Entry 1. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
Since I completely forgot about keeping the journal in pace with the reading, it seems to me decidedly inconvenient that I finished reading the book. So I must start from the last impression I felt as I closed the book and work my way up from there.
So, first things first (or last things first, actually). I felt like crying when I closed the book. Or actually the pdf file. And that was in the middle of the Vector Calculus class, which was also a bit inconvenient, because looking slightly down at your screen is nothing to attract attention, but holding your head up so that you don't accidentally burst into tears or anything can be pretty conspicuous. And conspicuous it was.
Anyway, I am not a very emotional person. It takes a pretty impressive story to put water in my eyes. And the book did it. I'm not saying that this is any big deal, numerous movies and books have done it in the whole eighteen years of my life. But the real thing is, the book made me realize what crying about a story is all about.
What that means has a long history. I have never liked the fact that I am not a very emotional person, and I've tried my tears more than a dozen times by watching credibly sad movies. But all that were reflected in my eyes were just a bunch of tearful actors on screen and not a drop of tear. That happened with If Only, Leon: the Professional, and Story Sadder than Sad. And a pile of others of which I cannot recall the titles.
Naturally, I admired all the women in the world. They were always sobbing over movies and books. Sometimes even over poems. Man, I wanted to sob, too, but did not know how. So, to console myself, I made a hypothesis with a little information I read in a magazine. Maybe I were biologically impervious to sobbing. Maybe I did have the emotional and the intellectual nerve to feel the emotional factor that happened to make girls weep, but just did not have enough tear drops in my eyeballs.
And, as I read this book, I constantly thought of my hypothesis to see if I could feel anything at all if I could not cry. And I did. In every one of those moments of inconsolable institutionalization or vivacious victory of Andy and Red, I did feel it. A little windy feeling buzzing beside my ears. That was probably it.
So that is why I liked the book.
First off, I have to say this is wonderfully written. The intro with its subtle nod to Andy (best line the book? It definitely made it into film) is conveniently humorous. And I know what you mean about almost crying. The film and book do the same to me every time I encounter them - perhaps more so with the film. I honestly wish I'd read the book before the film to get more from it. But like most of you it was reverse engineering that was surprisingly rewarding in itself.
답글삭제So while I really like this post, I was hoping you'd expand more into what exactly it was you liked so much - a deeper dive into the text, so to speak. In any case, great personal reflection.