Everytime i go home .. dehradun i.e ..which is usually rare given how stingy these tech. companies can be ......in those moments of careless abandon .....basking in the winter sun ....far from the maddening "big city life" ..and those technology essentials that we have become so used to ...I spend some time with the books ... good books..war novels ..world history.. buisness magazines et al. ...anything that keeps you mind occupied and enchanted...In these busy times I always relish two short english novels that have kind'of influenced me ...
The one that i like most is Eric Remarque's "All Quiet On The Western Front". This is an epic war novel ..'anti-war' to do justice to the book .. it is the story of a group of young men fighting for Germany in those last desperate days of the WW-I. The mood of the book is rightly put in these few lines ...."its a story about group of men who though may have escaped the shells, ...but were destroyed by the war"...It describes the horrors of that war and the deep alienation from civilian life felt by men returning from the front..The protagonist is Paul Bäumer who joins the germany war effort on the western flank with the group of boys who have just finished high school. He volunteered for the war when his instructor in school, urged the class to join up for the glory for Germany. But as soon as the first shells explode ,Paul and his friends realize everything is a lie. ..As Paul's friends slip away one by one through death, disease,desertion, and injury, Paul begins to wonder about his own life and whether he will survive not only the war but also a world without war. Remarque's book brilliantly exposes all of the insanities of war especially the things that were used on such a mass scale for the first time ... like poison gas,tanks,aircrafts and horrible trench warfare.The book is cold, brutal,depressing yet brilliant ....but then every war is cold and death...
Another book that i love is J.D. Salinger’s " The Catcher in The Rye" .This book is based on the teenage Holden's experiences in the days following his expulsion from the school...The book seemingly has disjointed ideas and episodes that comes across the young boy. There are various underlying themes in the novel .....interpretations are fractured. The underlying theme is "phoniness.".... He feels surrounded by dishonesty and false pretenses, and throughout the book is frequently picking out the "phonies" he sees around him....He wants to protect the young and innocent minds of young children from the “horrors” of adult society....He hopes to freeze the children in time, as wax figures are frozen in a museum.When his sister asks him what he wants to do with his life he said he wants to be "Catcher in the Rye" .....i.e. he wants to be the person that keeps children from falling off a cliff. That cliff symbolizes the transition from childhood to adulthood, and he wants to keep them as innocent children, not phony adults.....Another theme in the book is obviously his strong desire to be an adult and live in the adult world, though he is not yet ready and doesn't succeed, to his immense frustration. He repeatedly tries to fit into adult society...but being rejected, Holden's response is an even stronger rejection of the people he was trying to fit in with a few seconds ago......The novel is incredibly depressing yet the protagonist's self-destruction over a period of days forces one to contemplate society's attitude toward the human condition. Salinger's portrayal of Holden, which includes incidents of depression, nervous breakdown, alcohol abuse,impulsive spending, sexual exploration, vulgarity, and other erratic behavior, have all attributed to the controversial nature of the novel....Impressive yet too dark and tragic.
Both the books just make you think that things are not always as simple as they look to be and behind this veil of calmness on the human face lies our deepest fears and frustrations.....Right now I am reading another brilliant novel William Golding's "Lord Of The Flies" ..which shows the exploits of a band of young children who make a striking transition from civilized to barbaric.Its a pessimistic.... and shows that man is inherently tied to society, and without it, we would likely return to savagery....
~The End of Innocence~
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