I Completely Forgot About The Scene Where Laurie Seems Pleased To Be Perceived As Older! And While I

Hello! OK this is more an ask about a question, but you know you on the tag game when you mentioned Bunny and what happened in the car, you made me think. I'm not sure if there was actual contact, I tended to think of it as Bunny 'trying it on', but when I re-read it, it's clear Laurie is genuinely scared, and perhaps he suddenly realises he has no real idea who this guy is but he's also trying to make light of it. And then the little internal monologue is so pompous I find it hard to be sympathetic with him! But anyway, I wondered what you thought about it?

Hey! Thanks for this ask! I was debating making a post where I talked about it because it really confused me but you beat me to it with this question! When I went back to reread that scene, I didn’t expect to be so confused. I definitely agree that Laurie’s got some huge pompous lines in this one, but that wasn’t really the part that captured my attention or confused me. I was expecting the lines because I remembered reading them the first time. What I didn’t remember was getting the sense that Bunny was a real threat to Laurie. I think this is because I didn't realise how impossible the situation was?

The part that really made me think twice about Bunny and the car scene was this:

“Something primitive stirred in Laurie, as in a solitary man beset by the creatures of a swamp or forest “Oh, no,” he said. “I shouldn’t take that tone, if I were you.” This, thought Laurie, is what he doesn’t tell everyone. The practiced inflection had held many chapters of inadvertent autobiography. “You know,” he said, “Ralph’s going to wake up before long and ring the hospital to see I got back all right. If I haven’t, what do you expect me to do tomorrow? Back up your story?””

The line that caught my eye here was 'The practiced inflection had held many chapters of inadvertent autobiography.' I don't know why it did, but based on the situation as a whole, it kind of seemed to imply to me that Bunny was someone who coerced others?

So, if you think about it: here we have Bunny who puts Laurie in an impossible situation. Laurie is physically disabled, and needs to be conveyed to the hospital. They're out in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere when Bunny makes advances and is rebuffed. Angry at this, he tries to throw Laurie out of the car. Again, they're in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, and Laurie cannot walk. At this point in the story, he can barely be on his leg for an hour or two (at most) without his pain flaring up. So, there is no way Laurie can leave that car and get to the hospital safely. Only Bunny can get him there; he is entirely dependent on him. This is the situation he finds himself in. Bunny knows this, and after Laurie refuses to leave, responds saying: "I shouldn't take that tone, if I were you.' These words make clear that he knows Laurie is at his mercy, and is also warning him to be more agreeable. And it's not even just the words apparently, because Laurie says: "The practiced inflection had held many chapters of inadvertent autobiography." In other words, this tone of warning is itself practiced and reveals something about the one using it; based on everything above, I assumed it revealed that Bunny had done this all before, i.e. put others—who may not have had a Ralph to threaten him with—in similar impossible situations where the only way out would be responding favourably to his sexual advances.

I don't know if I'm reaching or reading too much into it, but this was what I got when I read it. I hope this made at least some sense. What do you think? And of course, thank you for the ask!

Oh, I forgot about the stream! 😭 I wish I'd taken more notice when I was going back again and tried to compare all the descriptions of them 😭

After I read the scene where Laurie recognises a bit of Andrew in an old photograph of Ralph, I went back to re-read (again) the part where Laurie meets Andrew for the first time because I was absolutely convinced there must be something in how he's described that clues you into Laurie making an unconscious connection to Ralph...only thing I came away with is that Laurie really likes blonds 😭

Odysseus: What do you think?

Achilles: I wasn't listening but I strongly disagree with Agamemnon.

Hello there, I would love to hear all your thoughts on 'The Last of the Wine'!

Hey, thanks for the ask! I really loved Last of the Wine! Alexias was a lovely character, and it was really interesting to watch his development and the development of his relationship with Lysis! He was so sweet in the beginning and then he became harder as the book went on; his father said that he once thought Alexias was 'too soft' to be a soldier, and I think he was right to feel that way at a certain point! His entire character progression was a trip to get through!

