Illustration in a Circle #2

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Illustration in a Circle #1

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Me Before You: A Review

DISCLAIMER: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. NOT KIDDING. EVERYTHING SPOILERY CAN BE FOUND N THIIS REVIEW. So, yea. Read at our own risk.

I liked this book. I really did. Maybe I won’t reread it, or even fangirl over it with other fans. But I liked this. At least, I liked it enough to stay awake till 4 am on a Monday morning to finish reading it.

I mean, the plot was not what you’d call original. You know how the story goes; girl is average, leads an average guy, boy is rich, leads a rich life. Boy meets girl, they instantly don’t like each other, he changes her, and she makes him happy, yada yada yada. Add in the tiny detail of him being paraplegic. And then he dies. Just a run-of-the-mill love story where a main character dies.

Except that there are a few things I actually liked about this book. But before that, let me put down what I didn’t like about the book.

·         The plot. Like I said, it was pretty ordinary, if not a tad boring. The whole thing is a bit overused, with too many young adult fiction writers using the same tropes over and over and over again.

·         Lou. I found her annoying. Granted, as the story progressed, she grew a bit less annoying, but all her whining, especially about missing her old job, really got on my skin. So you got sacked. Big deal. You pick up the pieces and move on! Not whine about your new, albeit crappy, job, and get fired for all fucking kinds of silly reasons.

·         The POV changes. Jojo Moyes, let me give you a bit of constructive criticism; you don’t change your POV when you otherwise maintain a constant narrative of the MC. I mean, it’s a different matter when the whole book is constantly changing between different narratives. I found the change in POV’s that sprung up from nowhere in this book very unsettling; it constantly disrupted my reading flow.

And then there are the things that made skip several hours of sleep on a weekday.

·         Will. I love dry, asshole-ish sense of humour. I have a dry, asshole-ish sense of humour. Will Traynor had a dry, asshole-ish sense of humour. So, by default, he quickly turned into the asshole that I couldn’t help but love. I mean, don’t get me wrong; he’s far from (one of) my fictional boyfriend(s), but when a character says these lines:

“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen – I end up in a wheelchair?”

Or, gets a tattoo that says “Best before: 19 March 2007”, which is the date of his accident,

Or says,

“If you’re worried I have some devious secret plan to seduce you, you can just pull my plug out.”,

you kinda start really liking him. So, you see, I had a hard time not loving the sarcastic little shit.

·         MCD. So, okay, maybe this is something I did not particularly like. Hell, I hardly even like books with Major Character Deaths, and absolutely despise books where the author’s aim itself is to make your heart hurt. In this book, however, the character was not killed off just for shock value or for furthering the story; there were legitimate, albeit ethically controversial, reasons for his death.** And this is something I really liked about the author.

All in all, it was a good read with slightly annoying but realistic characters and a good prose. I’ll maybe rate it as 3, maybe 3.5. Because I’m an asshole like that lol. 

**I’m not going to comment on the topic of euthanasia. Assisted-suicide is still a topic I find very controversial about with valid arguments from both sides, and I don’t think I could ever come to a concrete conclusion, generally speaking or even regarding a particular patient.

Greek Mythology and Harry Potter

Little known fact: we come across tit bits of Greek mythology everyday; in the books we’ve read as a child or the cartoons or movies we’ve seen when we were young. In today’s novels and books, references to Greek mythology are, quite frankly, everywhere. The ideals of an epic hero and stories of epic journeys are repetitive in modern-day pop culture and entertainment. These modern stories have heroes growing through trials. According to Steve Persall, a researcher in the field of allusions, “many hero stories have great parallels to Odysseus, since it was essentially one of the very first “hero” stories of all times.”

Many kids are introduced to Greek mythology at quite an early age. For instance, in The Little Mermaid, the idea of mermaids have been derived from the idea of sirens, which are female winged creatures in Greek mythology whose singing lured unwary sailors on to rocks. Ariel’s father was Neptune, the Roman name for Poseidon. Even the idea of Ursula has been adopted from the Greek monster Scylla.

