the flip book, Beatrice and Virgil, and the Taxidermist). I feel like it's a waste of words and paper. Why use more words then necessary to tell a story unless you are meeting a page/word limit. Concise and to the point keeps the reader's attention more in todays society. But the saying is "the third times the charm." Some things needs the constant beating so we don't forget them and then repeat atrocities. We might find it redundant at times but it is having the desired affect. Everyone knows about it and nobody can escape the past. And some people might need these constant and extra reminders. We all work at a different capacity. Also, the complete disjointness of the book gave it a different quality. Do you try and put them in the right order throughout the story and just take them in as they come? I don't try I just let what ever comes, comes and find their own spot in my head. I enjoy this book because it is not something someone will comprehend and understand, this book is something that is grasped at, felt, and then lost before understandment can happen but it makes you think and then potentially change. But than I hate this book because we are taught and raised that in school there is always a right answer. My rebellious side adores this book because it is straight chaos and unorderness. Rarely is their ever a concrete answer to real life problems. there won't always be a resolution or epiphany. Sometimes somethings just happen that has no good, no sliver lining. They just happen and then we have to live with it and move on.
6 McGee I have found the book Beatrice and Virgil, very interesting. Sometimes the book is hard to follow and is very confusing. But I enjoy all the symbolism the book holds. I find it very effective the way that Yann Martel uses Henry the writer and Henry the taxidermist to tell the story. I find the book extremely intriguing and find myself wanting to read on. So, yes I do believe that the abstract and strange elements of this novel work for me. I really like the character Beatrice and Virgil, they are very effective in getting the story across. To be honest I have not finished the novel completely, but I am close and so far the way Yann Martel has unraveled this story has been very fascinating. The seriousness of the taxidermist Henry also adds a good element to this novel. He is so upfront and social awkward that I believe he being the author of the play is very effective. I am really enjoying this book and look forward to the forum because I am excited to hear everyone else's opinions on this book. I also am excited to understand the book better as my fellow classmates help me pick up on some of the symbolism I missed.
Reading Beatrice and Virgil there is no way I could go without noticing all the strange and abstract elements it contains. When you think of anything containing strange or abstract elements you would never think that it would be boring to interact with? I mean I relate having such strange things all in one spot to dreaming at night. And I would have to say my dreams are not boring! It would be very rare for such an abstract group of things to all come together in real life as they do in this book and in your dreams. I would have to say that it is great that Yann Martel could combine such a vast number of unique things all into one book and still get a message across; however, I have completed the book and did not find it interesting until the very end. The book takes too long on portions of writing that I believe could be shorter and in turn make the whole book shorter. I usually like thinking deeply about things and discovering symbols within books, but this book just has so much going on at once and still fails to interest me. Overall there was a few strange elements that I can respect and like to an extent. I thought it was clever to use a word like Aukitz and have it short for Auschwitz. I also thought that the games at the end were a unique addition that enhanced the book. All in all, I would have to say that I didn’t enjoy this book all that much and the strange elements didn’t quite work for me; however, some of the symbols were cleverly placed and brought to my attention which kept me entertained enough to finish.
In all honesty, this novel really is strange and was hard to understand at first but as you keep reading, you realize that to fully comprehend this book, you must break it down and analyze everything. I thought the beginning of the story was quite boring but then when he comes across the letter from the taxidermist, it gets some what more interesting. The description of the pear was so in depth, I do not think I would have ever been able to describe a pear with that much justice. Yann Martel never fails to add detail in his stories, when Henry enters the taxidermy shop, you can picture it perfectly just by the excess of details that are provided. The details are what help me the most, they help me grasp the effect Martel is trying to create but sometimes they are too excessive and the reading just becomes boring. I think if you are reading this book for pleasure and do not know how to properly analyze the meaning behind everything then you will most likely end up hating this book, but if you know how to search for the answers behind the story then you will do just fine with this novel and might even turn out loving it.
1 Harvison If I am being completely honest, this book has been a challenge to read. I appreciate what Yann Martel is trying to accomplish as well as his ambition to challenge the reader, however the execution could be improved. The first part of the book, although it does serve as a backstory, seems to stretch on for more than half the book. I had a hard time reading about an author who was contemplating writing a book while writing a book. However, as I continued reading the book was much more engaging. I had never really thought that a monkey, donkey, shirt, taxidermist, and the Holocaust would ever be able to make a coherent book-- yet here we are reading it. That being said, I think it takes great imagination and creativity to be able to write such a book that some readers may not even understand and others will be changed for. I find myself somewhere in the middle of that spectrum as I would like to think I understood most of the book but was confused by certain parts such as the beginning portion. I personally feel this book would be very hard to read unless you had the purpose of analyzing what it is trying to accomplish due to the weird allegories and the strange man. I do tend to be interested in learned about the Holocaust, so I found this fiction take to be quite interesting.
Beatrice and Virgil is a very interesting novel, none like I have read before. Yann Martel throws in a lot of odd and strange pieces, and sometimes they do not seem to flow together. This was a very hard book to get into, because there seems to be nothing interesting happening in the plot. The only action that you see throughout the entire novel is when Henry gets stabbed, which does not happen until there is only ten pages left in the book. After a while the strange pieces finally start to fit together, and you can get an overall better idea about what the story is really about. Martel must have put a lot of thought into writing the book, because you can tell they nothing included is in there by accident. You get the idea that the taxidermist was using the monkey and donkey to represent the people in the Holocaust, and how poorly they were treated. However the abstract and strange elements do confuse me at many points through the book, as it is difficult to tell what he is really trying to say, but it overall makes for a much more unique and creative way of writing and gives the reader a challenge.
1 Top Throughout reading Beatrice and Virgil, everything was very clear to me up until around page 100. The bricolage used in the novel definitely works for me, essentially it is what kept me interested in a reading with very few events until the last 15 pages. Henry, a taxidermist, had asked Henry, a writer, for help on his play. As the two began to build a relationship and began to see each other everyday, the odd behavior the taxidermist possessed began to seem normal. Yann Martel strategically describes the taxidermist with a distinct behavior. Later on, learning about the Holocaust, I felt I was a victim in book. The taxidermist who could potentially represent Hitler, had started to seem like a trustworthy guy to me and to Henry, while everyone else was standoffish towards him and did not associate with the man. In association with the Holocaust, victims did not know that Hitler was a dictator that wanted to kill them, they followed his orders because they thought that was what was best and he knew what was best. Henry thought helping the taxidermist with his play was best until it ended up killing him in the end. The arrangement of the words and scenes Martel creates established a novel well organized and entertaining. Without questionable scenes or actions in the reading, the reader would become uninterested and bored.
Quite honestly, I am not the biggest fan of Beatrice and Virgil. I was waiting until I finished it to see if some surprise ending would change my mind, but it did not work out like that. The abstract and strange elements made it much more difficult for me to fully appreciate the novel, let alone understand it. This, coupled with the fact that it is a newer book and there are no reputable literary sources to help understand it, made for the roughest reading this semester. While I say that, I am surprised to hear critics call it a terrible book. I like the idea of what the author is trying to do and I loved figuring out that the taxidermist is doing what Henry attempted to do years prior. At this time, I don’t think the literary scene is quite ready for it. A lot of ingenious ideas were worked into this novel, creating a delicate reading atmosphere. The book was not hard to follow, but it just lacked something in the middle to pique the reader’s interest and get them to keep reading. The ending, however, certainly did a job of doing that. Within the last 30 pages, things accelerated and happened much more than they did in the 170 pages prior. I was immensely shocked by the ending, but also left with a sense of incompletion; I feel like it should not be over or that Henry really should have taken the Nazi taxidermist’s play, just so he could help us understand it.
1 Ellis Beatrice and Virgil was definitely a type of book I have never read before. I noticed how Yann Martel’s writing style was very present in this book compared to Life of Pi. Descriptions of food, for example, were very much alike. When Virgil tries to describe what a pear is to Beatrice it seems so much like when Pi discusses different Indian foods that he craves to eat. The lack of plot at first was annoying and boring. Yet when Henry complains to the taxidermist that his play has no real plot I understood how the book was attempting to show that. The constant switch from Henry’s real life to the play about Beatrice and Virgil was amazing. The constant irony of how whatever was mentioned in the play at that time was relatable to Henry at that time was a great element in the book that I enjoyed. Beatrice and Virgil’s story itself was beautiful, with its subtle hints to the Holocaust and how they were being persecuted kept me interested. I also liked how the taxidermist used another story, “The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator” to capture Henry’s attention and raised serious questions about the story just by the use of highlighter. I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, though the ending seemed more abrupt and unfinished, it completely caught me off guard.
Mikkelsen 1 Reading Beatrice and Virgil was an extremely odd experience for me. For the majority of the novel, I found myself wondering how the bricolage would end up sorting itself out in the end. Once I had finished the novel, I still found myself annoyed and kind of confused. One thing I enjoyed about the ending was how you could learn what the symbols represented such as the shirt in which this play was taking place--although it is hard to know what all the symbols mean. This is definitely the strangest book I have ever read, but I wanted to embrace the strangeness. While reading it, I knew in the back of my head that this would somehow connect to the Holocaust; I think this is why the ending was not amazing for me personally. I think for most of the novel the dialogues between Beatrice and Virgil that are included within the story are strange and go into excessive description. I felt in the end it is hard to decipher the true meaning and how everything entirely comes together. Although I personally did not enjoy this book, I think it took a lot of thought and time to make it what it is, and for that I respect Martel.I think my entire life I have been exposed to books that are fairly orthodox, so this novel definitely put me in a situation I have not been in before. “Normal” does not always mean good, and “abnormal” does not always mean bad; I think this book uses literary elements in an extremely creative, but odd way.
While many of my classmates were confused by the abstract elements of the novel, I personally loved the insanity of Henry the taxidermist. Too often we as people look at things and determine what they’re worth without thinking about underlying justifications. In Beatrice and Virgil, I was presented with a story entirely composed of subliminal messages. Despite the apparent lack of plot, I had more notes on the brilliance of Beatrice and Virgil than throughout the entire Life of Pi novel. I immediately noticed the similarities between the discussions between Beatrice and Virgil and those between Henry and Henry. It could even be said that Henry the taxidermist represents the dark side of Henry the writer, much like Jekyll and Hyde (a story directly alluded to in the novel). In addition the story had significant insights into the nature of history and art. History and art actually define us as a people rather than the other way around, so by using abstract elements, Martell eliminates any preconceptions about Nazis. Despite alluding to Henry the taxidermist being a Nazi throughout the whole book (I picked up on it on page 97 with Henry’s description of taxidermy and how it relates to Mengele’s bastardization of Nazism), you begin to sympathize with the old man trying to tell his story. This story is more than just a fictionalized representation of the Holocaust; it is a view of history from the other side, one few can take up without the abstract elements hiding the strongest negative connotation in history. However, this is also a story about Martell as he uses his pseudo-personality to explore the possibilities of an alternate reality… in addition to directly telling the readers he LOVES mail. Martell’s use of the abstract in Beatrice and Virgil is one of the greatest pieces of symbolism known to man. Through its beautifully intricate relationships of the unspeakable, Martell has influenced me to think in a whole new light.
In all honesty, I was not a huge fan of this book, Beatrice and Virgil. I believe that a tiny pear did not need a five page description on all of its components. Most of the scenes in the novel could have been shortened because after time they became boring. However, some symbolism did keep me interested in the book. A few of the abstract and strange elements work for me and a few do not. The elements that extend too far for my brain to comprehend are the ones that confuse me. I did catch most of the Holocaust references such as the striped shirt, Aukitz, and the false posters about Virgil. One thing that sets this book apart from any other is the games at the end of the book. They make you think way more about what happened and how you would have reacted in such a situation. I do have one question though. Why is the 13th game blank? Yes, this book has wonderful bricolage, but it would be better if I could understand all of it without having to research. The last 10 pages were the only ones to actually attract my attention to the book.
In the story the amount of times that one object is symbolic or referencing to another thing in the Holocaust that gives it meaning or purpose in the story. However, I didn't like the book in that it was very boring and the constant referencing made you think twice about things that don't need to be thought of in that way. Example would be when his dog gets rabies and kills his other dog basically and is then gassed. I get that it is symbolic of how Nazi's had no self control and then in the end the dog gets gassed but its almost pointless to the story in that it doesn't contribute to the plot and is quite random in my opinion. Also with it being boring is that the only real plot to the story seemed to be at the beginning when first introducing the taxidermy Henry as it helped to understand him later in the novel but almost all the middle parts, except the reading of the play, seemed almost pointless with nothing to contribute to the story with nothing being connected from the end to the middle and beginning and it was only a few connections from the end and beginning.
3Bowman When I first began reading Beatrice and Virgil, the only thought going through my head was “what the nuts is happening right now?” Of course, followed by the answer: nothing. Beatrice and Virgil, I thought, began quite a dry read. The book takes time to develop, and when it does develop, it is through the seams of the text rather than through the text directly. Nonetheless, my hat is off to Martel who does an exceptional job at tying together such random ideas and objects to come to the conclusion of the story (of which there actually is none, but still fits with the novel). It is so hidden, yet blatantly obvious, that this is a tale relating to the events and circumstances of the Holocaust. Martel accomplishes exactly what Henry had always strived to: retell a common story in a quite different way to elicit a deep emotional response once again. I am still perplexed why he chose a monkey and a donkey for the main characters of this Holocaust tale, but hopefully that can be answered at our forum. Though it was a long, “interesting” read, I hope that our forum goes well and I look forward to hearing others opinions of the book itself.
I am extremely interested in the abstract and strange elements of Yann Martel’s novel, although I do not fully understand them for I have not yet completed the book. The strange deceptions and symbols of the book confuse me, yet aspire me to continue reading the novel until I understand their hidden values. As strange as it may sound, these ideas are what I enjoy about novels and is a prime example of what peaks my interest in reading. The symbolic meanings behind the howler monkey, the donkey, a taxidermist, and how they all relate somehow to a holocaust reference is indescribable. My favorite idea of Martel’s novel is that the setting of the story within the story is a striped shirt. Incredible. At first reading the book, I was not sure where the novel would take itself, as the description of a pear lasted about five pages and there was a whole description about an author’s struggles to publish his book. The great thing, however, is that the novel clears itself up as it continues until I eventually run out of pages to read.
I believe that the abstract and strange elements of the book Beatrice and Virgil do work for me. I say this because I am able to pick up on the things that Yann Martel is wanting to portray in a way that does not have to outright say exactly what he is trying to exemplify in the novel. The subtle ways that he creates his sentences gives the book a greater clarity and a better rhythm than to simply state what he is trying to say throughout the novel. To me, having things be hinted at or maybe simply alluded to in a novel makes more sense to me than to have the author say it. In adding strange elements to a book, it gives the story more life than to have it a cut and dry piece of fiction that anyone would be able to understand. In the duration of reading a book, should I find it boring, I will be more inclined to set the book down and grab something more thrilling from my extensive collection of books rather than continue to read this banal piece of fiction. Henceforth, I enjoy the works of Yann Martel and his use of abstract ideas to intricate his books.
Lindemann 3 This novel is a conglomeration of things that make almost no sense until the last 10 pages (cough cough lord of the flies?) but still creates interest with minor details. I, personally, think it works super well. I didn’t see the plot twist coming until after it flew past my head. I also didn’t expect the play to end up the way it did, but it was still interesting to read and see how the play slowly came to reflect what Henry suspected it did. Having Professor Hicks come in and speak was also helpful to understanding the book, as it gave me an idea as to what I feel Henry’s character would have been in person. This novel is the perfect combination of whimsical and dark that it keeps readers easily invested without them knowing it. I found that I didn’t want to put the book down because I was continuously searching for resolutions to the smaller plot lines, resolutions I never got that make me want to read and reread to see if i can find them in the earlier sections of the novel. Beatrice and Virgil is a great novel and I think Yann Martel wrote beautifully and craftily, something that is hard to do for a lot of authors.
If I am being completely honest, I did not enjoy the novel. I thought Beatrice and Virgil was written in a bizarre, weird, awkward style of how the story was told. I had high hopes for this novel, especially after seeing Yann Martel’s brilliant work, Life of Pi. I was truly looking forward to reading another of Martel’s books. I think that had Martel chosen to write the novel without the strange elements, the novel would have been even worse. The only thing in my opinion that continued to keep the novel interesting to me was the collection of strange objects being described in the story. The elements worked for me purely from the standpoint of it keeping the book entertaining. When I first read the scene where Virgil describes the shape and taste of a pear to Beatrice, I thought that the descriptions were perfect and I was able to picture the pear in my mind if I had never seen one before. I think that Martel has a very creative style of writing and a very large imagination (you need this to be a writer). I think what really did not work for me in the novel was that this was a book within a book, and it felt mind boggling to have to interpret the plot and symbols of both stories.
3 Hoffman Absolutely. Absolutely this novel has worked for me. Yann Martel is an absolutely intriguing writer, I believe. Everything he writes makes me think, it appears that every sentence in his books is intentional, as Mr. C states. It did, indeed, infuriate me, the ending, though it was infuriating because of my discontent with the characters, not because of the writing. I was so incredibly immersed in the book, I often lost myself in it. I tell my friends that I finished it because I can’t think of the book and the essay at the same time, but the truth is that I was absolutely excited to read. I would be at work and almost all of my thoughts were on the book and how much I’d read that night. The ending was not what I had expected, though it was hard to guess. I assumed that because they are named Henry together, a very specific thing to do, they were the same person. I also assumed that the taxidermist didn’t show the play to Henry the novelist because he was making it up as they went, he was making it of them together. They said something about cake and coffee, Beatrice and Virgil, just as those both arrived on their table. I assumed Beatrice and Virgil were the inverses of Henry and Henry. I wasn’t sure what to think, though I had never stopped.
To start, I thought that throughout most of the novel it was pretty boring. However at the end it did pick up some, but it was not really a surprising ending as I think it was supposed to be. I think I understood a fair amount of the allegory but not as much as I would have if it were more normal and standard things. The events and symbols seem completely random, even though Martel is able to tie them together fairly well. The randomness and abstractness is likely done on purpose though. The abstract elements both keep the reader invested, because they hope for a clear answer at the end, but they also make one want to stop reading because it is so difficult to understand. Henry struggles to figure out what his story is about, and he struggles to find out what the taxidermist’s play is about. I also struggle to figure out what this book is about. You could say the Holocaust, but I think a more accurate answer would be it is a story about a story about the Holocaust, and even then I am not sure that is right either.
Upon reading Beatrice and Virgil, the elements of the book were very confusing to me. I have had trouble reading the novel for a long period of time because it was boring for me to read. When I reached about halfway through the book it started to get more interesting as the scenes I previously had read started to make sense. The main scene that didn’t make sense to me was when Virgil explained what a pear was to Beatrice. After I read this scene I began to think more and more about why this was put into the book. Eventually I came to the conclusion that Yann Martel used this as an element about how people can sometimes described things truthfully or completely wrong. Virgil uses other fruits to accurately describe what a pear is compared to using unrelated objects or just exaggerate it completely, like a fisherman would when he loses a fish. The book has been a challenge to read and fully understand what I am reading. I constantly find myself rereading passages because I don’t know what they were talking about.
Beatrice and Virgil is most definitely unlike any other novel that I have ever read. The strange settings and symbolism are very difficult to follow. This book challenges readers to a great extent. I still have a significant amount of the book to finish reading, so hopefully more will make sense soon. Having never really learned anything about the practice of taxidermy, I have enjoyed the way Yann Martel goes about informing the reader of the strange practice. I definitely think it has helped to have Henry in the book, who is much like me in the fact that he is fairly clueless about taxidermy as well. The metafiction aspect of the novel is very confusing and I cannot say that I am a fan of it thus far. However, I am hopeful that as I near the end of the book that these aspects become clearer and fit together in the conclusion of the novel.
