Enduring Love chapter 2

Summary: The reaction to the accident

Joe re-evaluates what has happend so far. He ' slows down time' in order to discuss the detail. Joe goes up to see John Logan's body and Parry joins him and asks him and inists that he pray with him.

Joe is not being like himself. He uses science to make sense of his death and the human need for a 'soul'. Joe seems emotionally detatched from the situation

Destination

To gain a better understanding of the charater of Joe - he is a rationalist, emotionally challenged, methodical and rationalises through that which is objective but also to raise one of the novels most important themes: science vs. religion. When we die do we simply stop or do we have a 'soul' and so is there life after this?

Cubist form :

Joe is descirbing the body of John Logan:pg 23 " Though the skin was intact, it was hardly a face at all, for the bone structure had shattered and I had the impression, before I looked away of a radical, Picassoesque violation of perspective"

Realism:

The exactitude with which Joe attempts relay the avents of the incident " The best descriptions of a reality to not need to mimic its velocity. Whole books, whole research departements, are dedicated to the whole first half minute of the universe" typical of realism + begins to almost to re enumerate the events of the incident but interjects with analysis / other stories + fragmentation  -post- modern form. So that we trust in his narration.

Post modern form 

Life continues even after a tradegy pg 19

" Beyond them was a larger pasture where sheep and a few lambs were grazing"

Told only from the point of view of Joe- the protagonist.  With this the reader is allowed a deeper undertanding of Joe's mentality.

Disadvantage: becaause the reason isn't allowed any other views, the reader does not get a holistic view and is forced to take Joe's account of events at face value, Joe's point fo view of things may challenge the views od readers.

Author's purpose in doing this: To make the reader question their own beliefs and evaluate why they hold such beliefs

1st person narration and homodiegetic narration allows greater proximity to the novel.

Joe: " Like in a dream I was both first person and thrid person" - shows emotional detatchtment. 'Dream' <-- can the reader trust everything he says?

Joe: Cinematic language = distancing himself from the events - he cannot process emotion.  " I acted, and saw myself act. I had my thoughts, and I saw them drift across the screen" adimitting his own emotional detatchment " as in a dream my emotional responses were non- existent or inappropriate"

Methodical - lots of attention to detail  " Let'd givethe half minute after John Logan's fall careful consideration"  side note- inclusiveness of 1st person plural pronoun- creates proximity.

Use evolutionary psychology " such was his genetic investment" <- cognitive response

Clarissa  <- emotional response. Huge disparity between the two. How can their relationship work ?

Joe 

Initiially characterized as 'slightly threatening' - pg 24 for description  /Forces his opinon onto others

Proleptically foreshadowing how dangerous he becomes later in the novel