Many books have plots revolving around the world of Greek gods and goddesses (Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, the Starcrossed series by Josephine Angelini, etc) while many others have allusions in them. Harry Potter, surprisingly, is full of Greek mythological allusions, which, I guess,is no surprise since Rowling did study Greek and Roman mythology at Exter University.

• The name Hermione can be considered as an example. The only daughter of Melenaus and Helen, Hermione in Greek mythology was a smart and hardworking girl, whose parents left her behind and sailed away. The character of Hermione in Harry Potter was not very far from her namesake. Interestingly, both Hermione’s were pursued by two man, Orestes and Neoptolemus, and Ron Weasley and Viktor Krum.
•  Minerva McGonagall was named after the Roman counterpart of Athena, Minerva, who was the goddess of wisdom and war. Both of them were quick to help others with reason, fierce in battle and strict. Also, Athena’s symbol was an owl, which was McGonagall’s pet.
• Even our beloved Rubeus Hagrid’s back-story has been adapted from Hagrid Rubes, a kind giant, who was framed for the murder of Zeus and banished from Mt. Olympus to take care of animals.
• The character of all-seeing man and caretaker of Hogwarts, Argus Filch, has been adapted from the Greek Argus Panoptes, a great watchman with a hundred eyes and Hera’s servant who was instructed to watch and guard Io from Zeus.
• The character of Albus Dumbledore and the Greek Merlin is similar in their physical and personality description. Despite being a heroic archetype, both of them were wise, powerful, a caregiver and an advisor.
• Another example is the predicament of Harry. Harry, like Odysseus, was looking for a place he could call home. Special abilities being brought out by trying times is a characteristic we see in mythic heroes, a characteristic common for both Odysseus and Harry.
• Even the merpeople that Harry had to fight in one of his journeys at the bottom of the school pond were fashioned after the sirens of Greek mythology. These creatures distracted Harry from his quest, just like they did to Odysseus in his journey.
• Sybill Trelawney is the divination teacher at Hogwarts. Her great-great-grandmother was the celebrated seer and witch, Cassandra Trelawney. Although none of Cassandra's prophecies were ever told in the novels, because Dumbledore once kept the divination "program" for the mere fact of the Trelawney name, one can assume they were legendary. Dumbledore once noted that Sybill's skills were far less apparent than those of her great-great-grandmother, but nevertheless, Sybill did have a few great prophecies that served accurate. According to myth, Apollo, the god of music, fell in love with the Trojan Princess Cassandra, her beauty causing him to grant her the gift of prophesy. When she did not return his love, Apollo became angered and instead of taking the gift back, cursed her so that no one would ever believe her or her descendants’ predictions. This could be one reason why many believed Sybill to be a fraud. 
• Fluffy, the three-headed dog that could be put to sleep by playing music was an allusion to Cerberus in Greek mythology that guards the Underworld and can be put to sleep in much the same way.
• The superlative centaur among his brethren, Chiron is known to be one of the many wise centaurs of Greek Mythology. The centaurs were known to be wild drunkards, but Chiron was an exception to this stereotype. He possessed a great number of skills, which also included teaching and prophecy.  During the fifth Harry Potter novel, Firenze, a centaur from the colony in the Forbidden Forest takes the spot of the divination professor at Hogwarts. Firenze was not like the rest of the centaurs and was very concerned with teaching and divination. Because of this, and his acceptance of Dumbledore’s teaching offer, he was ostracized by his “herd”.

From the very first chapter, it is evident that the work holds strong Greek mythological backgrounds. For anyone who has ever seen, read or heard the Harry Potter books or movies, classical connections can be made quite easily. Rowling was able to use Greek mythology as a way to attract all types of people and age groups. These seven books prove mythology still lives and influences modern culture even after thousands of years. So whether it be by page or by screen, Harry Potter will always be there to welcome one into the fascinating world of Greek mythology through a modern lens.