I honestly do not know how I feel about this novel. The introduction of the novel follows a similar trend that most other stories have, but Beatrice and Virgil never reaches the juncture in between introduction and rising action. It is written as a very long intro, and even though the introduction of the story is the my favorite part, it never ends. The abstract elements are perfunctory of introductions, and usually ends once the plot starts, but this novel just keeps it coming. Also, the play in the novel, 20th Century Shirt, and the novel itself follow a very similar plot line of dialogue without action. Yet, for some reason, I believe that the play would be much more appealing to observe than the book. The oddities mentioned in the book, such as a shirt, a tattoo, and an address seem to be random, but they all can relate to the Holocaust. It is an excellent example of bricolage. The inmates of concentration camps wore blue/gray striped shirts, were marked with tattoos of their identification number, and 68 Nowolipki Street is where an archive of the war was found in milk bottles. These are all important artifacts left from the Holocaust that continue to show us this dark period of time. This list of things from the play is the only thing that makes sense to me in this novel. It was hard to see where the book was going, but this made logical sense to me. So I’m left confused on my feelings toward the novel. I think I’m indifferent about it, but I’m not sure.
1 Headrick Beatrice and Virgil. The book that you literally only need to read the last 20 pages. The first time someone reads this book they end up throwing the book across the room either out of boredom from the first 170 pages or from the last fireball of pages… Hehehehe did you see what I did there… Upon further review, this book sucks a little less. The first 170 pages were not just some random pages that mean nothing, but kindling for the explosion that is about to come. I did it again hehehehe. This book left me with a lot of questions. Why are the animals a Donkey and a Monkey? Is it supposed to represent Jews/Polish? Hopefully the forum will alleviate these questions from my heart so that I can get a good night’s sleep without a thought of this infuriating book. Did the Taxidermist have rabies from years of stuffing animals? Why the heck are they both named Henry? At first Yann Martel’s brilliant writing did not work for me but upon reflection I have come to become very interested in this book. And why did he put in that Sarah knew that the dermist was bad news and Henry should never go back. Do women always know what is right?
After finishing Beatrice and Virgil, I have found that the abstract elements did not really work well for me as a reader. I would say that for the grand majority of the novel I was confused, and overall disinterested in what was going on in the novel, and if I had not known that Beatrice and Virgil was referring to the Holocaust I do not think that I would have gotten that by the end of the novel. However, I thought that the last fifty pages or so were the most intriguing, by this point I had understood what was occurring in the novel and was beginning to understand the events that had happened. I think that this transition from confusion to clarity was intended by Yann Martel. Although I do not think that this novel will reach the popularity that Life of Pi reached, I still feel like this novel is one that should be read. Overall, I just felt that this novel created feelings of uneasiness and leaves much in question until the very end, and at the end everything seems to come full circle. Overall, I did not feel like the strange elements worked very well for me, but I did understand that Beatrice and Virgil were supposed to represent Holocaust survivors and were extremely hungry, explaining the pear. Furthermore, the setting is a striped shirt, which would be similar to the shirts that the prisoners would wear in the Concentration Camps. Finally everything made sense once Henry had explained that the taxidermist was an old Nazi or Nazi supporter, which makes sense as to why he initially sent the short story to Henry at the beginning of the book.
I personally enjoyed this novel very much, and the use of strange and abstract elements did work for me. Yann Martel has managed to take and depict seemingly random and meaningless events and objects (such as in the lengthy description of the pear or the some of the conversations between Beatrice and Virgil) and give them meaning, however small and insignificant they may seem. There is a purpose to everything, even if not directly noticed, that relates to a larger picture, in this case, the relation between the events of the taxidermist’s play and the events of the Holocaust. It is a new and interesting way of presenting information. Both Henry and the Taxidermist are asked what their writing is about; what message they want their story to convey to the audience that comes across it. Henry tells the taxidermist that in order for his play to truly have a story it must have action besides that of pure conversation. However, it is in the conversation that the story unfolds. Martel has taken an artistic approach towards writing a novel that I didn’t think I would be able to understand. After all, people tend to dislike what they do not understand. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised. It is important to read novels such as these, ones that do not always speak with sense in the beginning, ones that don’t always end with a “happily ever after”, and ones that seem out of the ordinary or uncharacteristic of their usual manner of being written. It is in these sorts of stories that we learn the more and remember most.
3 Schroder As I read Beatrice and Virgil, I found the bricolage confusing yet extremely interesting. Although this book was compelling, it did not work for me. I felt that the weird extremes in this novel drove me away from actually wanting to read it. When I first began the novel I didn’t exactly know what I was getting myself into. Having absolutely no knowledge on taxidermy, Yann Martel helped me understand this hobby that Henry had for the dead carcusses he dealt with in his everyday life. In my own words, I would describe the work of taxidermy as creepy, detestable, and gruesome. I found it interesting how Henry, the taxidermist, found no problem with his work because he felt as if he was preserving the animal's spirit. However, when Henry, the man helping him with his play wanted to go to the zoo, the taxidermist was against that idea with full force. It doesn’t make sense to me how Henry prefers being confined in his office, skinning animals, rather than observing animals alive in an actual zoo. All in all this book caught my attention, but it was not one of my favorite novels I have read in this class.
If you thought Life of Pi was full of nonsense then you have yet to see anything until you read Beatrice and Virgil! Much like the african child questions the lady in the image supplied to us by Mr. C, while reading we wonder what Yann Martel could have been smoking when he wrote his Holocaust allegory. To remind you of just how weird this story gets, remember that a two starving animals, a monkey and a donkey, abstractly describe a pear and its related sensations while being persecuted by Nazi’s on a striped shirt. If that isn’t scattered and incoherent I don’t know what is. I must admit though, that this has been a refreshing sort of weird. The story doesn’t really have any real, or at least driving, conflict. The characters tend just sit by and have things happen to them rather than oppose anyone. This is especially true for the meta-fictitious beings Beatrice and Virgil, but also true for Henry. The closest I can come up with for conflict is Henry trying to decipher meaning from the other Henry’s story, and eventually rejecting the other Henry. Maybe you could consider the interview at the beginning about the flipbook conflict, but I think of this as more along the lines of early character development and exposition. I would not even call the stabbing real conflict because of how quickly, and conveniently, the story resolves itself afterward. This relative lack of conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, but you pretty much only have what is said in dialogue to go off of, rather than any actions or reactions. Take Cuckoo’s Nest as an example: McMurphy would physically do things in defiance of Nurse Ratched like breaking a window or start a gambling ring, but Beatrice and Virgil don’t have that. It was interesting and I did enjoy it. You rarely ever see metafiction but it is interesting how Martel pulls it off: an accomplished author helping out an aspiring one. This book does its job so to speak, by describing the Holocaust in a new and completely fictional way, which I definitely appreciate. Honestly, I would describe this book as interesting, but not necessarily good.
While reading the book, I felt somewhat frustrated because of all the randomness Yann Martel had in the book. He jumps between the play, Henry the writer, and Henry the taxidermist, and you really never get the full story. It reminds me of Life of Pi, where he told the story based off memory, meaning the story was not necessarily in chronological order. Although the beginning of Beatrice and Virgil was frustrating because it felt so random, I loved the ending and how he pieced everything together. He tied things that happened in the beginning into the end. I think that I was frustrated in the beginning because the story felt slow and without a plot. I also was frustrated because it seemed like there was no point to the play and you got bits of the play out of order. It felt hard follow the chronological order of the play. But in the end, you begin to understand the point of the play, who Henry the taxidermist really is, and you piece together the play (somewhat). It makes you think about the play from a Holocaust point of view rather than a monkey and donkey talk point of view. One thing I wish he had incorporated was the entire play pieced together, so you can read the full play and look at it from a camp prisoner’s point of view. It would be a nice addition to the ending with Games for Gustav. Overall, I liked the book because of how the ending answered most of the questions about the book and made the reader ponder afterwards. This curiosity happens because it seems random at first.
3 Holter When I first started to read this book, I was bored out of my mind, I had the mindset of not wanting to finish it. The novel did not start to get interesting or intriguing until the very last part of the book. The last few pages climaxed and left me with questions. The very first pages, about the pear and the author, that did not intrigue me, but it slowly started to get better and better. The strange and abstract elements of this novel do not necessarily work for me. I understand the concept of relating animals to people and relating the Holocaust to the play, but I do not understand the meaning and purpose behind the flip book that was described in the beginning and the description of the pear. But with all these strange and bricolage elements it allows me and other readers to fully analyze and read deeper into the book. When I finished the novel, I went through the symbols that Yann Martel used, like the striped shirt, in his novel and for the most part everything slowly started to make sense to me. Will I ever read this book again? No, probably not, but for the most part it was a good read.
3 Moelter This stories metafiction is most certainly unparalleled to any other book we have read, but it does not work for me in the sense that it was quite the trudge to get through. The whole scene with the pear and the banana are just that scenes of what they wish they could have but alas cannot. Throughout the whole novel I was expecting some terrible, strange, exciting, or even random event to happen to the donkey and the howler monkey. I got nothing of my liking. Then in the end, when there was finally an event, to make the book more gripping he attempted to kill off the main character and then did kill off the only being the main character was infatuated with. His family nor his pets became of importance when the taxidermist, Henry, entered the supposed family man Henry’s life. To not notice your dog catching rabies from the taxidermist shop you have been leaving him in while you go and help a man that appears at first to be a Holocaust survivor, but then in the final pages you realize he is actually a Nazi collaborator is insanely irresponsible of Henry. Especially when he just has his son and you think with his world in mass chaos he would forget. Constantly thinking of the man that is too antisocial to go to a cafe a few blocks from this store, which he never appears to leave, and remain civilized enough to look anyone in the eye when talking to them. Trying to understand Henry’s obsession with the taxidermist, leads me to think that he was pushing his views of the Holocaust into everything he read and did. The Holocaust was definitely interwoven throughout this novel: from the striped shirt country to the very shop that Henry visited numerous times. The animals in the book symbolized the Jews on the run from Hitler's Gestapo in the streets as the boys that in the end of the tale are brutally beaten to death while the Gestapo has their fun. The taxidermist’s whole tale was leading up to the brutal end of the tale as well as the novel itself. From the boys killing the animals to the taxidermist stabbing Henry. A horrific yet fascinating ending to an otherwise dull novel.
This novel is a lot different than most, in the novel Beatrice and Virgil the abstract and strange elements do work for me. I will admit that some parts were boring and hard to read, but it got better. I thought that it was fascinating when Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice. At first I was confused, but then realized that the describing of the pear was truthful. For myself, I have never read anything about or in relation to taxidermy, it was interesting and was informative. In the beginning of the novel it was hard to try and understand all the different elements Martel was incorporating, however as I have gotten farther into the book I am gaining more knowledge of bricolage. I think that it is interesting that he used animals who represented the Jews and how they felt. He also used a donkey and a monkey to portray the people of the Holocaust to show how people were getting treated during that time. I think that it is very interesting how he incorporated these symbols, I find it intriguing and at some points entertaining.
In Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel uses bricolage, unique and unconventional combinations of strange and fictional elements. This bricolage worked for me by making the story very intriguing. I was drawn into the story and had a difficult time pausing in my reading to complete other tasks. Martel discusses how fiction with talking animals makes the story more believable for a reader because the reader has no pre-existing prejudices about talking animals. Also, Martel explains that humans are more critical and suspicious of our own species, but we are less critical of animals. We are more willing to believe animals than humans because humans are known to lie often. After Martel’s mention of this phenomenon, I began looking for it in myself as I read the novel, and I found it to be true. In a way, scenes involving the talking animals seemed more believable than sections involving the author and the taxidermist, and I was less critical of the talking animals than I was of the author and the taxidermist. Thus, the odd bricolage with the talking animals worked by helping me believe the story more. In addition, Martel’s bricolage allows for a lot of unique symbolism that makes the story more interesting. However, I thought some of the strange elements within the story made the novel more confusing. I had a hard time connecting all of the seemingly random elements to each other while I was reading the story, though they were easier to connect once I had finished the novel. Some of my confusion could be attributed to overall structure of novel, too. Revealing the taxidermist’s play out of order to the reader added to the confusion I felt while reading the story. Altogether, though, the strange bricolage in Beatrice and Virgil works well for me.
Additionally, the novel contains metafiction. This metafiction is present in the novel as the author, Henry, is aware that the story he is telling of his encounters with the taxidermist is a novel being read by readers. The novel’s metafiction helps me relate the book to Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and to Yann Martel himself. I am reminded of the metafiction that was present in Life of Pi when the unnamed author inserted his own thoughts and observations into the story and when Pi was aware that the author was recording his story to make it into a novel. In the same way, Henry the author talks about how he transcribes what happened to him and turns that story into a novel. In addition, I am able to see similarities between Yann Martel and Henry the author, the same way I was able to see similarities between Yann Martel and the unnamed author in Life of Pi. I think metafiction makes both novels unique and fun. It makes the novels seem more realistic in a way, too. I believe the reader connects more to a main character who acknowledges that he or she is in a novel that readers will take in and analyze. I certainly felt this way as I read the novel. Thus, the metafiction in Beatrice and Virgil works well for me.
6 Berg Honestly, I am still deciphering how I truly feel about Yann Martel’s novel, Beatrice and Virgil. I am intrigued by it, and have mostly enjoyed this piece of literature, though at times I was not so convinced that my interest would remain steady. The majority of this novel, the first 180 pages or so, seems to be one very long introduction, leading up to the last few pages, when the action “starts.” However, the introduction has seemed to grab my attention even more than the ending. This novel is very random and all over the place, though I think that is what Martel was going for, in order to convey his piece of literature truthfully. For the most part, the randomness and capriciousness of this novel have intrigued me, and thus essentially “worked” for me. Although, there were times when my brain no longer desired the random, and yet the randomness never ceased. Throughout the novel, Martel has placed many things that you would not think belong in this particular novel, though when further analyzed, it does not seem as anything truly belongs. However, through these sporadic objects and moments, he has created many ideas and situations which the reader has to really think about and decipher for themselves, which is what many believe to a goal of Martel while he was writing this specific novel.
I have got about 40 pages left to go in Beatrice & Virgil, but I hear things get pretty heated towards the end. So far, I am not a fan of this book. It is just not working for me. I am far from understanding any of the symbolism (that usually comes to me after I have read the entire book and I go back and reflect on what I just read). I find myself excited to read the book, but then once I start reading I become bored with the lack of plot and action, much like Henry’s (the taxidermist) play. Again, I have not finished the book so we will see if things turn around. Some questions I have about the book are: how did the taxidermist come to be the way he is? What does Yann Martel base his writing off of? Usually, when I write, it is based off something that is present in my life. Did Martel actually have an experience similar to this, or are his creative juices flowing off the charts? I am still unsure about how the shirt represents a country, or what the writing on the back of Beatrice symbolizes, or why it is a donkey and a monkey in the first place. All of these questions have flooded my head as I’ve read this book; hopefully, the forum tomorrow brings some clarity, as it always has.
In Beatrice & Virgil the abstract and strange elements did work for me as the plot line progressed, but in the beginning I felt that Yann Martel was just throwing different situations at me, that have no connection to each other. As the novel continued I began to understand why he began the novel this way and started to enjoy it more. The weird occurrences throughout the novel helped me to remember the story. They stay in my head which is a good choice on Yann Martel’s part. I thought the description of the pear was very interesting. How Martel could take something that seems so simple and turn it into something with enormous detail was amazing. Virgil described the pear filling almost 8 pages. He described it using other fruits such as the black spots on a banana and the shape of an avocado. The sensations you acquire while reading about the experience of eating the pear is a delightful and sensual experience. At first I did not understand the relationship between Beatrice and Virgil but as the plot line thickened I began to understand the meaning behind their placement in the novel.
6 Etrheim Beatrice and Virgil is for sure a novel I have never read anything like it before. When I first started reading the book, it was hard for me to keep going and to actually pay attention to (or understand) what was happening in this novel. I was somewhat confused with all of the unusual, yet interesting, elements in this novel. Although once I finished reading this book I enjoyed how it all came together at the end. It was not my favorite when Yann Martel would go from the taxidermist reading some of his play to Henry and Henry talking to one another. I wanted to hear more about the play or how it all started/ended but I never got to. It was also a disappointment to me how it took Martel 170 pages to finally make the novel more interesting to his readers. But with that much build up to the end, it made it more worth it because I did not see any of it coming. Overall, this novel’s abstract and strange elements did work for me.
Throughout this novel, the strange elements put together with bricolage started to work for me towards the end. At the beginning, first 100 pages or so, I could not get into this book. I continued to read on not really understanding his point of those beginning pages. It finally took off though and grabbed my attention. All of the random items working together actually made it interesting and allowed me to become entertained and aware of what he was trying to explain. There are so many references to the Holocaust that I didn't even know were apart of the Holocaust until I researched them. While other people pick up on more symbols than me usually, I think that I have done very well on understanding the symbols and analyzing what they mean. I have had to research some though which has helped me to understand more of the Holocaust. Although, this book started out not so good for me, I have come to enjoy it and will continue to look forward to it as I read the next 30 pages. Yann Martel is a brilliant writer but I believe that Life of Pi tops this book by far.
The idea of writing or reading a book as such, with its outlandish style and radical notions is not in the least the problem with the book. I have read and enjoyed countless books that follow in the same suite, having both increasingly confusing storylines and obscure metaphors and meanings throughout. But what did occur to be a major problem was the unfolding of the book as you read. The book, to me carried very little if at all any weight, the only part that in the least intrigued me was why the book was written at all. It would and apparently does not appeal to most in the likes of fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, or historical taste. The book seemed to wander and meander as Yann ranted nonsensically almost seeming to inoculate words just to give it the length necessary to be published as a novel. The abrupt ending although its circumstance intriguing did not seem to tie into the story at all and the well to overdone ending, as the last remaining shred of paper so impossibly salvaged inspires the narrator to continue with his works, was no more than an extra five pages I enjoyed no more than the first. But if one thing is to come of the book it is the similarity between the taxidermist signature and that of Yann Martel's.
Throughout this book I have found it incredibly hard to read due to the random bricolage elements. Reading through this book and finding that there is frankly no plot has made my desire to read this book very low and has ultimately made this book boring. Although I must truck through, the bricolage elements have not worked in my favor. When stumbling upon one of these strange elements I get confused and flustered. I try finding the meaning for them and once I think I have figured it out I’m completely and utterly wrong. I think that Martel tried to make the book interesting with the bricolage elements but for me with no plot or anything truly exciting happening I just find it a hard book to read. Although giving credit to author for his imagination and the way he thinks outside of the box. To try and write a book with so much pain behind it and pair it with a character as a donkey or monkey that are most commonly known to be light hearted, and to an extent made fun, is a risky move that he tries to handle.
6 Benitez The abstract and Strange elements of the story do work for me. They help to draw me in and cause me to wonder and question the book. During Virgil’s description of a pear, it had been awhile since I had last had a pear; I thought of Virgil’s words and thought if they would match my description and make me remember what a good pear is like. As well the metafiction of it being an author writing a book and just his life, makes me wonder if this is what happened to Yann Martel for a part of his life. As well the strangeness of reading a book about an author who is listening to a play, is obviously strange yet very intriguing because it goes against the normalities of books and being just a story of something. Henry going into the taxidermists and seeing all the animals and his entire experience at it, makes me want to see how realistic the taxidermy in real life compared to the ones in the book. The use of animals in place of humans is not rare but not super common way to have characters and makes it so that anything can happen to these characters and make it more interesting.
