The Notebook of a Return to Native Land seems to be a difficult read to me in general because the author relates ideas that I never would expect to be related. For instance, one part that confused me was when it stated, “I declare my crimes and that there is nothing to say in my defense. Dances. Idols. An apostate. I too” (Cesaire 19). The reason why this confused me was because random words were thrown together and I could not find the relevance and the correlation between these words and what the speaker was saying. In this quote, the speaker talks about how s/he admits that s/he committed crimes and there is nothing s/he can say to defend his/herself. Afterwards, the speaker says words such as “dances” “idols” and “apostate” which I could not understand. The notion of comparing ideas together reminded me of the Surrealism Introduction text by Andre Breton since he stated that if the relation between two realities is distant yet accurate, the image will be stronger. However, for me, it was difficult to create a strong image in mind since I could not relate the ideas “dance” “idols” and “apostate”. I had to reread it a couple of times and look up the word “apostate” to slightly understand the sentence better. Once I realized that an “apostate” is one who rejects a religious belief, I put it into context and interpreted the speaker to not really believe in religion or stopped believing in religion after realizing all the sins committed. Another way to deal with the difficult of the passage was to read the sentence that comes before or after. I read the sentence that comes after: “I have assassinated God with my laziness with my words with my gestures with my obscene songs” (Cesaire 19). Through this, I guessed that the idols might refer to a type of God that this person might formally worship since s/he has now “killed” God with his/her sins. As a result, I interpreted these sentences as the speaker having committed so many sins and realizing it, that s/he decide to renounce the idea of religion in general.

It is safe to say that Notebook of a return to the native land by Andre Breton, is one of the most complicated readings yet. Starting from the first few pages itself was pretty hard to make sense of. Whenever I started to actually get what it meant, something completely out of place pops up and I’m back to square one. For me the fourth paragraph in page four stood out to be the most difficult to understand.  For example; the passage starts with, “At the end of the daybreak, the morne crouching before bulimia,” (Breton 4). Bulimia is an eating disorder, an obsessive desire to lose weight, overeating would usually end up in vomiting or depression. Morne, a small hill or mountain, crouching or bent low because if you look at it, a mountain is usually perceived to be an arc shape or bent over, before the bulimia which is the volcano erupting or vomiting. However I couldn’t make sense what the author meant by “on the outlook for tuns and mills.”  I am not sure if the idea of bulimia, the vomiting, blood…. was  used to describe the morne or the volcano eruption. Therefore, here’s what I did to make as much sense of the paragraph as I could. First of all, I looked up the definitions of all the words I wasn’t familiar with and also the words that didn’t make sense as to why it was in the package such as Bulimia, Morne, tuns and mill etc. Although it didn’t make sense even after defining all the terms, what I understood is that the volcanic eruption had consumed/destroyed everything making it a ditch of fear and there as nothing left but wind.

The book Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is difficult to understand from the first page. However, a passage that struck out to me the most is found on page 14, where Aimé Césaire begins to write about this idea of death which doesn’t go into context of the first few pages of the book. It’s as if this idea of death appeared out of nowhere and is hard to realize the meaning and context of the text at first. The previous page speaks upon speaking up for those who have no voice, but the transition into the line which says, “once again this life hobbling before me, what am I saying, this death…” (pg. 14) gives this ordeal of life being nothing but a buildup to one’s death. The author goes into exemplifying death as if we live throughout death. In order to understand this page of the book specifically, I had to reread the text numerous times while also looking for definitions of unknown words. The transition into this idea of death is a bit awkward, which created a confusion for me since the book speaks of one setting and message to a completely irrelevant thought. It’s as if he corrects himself when saying “what am I saying”, by stating that this life we live is just a pedestal for death. Hence the italics surrounding the word “death” creates a sense of emphasis and shifts the readers mind to a new subject, where in this context the shift was a bit difficult because there are so many that it’s hard to create an image. Overall, the book so far is quite difficult to understand as each paragraph seems to have its own message and meaning, but it appears to be more clear after reading the text over a couple of times. However, I don’t believe there is one meaning this passage specifically, just like the rest of the book, the meaning is based upon one’s interpretation.

The passage that struck me was very early on. The 4th paragraph starts out simply enough with at the first light, referencing dawn. From there is where things got tricky with the line “on this very fragile earth thickness exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future”. I was not sure what the line was describing at first due to the oxymorons. To understand it I continued to read the passage with the context of the French colonized central American islands and their prevalence of slave plantations. That was when things made a bit more sense, describing a volcano destroying the island leaving nothing left but confusingly, “bubbling and a beach of dreams and the insane awaking.” From there I believe I understood what it the passage was talking about. The fragile Earth was a carribean colonial island. The humiliating way by its grandiose future refers to the relative prosperity felt by the plantations due to the inhumane practice of slavery. After realizing this I understood the final line better. The effect of the volcano was wiping the slate clean and returning the island to a beautiful paradise, (the beach of dreams), unimaginable by the modern human standard, (the insane awakening.)

