Esther troubles me. She focuses solely on minute details yet describes individuals like Buddy Willard is generalities. Buddy Willard is a hypocrite— she follows her declaration up with a story. However, does she truly understand the word? (My response is to the first seven chapters).
I believe she understands the meaning of the word hypocrite—someone who says one thing and does another. However, how truly hypocritical is Buddy? He simply explains to her that she seems like she has been dating a lot of boys. Esther appears to over analyze the situation and labels Buddy as a hypocrite upon discovering his sexual impurity.
I believe Buddy is a not a hypocrite. He simply is dating in the college world and often the dating world has no bars or rules. Esther shows interest in him yet she has nothing good to say and minimal intellectual interaction. She appears extremely focused on falling in love and falling in love fast. If Buddy were such a hypocrite, he may have simply dumped Esther and pursued a girl with looser morals in order to get his fix. However, he shows interest in her poetry and education and he continues the rendezvous. Esther is more at fault then Buddy. She lives in a dream world perpetually reliving the encounters with Buddy—yet she replaces her “I guess so’s” with more witty and interesting comments. It is almost no wonder why no one calls her back for a second date. If I were on a date with her I wouldn’t call her back ever—not even to set her up with one of my friends. Esther appears to want to be interesting yet short of the mark.
I have more problems with Esther’s character aside from this character flaw. And want to discuss them further in class tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
There are definitely two ways of looking at Buddy's character. Though I can not fully disagree with you in the fact that Esther tends to over analyze her relationship with Buddy, maybe even his mannerism, she is not completely unjustified in her thoughts of his hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteIs it not hypocritical to expect your girlfriend to be a pure angelical being, while you yourself are not? We must remind ourselves that the dating world of the 1950s versus the dating world of today are very different. When Buddy suggests that Esther has dated a lot of boys, I doubt he is suggesting she has been physical with a lot of men. Simply because this was unheard of at the time. I truly feel that Buddy's impurity that we learn about in the first seven chapters is somewhat hypocritical because of his own purity expectations for Esther.
In addition to all of that, at the end of the novel, I believe in Chapter 19 or 20, when Buddy finally gets a chance to talk to Esther after he learns of her sickness and Joan's death, he is in every way hypocritical. He expected understanding and to be treated normally when he was a patient in the sanatorium, yet he veers from those qualities when he sees Esther in her state. Not to mention how absolutely annoying he is for making himself the center of attention of these womens' mental illness. In these ways, I find Esther's thoughts of hypocrisy displayed by Buddy justifiable.
I think you're both right--on the one hand, Buddy is certainly hypocritical by our standards today. His question, "Have you ever seen a man?," does suggest that Chantal is right--and that he reserves for himself the privilege of having been intimate with someone of the opposite sex. On the other hand, Buddy is who is--a rather straightforward, limited character, someone who really doesn't know what to do with poetry and who has a rather conventional outlook on life. The scene in which he shows Esther his poem ("Florida Dawn") and gives her an ashtray she doesn't need is painful. On the other hand, this scene also betrays Esther's elitist outlook. She thinks of herself as "better" than Buddy, as more of an artist, despite the fact that the evidence we see in the novel of her own literary productivity isn't exactly compelling.
ReplyDelete