This novel is unlike any book I have read. I think that the abstract elements are fairly easy to pick out, but then again, I could be missing them completely. Reading this novel is boring. I’m not going to lie. Reading comes very easy to me, but this novel wasn’t easy to finish. It picked up at the end, but I still feel unentertained. The abstract elements seemed unnecessary, because most people already know all of that information about the holocaust. Strange elements include a taxidermied donkey and howler monkey that are alive. This is somewhat intriguing due to my interest in taxidermy, but it still seems ridiculous. As state previously, the symbolism and abstract elements were easy to pick out. The references to the holocaust seemed unnecessary due to there being no plot in the story in my opinion. There seems to be no main problem that needs to be solved, only little random predicaments that I don’t find interest in. Comparing the elements in other books we have read, Beatrice and Virgil easy takes the cake as the most abstract. And for that reason, I have little to no interest in how this story has played out, and how it ended.
I think to say that Beatrice and Virgil is the strangest novel I have read would be a very untrue statement. Just being in the Honors English classes alone has exposed me to stories were two teenagers have a fling and then kill themselves, another was about farm animals getting sick of their farmer and thus decided to run the farm themselves, and there was even one were a town of people started murdering each other because of the word of a few young girls. Even when you look at the books we have read in Literature 201 they are all around very strange subjects, boys trapped on an island where a pig's head talks to one, a mental institution where the head nurse hates men and wants them all to follow her rule, even Mr. Martel's other novel tells the tale of a sixteen-year-old living on a boat with an adult Bengal tiger for nearly a year. Even outside of class I have come across some very strange plot lines, one example of this would be a whole series of books based on the idea that talking cats get together in the forest and have organized their own society just outside of ours. That being said Beatrice and Virgil is still a very surreal book full of events that seem to come charging in out of nowhere only to leave as quickly as they came, but for me, I find it rather intriguing. After being exposed to some of the weirder parts of the human imagination I am now curious to discover why such absurdities are taking place. Is there a reason behind them? Is it just some nonsensical fun? Either way, I always find myself reading deeper into the book in order to put the pieces all together, and Beatrice and Virgil is no exception to this. The one aspect of this that stands out to the most is the play itself, the whole thing is very strange, a donkey and a howler monkey, who are good friends no less, are living together on a shirt and spend a considerable amount of time and pages to describe a simple pear. The whole concept of the play is just odd, and on top of it, all the play is given to the reader in chunks which in turns forces the reader, much like the author Henry, to continue to come back if they would like to know how it all ends.
At the beginning of the book, the abstract and strange elements confused me a little bit. I think I was confused because the novel Beatrice and Virgil is very different to what I would normally read. The pear, shirt, howler monkey, donkey, and Holocaust are all important in the novel, but I did not see the significance right away. It made me wonder why the author was adding these details into the novel. As I read more, I realized everything was there for a reason and it all started to come together and make sense. I understood the striped shirt had a relation to the Holocaust and also the posters going around about Virgil. I like how us readers were kept confused until we continued to read and put the pieces together. I like the way the author, Yann Martel, created his characters. They are very unique and are not what you typically see in a book. I also liked how Henry the author is very similar to Yann Martel. I feel like I had to think very hard while reading this book, and look farther into a book than I normally do.
Blue 7 The abstractness of the novel Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel sort of works for me. I just finished reading the book so I was able to understand parts of it looking back now. For example, while I was reading the book I had no idea why he had the scene where the Erasmus kills their cat. However, looking back I see that he used it as a foreshadowing device for the stabbing of Henry by the taxidermist. By the end of the book I also understood why he gives the taxidermist and the author the same name because Martel wants readers to understand anyone could have been a Nazi and it is easy to be lead astray from humanity. I do wish however the earlier scenes from the play were written with more intent on connecting to the Holocaust. Not up until the scene where Beatrice is arrested is the connection fully clear. This made reading four-fifths of this book very confusing. Although Martel might have used this tactic to make us like the taxidermist, rather than knowing he was a terrible guy all along. By doing this he makes us question our own moral compasses.
The novel and the techniques used by Yann Martel and his novel Beatrice and Virgil did not appeal to me. The technique of the inception of the novel was the only item that piqued any of my interest. I truly got the sense that Henry the writer is Yann Martel. Many clues gave this away to me as both authors expressed much interest in animals and the blending of fiction and nonfiction. The descriptive and plot techniques did not flatter me in the least. It is clear that Martel is a fantastic writer and a master of description but his use of it is too bland in the story. The descriptive conversations between the donkey and monkey exude brilliance but also dullness. The Holocaust metaphor is such a stretch that it does not cause me to look at the Holocaust in a new way at all. I was under the impression that the novel was meant to make me view the Holocaust from a new perspective and it failed terribly. Much like the Taxidermist had trouble completing the play, I feel Yann Martel had trouble writing this book.
Beatrice and Virgil and the strangeness and bricolage that came with it made it an easy read in my opinion. You never knew what random object was going to be brought up next, that made me want to continue reading on. It is easier to read strange things that make you go back and re-read what you just read to make sure you read it right the first time than it is otherwise. The first thing I noticed that was not typical with the book compared to others one I have read in the past is the two main characters having the same name. Another thing that I was surprised to see was the combination of humans and animals in the play of the taxidermist. I could not help but think if possessing the knowledge humans do, would some of the bigger predators such as bears take over the world, or at least the area around where they live? Something I did not put together, at least yet, is how of all the random items in the book all link together. Maybe that is left up to the reader and my classmates can help out during the forum.
I am struggling to really follow along with all of the randomness that is going on, and it gets kind of boring when you don't know what is really going on. It is hard for me to connect some of the stuff together because it seems so out of the blue. We were exposed to bricolage in art classes that I was in already, and it was really cool how even with all the random pieces that the artist find and decides to use it ends up being a really cool work of art, when it only started out as random or separate pieces and was choppy along the way. I feel like Beatrice and Virgil is like that, while I might be confused along the way right now by all the random items Yann Martel is using, that if I keep reading and get to the end that it will all make sense and make a beautiful crafted book in the end. Things that might seem random now will eventually connect full circle to make sense in the end.
This novel, overall-- to me-- is vague. I have found heaps upon heaps of symbolic undertones in every single aspect of this novel, but what it directly alludes to confounds me. Such remotely unconnected shapes and thoughts have been applied to create what I imagine to some is a coherent image; this eludes me. Obviously the Holocaust is a prevalent theme throughout the entirety of the novel, but only because it is directly mentioned by the characters/narrator am I absolutely resolute in this idea. The themes are frustrating to me in their subtlety. I am trying with utmost effort to efficiently deduce this novel and extract every possible morsel of actual thought from it, but I think potentially that was Martel’s intention(s): to give the reader so many possible routes to identify and analyze all these ideas he has thrown into his story and to personally determine what it means and how it connects. Without having personally spoken to Martel I have no way of authenticating this “theory”. Only time and further introspection and potentially mad ravings and obsession with the story will give me any answer verging on remotely satisfactory.
Tingle 6 The randomness that I came across as I ran out of pages in the book really frustrated me. Even after the forum, I continue to have many unresolved questions, hence why the ending left me feeling extremely frustrated and unsatisfied. Why is the taxidermist writing this play? Was it to try to have remorse over being a nazi? Why did his play take place on a t-shirt? Why did the taxidermist smile at Henry before burning down inside his shop? I know that the events throughout the book were heavily correlated to the holocaust, so what was Yann Martel’s main goal for the publication of this Beatrice and Virgil? Was it to spread awareness about the detrimental effects of the Holocaust? Is he attempting to prevent another “-ism” (sexism, racism, etc) from becoming popular? I do not understand. I lack a creative imagination, and reading books that require me to draw back into my imagination flat out frustrate me. Books that contain an organized plot appeal to me more, mainly because I understand them. But, I also know that reading these books also helps my learning grow, therefore helping me become a better student. So, I guess the strange elements that I read about through the story did “work for “me” in a way.
3 Scholten Beatrice and Virgil was a very interesting novel and different than books I have read in the past. This book was very hard to get into and there was no action in the plot until the very end. This book was really slow moving and this book was kinda boring to me. At first, all the strange and abstract elements confused me and I did not get the book at all. I didn’t know how a monkey and donkey was supposed to be related to the Holocaust. As the book progressed, I started to understand some of the strange elements Yann Martel used in this book. The monkey and the donkey symbolized all of the Jews that were part of the Holocaust. The monkey and donkey were not treated fairly just like the Jews weren’t in the Holocaust. The poster of the monkey was just like the posters of the Jews that the Nazis put up in World War II. They both told lies about the Jews and the monkey. Lastly, the bricolage makes this novel very hard to follow. I have never read a book that uses pure bricolage before so it was just different and little confusing at times. Even though this book was a little confusing, I am still glad I read the book.
3 Clemenson While I was able to follow along throughout the book a decent amount of the time, the books strange elements makes it worth the read and a great option to use in a Literature class--even if the book did not work for me. The usage of different styles of text makes this book unique; however, the bouncing around and odd stories presented throughout the book were off putting for me. The last 40 pages of the book was fascinating to read and provided a better structure in which I enjoy to read. However, I could not get into the first 160 pages enough that the last 40 could not make up for it. While I have not taken the time to reread anything yet, parts like the pear scene seem off putting, and make it harder to follow. Through my first impression, I think he is saying how anything can be explained well enough to give us emotion even if we never seen it--if you can explain the horrors of the holocaust well enough, people learn to never do it again. Also, the taxidermists paragraph on his opinion of the art behind taxidermy was fascinating to read as that is something I had never taken the time to think about. As I reexamine tonight, hopefully things fall into place better and I’ll understand his elements, but ultimately, the first time through left me to distracted to pick up on certain things. Regardless of my experience, the way Yann Martel was able to write about a topic like the holocaust in such a unique manner, but still allow for a powerful message is something to envy.
Does the abstract and strange elements (pure bricolage) of this novel work for you?
So far it does for me. I’m really intrigued about the pear, monkey, donkey, and banana play in part of this play Henry is trying to write. I’m trying to pull out as many symbolic things as I can from these odd elements he uses. The striped shirt reminds me of the Jew’s uniform in the prison. Beatrice and Virgil are Jews in a camp who are losing hope in faith as some Jews may have during the Holocaust. They talk about the sun going down and shadows taking over like how they’re faith is fading and evil is taking over. Like there is evil around every corner and no way to avoid it and maybe to just give in. There is a part in the beginning of Henry’s story where Beatrice can’t find Virgil. In relation to the Holocaust it alludes to situations where close family members or friends can’t find one another after splitting up. To me I like this book the abstract elements add a new freshness to a book that could be like any other book, though this one makes people think more and adds a bit more curiosity and wonder to the novel.
Does the abstract and strange elements (pure bricolage) of this novel work for you?
So far it does for me. I’m really intrigued about the pear, monkey, donkey, and banana play in part of this play Henry is trying to write. I’m trying to pull out as many symbolic things as I can from these odd elements he uses. The striped shirt reminds me of the Jew’s uniform in the prison. Beatrice and Virgil are Jews in a camp who are losing hope in faith as some Jews may have during the Holocaust. They talk about the sun going down and shadows taking over like how they’re faith is fading and evil is taking over. Like there is evil around every corner and no way to avoid it and maybe to just give in. There is a part in the beginning of Henry’s story where Beatrice can’t find Virgil. In relation to the Holocaust it alludes to situations where close family members or friends can’t find one another after splitting up. To me I like this book the abstract elements add a new freshness to a book that could be like any other book, though this one makes people think more and adds a bit more curiosity and wonder to the novel.
The abstract and strange elements of the novel worked well for me. When I was reading the novel I did not imagine that there would be pages of the novel that was spent talking about a young boy killing creatures or even pages spent discussing a pear. These pages really worked for me. By adding these abstract and strange elements to the book it help to give me things to picture in my head as I read. I am not saying that I like to imagine a young boy killing creatures, I just like to be able to read something and be able to make a clear picture in my head of what is going on. I enjoyed the pages about the pear very much since Beatrice and Virgil talk about it in such great detail. However, when Virgil is describing the pear to Beatrice he is putting many things together to form what he wants and he makes Beatrice believe it. This in a way reminds me of the Holocaust in the way that Hitler makes his followers believe whatever he tells them. Although these elements of the novel make images in my head that I enjoy there is still parts that are dull and lifeless. In my reading I have seen that the book is going very slow and and makes it some what difficult to read on in the book.
The abstract and strange elements of Beatrice and Virgil most certainly did not work for me. I understood a lot of references and certain Holocaust illusions, but I do not think as a whole the book portrayed that to me. The bricolage of a shirt, taxidermy, a donkey, and the holocaust throughout the novel made it somewhat difficult(for me personally) to think of it as a coherent story. Though I did not enjoy this aspect of the story, I did enjoy the various elements of metafiction. I enjoy properly used metafiction in almost any art form, so this it was a very enjoyable part of the book when I could pick out the metafictional facets. I very much am looking forward to the forum on Friday. It will be very useful for me, as it always is, to see what insight other students have on the book. As I said, I have found some deeper aspects of this story but I most definitely have failed to discover them all. I look forward to hearing what you and my fellow classmates have to say on this subject.
Beatrice and Virgil is a very strange and interesting novel. This novel is definitely very different from any other novel I have read. The abstract and strange elements in this unique novel really gives me something vivid to picture in my head; making the novel a tad bit easier to understand in a way--though still very confusing. Beatrice and Virgil did not turn out to be anything like what I expected. I personally did not enjoy the novel as a whole, but I feel it is a good novel to study in terms of imagery and strange concepts. The pear scene is an interesting one to me, for the metaphor towards Nazi Germany and propaganda is stunning. Virgil could describe the pear to Beatrice in any way he wishes, and Beatrice would have to believe Virgil, being that Beatrice has never had the enjoyment of tasting a pear. This is similar to what Hitler did with his people by way of propaganda.
In my opinion, while I was reading Beatrice and Virgil, I found the random symbols such as the taxidermied animals, the pear, and the taxidermist, quite a strange combination in which Yann Martel chose to write about. However, they do, in a small way, work for me. I see all of these working together and making sense to create the overall story. I initially, found reading this book to be quite boring and difficult to read at times considering the strange elements but towards the end, it began to make more sense and I began to like the book better as it progressed. In my opinion, I enjoy the way Yann Martel uses descriptive adjectives to give an extra sense of visual aspect. For example, I am not a person who likes pears. However, after reading the section about how the fruit looks, feels, and smells, the extra imagery gave me a sense that I wanted to try one. Where I am reading right now, I can find small similarities between the holocaust and the different aspects of propaganda against Virgil, similar to the way that the Nazis dehumanized the Jews.
3 Roby As I have been reading Beatrice and Virgil I have found the novel confusing and extremely boring. The dialogue between both Henrys can be hard to follow at times and I think that having both main characters with the same name was a bad choice for the novel. I have been struggling to finish reading the novel because I cannot bring myself to read such a boring and confusing book. I have been listening to an audio recording of the book and that has made it much easier to understand the conversations between the Henrys as the audiobook voices two different accents for each person, but listening to the book has not made it easier to stay interested in the novel. I have not yet understood the connection between the donkey, monkey, shirt, and pear to the Holocaust, I feel that it is all very random and the symbols are stretching to make sense. Everything in this book seems very vague which I guess might be Yann Martel’s intention, so the reader can imagine their own details to the story. The ending was a such a big twist that I was not expecting, but I do feel that it ended abruptly and awkwardly. I am not a big fan of this book but maybe it was just because I don’t understand the symbolism behind everything.
I found some of the abstract and strange elements of Martel’s story to be confusing at times, while effective at others. My opinion is that it started slow, but picked up the pace at the end when all of the pieces started coming together. Beatrice and Virgil is unlike any book that I have ever read before, merely by the fact that so many stories were told within the novel (bricolage). I feel as though the story jumped around quite a bit, from the pets dying to Henry’s acting career to a thorough description of a pear. I am still unsure as to where that exactly ties in to the meaning of the story as a whole. After listening to Professor Hicks speak before I finished the novel, I enjoyed noticing the connections between the play and how the taxidermist was acting. I loved the connection between the story about Julian and the taxidermist justifying his actions during World War II. Julian was still redeemed even though he killed so many creatures, just as the taxidermist believes that he will be saved. I believe that Yann Martel is an extremely talented author because through this novel specifically, I have encountered some literary devices and techniques that I have never seen before.
6 Waltner As I read this book I honestly found it to be quite confusing and hard to follow at the beginning. Although I tried to keep an open mind and hoped something would spark my interest--nothing seemed to do such. I personally did not like the abstract and pure bricolage of this novel. In my opinion the book did not have a plot, as it went from one thing to the next suddenly. However this was most definitely not one of my favorite novels, there were a few aspects I enjoyed. One aspect I enjoyed was continued use of animals and other themes to portray different meanings of the Holocaust. Every single part of the play had a total different meaning than what was just being read, which was tough to figure out at times. This was very interesting, but I believe he over did it for my liking. Towards the end of the book, after 160 pages or so, something interesting happened for once. I found the end of the book to be very intriguing and wish there was more action like this throughout the novel.
The abstract and strange elements that are within Beatrice and Virgil kind of work and kind of don’t work for me. There are parts, such as the pear scene, that I can make zero connection to what the story is about as a whole. There’s several pages dedicated to describing what a pear looks like and it doesn’t even do anything for the plot of the story. Some of the weird and abstract elements seem like filler to me sometimes. On the other hand, there are several instances where they do work to highlight some of the key points of the book. There are many strange allusions to the Holocaust within the book that I never would have even thought about, one being that the play is set on a striped shirt. One of the parts that I thought was one of the best elements that related to the Holocaust was making the extinction of animals correspond to the near extinction of the Jews. I think that was a clever way to allude to the Holocaust, especially when the taxidermist tells Henry that two thirds of animals are extinct, much like two thirds of the Jews were eliminated during the Holocaust. There are some elements that are just plain confusing in my point of view, but others that really help you understand the meaning behind the book.
While I am sure the pure bricolage of ‘Beatrice and Virgil’ serves a purpose that Yann Martel intended, it made for some major confusion in my mind at times. The abstract and strange elements did not work for me. To be completely honest, I did not particularly enjoy reading this book, and if it were not for this class, I likely would not have continued after the first twenty pages or so. Though I did not enjoy the randomness of this novel, I definitely benefitted from the casual tone Martel wrote in. The style in which he wrote the book made me feel as if he were talking directly to me, which helped to engage me. This is good since the abstractness of the book failed to do so. Still after finishing the novel, I am unable to comprehend why Martel would write a book this way, with so many strange elements wound together in such an unorganized way. I hope that discussion with my classmates during the forum tomorrow will assist me in understanding the purpose of this bricolage.
1 Campbell As I am reading this novel, I find it kind of difficult to follow along due to the strange addition of random things. I will be honest in saying I am not a huge fan of this book. There’s nothing that really drew me in and interested me other than the mentionings about the Holocaust. From the talk we just attended, I learned a lot more about the Holocaust and what actually happened. Therefore, when looking back, I understand those references now. However, the randomness of this text is very hard to follow and understand. I am trying to understand if these objects and things have a deeper meaning, but I really don’t think that they do. I think this book is very confusing and I would have to read it a couple more times to fully understand what is actually going on. Yann Martel is an excellent writer and I really enjoyed Life of Pi, but even from reading that it was confusing at the end because you didn’t truly know if there had been actual people on the boat or if it was the animals. Perhaps this is a writing technique for Martel, and he is purposefully trying to confuse readers. If that is what he is trying to do, I personally think he succeeding.
