“The drama is a unique form of expression in that it employs living actors to tell its story; its other aspects - setting, characters, dialogue, action, and theme - it shares with other forms of communication. But the fact that the dramatist is not dealing with characters merely, but with three-dimensional person is paralleled by the fact that he is not dealing with a setting verbally described but three-dimensionally realised, with action that actually occurs in time and space, with dialogue which is spoken by human voices for the human ear: so many tools, so many tribulations. One of the very real problems of the dramatist is just this, that he, unlike the poet must deal with the thingness of things: to him a mossy stone must be a mossy stone and a ship tossed on an ocean a ship tossed on an ocean, not a synonym for peace or turmoil. But the point is, surely, that for the poetic dramatist the stone is more than a stone without ever losing its stoniness, and the tempest may be a highly symbolic one without losing its reality. So, although the drama in general makes considerable use of physical objects - ‘props’ - to tell its story, the higher drama transmutes the physical prop into a symbol, gaining richer meaning without expansion. The poetic drama relates the dramatic symbol to the poetic image, intensifying the unity of the work, and gaining still greater richness without greater bulk, compression being the ever-present necessity of the form.”

from ‘The Life of our Design’ by Alan S. Downer, in
The Hudson Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 1949 - 50

I found the above paragraph amusing when I read it while researching symbolism in Macbeth. It’s very wordy and I especially enjoyed the line ‘the stone is more than a stone without ever losing its stoniness’. Nevertheless it’s quite poetic.

Two completely unrelated novels but the two that I have read most recently and haven’t said anything about.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Aged 13 3/4) (Sue Townsend) was loaned to me by a friend to keep me occupied during my flight to Canada. While I unfortunately didn’t get to read it then, I really enjoyed it when I finally did get the opportunity to read it. As the title suggests, it’s in a diary format and the narrator is a 13-year-old boy who thinks he’s far more intelligent than he actually is. The reader can be easily amused by his ‘intellectual’ thoughts on the world, his parents and the things that come with puberty. Much like in The Curious Incident…, our protagonist does not, however, understand properly the family troubles that are occurring around him, although it is due to his own ignorance rather than a disability.

I didn’t realise how popular the novel was when I started reading it either and received a few comments from people about how much their enjoyed it whenever I mentioned it. One day I’ll get around to watching the TV series too, as can be found on YouTube. Adrian’s account provides an easy and fun read that provides a good giggle.

I read Perfect Match over a couple of reads and although the content of the novel is deep and depressing (as Jodi Picoult’s books generally are), it was an easy read due to the short chapters and the little twists that make you want to keep reading. I’ve read a lot of Picoult’s books and although they often have similar content, hence why I usually separate reading each of hers by a few other books, but this one to me was a bit silly. 

First I’ll give you the basic plot: Nina Frost is a prosecutor who deals with child abuse cases and discovers that her own son has been raped. I do not deny that this is a very serious and sad situation, yet I felt that the novel became more and more like a soap opera as it went along. The event causes her son to become mute and so when he tries to communicate to his mother that it was ‘father’ (from a church) that hurt him, his mother initially assumes it is her husband. Then when she learns from her son that it was a priest she shoots him dead in a courtroom during the initial hearing, knowing she will be arrested but believing she will get off for murder because she’s a lawyer and knows just how she should argue the case.

There are more twists as the story goes on but to me everything just got more ridiculous and farfetched, which meant that overall I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I would have liked. Nevertheless, I will continue to read Picoult’s books because it’s the first time I’ve felt negatively towards one of her novels.