This is what I briefly said to Dr. Scanlon yesterday. And, even after listening to today’s discussion, those thoughts remain relatively the same.

I’m having a hard time liking any one character, even smaller ones like the different nurses around the hospital where Frederick is staying. There seems to always be something that they say or do that bothers me, or makes me stop and think “huh, that’s kind of weird.” Granted, each character has their moments where I’ll like them for what they said, or maybe something they did, but it never lasts.

I love that, though. I’d rather read a book that frustrates me to no end, that makes me feel at least something, rather than read a book where I feel nothing at all and I am just chugging my way through it. Don’t let my above thoughts fool you: I actually really like this book. I like not knowing who I side with in conversation; I like constantly flip-flopping back and forth on character support. It keeps my reading experience interesting.

I think it’s actually a great tie-in to the other stories we’ve read, and All Quiet in particular. War forces a person to play on a line of morality that someone like me really hasn’t had to even think about. I don’t believe that anything in life is completely black and white, but especially in a war, the different shades of grey are endless. You become who you have to, and do what you feel you have to in order to get by. This applies to Frederick and Catherine as well. While I think there are some genuine emotions toward each other, as someone mentioned, it’s more like the idea of playing house with someone than anything else. They’re playing a part that they need to in order to stay some semblance of sane.

I don’t dislike Catherine for her as a character, necessarily, but more for the way Hemmingway wrote her, if that makes sense. I’m more upset with the author than I am the character.

These narratives we’ve read all play with morality in interesting ways, and I’m curious to see what happens with the rest of the narrative.