This whole book has been a very weird experience for me personally, it’s almost like a weird story that just keeps getting weirder the more you read it. The whole pear description and those kinds of things really threw me for a loop in general. Although, I must say, that description of a pear was extremely well thought out and definitely gave a great idea of what a pear might actually look like if you had no idea of what a pear was. I still don’t think that it’s easily possible to show someone what something is when it hasn’t been seen, but the effort was commendable for sure, and impressive at the least. Another thing that was just super bizarre to me was the amount of animals that were displayed in the taxidermy shop, it just seemed like overkill to me. I didn’t think that a taxidermy shop was a place that sold things pre-made so to speak, but more of a professional service shop that took work for people like hunters of maybe zoos that needed something preserved or for show. Other than that, I didn’t mind the book. The 3rd person seemed a little awkward at some parts, but no major complaints really.
For myself personally, I have gone back and forth with my feelings on this book. As I’m reading it I find myself getting more interested in it as I go but I’m not sure if it is only because I’m unsure of the direction of the book and where it is going or if it might be because of the oddness of the book in general. I am also wondering if there is any literal meaning to this or if it is all supposed to symbolize the Holocaust. I wonder if metafiction is just a way to spice up a story or if it is a way to explain the author's methods. When the idea of a pear being the best fruit was introduced to the class before we had started reading I thought it was insanely strange. When I got to the play that Henry the Taxidermist had written I initially thought that it would be annoyingly pointless but as I read it I found it interesting in an odd way. This book has surprised me in the fact that I didn’t think I would enjoy it.
This is one of the most difficult books that I have ever read. I am having the toughest time trying to force myself to read it and keep myself interested. I think that his strange writing technique could be appeasing to other people, but it is definitely not really my thing. Reading already is something that I don't like to partake in, but I have done my best to try and read all the stories that have been given, no matter how difficult. This is for sure one of the more complex books that we have given. I also get confused when it talks about a book inside of a book. A lot of this book seems somewhat pointless and the meaning behind a lot of it gets quite lost in translation. I am happy that we will have a forum because then maybe it will all get explained a little bit better and make it more clear for my foggy brain to understand.
1 Singh This book has been a fresh and new experience that I have never encountered in any english class that I have taken. Most of the other stories I have read follow a similar basic guideline. This book’s strange elements add to its personality and uniqueness. Yann Martel uses imagery so perfectly like he did in The Life of Pi which really made the book most enjoyable in my opinion. The randomness and weirdness kept me intrigued the whole time and kept me guessing and thinking about the novel more and more. When the weirdness started to make sense towards the end of the novel I felt very satisfied. I think this is an ideal story about the Holocaust because it talks about it in a better way than just laying out facts and dates. The book did, however, leave me with lingering questions about the different symbols and elements that did not quite make sense to me. An example would be the description of the pear and its significance. Despite the few confusing moments I had with the novel, I enjoyed it very much and hope to read another novel like this one.
The strange and abstract elements of this book at first through me off. I was initially reading not understanding what exactly was going on. Also, with the previous knowledge of the book relating to the Holocaust, I was slightly confused throughout the book on how exactly it was relating to the Holocaust, but after reading the entire book the obvious answer is that the taxidermist is a Nazi. Even though on the surface not much can actually can be connected to the Holocaust but so much can if you look deeper and that adds so much to the masterful writing of Yann Martel that makes his novels so great. On top of that, his writing style in Beatrice and Virgil speaks volume on how novels can be written in unconventional ways even though many critics spoke strongly against this book. This abstract style of writing is something that I actually love in books, it allowed for me to read more without knowing it because I was so engulfed in the book that I wanted to know more about what was happening and what was going to happen. When people say that the book was bad and boring just tells me that they did not understand what Martel was trying to convey in this abstract style of book layout.
My seemingly unpopular opinion about the book is that it was an easy read for me. The way Yann Martel expertly crafts his books really challenges the reader to think, which made the book more enjoyable for me and made me fly through the pages. The pear scene particularly stuck out to me. The way Martel can take up three pages talking about a pear shows what an incredible author he is and how well he uses imagery. His description was perfect for someone who doesn’t know what a pear looks like to feel as though they have seen one. The randomness of the objects he talks about really force the reader to think about what they could mean and it makes them come up with theories. This is what made the book very entertaining for me. The ending of the book was phenomenal. Although all my questions aren’t answered, the unpredictability of it all was enough to make it well worth the read. I am a little concerned about the forum though, as not much analysis has been done online because of the newness of the book, so I will have to come up with everything on my own, unable to piggyback and go deeper into ideas that others on the web had.
I have mixed feelings about the novel Beatrice and Virgil. I thought it was interesting to read, as it left me continually wondering what it meant, or if it even meant anything. Three fourths of the novel didn’t click until the end. Also, the taxidermist was just so unlikeable. By the second visit I was just done with that guy. I would have walked away and not looked back. I suppose I somewhat enjoyed reading the novel, but I didn’t overly enjoy the novel itself. I think a distinction can be drawn between the experience of some “thing” and the “thing” itself. I think one contributing factor to my opinion of Beatrice and Virgil was that I feel a bit burned out on reading about the holocaust. I feel it is very important to know about what happened and to be aware of the history, however I’ve spent so much time learning about it. We spent a great deal of our time in English 10 reading about the holocaust and its been mixed in throughout our education (rightfully so). It just gets old after a while, which is the terrible truth. It’s like math: yeah it’s important, but I’m not super keen on hearing about it. Perhaps that a poor analogy… I also kinda like math. I digress. I didn’t love Beatrice and Virgil.
"Beatrice and Virgil" by Yann Martel was different than any other novel I have ever read. It was about the holocaust but set in a modern time. The two animals: a donkey and a monkey, were risky and could have been taken offensively. It was also a risk writing fiction about it rather than a true story, such as "Night" by Elie Wiesel. I think I would have enjoyed it more if there was more variety throughout the years. I have learned about the holocaust every year for five or more years in a row. I didn't enjoy some of the elements, such as the back and forth in the play. I wish there were more characters in the play. I did think it was interesting that Martel chose the name Henry for both of his main characters, rather than choosing two different names. As far as metafiction is concerned, Martel, in my opinion, did a good job. He has gotten more than his fair share of backlash for writing "Beatrice and Virgil", but I believe that he should receive at least some praise for the unique idea of choosing the style that he did.
I really quite enjoy it. The junction of stories within the stories are quite fascinating. You have the story of Henry the writer, the story of Beatrice and Virgil, and the story of the taxidermist. Please click to play,if you wanna join casino online. Thank you
104 comments:
1 Wrightsman
As I read along in Beatrice and Virgil, I have noticed all the odd items collected into one big story. The bricolage of everything does make it quite difficult to read but I can almost pick out what he is meaning the whole time. The way he flows from one odd item to another really helps me understand the novel more and more. He is not just putting random things in there with no purpose; he is creating a story out of random things. The way Yann Martel explains and describes each item also really helps the reader understand why he has included that item in that particular place. I get this feeling from the novel that Yann had a very sporadic mind and never really could focus on one thing for a very long time so he wrote about multiple and combined them. Overall I felt that this novel, Beatrice and Virgil, does work for me because I also have a sporadic mind as well and it is intriguing to read about all the interesting things that he has put into the book.
1 Kueter M
The abstract and strange elements of this novel do work for me and I like the scene with the pear especially. This scene is a scene in which Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice. Beatrice is eager to taste a pear and wants to understand what a pear is. Thus, Virgil describes the pear to Beatrice. However, Virgil did not have to describe a pear. Virgil could have described an orange and Beatrice would not know the difference. This reminds me of the Holocaust. Beatrice is ignorant and doesn’t know what a pear is, but since Beatrice has never seen one before Virgil could describe whatever he wants and make Beatrice believe whatever he wants, taking advantage of him, just like Hitler took advantage of his people. There are many references to the Holocaust in this book as well. For example, the scene in which there were horrible, untrue posters about Virgil. These posters are not true at all and it symbolizes what Hitler did during the Holocaust. He made people believe unreal, untrue things, so they would follow him. He made up lies and the people believed those lies, just as people believed the lies about Virgil. It represents the propaganda in the Holocaust.
1 Kueter A
The abstract and strange elements of this novel do work for me. I like the scene in particular in which the taxidermist writes about his work. He states that “there is no excuse for bad work. To ruin an animal with shoddy taxidermy is to forfeit the only true canvas we have on which to represent it, and it condemns us to amnesia, ignorance and incomprehension” (96). The taxidermist is really talking about the Holocaust and how if you ruin the only real, true facts or evidence about the Holocaust then you will forget about the Holocaust. There was another equally important quote when he stated that “there was a time when every good family brightened up its living room with a mounted animal...That business has all dried up, not only the collecting but the preserving. Now the living room is likely to be dull and the forest silent” (96). The taxidermist is saying how the knowledge of the Holocaust used to be fresh and ever-present within people, but now, as time passes, the gaining of the knowledge of the Holocaust is “drying up,” or going away. People are not learning or remembering the Holocaust anymore, they are silent.
1 Jeanson
To begin this blog task, I must state that this story bores me. The bricolage is made of the randomest of things. Only ten pages left and something exciting has finally happened. If it takes five pages to describe a pear you are thinking too hard about it. None of this story works for me. I understand the use of animals in place of humans and I even understand the oddness of taxidermy, but what I do not understand is how Henry could be so infatuated with a random guy he recieved a letter from and his play about a howler monkey and a donkey. Many events have proven that he is not a person who should have trust given to them. He does not even look at Erasmus. What kind of human being does not even look a dog in their shop? I find no satisfaction in reading this concoction of words and descriptions. Out of the entire book I have only found three sentences that are appealing to my inner artist. “‘Reality escapes us. It’s beyond description, even a simple pear. Time eats everything’”(Martel 115).
Great, Claire! Love the honesty and intellect you're showing!
23 March 2017
6 Smit
23 March 2017
6 Smit
Beatrice and Virgil is a wonderfully entertaining book! A majority of the literature we read throughout school focuses on the plights of the main characters and how they handle their situation. Martel’s novel, on the other hand, concentrates on how the primary main characters interpret a secondary set of main characters in the taxidermist’s play. We are gaining an understanding at the same time Henry, a primary character, is understanding. The motif is imparted in a progressive way. It’s not the primary main characters that we learn from but the secondary main characters that primary characters discuss and write about. Aside from plot, the characters feel real and human. The taxidermist is a cold, humorless man who has spent many years in the same profession practicing his art. An existence dealing with dead animals will leave a man without proper social skills. Henry’s fruitless attempts at making small talk makes me just as uncomfortable reading the situation as Henry is in text. Speaking of Henry, his character is a blatant foil to the saturnine taxidermist. Henry is lively, married and social. He works at a chocolate cafe and is apart of a theater crew, both undeniably gregarious activities. Their awkward banter is interesting and a joy to read.
6Bachman
At first, the strange elements of Beatrice and Virgil were odd for me. After reading certain parts of the book, I thought about some of the scenes for awhile as they stayed in my head because of how unique they were. The scene were Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice was intriguing. I did not understand the scene right away, but realized that the describing of pear is truthful. Since there were no pears around, Virgil could have described it as another food. He truthfully described it to Beatrice, and I thought of this as historians relating truthful facts, through evidence, to people. As the pear was described accurately, I related this to people recalling historical events to others, through the knowledge that they have. If the knowledge is untrue, the historical impact of the event can be downplayed by the people who did not experience it, but only heard of it. I believe Martel is trying to relate this scene to the knowledge that is passed down of the Holocaust. While almost all of the people in the world now have not experienced the Holocaust, they know how horrific it was from accurate tellings of who they learned it from. There are some people who don’t believe the Holocaust happened, or that it was not a terrible event. These people downplay the facts, or spread lies to others, so they believe what they are told. The people that wrongly tell facts because of their opinion are what Martel is trying to convey as bad.
6 Presler
This short novel written by Yann Martel is much different than any other novel I’ve read. For starters, I have never read anything in relation to taxidermy, and this was surely an informative, interesting place to begin. The eccentric description Martel uses to have the readers understand the practice is breathtaking, yet at times disgusting. The use of having Henry (the writer) be just as shocked and astounded by all the different life forms found within the taxidermist’s shop as a reader would be in a similar situation is brilliant. Because, just as Henry “didn’t even know taxidermists still existed,” it is likely readers have the same thought (58). For the metafiction element, I found it very hard to follow in some areas. I was able to grapple an understanding of the allusions being made by Martel, but when one has not read the work being referred to, there is a matter of enhanced difficulty in the reading. However, in a novel such as this, metafiction has a definite reason to be included, especially when relating the taxidermist’s play, which is jumbled as Henry comes to realize the nature of the disturbing man he has been spending so much time with.
7 Jensen
As I read Beatrice and Virgil, I have noticed how all the big elements do somewhat connect to one another, but I do not think the connection is strong enough. The book is too random for me to enjoy or rather even follow. I do believe this is a great example of Bricolage, but it does not work for me. The only thing I have found rather amusing is how Henry has trouble with his book because it has no plot, as does the Taxidermist with his novel and the book as a whole I feel has absolutely no meaning nor plot. I found it rather strange how the Taxidermist believes he is preserving the animal's life/spirit, but it so applaud with the idea of zoo’s, but he skins animals? He also takes in animals that were killed for pleasure and hung up like a trophy. The taxidermist justifies his job because of keeping the memory of that specific animal alive, but does not even acknowledge Henry’s dog Erasmus. All in all this book does not catch my attention nor keeps me wanting to read more.
7 Van Kalsbeek
At the beginning of this novel I found it very hard to understand all the different elements that Yann Martel was trying to incorporate. As I began reading more the more knowledge I gained especially through the use of bricolage. The way that he put a small short story inside a story gave me more insight on how the animals (Jews) were feeling. Along with this how he decided to use a donkey and a monkey to portray the people of the Holocaust. One part that especially stood out to me is the fact that the taxidermist was using his story about the Holocaust to show how people are treating animals because neither of them had a voice during this mass genocide. An irony in the story is the fact that Henry and his wife Sarah believe that animals should be adopted from a pound instead of pet stores because they don’t have a voice and the taxidermist agrees with the fact that humans are just using animals for there own reasons but they end of dying because the dog got rabies and attacked the cat. Which shows how an innocent animal can get influenced/infected by a problem. Finally at the most important thing that I believe in my opinion is the fact that the whole short story is on a shirt. This can be interpreted that everyone has a shirt and they wear it so what is stopping a normal person from becoming a nazi or even creating a mass genocide. We may all look different and seem different but if we were put in this situation most people would choose to follow along the leader in order to protect your family.
7 Hanson
Abstract and strange elements from the novel Beatrice and Virgil have helped intrigue me to continue reading the book, but also have made it hard for me to completely follow the book. Stories inside stories, past examples that back track to answer a question have made the novel readable for me. For example, when Virgil and Beatrice meet the boy who is a terror, we as a reader find out more about this character (which reveals a surprising plot twist) through back tracking stories and daydreams from Virgil and Beatrice. Now these bricolage elements can enhance a novel, they can also hinder the reader's ability to get involved with the novel. With complex literary devices placed in multitude, a reader can get quiet confused on what is actually happening in the novel. All in all though, I strongly dislike this book. The book bores me, the only really intriguing portion of this book is the last 15 or 20 pages. I relate the play done by the taxidermist and this novel as similar, there is a plot, but it's open and loose.
Reindl 1
The abstract and strange elements of Beatrice and Virgil do work for me. I do not casually seek for symbols when I am reading, but I like to see the symbols when they pop out. When the different parts of Henry’s (the taxidermist) story are first told, any reader would be just as confused as an illiterate child who tried to read any book. The different parts make no sense--the dialogue of the pear, the relationship of Beatrice and Virgil, and most of the other details like them living in the country of Shirt. But when the novel is finished, and all of the random bits and pieces fall into place, every seemingly useless detail gets turned into its own elaborate symbol, creating a masterpiece of a story. I appreciate books with strange elements because it forces our minds to work on piecing everything together, but it also grants us the ability to see the world in a variety of ways, not just in ways we see it currently. I really enjoyed Beatrice and Virgil because it was a witty story with a small “twist” that opens the minds of readers.
1 Hoffmann
The abstract elements in Beatrice and Virgil make it a fresh and entertaining book. I actually found myself enjoying being confused for most of the novel, because I knew that when I finally put together the puzzle pieces there would be an intense meaning behind the initial strangeness of the story. One thing that I really love about this book is how open to interpretation every element present is. I have read some other students’ blog posts and agree with their interpretations of certain lines and symbols. However, I also think that the pear that Virgil describes to Beatrice can be seen in infinite different ways; for example, the pear could symbolize the luxuries of normal life that we take as mundane, taken away by the Holocaust. I also enjoyed how vague Martel left the final condemnation of Henry the Taxidermist, forcing the reader to put two and two together--even though Henry the Author says “Here he was, rubbing shoulders with a stinking old Nazi collaborator,” there are still vague elements. Did Henry the Taxidermist write himself into the play as the cruel boy that kills Beatrice and Virgil? Was he simply a witness to the Holocaust who was forced to go along with it for fear of his own life? Was he one of those in power that actually ordered the atrocities? All the reader knows is that he felt enough regret to burn himself alive in a fitting irony.
Konz 1
Entirely confusing to me, I do not like the bricolage in this novel. I think the extremely random elements take away from the continuity of a novel and make the novel confusing. One thing that I really enjoyed in this novel is the elements that make Henry seem like Yann Martel. Henry talks about his previous novel that was an entirely successful book about animals. Immediately this makes it seem like Henry was the writer of Life of Pi the reader starts to wonder if Yann Martel is a pen name. Another thing that I found to be successful in the novel is the vague elements that the author adds. For example, not giving the place Henry’s family moves to a specific name and naming both the main characters Henry may be Yann Martel’s way of saying that this could happen to any “Henry,” or any person, in any city. It makes the story more relatable. As far as the shirt, donkey, monkey, and pear, I am still lost trying to connect these things to each other and the Holocaust in order to fully understand this book. The metafiction adds an interesting element to the novel. The uniqueness of definitely stands out and I think it is interesting that the novel is about the construction of a play, but the play offers much confusion.
Myers 7
When I first started reading Beatrice and Virgil I was very confused with all of the strange elements, their meanings, and how to relate them. With now being half way through the novel, I believe I am slowly connecting the abstract elements to the Holocaust. One connection I have made was with the posters in the play scene. The poster were warning the citizens of the howler monkey, warning that they were untrustworthy, dishonest, ugly, and antisocial. Clearly, from what we already know about Virgil, he is not like any of these words. This reminded me of how the Nazis would spread lies about the Jews by saying they were the reason that Germany lost WW1 and the reason why Germany’s economy collapsed. The bricolage makes this novel very difficult to follow along with what is happening in the story. All of the different elements do not work for me because they are so intermittent and it makes the story hard to connect the dots. Overall, I feel that this novel is not nearly as good as Life of Pi; however, I am expecting to be amazed at the end of the novel when all the these strange element finally come together, like I was after reading Life of Pi.