I absolutely loved the writing, which was beautiful as always, and there are some parts of the story I don't think I'm going to forget about anytime soon; the story of Phaedo (I cried), the moment Alexias exposes his brother and asks him 'bear no ill-will to me' (I cried), quotes like 'at Gurgos's once I lay awake considering how to kill him. But already it was too late,' 'I saw death reach out for you; and I had no philosophy,' 'if there be any god who concerns himself with the lives of men, the god himself must suffer with me,' etc. etc. It was just so good but very disturbing in some points...sometimes, you never stop to wonder why people do the things they do and only see that what has been done is evil. In a way, this is good; evil things ought to be derided as such no matter the circumstances, but in another way it is unfair and unhelpful. This is how I feel about a lot of the last third of the book: I understand why and how certain things happened, I just wish that they hadn't happened.

Something that made me laugh though and which I will think about forever are the few scenes where it's apparent Mary Renault is writing with a modern audience in mind, like the absolutely hilarious scene where Alexias is afraid of asking Xenophon if he only likes girls because he doesn't want to offend him 😭 or the scene where Alexias, assuring his dying father of vengeance, says: "Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies?" They're really cool scenes because they kind of play with the expectations of a modern audience and subvert common sentiments and understandings in modern culture and society; the opposite situation in the Xenophon scene would seem likelier to a modern person (especially at the time Mary Renault was writing) with Xenophon worrying about offending Alexias by asking him if he likes boys. And it's really a head-trip to read that question asked by Alexias because it's a direct contradiction to the common and widely known sentiment of forgiveness and loving your enemies within Christianity...this becomes 10x funnier 10 pages later when Alexias accidentally stumbles onto the whole point of Christianity 'God with us' 😭😭😭 I love the whole sequence of these scenes because they seem written specifically to challenge the reader; to get it through your mind that this was a foreign place and time, and these people are foreign to us; they have an understanding different from our own...but maybe not completely different at the same time.

Anyway, I don't know if this makes sense, my thoughts are kind of all over the place with this one but the tldr version of it is: I loved it! The writing was beautiful! It made me sad!

“𝓘𝓯 𝓘 𝓼𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓭𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮, 𝓘 𝓼𝓮𝓭𝓾𝓬𝓮. 𝓐𝓷𝓭 𝓲𝓯 𝓘 𝓭𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓼𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓶𝔂𝓼𝓮𝓵𝓯, 𝓘 𝓼𝓵𝓪𝔂.” My copy of Chain of Iron hasn’t arrived yet 😭

(Cordelia Carstairs from “Chain of Gold” by @cassandraclare )

The Blessed Damozel, 1878, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Medium: oil,canvas

“In the dream there had always been a pause in which he had looked up and said, “Next time you go away, I’m going with you”; and Ralph, who hadn’t had a first name in those days, had looked down all the same and answered, “Of course.””

“Give me to be beautiful within,” Socrates had prayed, “and for me let outward and inward things be reconciled together.” (99)

A little tribute piece to what is probably, definitely my favorite comfort novel, The Charioteer by Mary Renault.

congratulations alexias son of myron you just invented christianity

If Alastair has made up with Jem, does that mean Jem will start visiting the Carstairs in COT whenever a Silent Brother is needed to check on Sona? Will he keep Alastair company? Will they eventually get to talk and Jem tells him all the things Elias should've told him years and years ago? Will they talk about Alastair and his role in caring for his new sibling and mother? Will they talk about Alastair in his younger years when he hated to bully but did it anyway and now doesn't know how to fix it? Will they talk about all the pain surrounding his father and his father's death?

Will Jem ask him about music? Or will Jem finally just let Alastair have someone - a friend - who he can gush to about being excited to have a new sibling? Someone to list off names to: all the names he thinks would be lovely for a boy and then all the names he thinks would be lovely for a girl and if Jem doesn't know what some mean or where they come from, Alastair translates them and they argue about which would fit better 🧐 I will sell my soul for this 😭