By the end of this story, I felt very connected to the characters of Lenny and Eunice. Their narratives, whether from Lenny’s diary or Eunice’s GLOBALTEENS posts, eventually had a voice with them. I felt like I was hearing Lenny and truly understanding what he was feeling as conveyed through his diary and stories. As for Eunice, her messages to friends and family and even herself (at the end) allowed for me to truly understand her in way that would not have been revealed through just Lenny’s diary. Lenny’s diary provided a more emotional, obvious, and forthright expression of his desire to be connected and have intimacy, while Eunice’s desire is harder to uncover in her postings, but still buried in her habit of youth to act tough, and cool, and compiled all the time. Eunice seems to most express herself in her messages to her friend “GRILLBITCH” AKA Jenny Kang, which is interestingly not reciprocated.
In one message to Jenny, Eunice writes such things like, “I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I’m not I love with him” (p.74), and Lenny is what we “used to call ‘a real human being” (p. 75). In dissecting this message, it seems that Eunice is acknowledging her comfort in feeling safe and being herself, but also has a possibly twisted idea about what love is or can do. Personally, I feel like you want the person you love to be someone you feel completely comfortable with. She also seems to recognize qualities in Lenny that make him genuine, and valid in his existence. The way she writes about it as something has not yet experienced or as new, shows that within herself, she is curious about how to connect with him and herself, as well as be at ease with another human being.
As shone in Lenny’s diary entries, he yearns for human contact, love, and even self-esteem. While in the beginning, he longs to have Eunice, in the middle he is consumed about keeping her. In one memoir of speaking aloud to himself, he writes, “Lenny! You are not going to screw this up. You’ve been the chance to help the most beautiful woman in the world . You must be good Lenny. You must not think of yourself…If you don’t pull this off … you will not be worthy of immortality” (p.100). The context of this sentence reveals much about Lenny's definition of love, life, and happiness. Not only does he think love is all self-sacrifice, as shown throughout the book, but he also is completely dependent of Eunice as his to define his sense of well-being, even his worthiness to live.
At one point Eunice writes to “Precious Pony” about missing her x-boyfriend Ben, stating that “There was something so compatible about me and him. Like we didn’t have to say much to each other, we could just lie there in bed for hours, doing whatever on our apparati, with the lights turned off” (p.113). It was strange to read that Eunice thought of this as compatibility. I wonder if was something about her generation (within the context of the book) or if people in our lifetime somehow want this. This doesn’t seem to be real intimacy or connection, but more of a laziness within a relationship, a way to not have to feel vulnerable, overwhelmed with emotions (positive or negative), or resourceful in a relationship of being bored in moments of life but finding ways to have fun or talk. Throughout Eunice’s expressions, she seems so conflicted about what she wants and what actually makes her happy, as later she acknowledges almost crying about seeing a homeless person, but “ didn’t want to give Lenny the impression the [she] actually cared about something” (p.113). Yet, as she constantly fights her heart and emotions, she still shows a curiosity about feeling it all. “…I wonder how I could learn to love somebody like that” (p.115). Notice here, she does say ‘I wonder if I could” but ‘I wonder how I could learn.’ She therefore acknowledges her ability and interest in learning.
During the time of chaos and a ‘warlike scene’ Eunice also sends many messages to Jenny, her Mom, and Sally, expressing her fear, loneliness, gratitude, and love for them. This entire setting in the story makes me think about why, as humans, it takes disaster, fear, and pain for us to simply express bundled feelings or articulate apologies and/or gratitude. (p. 263-267).
Towards the end, I felt like Lenny finally greeted the reality of the small moments as beautiful. In his encounter with an old Jewish woman outside the co-op, he expresses “…the excitement of feeling both cold and protected, exposed to the elements and loved at the same time” (p.305). In this statement, Lenny is admiring the balance of chaos in the world, the idea of substance and satisfaction in imperfection, of all feelings as powerful, real, and pleasing in the sense of just being able to feel.
No comments:
Post a Comment