Galbavy 1
To be honest this book sucked in my opinion. I am not saying that the book was terrible for everyone, but in all honesty I don’t like a book that you may have to research to understand or the book is so slow that it takes several pages to describe a creepy old man’s story. I respect what Yann does with his novels, but the aspects of this story bore me. The only part I liked in this book was that he showed a message of truth through the pear. The world lacks honesty and this truly conveys a good message that people need to introduce into their own lives. Virgil could have told Beatrice that the pear was gross and did not looked as how he described it. The fact that the old gross never explains what he really wants disturbs me. I also do not enjoy the fact that he kills the dog when he believes in preserving animal life. The dialogue would be more interesting if the man was not socially awkward. I also wish the setting would have expanded out of the shop even more than around the corner.
Waldera 3
As I continue to get further and further along in the book, I have realized that a large plethora of objects that do not usually go together are presented. I personally see this as a new and interesting way of writing. I enjoy the use of abstract elements, as I believe it keeps the reader guessing and wanting to read more to reveal the meaning behind the unnecessary objects presented. I enjoy how Yann Martel uses these foreign and random things to represent other things in a less graphic manner, true literary genius. For example, I believe the story first presented by the taxidermist about the man killing any and every animal in his way clearly represents the Holocaust. The boy blinded by what he was doing and the impact he was creating mirrors Hitler and his motives of killing everything in sight. This technique allows the reader to piece things together and to retrieve the meaning of the of the objects, through the book, themselves, forcing readers to pay close attention to details throughout. However along with the objects I do know the meaning behind, Yann has presented a few that I simply can not explain. I do hope that my confusion will be cleared up during the forum Friday.
6 Mendoza
The strange and abstract elements completely work for me, as a matter of fact, I really quite enjoy it. The junction of stories within the stories are quite fascinating. You have the story of Henry the writer, the story of Beatrice and Virgil, and the story of the taxidermist. I have never even heard of a taxidermist before I encountered this book. I found it very ironic that a man who skins and works with animal remains is writing a play regarding the holocaust. His justification for his line of work is that he is preserving the beauty of the animals, for when they go extinct there is a visual representation of the animals, which grows in connection with the play. The taxidermist wants to preserve the horrendous actions and murders of the holocaust through theatre. Every detail of the book represents and symbolizes something greater. The structuralism of the book is magnificent. Simple objects like pears and shirts contain symbolism beyond the text. I admire Yann Martel’s writing style and his ability to make his novels seem so real. Throughout the novel you are in utter confusion and awe until the end, where it always comes together.
1 Klamm
I felt as though it was hard to follow the story because of how seemingly random the story was. It was harder to follow the play the taxidermist made than to follow Henry's story. The abstract and strange elements in the story definitely kept me from knowing the end of the story. The ending was nothing that I expected it to be and it seemed completely random to me. In the beginning it was definitely harder to understand what he was trying to say but as I kept reading it got easier to follow both stories at the same time. I did not really like the book and the randomness did not work for me until the end when all the randomness came together to create a very interesting ending. This book did not compare to Life of Pi and did not keep my attention the way Life of Pi did. The story was not as intriguing and I did not enjoy how random the book was and I really did not enjoy how he portrayed the taxidermist. The taxidermist to me was boring, annoying and rude. I felt as though the book was pretty static, boring and honestly not interesting up until about the last ten pages of the book where I finally gained interest.
7Huska
I personally do not care for the abstract and strange elements of this novel. I found the novel to be, in my opinion, quite pointless until the last few pages. It was a hard read and the use of all the descriptions made everything so boring. Things were thrown at you left and right and there were so many injections of that stupid play that I was left annoyed, confused, and bored. There were a FEW things that I did like. I did like the context clues that helped me guess what would happen at the end--which might I add was the only interesting part of the book. I also thought the lowkey allegory towards the holocaust was another thing that did work. The signs saying what a horrible person Virgil was, the striped shirt, the description of the pear, the horrors, and how everyone acted during and after were perfect representations of the holocaust that made you think and compare the book to those events. The taxidermist kind of reminded me of Hitler in where people (in both his writing and in real life) were both caught off guard at how he acted while others were blinded.
3 Wheeler
I have to say that I did not like this book. It is not often that I do not like a book. However, the vagueness and the absolute mishmash of elements in this book did not appeal to me. I am a rereader. I reread everything. I also rewatch movies, TV shows, I’ll listen to the same song on repeat for 5 hours and still not hate it the next day, and I’ve redone the same 9 jigsaw puzzles so many times I’ve nearly memorized the pieces, but I do not think I will ever reread this book unless it is asked of me by a superior. I did not like the absolute over kill of description and imagery, and I did not like the lackadaisical approach to setting in the “real” parts of the novel. It was random, and while it all came together in the end, I spent the majority of the time listening to the novel confused. I cannot count the amount of times I yelled at the speaker while listening to this book in the car.
However, this is not to say that I did not appreciate this book. I can see why other people would appreciate it’s randomness and rambling descriptions. All of the descriptions were quite beautiful, and the abstractness of a lot of them was objectively pretty. However, as someone who is easily distracted and the posterchild for ADHD, it was very difficult to focus on this book because of those abstractions. The mishmash of elements gave me a headache, to be frank. But I will not deny that this was a interesting story, or even a good book.
6 Beckman
The abstract and strange elements of this novel do not work for me very much. I can see where some people may like it because it is different from other novels that can become trite with their themes, however, I think this novel is not as fun to read. It seems like more of a commitment. I’m sitting down specifically to read it and finding myself not wanting to read it in my spare time. Though I’m only halfway through the book right now, so I cannot be too judgemental of it, not a lot has happened. The most interesting part to me was the play that was sent to Henry, which is odd because it is not even part of Yann Martel’s book technically (it is a play within a book). I think he is over thinking things a lot and describing unnecessary things. I find it fascinating that later on he will become so infatuated with this letter he has received. I am excited to see what the ending of the book is like because other people are saying that the ending is the best part. I think this specific book is lacking in spirit compared to Martel’s Life of Pi, which is a let down to me, but hopefully it will pick up pace.
6 Willard
This book, once again, was created seemingly for the analysis of it and all of it’s largely allegorical symbols. Personally, I feel that in a sense, the level and in that the amount of symbolism can very easily become gratuitous. Though I don’t possess the intellect that many of my peers do, I find it difficult to follow certain pieces or nuances within the story. That is, in the immense layered “onion” of a narrative that this is -- if you will -- I find it quite easy to misconstrue the attempted meaning. All in all, if in a very real sense.. I wasn’t such an idiot, this book would certainly have been immaculate. The meaning behind it is something horrifying, and the powerful allegorical description of it grants that meaning a holistic tangibility. Looking back on it, there is no question in my mind, that if I’d taken the time to read between the lines as it were, I would have gathered more from it. Perhaps not, after all, isn’t the author's intent to leave the perceived meaning of the story to that of the reader?
6 Sorenson
Beatrice and Virgil is a book that requires me to analyze it. If I do not analyze it, I have a confusing story with random objects in it. At the very end of the story, Henry says that Beatrice and Virgil is the story of his stabbing. But the stabbing only takes up a page or two of the book. Therefore, I must dig deeper into the seemingly random objects throughout the book, because this is not simply a story of how Henry was stabbed. The objects are intriguing and can possibly be interpreted many different ways. I like that because it allows the story to mean different things to different readers. People can get what they want out of what they are reading. I like the metafiction more than the symbols. The fact that there is a short story within a story, a play within a story, and a story about writing itself is incredibly fascinating. I was not expecting Beatrice and Virgil to be as meta as it is. Ultimately, I think that Yann Martel successfully discussed the holocaust in fictional way that portrays the psychological and emotional side of the events that happened. He presents a historic event in a new light that helps keep the Holocaust relevant.
1 Koehn
When I first started reading Beatrice and Virgil I did not like the book whatsoever. All of the strange elements that Yann Martel included in this book confused me. I did not understand how a book about a taxidermist, a donkey, and a monkey would teach me any value or lesson. When I came upon the five page description of the pear I thought this may be the worst book I've ever read. However, my opinion on the book began to change. Once I started to realize that these strange elements and bricolage had actual meanings behind them I started to really enjoy this book. This book created suspense whereas I was always trying to predict what each element meant. For example when they were talking about the posters that were spread about Virgil and how he was seen as ugly, and unworthy of trust this made me think about how Hitler portrayed the Jews in a negative light. I also enjoyed how the whole story took place on a striped shirt. A striped shirt is a very common piece of clothing that everyone could have in their closet. Therefore by having this as the setting I believe Yann Martel is trying to say that anyone in this time period could have become a Nazi. We like to think that we wouldn't, but in reality we would have done anything to survive.
7 Johnke
The strange symbols that are presented in the book somewhat work for me. There are a large amount of them and some just stretch a little too far for me to understand the full meaning of I feel. The setting of being on a striped shirt is unique but I feel that it is something that is merely thrown in to make reference to the Holocaust as the landscape Beatrice and Virgil walk on is not even remotely designed to embrace the shirt. The pear, however, I do like. Out of all the fruits to describe that would be harder and more fun, a pear is analyzed and critiqued to be something juicy and flavorful. Truthfully, after reading that portion of the book, a pear sounded very delectable. Right after Henry meets the taxidermist, I felt uncertainty and a strange feeling--like I was worried for the protagonist. It seems that the build up until we learn of the identity of the taxidermist is slow, but necessary. After the building is destroyed and the play along with the taxidermist, I felt upset for Henry. I thought that the flip book that he tries to publish would work well if the essay was replaced by the play.
6 Thompson
When I first started reading this book, I thought the book was quite strange and honestly boring. As I got to the middle and end it got better and actually turned into my second favorite book we have read in this class behind Life of Pi. I think that the strange and abstract elements of the novel worked for me. The abstract elements made me analyze the novel more than I had with the previous novels we have read and I like how this novel kept me guessing on what was going to happen. I think Martel did a wonderful job of adding different elements and descriptions throughout the beginning of the novel that help explain the odd items enough but not enough that it gives away the importance at the beginning. As I read the book the one thing that stuck out to me the most was the taxidermists personality. At first, I felt a little leery of the taxidermist and was wondering why Martel chose to write about the taxidermist. As I read on I saw how his personality changed when he was alone with Henry, when he was talking about the play, and also when he was in public and also at the I realized why a taxidermist. As I read I tried to pick out the importance of his changing personality and why he got so excited about talking about the play and what the significance of his play was. I realized after I was done with the novel that I was actually analyzing the taxidermist way more than I had any other character of a novel before and I credit to all the strange elements placed throughout the novel that worked for me.
Corcoran 6
This novel is really giving me a challenge in trying to grasp, correlate, and comprehend all the different elements meshed into this surreal tale. I felt hesitant at first, but came to embrace wholeheartedly all the strangeness, and dreamlike movement of the story. I want to for the very life of me become satisfied in my research as I make attempts at breaking down the themes, symbolism, and messages. My mind quickly turns to putty as my brain is overloaded with frantic reaches to meaning that I cannot confidently say I understand. Though the research to me is what makes the novel worth it, for if I had just read this as is and made no attempt to find a deeper meaning I would absolutely hate the book, and find the ending abrupt, time-wasting, and offensive. It is the probing, and the occasional “ah-ha!” that reignites that interest and allows me to valiantly seek what lies between the lines. The clues and breadcrumbs left by Martel beckon me with each new discovery, slowly fastening pieces to a jigsaw puzzle that I believe will always, and purposefully remain unsolved.
House 3
I oddly enjoy yet hate this book. My ID, my inner ego and rebellious side of me enjoys this book quite a bit but my superego, the side of the "studious" student and by-the-book personality hates this book. There is nothing in this book. It rehashes the same thing over and over again and again. Nothing gets answered, nothing happens, the book isn't finished but thats what is so great about it. It makes little to no sense. At some points you don't know which Henry is speaking or doing. It's up for interpretation. It gives the reader the choice of picking one, none, or both of them to do said thing. Its great yet awful. Henry claims that Henry's play has no plot, nothing to move it forward much like this book. Yann Martel is something else, calling himself out in the his own book. But it works for him. I feel like he over hashes his ideas in his stories. Three Religions, Three holocaust-(the flip book, Beatrice and Virgil, and the Taxidermist). I feel like it's a waste of words and paper. Why use more words then necessary to tell a story unless you are meeting a page/word limit. Concise and to the point keeps the reader's attention more in todays society. But the saying is "the third times the charm." Some things needs the constant beating so we don't forget them and then repeat atrocities. We might find it redundant at times but it is having the desired affect. Everyone knows about it and nobody can escape the past. And some people might need these constant and extra reminders. We all work at a different capacity. Also, the complete disjointness of the book gave it a different quality. Do you try and put them in the right order throughout the story and just take them in as they come? I don't try I just let what ever comes, comes and find their own spot in my head. I enjoy this book because it is not something someone will comprehend and understand, this book is something that is grasped at, felt, and then lost before understandment can happen but it makes you think and then potentially change. But than I hate this book because we are taught and raised that in school there is always a right answer. My rebellious side adores this book because it is straight chaos and unorderness. Rarely is their ever a concrete answer to real life problems. there won't always be a resolution or epiphany. Sometimes somethings just happen that has no good, no sliver lining. They just happen and then we have to live with it and move on.
6 McGee
I have found the book Beatrice and Virgil, very interesting. Sometimes the book is hard to follow and is very confusing. But I enjoy all the symbolism the book holds. I find it very effective the way that Yann Martel uses Henry the writer and Henry the taxidermist to tell the story. I find the book extremely intriguing and find myself wanting to read on. So, yes I do believe that the abstract and strange elements of this novel work for me. I really like the character Beatrice and Virgil, they are very effective in getting the story across. To be honest I have not finished the novel completely, but I am close and so far the way Yann Martel has unraveled this story has been very fascinating. The seriousness of the taxidermist Henry also adds a good element to this novel. He is so upfront and social awkward that I believe he being the author of the play is very effective. I am really enjoying this book and look forward to the forum because I am excited to hear everyone else's opinions on this book. I also am excited to understand the book better as my fellow classmates help me pick up on some of the symbolism I missed.
Mork 7
Reading Beatrice and Virgil there is no way I could go without noticing all the strange and abstract elements it contains. When you think of anything containing strange or abstract elements you would never think that it would be boring to interact with? I mean I relate having such strange things all in one spot to dreaming at night. And I would have to say my dreams are not boring! It would be very rare for such an abstract group of things to all come together in real life as they do in this book and in your dreams. I would have to say that it is great that Yann Martel could combine such a vast number of unique things all into one book and still get a message across; however, I have completed the book and did not find it interesting until the very end. The book takes too long on portions of writing that I believe could be shorter and in turn make the whole book shorter. I usually like thinking deeply about things and discovering symbols within books, but this book just has so much going on at once and still fails to interest me. Overall there was a few strange elements that I can respect and like to an extent. I thought it was clever to use a word like Aukitz and have it short for Auschwitz. I also thought that the games at the end were a unique addition that enhanced the book. All in all, I would have to say that I didn’t enjoy this book all that much and the strange elements didn’t quite work for me; however, some of the symbols were cleverly placed and brought to my attention which kept me entertained enough to finish.
Bogensberger 6
In all honesty, this novel really is strange and was hard to understand at first but as you keep reading, you realize that to fully comprehend this book, you must break it down and analyze everything. I thought the beginning of the story was quite boring but then when he comes across the letter from the taxidermist, it gets some what more interesting. The description of the pear was so in depth, I do not think I would have ever been able to describe a pear with that much justice. Yann Martel never fails to add detail in his stories, when Henry enters the taxidermy shop, you can picture it perfectly just by the excess of details that are provided. The details are what help me the most, they help me grasp the effect Martel is trying to create but sometimes they are too excessive and the reading just becomes boring. I think if you are reading this book for pleasure and do not know how to properly analyze the meaning behind everything then you will most likely end up hating this book, but if you know how to search for the answers behind the story then you will do just fine with this novel and might even turn out loving it.
1 Harvison
If I am being completely honest, this book has been a challenge to read. I appreciate what Yann Martel is trying to accomplish as well as his ambition to challenge the reader, however the execution could be improved. The first part of the book, although it does serve as a backstory, seems to stretch on for more than half the book. I had a hard time reading about an author who was contemplating writing a book while writing a book. However, as I continued reading the book was much more engaging. I had never really thought that a monkey, donkey, shirt, taxidermist, and the Holocaust would ever be able to make a coherent book-- yet here we are reading it. That being said, I think it takes great imagination and creativity to be able to write such a book that some readers may not even understand and others will be changed for. I find myself somewhere in the middle of that spectrum as I would like to think I understood most of the book but was confused by certain parts such as the beginning portion. I personally feel this book would be very hard to read unless you had the purpose of analyzing what it is trying to accomplish due to the weird allegories and the strange man. I do tend to be interested in learned about the Holocaust, so I found this fiction take to be quite interesting.
6Long
Beatrice and Virgil is a very interesting novel, none like I have read before. Yann Martel throws in a lot of odd and strange pieces, and sometimes they do not seem to flow together. This was a very hard book to get into, because there seems to be nothing interesting happening in the plot. The only action that you see throughout the entire novel is when Henry gets stabbed, which does not happen until there is only ten pages left in the book. After a while the strange pieces finally start to fit together, and you can get an overall better idea about what the story is really about. Martel must have put a lot of thought into writing the book, because you can tell they nothing included is in there by accident. You get the idea that the taxidermist was using the monkey and donkey to represent the people in the Holocaust, and how poorly they were treated. However the abstract and strange elements do confuse me at many points through the book, as it is difficult to tell what he is really trying to say, but it overall makes for a much more unique and creative way of writing and gives the reader a challenge.
1 Top
Throughout reading Beatrice and Virgil, everything was very clear to me up until around page 100. The bricolage used in the novel definitely works for me, essentially it is what kept me interested in a reading with very few events until the last 15 pages. Henry, a taxidermist, had asked Henry, a writer, for help on his play. As the two began to build a relationship and began to see each other everyday, the odd behavior the taxidermist possessed began to seem normal. Yann Martel strategically describes the taxidermist with a distinct behavior. Later on, learning about the Holocaust, I felt I was a victim in book. The taxidermist who could potentially represent Hitler, had started to seem like a trustworthy guy to me and to Henry, while everyone else was standoffish towards him and did not associate with the man. In association with the Holocaust, victims did not know that Hitler was a dictator that wanted to kill them, they followed his orders because they thought that was what was best and he knew what was best. Henry thought helping the taxidermist with his play was best until it ended up killing him in the end. The arrangement of the words and scenes Martel creates established a novel well organized and entertaining. Without questionable scenes or actions in the reading, the reader would become uninterested and bored.
1 Sherron
Quite honestly, I am not the biggest fan of Beatrice and Virgil. I was waiting until I finished it to see if some surprise ending would change my mind, but it did not work out like that. The abstract and strange elements made it much more difficult for me to fully appreciate the novel, let alone understand it. This, coupled with the fact that it is a newer book and there are no reputable literary sources to help understand it, made for the roughest reading this semester. While I say that, I am surprised to hear critics call it a terrible book. I like the idea of what the author is trying to do and I loved figuring out that the taxidermist is doing what Henry attempted to do years prior. At this time, I don’t think the literary scene is quite ready for it. A lot of ingenious ideas were worked into this novel, creating a delicate reading atmosphere. The book was not hard to follow, but it just lacked something in the middle to pique the reader’s interest and get them to keep reading. The ending, however, certainly did a job of doing that. Within the last 30 pages, things accelerated and happened much more than they did in the 170 pages prior. I was immensely shocked by the ending, but also left with a sense of incompletion; I feel like it should not be over or that Henry really should have taken the Nazi taxidermist’s play, just so he could help us understand it.