       While I was reading Notebook of a Return to a Native Land, I found pages 7-8 very difficult to understand. It was hard to keep track of what was going on. For instance, page 7 begins by mentioning the months as they pass by, but after November it starts talking thoroughly about Christmas, a holiday instead of mentioning the month of December. This disruption in the sentence structure forced me to reread it and make sure that I didn’t miss anything. I also found the ending of page 7 and the beginning of page 8 very difficult to understand because it was a very long and continuous sentence. I had trouble identifying what the sentence was about. For example, the sentence begins by talking about Christmas Day and then suddenly it starts talking about a Church. According to the text, “It had agoraphobia, Christmas did. What it wanted was a whole day of bustling, preparing, a cooking and cleaning spree, endless jitters, about-not-having-enough, about-running-short, about-getting-bored, then at evening an unimposing little church, which would benevolently make room for laughter, the whispers, the secrets, the love talk, the gossip…” (7). It was hard to figure out whether the sentence was focusing on the Church or on the events that occurred during the day. Overall, in order to comprehend the passage, I had to reread it over and over again so that I could make sense of what I was reading. I also had to search up the definitions of some of the words to better understand the passage.

Something that I found difficult in Djuna Barnes’s book Nightwood is not specifically a part but the whole book itself. From the very first chapter, it starts off with “Early in 1880, in spite of a well-founded suspicion as to the advisability of perpetuating that race which has the sanction of the Lord and the disapproval of the people…” This sentence just keeps going on and on without no stop and this confused me from the start. It was only after the discussion in class on the reading and hearing what our classmates have to say about Nightwood that I was able to understand what was going on. I then proceeded to read over the chapter a few more times, maybe about 20 times. I defined words that I did not understand and try to piece them together. Hearing other’s input on the book is what helped me solve my problem.

When I was reading the novel I was confused with the idea of death and misery that Djuna Barnes presents in Nightwood. For example, Barnes writes “We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality. We sleep in a long reproachful dust against ourselves. We are full to the gorge with our own names for misery. Life, the pastures in which the night feeds and prunes the cud that nourishes us to despair. Life, the permission to know death.” When I read this quote I don’t quite know to interpret it as one of the meanings that I find to the quote is that only by living we can die and so after one will experience the misery of death. However, I also interpreted this quote as life been the permission to know the true peace that death brings after a lifetime of suffering. Overall, my confusion is on whether the novel wants to portray life as a misery that will prepare you the greatness of death or the opposite meaning that death is the misery that life gives “permission to know.”

Finishing the rest of Nightwood, I found many parts that seemed problematic or just hard to understand with everything that has happened with a conclusion that is open to interpretation.

The passage that I choose to focus on specifically is on page 153, where Robin stumbled and “she said seeing a poor wretched beggar of a whore, ‘Giver her some money, all of it!… They are all God-for-saken, and you most of all, because they don’t want you to have your happiness. They don’t want you to drink. Well, here, drink! I give you money and permission! These women- they are all like her, They are all good-they want to save us!” When Robin said this she was very intoxicated and previous to this instance was taking out her anger and drunkenness on Nora, calling her a devil and confirming that they believed that truly. In this passage, Robin refers to a “they,” which I am having trouble understanding who that “they” might be referring to and what the source of all this pent up anger was. With the progression of Nightwood much dialogue from Robin wasn’t included, just descriptions of what others had to say about her, so hearing how outspoken she was at that moment came to a surprise to me.

A combination of her intoxication and her odd behavior of giving all her money to a random homeless woman give some insight to the peculiarity of what she actually said. After reading it over and over again, what I’ve come to understand is that Robin was directing this to the women in her life, but more specifically Nora. She blamed her for taking her back home, away from the bars and the liquor but praised and appreciated her for her how much she cared and took care of her. In this line alone, Robin tried to play victim: saying that she needs permission to live life the way she wants to and to be happy, even though throughout the novel, she does exactly that not taking into consideration any of the people in her life and how much anguish they may have with her actions. The nature of her character at this particular point played a contributing factor in what she had to say because it revealed some truths yet in a discombobulated manner.

One part of the book that confused me is on page 135  where the doctor says “And Robin? I know where your mind is! She is the eternal momentary— Robin who was always the second person singular. Well… Lie weeping with a sword in your hand!” Many things confuse me about this section of this chapter. Starting with the the doctor’s description of Robin. The step I took to understand this was to look back at the notes from our class descriptions of Robin.  This helped me to understand what the doctor means by “eternal momentary.” Robin draws people in and in the case of Nora she is attached to Robin. Robin becomes Nora’s everything which relates to the doctor’s use of “external.” However, Robin’s love is also “momentary” because she sneaks away from Nora to be with Jenny.

I am also confused as to who the doctor is speaking to or about when he says “I know where your mind is” and “Lie weeping with a sword…” After rereading the the whole paragraph again I have decided that the doctor is most likely speaking directly to Nora. I say this because he is giving this whole speech to convince Nora to stop writing letters to Robin. Therefore, by saying “I know where your mind is” it would show Nora that he knows how much she cares about Robin but Robin is not as great as Nora paints her to be. For the second part where the doctor says “lie weeping with a sword” I think he is telling Nora that yes she can still cry for Robin, but she still has to carry around with her a “sword” to keep herself and feelings protected from Robbins manipulation.