1 Ellis
Beatrice and Virgil was definitely a type of book I have never read before. I noticed how Yann Martel’s writing style was very present in this book compared to Life of Pi. Descriptions of food, for example, were very much alike. When Virgil tries to describe what a pear is to Beatrice it seems so much like when Pi discusses different Indian foods that he craves to eat. The lack of plot at first was annoying and boring. Yet when Henry complains to the taxidermist that his play has no real plot I understood how the book was attempting to show that. The constant switch from Henry’s real life to the play about Beatrice and Virgil was amazing. The constant irony of how whatever was mentioned in the play at that time was relatable to Henry at that time was a great element in the book that I enjoyed. Beatrice and Virgil’s story itself was beautiful, with its subtle hints to the Holocaust and how they were being persecuted kept me interested. I also liked how the taxidermist used another story, “The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator” to capture Henry’s attention and raised serious questions about the story just by the use of highlighter. I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, though the ending seemed more abrupt and unfinished, it completely caught me off guard.
Mikkelsen 1
Reading Beatrice and Virgil was an extremely odd experience for me. For the majority of the novel, I found myself wondering how the bricolage would end up sorting itself out in the end. Once I had finished the novel, I still found myself annoyed and kind of confused. One thing I enjoyed about the ending was how you could learn what the symbols represented such as the shirt in which this play was taking place--although it is hard to know what all the symbols mean. This is definitely the strangest book I have ever read, but I wanted to embrace the strangeness. While reading it, I knew in the back of my head that this would somehow connect to the Holocaust; I think this is why the ending was not amazing for me personally. I think for most of the novel the dialogues between Beatrice and Virgil that are included within the story are strange and go into excessive description. I felt in the end it is hard to decipher the true meaning and how everything entirely comes together. Although I personally did not enjoy this book, I think it took a lot of thought and time to make it what it is, and for that I respect Martel.I think my entire life I have been exposed to books that are fairly orthodox, so this novel definitely put me in a situation I have not been in before. “Normal” does not always mean good, and “abnormal” does not always mean bad; I think this book uses literary elements in an extremely creative, but odd way.
Powell 1
While many of my classmates were confused by the abstract elements of the novel, I personally loved the insanity of Henry the taxidermist. Too often we as people look at things and determine what they’re worth without thinking about underlying justifications. In Beatrice and Virgil, I was presented with a story entirely composed of subliminal messages. Despite the apparent lack of plot, I had more notes on the brilliance of Beatrice and Virgil than throughout the entire Life of Pi novel. I immediately noticed the similarities between the discussions between Beatrice and Virgil and those between Henry and Henry. It could even be said that Henry the taxidermist represents the dark side of Henry the writer, much like Jekyll and Hyde (a story directly alluded to in the novel). In addition the story had significant insights into the nature of history and art. History and art actually define us as a people rather than the other way around, so by using abstract elements, Martell eliminates any preconceptions about Nazis. Despite alluding to Henry the taxidermist being a Nazi throughout the whole book (I picked up on it on page 97 with Henry’s description of taxidermy and how it relates to Mengele’s bastardization of Nazism), you begin to sympathize with the old man trying to tell his story. This story is more than just a fictionalized representation of the Holocaust; it is a view of history from the other side, one few can take up without the abstract elements hiding the strongest negative connotation in history. However, this is also a story about Martell as he uses his pseudo-personality to explore the possibilities of an alternate reality… in addition to directly telling the readers he LOVES mail. Martell’s use of the abstract in Beatrice and Virgil is one of the greatest pieces of symbolism known to man. Through its beautifully intricate relationships of the unspeakable, Martell has influenced me to think in a whole new light.
1 Sjogren
In all honesty, I was not a huge fan of this book, Beatrice and Virgil. I believe that a tiny pear did not need a five page description on all of its components. Most of the scenes in the novel could have been shortened because after time they became boring. However, some symbolism did keep me interested in the book. A few of the abstract and strange elements work for me and a few do not. The elements that extend too far for my brain to comprehend are the ones that confuse me. I did catch most of the Holocaust references such as the striped shirt, Aukitz, and the false posters about Virgil. One thing that sets this book apart from any other is the games at the end of the book. They make you think way more about what happened and how you would have reacted in such a situation. I do have one question though. Why is the 13th game blank? Yes, this book has wonderful bricolage, but it would be better if I could understand all of it without having to research. The last 10 pages were the only ones to actually attract my attention to the book.
LOVE these comments! Thanks for being our students. We are lucky you're here.
1 Vielmette
In the story the amount of times that one object is symbolic or referencing to another thing in the Holocaust that gives it meaning or purpose in the story. However, I didn't like the book in that it was very boring and the constant referencing made you think twice about things that don't need to be thought of in that way. Example would be when his dog gets rabies and kills his other dog basically and is then gassed. I get that it is symbolic of how Nazi's had no self control and then in the end the dog gets gassed but its almost pointless to the story in that it doesn't contribute to the plot and is quite random in my opinion. Also with it being boring is that the only real plot to the story seemed to be at the beginning when first introducing the taxidermy Henry as it helped to understand him later in the novel but almost all the middle parts, except the reading of the play, seemed almost pointless with nothing to contribute to the story with nothing being connected from the end to the middle and beginning and it was only a few connections from the end and beginning.
3Bowman
When I first began reading Beatrice and Virgil, the only thought going through my head was “what the nuts is happening right now?” Of course, followed by the answer: nothing. Beatrice and Virgil, I thought, began quite a dry read. The book takes time to develop, and when it does develop, it is through the seams of the text rather than through the text directly. Nonetheless, my hat is off to Martel who does an exceptional job at tying together such random ideas and objects to come to the conclusion of the story (of which there actually is none, but still fits with the novel). It is so hidden, yet blatantly obvious, that this is a tale relating to the events and circumstances of the Holocaust. Martel accomplishes exactly what Henry had always strived to: retell a common story in a quite different way to elicit a deep emotional response once again. I am still perplexed why he chose a monkey and a donkey for the main characters of this Holocaust tale, but hopefully that can be answered at our forum. Though it was a long, “interesting” read, I hope that our forum goes well and I look forward to hearing others opinions of the book itself.
6 Meyer
I am extremely interested in the abstract and strange elements of Yann Martel’s novel, although I do not fully understand them for I have not yet completed the book. The strange deceptions and symbols of the book confuse me, yet aspire me to continue reading the novel until I understand their hidden values. As strange as it may sound, these ideas are what I enjoy about novels and is a prime example of what peaks my interest in reading. The symbolic meanings behind the howler monkey, the donkey, a taxidermist, and how they all relate somehow to a holocaust reference is indescribable. My favorite idea of Martel’s novel is that the setting of the story within the story is a striped shirt. Incredible. At first reading the book, I was not sure where the novel would take itself, as the description of a pear lasted about five pages and there was a whole description about an author’s struggles to publish his book. The great thing, however, is that the novel clears itself up as it continues until I eventually run out of pages to read.
3 Coyle
I believe that the abstract and strange elements of the book Beatrice and Virgil do work for me. I say this because I am able to pick up on the things that Yann Martel is wanting to portray in a way that does not have to outright say exactly what he is trying to exemplify in the novel. The subtle ways that he creates his sentences gives the book a greater clarity and a better rhythm than to simply state what he is trying to say throughout the novel. To me, having things be hinted at or maybe simply alluded to in a novel makes more sense to me than to have the author say it. In adding strange elements to a book, it gives the story more life than to have it a cut and dry piece of fiction that anyone would be able to understand. In the duration of reading a book, should I find it boring, I will be more inclined to set the book down and grab something more thrilling from my extensive collection of books rather than continue to read this banal piece of fiction. Henceforth, I enjoy the works of Yann Martel and his use of abstract ideas to intricate his books.
Lindemann 3
This novel is a conglomeration of things that make almost no sense until the last 10 pages (cough cough lord of the flies?) but still creates interest with minor details. I, personally, think it works super well. I didn’t see the plot twist coming until after it flew past my head. I also didn’t expect the play to end up the way it did, but it was still interesting to read and see how the play slowly came to reflect what Henry suspected it did. Having Professor Hicks come in and speak was also helpful to understanding the book, as it gave me an idea as to what I feel Henry’s character would have been in person. This novel is the perfect combination of whimsical and dark that it keeps readers easily invested without them knowing it. I found that I didn’t want to put the book down because I was continuously searching for resolutions to the smaller plot lines, resolutions I never got that make me want to read and reread to see if i can find them in the earlier sections of the novel. Beatrice and Virgil is a great novel and I think Yann Martel wrote beautifully and craftily, something that is hard to do for a lot of authors.
3 Else
If I am being completely honest, I did not enjoy the novel. I thought Beatrice and Virgil was written in a bizarre, weird, awkward style of how the story was told. I had high hopes for this novel, especially after seeing Yann Martel’s brilliant work, Life of Pi. I was truly looking forward to reading another of Martel’s books. I think that had Martel chosen to write the novel without the strange elements, the novel would have been even worse. The only thing in my opinion that continued to keep the novel interesting to me was the collection of strange objects being described in the story. The elements worked for me purely from the standpoint of it keeping the book entertaining. When I first read the scene where Virgil describes the shape and taste of a pear to Beatrice, I thought that the descriptions were perfect and I was able to picture the pear in my mind if I had never seen one before. I think that Martel has a very creative style of writing and a very large imagination (you need this to be a writer). I think what really did not work for me in the novel was that this was a book within a book, and it felt mind boggling to have to interpret the plot and symbols of both stories.
3 Hoffman
Absolutely. Absolutely this novel has worked for me. Yann Martel is an absolutely intriguing writer, I believe. Everything he writes makes me think, it appears that every sentence in his books is intentional, as Mr. C states. It did, indeed, infuriate me, the ending, though it was infuriating because of my discontent with the characters, not because of the writing. I was so incredibly immersed in the book, I often lost myself in it. I tell my friends that I finished it because I can’t think of the book and the essay at the same time, but the truth is that I was absolutely excited to read. I would be at work and almost all of my thoughts were on the book and how much I’d read that night. The ending was not what I had expected, though it was hard to guess. I assumed that because they are named Henry together, a very specific thing to do, they were the same person. I also assumed that the taxidermist didn’t show the play to Henry the novelist because he was making it up as they went, he was making it of them together. They said something about cake and coffee, Beatrice and Virgil, just as those both arrived on their table. I assumed Beatrice and Virgil were the inverses of Henry and Henry. I wasn’t sure what to think, though I had never stopped.
3 Munson
To start, I thought that throughout most of the novel it was pretty boring. However at the end it did pick up some, but it was not really a surprising ending as I think it was supposed to be. I think I understood a fair amount of the allegory but not as much as I would have if it were more normal and standard things. The events and symbols seem completely random, even though Martel is able to tie them together fairly well. The randomness and abstractness is likely done on purpose though. The abstract elements both keep the reader invested, because they hope for a clear answer at the end, but they also make one want to stop reading because it is so difficult to understand. Henry struggles to figure out what his story is about, and he struggles to find out what the taxidermist’s play is about. I also struggle to figure out what this book is about. You could say the Holocaust, but I think a more accurate answer would be it is a story about a story about the Holocaust, and even then I am not sure that is right either.
3 Buteyn
Upon reading Beatrice and Virgil, the elements of the book were very confusing to me. I have had trouble reading the novel for a long period of time because it was boring for me to read. When I reached about halfway through the book it started to get more interesting as the scenes I previously had read started to make sense. The main scene that didn’t make sense to me was when Virgil explained what a pear was to Beatrice. After I read this scene I began to think more and more about why this was put into the book. Eventually I came to the conclusion that Yann Martel used this as an element about how people can sometimes described things truthfully or completely wrong. Virgil uses other fruits to accurately describe what a pear is compared to using unrelated objects or just exaggerate it completely, like a fisherman would when he loses a fish. The book has been a challenge to read and fully understand what I am reading. I constantly find myself rereading passages because I don’t know what they were talking about.
3 Roegiers
Beatrice and Virgil is most definitely unlike any other novel that I have ever read. The strange settings and symbolism are very difficult to follow. This book challenges readers to a great extent. I still have a significant amount of the book to finish reading, so hopefully more will make sense soon. Having never really learned anything about the practice of taxidermy, I have enjoyed the way Yann Martel goes about informing the reader of the strange practice. I definitely think it has helped to have Henry in the book, who is much like me in the fact that he is fairly clueless about taxidermy as well. The metafiction aspect of the novel is very confusing and I cannot say that I am a fan of it thus far. However, I am hopeful that as I near the end of the book that these aspects become clearer and fit together in the conclusion of the novel.
I honestly do not know how I feel about this novel. The introduction of the novel follows a similar trend that most other stories have, but Beatrice and Virgil never reaches the juncture in between introduction and rising action. It is written as a very long intro, and even though the introduction of the story is the my favorite part, it never ends. The abstract elements are perfunctory of introductions, and usually ends once the plot starts, but this novel just keeps it coming. Also, the play in the novel, 20th Century Shirt, and the novel itself follow a very similar plot line of dialogue without action. Yet, for some reason, I believe that the play would be much more appealing to observe than the book. The oddities mentioned in the book, such as a shirt, a tattoo, and an address seem to be random, but they all can relate to the Holocaust. It is an excellent example of bricolage. The inmates of concentration camps wore blue/gray striped shirts, were marked with tattoos of their identification number, and 68 Nowolipki Street is where an archive of the war was found in milk bottles. These are all important artifacts left from the Holocaust that continue to show us this dark period of time. This list of things from the play is the only thing that makes sense to me in this novel. It was hard to see where the book was going, but this made logical sense to me. So I’m left confused on my feelings toward the novel. I think I’m indifferent about it, but I’m not sure.
1 Headrick
Beatrice and Virgil. The book that you literally only need to read the last 20 pages. The first time someone reads this book they end up throwing the book across the room either out of boredom from the first 170 pages or from the last fireball of pages… Hehehehe did you see what I did there… Upon further review, this book sucks a little less. The first 170 pages were not just some random pages that mean nothing, but kindling for the explosion that is about to come. I did it again hehehehe. This book left me with a lot of questions. Why are the animals a Donkey and a Monkey? Is it supposed to represent Jews/Polish? Hopefully the forum will alleviate these questions from my heart so that I can get a good night’s sleep without a thought of this infuriating book. Did the Taxidermist have rabies from years of stuffing animals? Why the heck are they both named Henry? At first Yann Martel’s brilliant writing did not work for me but upon reflection I have come to become very interested in this book. And why did he put in that Sarah knew that the dermist was bad news and Henry should never go back. Do women always know what is right?
3 Brandsrud
After finishing Beatrice and Virgil, I have found that the abstract elements did not really work well for me as a reader. I would say that for the grand majority of the novel I was confused, and overall disinterested in what was going on in the novel, and if I had not known that Beatrice and Virgil was referring to the Holocaust I do not think that I would have gotten that by the end of the novel. However, I thought that the last fifty pages or so were the most intriguing, by this point I had understood what was occurring in the novel and was beginning to understand the events that had happened. I think that this transition from confusion to clarity was intended by Yann Martel. Although I do not think that this novel will reach the popularity that Life of Pi reached, I still feel like this novel is one that should be read. Overall, I just felt that this novel created feelings of uneasiness and leaves much in question until the very end, and at the end everything seems to come full circle. Overall, I did not feel like the strange elements worked very well for me, but I did understand that Beatrice and Virgil were supposed to represent Holocaust survivors and were extremely hungry, explaining the pear. Furthermore, the setting is a striped shirt, which would be similar to the shirts that the prisoners would wear in the Concentration Camps. Finally everything made sense once Henry had explained that the taxidermist was an old Nazi or Nazi supporter, which makes sense as to why he initially sent the short story to Henry at the beginning of the book.
3 Kluin
I personally enjoyed this novel very much, and the use of strange and abstract elements did work for me. Yann Martel has managed to take and depict seemingly random and meaningless events and objects (such as in the lengthy description of the pear or the some of the conversations between Beatrice and Virgil) and give them meaning, however small and insignificant they may seem. There is a purpose to everything, even if not directly noticed, that relates to a larger picture, in this case, the relation between the events of the taxidermist’s play and the events of the Holocaust. It is a new and interesting way of presenting information. Both Henry and the Taxidermist are asked what their writing is about; what message they want their story to convey to the audience that comes across it. Henry tells the taxidermist that in order for his play to truly have a story it must have action besides that of pure conversation. However, it is in the conversation that the story unfolds. Martel has taken an artistic approach towards writing a novel that I didn’t think I would be able to understand. After all, people tend to dislike what they do not understand. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised. It is important to read novels such as these, ones that do not always speak with sense in the beginning, ones that don’t always end with a “happily ever after”, and ones that seem out of the ordinary or uncharacteristic of their usual manner of being written. It is in these sorts of stories that we learn the more and remember most.
3 Schroder
As I read Beatrice and Virgil, I found the bricolage confusing yet extremely interesting. Although this book was compelling, it did not work for me. I felt that the weird extremes in this novel drove me away from actually wanting to read it. When I first began the novel I didn’t exactly know what I was getting myself into. Having absolutely no knowledge on taxidermy, Yann Martel helped me understand this hobby that Henry had for the dead carcusses he dealt with in his everyday life. In my own words, I would describe the work of taxidermy as creepy, detestable, and gruesome. I found it interesting how Henry, the taxidermist, found no problem with his work because he felt as if he was preserving the animal's spirit. However, when Henry, the man helping him with his play wanted to go to the zoo, the taxidermist was against that idea with full force. It doesn’t make sense to me how Henry prefers being confined in his office, skinning animals, rather than observing animals alive in an actual zoo. All in all this book caught my attention, but it was not one of my favorite novels I have read in this class.
3 DeCurtins
If you thought Life of Pi was full of nonsense then you have yet to see anything until you read Beatrice and Virgil! Much like the african child questions the lady in the image supplied to us by Mr. C, while reading we wonder what Yann Martel could have been smoking when he wrote his Holocaust allegory. To remind you of just how weird this story gets, remember that a two starving animals, a monkey and a donkey, abstractly describe a pear and its related sensations while being persecuted by Nazi’s on a striped shirt. If that isn’t scattered and incoherent I don’t know what is. I must admit though, that this has been a refreshing sort of weird. The story doesn’t really have any real, or at least driving, conflict. The characters tend just sit by and have things happen to them rather than oppose anyone. This is especially true for the meta-fictitious beings Beatrice and Virgil, but also true for Henry. The closest I can come up with for conflict is Henry trying to decipher meaning from the other Henry’s story, and eventually rejecting the other Henry. Maybe you could consider the interview at the beginning about the flipbook conflict, but I think of this as more along the lines of early character development and exposition. I would not even call the stabbing real conflict because of how quickly, and conveniently, the story resolves itself afterward. This relative lack of conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, but you pretty much only have what is said in dialogue to go off of, rather than any actions or reactions. Take Cuckoo’s Nest as an example: McMurphy would physically do things in defiance of Nurse Ratched like breaking a window or start a gambling ring, but Beatrice and Virgil don’t have that. It was interesting and I did enjoy it. You rarely ever see metafiction but it is interesting how Martel pulls it off: an accomplished author helping out an aspiring one. This book does its job so to speak, by describing the Holocaust in a new and completely fictional way, which I definitely appreciate. Honestly, I would describe this book as interesting, but not necessarily good.
3 Wickersham
While reading the book, I felt somewhat frustrated because of all the randomness Yann Martel had in the book. He jumps between the play, Henry the writer, and Henry the taxidermist, and you really never get the full story. It reminds me of Life of Pi, where he told the story based off memory, meaning the story was not necessarily in chronological order. Although the beginning of Beatrice and Virgil was frustrating because it felt so random, I loved the ending and how he pieced everything together. He tied things that happened in the beginning into the end. I think that I was frustrated in the beginning because the story felt slow and without a plot. I also was frustrated because it seemed like there was no point to the play and you got bits of the play out of order. It felt hard follow the chronological order of the play. But in the end, you begin to understand the point of the play, who Henry the taxidermist really is, and you piece together the play (somewhat). It makes you think about the play from a Holocaust point of view rather than a monkey and donkey talk point of view. One thing I wish he had incorporated was the entire play pieced together, so you can read the full play and look at it from a camp prisoner’s point of view. It would be a nice addition to the ending with Games for Gustav. Overall, I liked the book because of how the ending answered most of the questions about the book and made the reader ponder afterwards. This curiosity happens because it seems random at first.
3 Holter
When I first started to read this book, I was bored out of my mind, I had the mindset of not wanting to finish it. The novel did not start to get interesting or intriguing until the very last part of the book. The last few pages climaxed and left me with questions. The very first pages, about the pear and the author, that did not intrigue me, but it slowly started to get better and better. The strange and abstract elements of this novel do not necessarily work for me. I understand the concept of relating animals to people and relating the Holocaust to the play, but I do not understand the meaning and purpose behind the flip book that was described in the beginning and the description of the pear. But with all these strange and bricolage elements it allows me and other readers to fully analyze and read deeper into the book. When I finished the novel, I went through the symbols that Yann Martel used, like the striped shirt, in his novel and for the most part everything slowly started to make sense to me. Will I ever read this book again? No, probably not, but for the most part it was a good read.
3 Moelter
This stories metafiction is most certainly unparalleled to any other book we have read, but it does not work for me in the sense that it was quite the trudge to get through. The whole scene with the pear and the banana are just that scenes of what they wish they could have but alas cannot. Throughout the whole novel I was expecting some terrible, strange, exciting, or even random event to happen to the donkey and the howler monkey. I got nothing of my liking. Then in the end, when there was finally an event, to make the book more gripping he attempted to kill off the main character and then did kill off the only being the main character was infatuated with. His family nor his pets became of importance when the taxidermist, Henry, entered the supposed family man Henry’s life. To not notice your dog catching rabies from the taxidermist shop you have been leaving him in while you go and help a man that appears at first to be a Holocaust survivor, but then in the final pages you realize he is actually a Nazi collaborator is insanely irresponsible of Henry. Especially when he just has his son and you think with his world in mass chaos he would forget. Constantly thinking of the man that is too antisocial to go to a cafe a few blocks from this store, which he never appears to leave, and remain civilized enough to look anyone in the eye when talking to them. Trying to understand Henry’s obsession with the taxidermist, leads me to think that he was pushing his views of the Holocaust into everything he read and did. The Holocaust was definitely interwoven throughout this novel: from the striped shirt country to the very shop that Henry visited numerous times. The animals in the book symbolized the Jews on the run from Hitler's Gestapo in the streets as the boys that in the end of the tale are brutally beaten to death while the Gestapo has their fun. The taxidermist’s whole tale was leading up to the brutal end of the tale as well as the novel itself. From the boys killing the animals to the taxidermist stabbing Henry. A horrific yet fascinating ending to an otherwise dull novel.
6 Riley
This novel is a lot different than most, in the novel Beatrice and Virgil the abstract and strange elements do work for me. I will admit that some parts were boring and hard to read, but it got better. I thought that it was fascinating when Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice. At first I was confused, but then realized that the describing of the pear was truthful. For myself, I have never read anything about or in relation to taxidermy, it was interesting and was informative. In the beginning of the novel it was hard to try and understand all the different elements Martel was incorporating, however as I have gotten farther into the book I am gaining more knowledge of bricolage. I think that it is interesting that he used animals who represented the Jews and how they felt. He also used a donkey and a monkey to portray the people of the Holocaust to show how people were getting treated during that time. I think that it is very interesting how he incorporated these symbols, I find it intriguing and at some points entertaining.
7 Runia
In Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel uses bricolage, unique and unconventional combinations of strange and fictional elements. This bricolage worked for me by making the story very intriguing. I was drawn into the story and had a difficult time pausing in my reading to complete other tasks. Martel discusses how fiction with talking animals makes the story more believable for a reader because the reader has no pre-existing prejudices about talking animals. Also, Martel explains that humans are more critical and suspicious of our own species, but we are less critical of animals. We are more willing to believe animals than humans because humans are known to lie often. After Martel’s mention of this phenomenon, I began looking for it in myself as I read the novel, and I found it to be true. In a way, scenes involving the talking animals seemed more believable than sections involving the author and the taxidermist, and I was less critical of the talking animals than I was of the author and the taxidermist. Thus, the odd bricolage with the talking animals worked by helping me believe the story more. In addition, Martel’s bricolage allows for a lot of unique symbolism that makes the story more interesting. However, I thought some of the strange elements within the story made the novel more confusing. I had a hard time connecting all of the seemingly random elements to each other while I was reading the story, though they were easier to connect once I had finished the novel. Some of my confusion could be attributed to overall structure of novel, too. Revealing the taxidermist’s play out of order to the reader added to the confusion I felt while reading the story. Altogether, though, the strange bricolage in Beatrice and Virgil works well for me.
Additionally, the novel contains metafiction. This metafiction is present in the novel as the author, Henry, is aware that the story he is telling of his encounters with the taxidermist is a novel being read by readers. The novel’s metafiction helps me relate the book to Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and to Yann Martel himself. I am reminded of the metafiction that was present in Life of Pi when the unnamed author inserted his own thoughts and observations into the story and when Pi was aware that the author was recording his story to make it into a novel. In the same way, Henry the author talks about how he transcribes what happened to him and turns that story into a novel. In addition, I am able to see similarities between Yann Martel and Henry the author, the same way I was able to see similarities between Yann Martel and the unnamed author in Life of Pi. I think metafiction makes both novels unique and fun. It makes the novels seem more realistic in a way, too. I believe the reader connects more to a main character who acknowledges that he or she is in a novel that readers will take in and analyze. I certainly felt this way as I read the novel. Thus, the metafiction in Beatrice and Virgil works well for me.
6 Berg
Honestly, I am still deciphering how I truly feel about Yann Martel’s novel, Beatrice and Virgil. I am intrigued by it, and have mostly enjoyed this piece of literature, though at times I was not so convinced that my interest would remain steady. The majority of this novel, the first 180 pages or so, seems to be one very long introduction, leading up to the last few pages, when the action “starts.” However, the introduction has seemed to grab my attention even more than the ending. This novel is very random and all over the place, though I think that is what Martel was going for, in order to convey his piece of literature truthfully. For the most part, the randomness and capriciousness of this novel have intrigued me, and thus essentially “worked” for me. Although, there were times when my brain no longer desired the random, and yet the randomness never ceased. Throughout the novel, Martel has placed many things that you would not think belong in this particular novel, though when further analyzed, it does not seem as anything truly belongs. However, through these sporadic objects and moments, he has created many ideas and situations which the reader has to really think about and decipher for themselves, which is what many believe to a goal of Martel while he was writing this specific novel.
6 Barton
I have got about 40 pages left to go in Beatrice & Virgil, but I hear things get pretty heated towards the end. So far, I am not a fan of this book. It is just not working for me. I am far from understanding any of the symbolism (that usually comes to me after I have read the entire book and I go back and reflect on what I just read). I find myself excited to read the book, but then once I start reading I become bored with the lack of plot and action, much like Henry’s (the taxidermist) play. Again, I have not finished the book so we will see if things turn around. Some questions I have about the book are: how did the taxidermist come to be the way he is? What does Yann Martel base his writing off of? Usually, when I write, it is based off something that is present in my life. Did Martel actually have an experience similar to this, or are his creative juices flowing off the charts? I am still unsure about how the shirt represents a country, or what the writing on the back of Beatrice symbolizes, or why it is a donkey and a monkey in the first place. All of these questions have flooded my head as I’ve read this book; hopefully, the forum tomorrow brings some clarity, as it always has.
7 Knutson
In Beatrice & Virgil the abstract and strange elements did work for me as the plot line progressed, but in the beginning I felt that Yann Martel was just throwing different situations at me, that have no connection to each other. As the novel continued I began to understand why he began the novel this way and started to enjoy it more. The weird occurrences throughout the novel helped me to remember the story. They stay in my head which is a good choice on Yann Martel’s part. I thought the description of the pear was very interesting. How Martel could take something that seems so simple and turn it into something with enormous detail was amazing. Virgil described the pear filling almost 8 pages. He described it using other fruits such as the black spots on a banana and the shape of an avocado. The sensations you acquire while reading about the experience of eating the pear is a delightful and sensual experience. At first I did not understand the relationship between Beatrice and Virgil but as the plot line thickened I began to understand the meaning behind their placement in the novel.
6 Etrheim
Beatrice and Virgil is for sure a novel I have never read anything like it before. When I first started reading the book, it was hard for me to keep going and to actually pay attention to (or understand) what was happening in this novel. I was somewhat confused with all of the unusual, yet interesting, elements in this novel. Although once I finished reading this book I enjoyed how it all came together at the end. It was not my favorite when Yann Martel would go from the taxidermist reading some of his play to Henry and Henry talking to one another. I wanted to hear more about the play or how it all started/ended but I never got to. It was also a disappointment to me how it took Martel 170 pages to finally make the novel more interesting to his readers. But with that much build up to the end, it made it more worth it because I did not see any of it coming. Overall, this novel’s abstract and strange elements did work for me.
6 Clark
Throughout this novel, the strange elements put together with bricolage started to work for me towards the end. At the beginning, first 100 pages or so, I could not get into this book. I continued to read on not really understanding his point of those beginning pages. It finally took off though and grabbed my attention. All of the random items working together actually made it interesting and allowed me to become entertained and aware of what he was trying to explain. There are so many references to the Holocaust that I didn't even know were apart of the Holocaust until I researched them. While other people pick up on more symbols than me usually, I think that I have done very well on understanding the symbols and analyzing what they mean. I have had to research some though which has helped me to understand more of the Holocaust. Although, this book started out not so good for me, I have come to enjoy it and will continue to look forward to it as I read the next 30 pages. Yann Martel is a brilliant writer but I believe that Life of Pi tops this book by far.
6 Steffel
The idea of writing or reading a book as such, with its outlandish style and radical notions is not in the least the problem with the book. I have read and enjoyed countless books that follow in the same suite, having both increasingly confusing storylines and obscure metaphors and meanings throughout. But what did occur to be a major problem was the unfolding of the book as you read. The book, to me carried very little if at all any weight, the only part that in the least intrigued me was why the book was written at all. It would and apparently does not appeal to most in the likes of fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, or historical taste. The book seemed to wander and meander as Yann ranted nonsensically almost seeming to inoculate words just to give it the length necessary to be published as a novel. The abrupt ending although its circumstance intriguing did not seem to tie into the story at all and the well to overdone ending, as the last remaining shred of paper so impossibly salvaged inspires the narrator to continue with his works, was no more than an extra five pages I enjoyed no more than the first. But if one thing is to come of the book it is the similarity between the taxidermist signature and that of Yann Martel's.
6 Zajicek
Throughout this book I have found it incredibly hard to read due to the random bricolage elements. Reading through this book and finding that there is frankly no plot has made my desire to read this book very low and has ultimately made this book boring. Although I must truck through, the bricolage elements have not worked in my favor. When stumbling upon one of these strange elements I get confused and flustered. I try finding the meaning for them and once I think I have figured it out I’m completely and utterly wrong. I think that Martel tried to make the book interesting with the bricolage elements but for me with no plot or anything truly exciting happening I just find it a hard book to read. Although giving credit to author for his imagination and the way he thinks outside of the box. To try and write a book with so much pain behind it and pair it with a character as a donkey or monkey that are most commonly known to be light hearted, and to an extent made fun, is a risky move that he tries to handle.
6 Benitez
The abstract and Strange elements of the story do work for me. They help to draw me in and cause me to wonder and question the book. During Virgil’s description of a pear, it had been awhile since I had last had a pear; I thought of Virgil’s words and thought if they would match my description and make me remember what a good pear is like. As well the metafiction of it being an author writing a book and just his life, makes me wonder if this is what happened to Yann Martel for a part of his life. As well the strangeness of reading a book about an author who is listening to a play, is obviously strange yet very intriguing because it goes against the normalities of books and being just a story of something. Henry going into the taxidermists and seeing all the animals and his entire experience at it, makes me want to see how realistic the taxidermy in real life compared to the ones in the book. The use of animals in place of humans is not rare but not super common way to have characters and makes it so that anything can happen to these characters and make it more interesting.
6 Eigenberg
This novel is unlike any book I have read. I think that the abstract elements are fairly easy to pick out, but then again, I could be missing them completely. Reading this novel is boring. I’m not going to lie. Reading comes very easy to me, but this novel wasn’t easy to finish. It picked up at the end, but I still feel unentertained. The abstract elements seemed unnecessary, because most people already know all of that information about the holocaust. Strange elements include a taxidermied donkey and howler monkey that are alive. This is somewhat intriguing due to my interest in taxidermy, but it still seems ridiculous. As state previously, the symbolism and abstract elements were easy to pick out. The references to the holocaust seemed unnecessary due to there being no plot in the story in my opinion. There seems to be no main problem that needs to be solved, only little random predicaments that I don’t find interest in. Comparing the elements in other books we have read, Beatrice and Virgil easy takes the cake as the most abstract. And for that reason, I have little to no interest in how this story has played out, and how it ended.
6 Braley
I think to say that Beatrice and Virgil is the strangest novel I have read would be a very untrue statement. Just being in the Honors English classes alone has exposed me to stories were two teenagers have a fling and then kill themselves, another was about farm animals getting sick of their farmer and thus decided to run the farm themselves, and there was even one were a town of people started murdering each other because of the word of a few young girls. Even when you look at the books we have read in Literature 201 they are all around very strange subjects, boys trapped on an island where a pig's head talks to one, a mental institution where the head nurse hates men and wants them all to follow her rule, even Mr. Martel's other novel tells the tale of a sixteen-year-old living on a boat with an adult Bengal tiger for nearly a year. Even outside of class I have come across some very strange plot lines, one example of this would be a whole series of books based on the idea that talking cats get together in the forest and have organized their own society just outside of ours. That being said Beatrice and Virgil is still a very surreal book full of events that seem to come charging in out of nowhere only to leave as quickly as they came, but for me, I find it rather intriguing. After being exposed to some of the weirder parts of the human imagination I am now curious to discover why such absurdities are taking place. Is there a reason behind them? Is it just some nonsensical fun? Either way, I always find myself reading deeper into the book in order to put the pieces all together, and Beatrice and Virgil is no exception to this. The one aspect of this that stands out to the most is the play itself, the whole thing is very strange, a donkey and a howler monkey, who are good friends no less, are living together on a shirt and spend a considerable amount of time and pages to describe a simple pear. The whole concept of the play is just odd, and on top of it, all the play is given to the reader in chunks which in turns forces the reader, much like the author Henry, to continue to come back if they would like to know how it all ends.
7 Dybdahl
At the beginning of the book, the abstract and strange elements confused me a little bit. I think I was confused because the novel Beatrice and Virgil is very different to what I would normally read. The pear, shirt, howler monkey, donkey, and Holocaust are all important in the novel, but I did not see the significance right away. It made me wonder why the author was adding these details into the novel. As I read more, I realized everything was there for a reason and it all started to come together and make sense. I understood the striped shirt had a relation to the Holocaust and also the posters going around about Virgil. I like how us readers were kept confused until we continued to read and put the pieces together. I like the way the author, Yann Martel, created his characters. They are very unique and are not what you typically see in a book. I also liked how Henry the author is very similar to Yann Martel. I feel like I had to think very hard while reading this book, and look farther into a book than I normally do.
Blue 7
The abstractness of the novel Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel sort of works for me. I just finished reading the book so I was able to understand parts of it looking back now. For example, while I was reading the book I had no idea why he had the scene where the Erasmus kills their cat. However, looking back I see that he used it as a foreshadowing device for the stabbing of Henry by the taxidermist. By the end of the book I also understood why he gives the taxidermist and the author the same name because Martel wants readers to understand anyone could have been a Nazi and it is easy to be lead astray from humanity. I do wish however the earlier scenes from the play were written with more intent on connecting to the Holocaust. Not up until the scene where Beatrice is arrested is the connection fully clear. This made reading four-fifths of this book very confusing. Although Martel might have used this tactic to make us like the taxidermist, rather than knowing he was a terrible guy all along. By doing this he makes us question our own moral compasses.
Loosbrock 7
The novel and the techniques used by Yann Martel and his novel Beatrice and Virgil did not appeal to me. The technique of the inception of the novel was the only item that piqued any of my interest. I truly got the sense that Henry the writer is Yann Martel. Many clues gave this away to me as both authors expressed much interest in animals and the blending of fiction and nonfiction. The descriptive and plot techniques did not flatter me in the least. It is clear that Martel is a fantastic writer and a master of description but his use of it is too bland in the story. The descriptive conversations between the donkey and monkey exude brilliance but also dullness. The Holocaust metaphor is such a stretch that it does not cause me to look at the Holocaust in a new way at all. I was under the impression that the novel was meant to make me view the Holocaust from a new perspective and it failed terribly. Much like the Taxidermist had trouble completing the play, I feel Yann Martel had trouble writing this book.
7 Livingston P
Beatrice and Virgil and the strangeness and bricolage that came with it made it an easy read in my opinion. You never knew what random object was going to be brought up next, that made me want to continue reading on. It is easier to read strange things that make you go back and re-read what you just read to make sure you read it right the first time than it is otherwise. The first thing I noticed that was not typical with the book compared to others one I have read in the past is the two main characters having the same name. Another thing that I was surprised to see was the combination of humans and animals in the play of the taxidermist. I could not help but think if possessing the knowledge humans do, would some of the bigger predators such as bears take over the world, or at least the area around where they live? Something I did not put together, at least yet, is how of all the random items in the book all link together. Maybe that is left up to the reader and my classmates can help out during the forum.
Haase 7
I am struggling to really follow along with all of the randomness that is going on, and it gets kind of boring when you don't know what is really going on. It is hard for me to connect some of the stuff together because it seems so out of the blue. We were exposed to bricolage in art classes that I was in already, and it was really cool how even with all the random pieces that the artist find and decides to use it ends up being a really cool work of art, when it only started out as random or separate pieces and was choppy along the way. I feel like Beatrice and Virgil is like that, while I might be confused along the way right now by all the random items Yann Martel is using, that if I keep reading and get to the end that it will all make sense and make a beautiful crafted book in the end. Things that might seem random now will eventually connect full circle to make sense in the end.
Broekemeier 7
This novel, overall-- to me-- is vague. I have found heaps upon heaps of symbolic undertones in every single aspect of this novel, but what it directly alludes to confounds me. Such remotely unconnected shapes and thoughts have been applied to create what I imagine to some is a coherent image; this eludes me. Obviously the Holocaust is a prevalent theme throughout the entirety of the novel, but only because it is directly mentioned by the characters/narrator am I absolutely resolute in this idea. The themes are frustrating to me in their subtlety. I am trying with utmost effort to efficiently deduce this novel and extract every possible morsel of actual thought from it, but I think potentially that was Martel’s intention(s): to give the reader so many possible routes to identify and analyze all these ideas he has thrown into his story and to personally determine what it means and how it connects. Without having personally spoken to Martel I have no way of authenticating this “theory”. Only time and further introspection and potentially mad ravings and obsession with the story will give me any answer verging on remotely satisfactory.
Tingle 6
The randomness that I came across as I ran out of pages in the book really frustrated me. Even after the forum, I continue to have many unresolved questions, hence why the ending left me feeling extremely frustrated and unsatisfied. Why is the taxidermist writing this play? Was it to try to have remorse over being a nazi? Why did his play take place on a t-shirt? Why did the taxidermist smile at Henry before burning down inside his shop? I know that the events throughout the book were heavily correlated to the holocaust, so what was Yann Martel’s main goal for the publication of this Beatrice and Virgil? Was it to spread awareness about the detrimental effects of the Holocaust? Is he attempting to prevent another “-ism” (sexism, racism, etc) from becoming popular? I do not understand. I lack a creative imagination, and reading books that require me to draw back into my imagination flat out frustrate me. Books that contain an organized plot appeal to me more, mainly because I understand them. But, I also know that reading these books also helps my learning grow, therefore helping me become a better student. So, I guess the strange elements that I read about through the story did “work for “me” in a way.
3 Scholten
Beatrice and Virgil was a very interesting novel and different than books I have read in the past. This book was very hard to get into and there was no action in the plot until the very end. This book was really slow moving and this book was kinda boring to me. At first, all the strange and abstract elements confused me and I did not get the book at all. I didn’t know how a monkey and donkey was supposed to be related to the Holocaust. As the book progressed, I started to understand some of the strange elements Yann Martel used in this book. The monkey and the donkey symbolized all of the Jews that were part of the Holocaust. The monkey and donkey were not treated fairly just like the Jews weren’t in the Holocaust. The poster of the monkey was just like the posters of the Jews that the Nazis put up in World War II. They both told lies about the Jews and the monkey. Lastly, the bricolage makes this novel very hard to follow. I have never read a book that uses pure bricolage before so it was just different and little confusing at times. Even though this book was a little confusing, I am still glad I read the book.
3 Clemenson
While I was able to follow along throughout the book a decent amount of the time, the books strange elements makes it worth the read and a great option to use in a Literature class--even if the book did not work for me. The usage of different styles of text makes this book unique; however, the bouncing around and odd stories presented throughout the book were off putting for me. The last 40 pages of the book was fascinating to read and provided a better structure in which I enjoy to read. However, I could not get into the first 160 pages enough that the last 40 could not make up for it. While I have not taken the time to reread anything yet, parts like the pear scene seem off putting, and make it harder to follow. Through my first impression, I think he is saying how anything can be explained well enough to give us emotion even if we never seen it--if you can explain the horrors of the holocaust well enough, people learn to never do it again. Also, the taxidermists paragraph on his opinion of the art behind taxidermy was fascinating to read as that is something I had never taken the time to think about. As I reexamine tonight, hopefully things fall into place better and I’ll understand his elements, but ultimately, the first time through left me to distracted to pick up on certain things. Regardless of my experience, the way Yann Martel was able to write about a topic like the holocaust in such a unique manner, but still allow for a powerful message is something to envy.
3 Hauge
Does the abstract and strange elements (pure bricolage) of this novel work for you?
So far it does for me. I’m really intrigued about the pear, monkey, donkey, and banana play in part of this play Henry is trying to write. I’m trying to pull out as many symbolic things as I can from these odd elements he uses. The striped shirt reminds me of the Jew’s uniform in the prison. Beatrice and Virgil are Jews in a camp who are losing hope in faith as some Jews may have during the Holocaust. They talk about the sun going down and shadows taking over like how they’re faith is fading and evil is taking over. Like there is evil around every corner and no way to avoid it and maybe to just give in. There is a part in the beginning of Henry’s story where Beatrice can’t find Virgil. In relation to the Holocaust it alludes to situations where close family members or friends can’t find one another after splitting up. To me I like this book the abstract elements add a new freshness to a book that could be like any other book, though this one makes people think more and adds a bit more curiosity and wonder to the novel.
3 Hauge
Does the abstract and strange elements (pure bricolage) of this novel work for you?
So far it does for me. I’m really intrigued about the pear, monkey, donkey, and banana play in part of this play Henry is trying to write. I’m trying to pull out as many symbolic things as I can from these odd elements he uses. The striped shirt reminds me of the Jew’s uniform in the prison. Beatrice and Virgil are Jews in a camp who are losing hope in faith as some Jews may have during the Holocaust. They talk about the sun going down and shadows taking over like how they’re faith is fading and evil is taking over. Like there is evil around every corner and no way to avoid it and maybe to just give in. There is a part in the beginning of Henry’s story where Beatrice can’t find Virgil. In relation to the Holocaust it alludes to situations where close family members or friends can’t find one another after splitting up. To me I like this book the abstract elements add a new freshness to a book that could be like any other book, though this one makes people think more and adds a bit more curiosity and wonder to the novel.
1 Beck
The abstract and strange elements of the novel worked well for me. When I was reading the novel I did not imagine that there would be pages of the novel that was spent talking about a young boy killing creatures or even pages spent discussing a pear. These pages really worked for me. By adding these abstract and strange elements to the book it help to give me things to picture in my head as I read. I am not saying that I like to imagine a young boy killing creatures, I just like to be able to read something and be able to make a clear picture in my head of what is going on. I enjoyed the pages about the pear very much since Beatrice and Virgil talk about it in such great detail. However, when Virgil is describing the pear to Beatrice he is putting many things together to form what he wants and he makes Beatrice believe it. This in a way reminds me of the Holocaust in the way that Hitler makes his followers believe whatever he tells them. Although these elements of the novel make images in my head that I enjoy there is still parts that are dull and lifeless. In my reading I have seen that the book is going very slow and and makes it some what difficult to read on in the book.
1 Talcott
The abstract and strange elements of Beatrice and Virgil most certainly did not work for me. I understood a lot of references and certain Holocaust illusions, but I do not think as a whole the book portrayed that to me. The bricolage of a shirt, taxidermy, a donkey, and the holocaust throughout the novel made it somewhat difficult(for me personally) to think of it as a coherent story. Though I did not enjoy this aspect of the story, I did enjoy the various elements of metafiction. I enjoy properly used metafiction in almost any art form, so this it was a very enjoyable part of the book when I could pick out the metafictional facets. I very much am looking forward to the forum on Friday. It will be very useful for me, as it always is, to see what insight other students have on the book. As I said, I have found some deeper aspects of this story but I most definitely have failed to discover them all. I look forward to hearing what you and my fellow classmates have to say on this subject.
7 Woessner
Beatrice and Virgil is a very strange and interesting novel. This novel is definitely very different from any other novel I have read. The abstract and strange elements in this unique novel really gives me something vivid to picture in my head; making the novel a tad bit easier to understand in a way--though still very confusing. Beatrice and Virgil did not turn out to be anything like what I expected. I personally did not enjoy the novel as a whole, but I feel it is a good novel to study in terms of imagery and strange concepts. The pear scene is an interesting one to me, for the metaphor towards Nazi Germany and propaganda is stunning. Virgil could describe the pear to Beatrice in any way he wishes, and Beatrice would have to believe Virgil, being that Beatrice has never had the enjoyment of tasting a pear. This is similar to what Hitler did with his people by way of propaganda.
7 Symington
In my opinion, while I was reading Beatrice and Virgil, I found the random symbols such as the taxidermied animals, the pear, and the taxidermist, quite a strange combination in which Yann Martel chose to write about. However, they do, in a small way, work for me. I see all of these working together and making sense to create the overall story. I initially, found reading this book to be quite boring and difficult to read at times considering the strange elements but towards the end, it began to make more sense and I began to like the book better as it progressed. In my opinion, I enjoy the way Yann Martel uses descriptive adjectives to give an extra sense of visual aspect. For example, I am not a person who likes pears. However, after reading the section about how the fruit looks, feels, and smells, the extra imagery gave me a sense that I wanted to try one. Where I am reading right now, I can find small similarities between the holocaust and the different aspects of propaganda against Virgil, similar to the way that the Nazis dehumanized the Jews.
3 Roby
As I have been reading Beatrice and Virgil I have found the novel confusing and extremely boring. The dialogue between both Henrys can be hard to follow at times and I think that having both main characters with the same name was a bad choice for the novel. I have been struggling to finish reading the novel because I cannot bring myself to read such a boring and confusing book. I have been listening to an audio recording of the book and that has made it much easier to understand the conversations between the Henrys as the audiobook voices two different accents for each person, but listening to the book has not made it easier to stay interested in the novel. I have not yet understood the connection between the donkey, monkey, shirt, and pear to the Holocaust, I feel that it is all very random and the symbols are stretching to make sense. Everything in this book seems very vague which I guess might be Yann Martel’s intention, so the reader can imagine their own details to the story. The ending was a such a big twist that I was not expecting, but I do feel that it ended abruptly and awkwardly. I am not a big fan of this book but maybe it was just because I don’t understand the symbolism behind everything.
6 Reinschmidt
I found some of the abstract and strange elements of Martel’s story to be confusing at times, while effective at others. My opinion is that it started slow, but picked up the pace at the end when all of the pieces started coming together. Beatrice and Virgil is unlike any book that I have ever read before, merely by the fact that so many stories were told within the novel (bricolage). I feel as though the story jumped around quite a bit, from the pets dying to Henry’s acting career to a thorough description of a pear. I am still unsure as to where that exactly ties in to the meaning of the story as a whole. After listening to Professor Hicks speak before I finished the novel, I enjoyed noticing the connections between the play and how the taxidermist was acting. I loved the connection between the story about Julian and the taxidermist justifying his actions during World War II. Julian was still redeemed even though he killed so many creatures, just as the taxidermist believes that he will be saved. I believe that Yann Martel is an extremely talented author because through this novel specifically, I have encountered some literary devices and techniques that I have never seen before.
6 Waltner
As I read this book I honestly found it to be quite confusing and hard to follow at the beginning. Although I tried to keep an open mind and hoped something would spark my interest--nothing seemed to do such. I personally did not like the abstract and pure bricolage of this novel. In my opinion the book did not have a plot, as it went from one thing to the next suddenly. However this was most definitely not one of my favorite novels, there were a few aspects I enjoyed. One aspect I enjoyed was continued use of animals and other themes to portray different meanings of the Holocaust. Every single part of the play had a total different meaning than what was just being read, which was tough to figure out at times. This was very interesting, but I believe he over did it for my liking. Towards the end of the book, after 160 pages or so, something interesting happened for once. I found the end of the book to be very intriguing and wish there was more action like this throughout the novel.
3 Livingston
The abstract and strange elements that are within Beatrice and Virgil kind of work and kind of don’t work for me. There are parts, such as the pear scene, that I can make zero connection to what the story is about as a whole. There’s several pages dedicated to describing what a pear looks like and it doesn’t even do anything for the plot of the story. Some of the weird and abstract elements seem like filler to me sometimes. On the other hand, there are several instances where they do work to highlight some of the key points of the book. There are many strange allusions to the Holocaust within the book that I never would have even thought about, one being that the play is set on a striped shirt. One of the parts that I thought was one of the best elements that related to the Holocaust was making the extinction of animals correspond to the near extinction of the Jews. I think that was a clever way to allude to the Holocaust, especially when the taxidermist tells Henry that two thirds of animals are extinct, much like two thirds of the Jews were eliminated during the Holocaust. There are some elements that are just plain confusing in my point of view, but others that really help you understand the meaning behind the book.
1 Forster
While I am sure the pure bricolage of ‘Beatrice and Virgil’ serves a purpose that Yann Martel intended, it made for some major confusion in my mind at times. The abstract and strange elements did not work for me. To be completely honest, I did not particularly enjoy reading this book, and if it were not for this class, I likely would not have continued after the first twenty pages or so. Though I did not enjoy the randomness of this novel, I definitely benefitted from the casual tone Martel wrote in. The style in which he wrote the book made me feel as if he were talking directly to me, which helped to engage me. This is good since the abstractness of the book failed to do so. Still after finishing the novel, I am unable to comprehend why Martel would write a book this way, with so many strange elements wound together in such an unorganized way. I hope that discussion with my classmates during the forum tomorrow will assist me in understanding the purpose of this bricolage.
1 Campbell
As I am reading this novel, I find it kind of difficult to follow along due to the strange addition of random things. I will be honest in saying I am not a huge fan of this book. There’s nothing that really drew me in and interested me other than the mentionings about the Holocaust. From the talk we just attended, I learned a lot more about the Holocaust and what actually happened. Therefore, when looking back, I understand those references now. However, the randomness of this text is very hard to follow and understand. I am trying to understand if these objects and things have a deeper meaning, but I really don’t think that they do. I think this book is very confusing and I would have to read it a couple more times to fully understand what is actually going on. Yann Martel is an excellent writer and I really enjoyed Life of Pi, but even from reading that it was confusing at the end because you didn’t truly know if there had been actual people on the boat or if it was the animals. Perhaps this is a writing technique for Martel, and he is purposefully trying to confuse readers. If that is what he is trying to do, I personally think he succeeding.
3 Scherb
This whole book has been a very weird experience for me personally, it’s almost like a weird story that just keeps getting weirder the more you read it. The whole pear description and those kinds of things really threw me for a loop in general. Although, I must say, that description of a pear was extremely well thought out and definitely gave a great idea of what a pear might actually look like if you had no idea of what a pear was. I still don’t think that it’s easily possible to show someone what something is when it hasn’t been seen, but the effort was commendable for sure, and impressive at the least. Another thing that was just super bizarre to me was the amount of animals that were displayed in the taxidermy shop, it just seemed like overkill to me. I didn’t think that a taxidermy shop was a place that sold things pre-made so to speak, but more of a professional service shop that took work for people like hunters of maybe zoos that needed something preserved or for show. Other than that, I didn’t mind the book. The 3rd person seemed a little awkward at some parts, but no major complaints really.
3 Casey
For myself personally, I have gone back and forth with my feelings on this book. As I’m reading it I find myself getting more interested in it as I go but I’m not sure if it is only because I’m unsure of the direction of the book and where it is going or if it might be because of the oddness of the book in general. I am also wondering if there is any literal meaning to this or if it is all supposed to symbolize the Holocaust. I wonder if metafiction is just a way to spice up a story or if it is a way to explain the author's methods. When the idea of a pear being the best fruit was introduced to the class before we had started reading I thought it was insanely strange. When I got to the play that Henry the Taxidermist had written I initially thought that it would be annoyingly pointless but as I read it I found it interesting in an odd way. This book has surprised me in the fact that I didn’t think I would enjoy it.
6 Baldridge
This is one of the most difficult books that I have ever read. I am having the toughest time trying to force myself to read it and keep myself interested. I think that his strange writing technique could be appeasing to other people, but it is definitely not really my thing. Reading already is something that I don't like to partake in, but I have done my best to try and read all the stories that have been given, no matter how difficult. This is for sure one of the more complex books that we have given. I also get confused when it talks about a book inside of a book. A lot of this book seems somewhat pointless and the meaning behind a lot of it gets quite lost in translation. I am happy that we will have a forum because then maybe it will all get explained a little bit better and make it more clear for my foggy brain to understand.
1 Singh
This book has been a fresh and new experience that I have never encountered in any english class that I have taken. Most of the other stories I have read follow a similar basic guideline. This book’s strange elements add to its personality and uniqueness. Yann Martel uses imagery so perfectly like he did in The Life of Pi which really made the book most enjoyable in my opinion. The randomness and weirdness kept me intrigued the whole time and kept me guessing and thinking about the novel more and more. When the weirdness started to make sense towards the end of the novel I felt very satisfied. I think this is an ideal story about the Holocaust because it talks about it in a better way than just laying out facts and dates. The book did, however, leave me with lingering questions about the different symbols and elements that did not quite make sense to me. An example would be the description of the pear and its significance. Despite the few confusing moments I had with the novel, I enjoyed it very much and hope to read another novel like this one.
1 Reese
The strange and abstract elements of this book at first through me off. I was initially reading not understanding what exactly was going on. Also, with the previous knowledge of the book relating to the Holocaust, I was slightly confused throughout the book on how exactly it was relating to the Holocaust, but after reading the entire book the obvious answer is that the taxidermist is a Nazi. Even though on the surface not much can actually can be connected to the Holocaust but so much can if you look deeper and that adds so much to the masterful writing of Yann Martel that makes his novels so great. On top of that, his writing style in Beatrice and Virgil speaks volume on how novels can be written in unconventional ways even though many critics spoke strongly against this book. This abstract style of writing is something that I actually love in books, it allowed for me to read more without knowing it because I was so engulfed in the book that I wanted to know more about what was happening and what was going to happen. When people say that the book was bad and boring just tells me that they did not understand what Martel was trying to convey in this abstract style of book layout.
7 Olthoff
My seemingly unpopular opinion about the book is that it was an easy read for me. The way Yann Martel expertly crafts his books really challenges the reader to think, which made the book more enjoyable for me and made me fly through the pages. The pear scene particularly stuck out to me. The way Martel can take up three pages talking about a pear shows what an incredible author he is and how well he uses imagery. His description was perfect for someone who doesn’t know what a pear looks like to feel as though they have seen one. The randomness of the objects he talks about really force the reader to think about what they could mean and it makes them come up with theories. This is what made the book very entertaining for me. The ending of the book was phenomenal. Although all my questions aren’t answered, the unpredictability of it all was enough to make it well worth the read. I am a little concerned about the forum though, as not much analysis has been done online because of the newness of the book, so I will have to come up with everything on my own, unable to piggyback and go deeper into ideas that others on the web had.
1 Quanbeck
I have mixed feelings about the novel Beatrice and Virgil. I thought it was interesting to read, as it left me continually wondering what it meant, or if it even meant anything. Three fourths of the novel didn’t click until the end. Also, the taxidermist was just so unlikeable. By the second visit I was just done with that guy. I would have walked away and not looked back. I suppose I somewhat enjoyed reading the novel, but I didn’t overly enjoy the novel itself. I think a distinction can be drawn between the experience of some “thing” and the “thing” itself.
I think one contributing factor to my opinion of Beatrice and Virgil was that I feel a bit burned out on reading about the holocaust. I feel it is very important to know about what happened and to be aware of the history, however I’ve spent so much time learning about it. We spent a great deal of our time in English 10 reading about the holocaust and its been mixed in throughout our education (rightfully so). It just gets old after a while, which is the terrible truth. It’s like math: yeah it’s important, but I’m not super keen on hearing about it. Perhaps that a poor analogy… I also kinda like math. I digress. I didn’t love Beatrice and Virgil.
7 Poole
"Beatrice and Virgil" by Yann Martel was different than any other novel I have ever read. It was about the holocaust but set in a modern time. The two animals: a donkey and a monkey, were risky and could have been taken offensively. It was also a risk writing fiction about it rather than a true story, such as "Night" by Elie Wiesel. I think I would have enjoyed it more if there was more variety throughout the years. I have learned about the holocaust every year for five or more years in a row. I didn't enjoy some of the elements, such as the back and forth in the play. I wish there were more characters in the play. I did think it was interesting that Martel chose the name Henry for both of his main characters, rather than choosing two different names. As far as metafiction is concerned, Martel, in my opinion, did a good job. He has gotten more than his fair share of backlash for writing "Beatrice and Virgil", but I believe that he should receive at least some praise for the unique idea of choosing the style that he did.
I really quite enjoy it. The junction of stories within the stories are quite fascinating. You have the story of Henry the writer, the story of Beatrice and Virgil, and the story of the taxidermist.
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