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Global Experience - Coggle Diagram

- - - - As previously mentioned, Annie is Felix's lover who bought drugs from him while he was still dealing. When Felix visits Annie to officially end their toxic relationship, Annie consumes vodka, cigarettes, and cocaine and calls it "lunch." Despite this, she claims to be clean for two years. Overall, Annie subscribes to the "live fast, die young" lifestyle and does not wish to end her addictions or pursue any long-term life goals (unlike Felix).
  - - - Beatrice's reaction to these dreams is particularly troubling; she turns to alcohol as her primary coping mechanism and develops an intense obsession with maintaining her appearance. She also grows increasingly possessive of the jewels that Strangman gives her, as she desperately clings to the London she grew up in.
  - - - Later in their lives, Charlie and Karim spend time together in New York City, where Charlie has made a name for himself as a punk musician. Charlie is increasingly possessive of Karim during this time, unwilling to let him return to London. Instead, the pair reap the rewards of their fame by doing coke, sleeping with multiple women, and drinking like fish.
        
        Unable to mentally compartmentalize the pressures and rewards of his newfound fame, Charlie hires a dominatrix to humiliate him. Disgusted by the act, Karim views Charlie's encounter with the dominatrix as an indication of Charlie's deteriorating mental state and returns to London.
- - - - Clarissa Dalloway recounts her first love, Sally, who was a rebellious young feminist. Clarissa describes their first kiss as a religious experience, only to be disrupted by Peter.
      - The casual queerness of Mrs. Dalloway continues with Clarissa's daughter, who Clarissa expects is in love with her tutor, Miss. Kilman. Clarissa does not care that her daughter has a crush on a woman, but is annoyed that it is Miss. Kilman, who has a "holier-than-thou" mindset.
    - - While never outright calling himself bisexual, Karim describes being sexually attracted to both women and men, with his first love interest in the novel being Charlie, who seldom returns Karim's feelings.
  - - - At the novel's beginning, Emma has an arguably negative view of marriage, as it had "taken away" both her sister and her best friend. She never wished to get married - up until her beloved Mr. Knightley proposed.
    - - Annie does not wish to get married or have children, and scoffs at the idea when Felix confesses that he has those goals.
      - To outsiders, Leah is married to the perfect man, Michel. However, Leah laments that the two have very few things in common, and got married more so due to their sexual chemistry than anything else. As a result, though she cares for Michel, Leah is unhappy in her marriage.
      - Natalie's marriage is a complete wreck. Her husband fails to grasp the realities of her upbringing and is unhelpful with the children. In search of validation, Natalie begins sleeping with other couples, which Frank discovers, resulting in a massive fight.
    - - Utterly devoid of emotion due to her fact-based education, Louisa marries Bounderby as a financial move rather than an act of love. Louisa is a pet to the grotesque Bounderby until she leaves her marriage near the novel's end.
    - - Tess is married twice - once to Angel, in which the marriage was never consummated, as Angel abandoned Tess - and once to Alec, whom she does not love, but rather marries as a financial move. When Angel finally returns to Tess, Tess takes it upon herself to murder Alec so she can be with Angel. However, Tess is arrested and executed for Alec's murder. They hate to see a girlboss win!
    - - At the novel's beginning, Clarissa is unhappy in her marriage and feels that others only see her as "Mrs. Dalloway" rather than her true self. By the novel's end, Septimus's suicide redirects her thinking, and she decides that she does not care how other perceive her due to her marriage.
      - Rezia is unable to soothe her husband's episodes, which may lead one to think that she was unhappy in her marriage. However, prior to Septimus's suicide, the pair share a happy moment, illustrating the life they once had. When Septimus ends his life, Rezia understands why he chose to do so, highlighting the understanding that the two had for each other.
  - - - Tess's mother, upon sending her daughter away, is fully aware that Tess will likely be raped by the men of the D'Urberville household, yet seems to accept this as a fact of womanhood
        
        As her mother predicted, Tess, after refusing Alec's multiple advances, is raped by Alec in a carriage. As a result of the rape, she has a child out of wedlock, for which she is eternally shamed.
        
        When her child dies in infancy, Tess leaves the D'Urbervilles to become a milkmaid. She falls in love with Angel and the two marry. On their wedding night, Angel confesses that he had premarital sex with a sex worker in London, and Tess describes her rape to him. As a result of Tess's confession, Angel abandons Tess on their wedding night, highlighting the rape culture of Victorian England.
  - - - NW by Zadie Smith
        
        Both Leah and Annie refuse to have children, as both women see it as the end of their self-agency ad youth. For Leah, this avoidance of motherhood results in her secret abortion and her starting the birth control pill under Natalie's name, which leads to issues with her husband Michel at the novel's end.
      - Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
        
        Tess's rape results in her giving birth to a child, which she names Sorrow. Sorrow dies in infancy, but as Tess had a child out of wedlock, she is shamed by the public for her "transgression." For Tess, the birth of Sorrow is an end of Tess's innocence.
    - - Emma by Jane Austen
        
        While Emma has no desire to marry or have children at the novel's beginning, Emma's sister, Mrs. John Knightley, has a plethora of children and is seemingly happy as a mother.
  - - - Felix's father warns Felix that women will only cause his son problems, which is a reflection of his view of women as a result of the few women he has been romantically involved with. Lame!
- - - - NW by Zadie Smith
        
        Education is more available to the affluent, like Annie Bedford, who cites philosophers Sartre and Nietzsche as academics who believe there is no "leveling up" in the world. Her philosophical knowledge is due to her affluent upbringing, as she could afford schooling due to her family's wealth.
        
        Leah studied philosophy in college. However, unlike Annie, who's wealth allows her to study whatever she wishes without it truly affecting her financial status, Leah's philosophy degree has led her to a job at a nonprofit that she does not enjoy (as philosophy is oftentimes deemed a "useless degree" that does not open up many jobs) and has put her into financial debt due to her student loans. While studying philosophy is a perk of Annie's nepotism, Leah's philosophy degree has only caused her more financial problems and brought her very few jobs.
        
        Unlike Natalie, who was born into poverty and worked hard into order to pass the Bar exams, her husband, Frank, was born into wealth, arrived late to the exam, and inevitably failed. However, due to family connections, Frank secured another job, illustrating that his college degree was nothing more than decorative, and he would find financial success no matter what, unlike his wife, who actually needed to pass the bar in order to escape poverty.
      - Hard Times by Charles Dickens
        
        Thomas Gradgrind develops a school and hires Mr. McChoakumchild, whom Gradgrind has instructed to give the schoolchildren an education based only facts rather than imagination or emotion. As a result, the children become capable workers and citizens, but not artists, humanitarians, innovators, etc.
  - - - Austen paints a romanticized image of rural England in the fictional setting of Highbury, but uses the neurotic Mr. Woodhouse to express her own discontent with the city of London, which Mr. Woodhouse characterizes as dirty, cramped, and smoggy.
    - - Coketown is a fictional, hyper-industrialized city with an intense divide between the rich and the poor. The poor, or the "Hands," live in filthy slums and have incredibly poor working conditions while the rich live in Stone Lodges, own multiple businesses, and rule the political system. Coketown is described as filthy and sinister, with smoggy skies that block out the sun and large brick buildings covered in ash. It is a parody and criticism of England's industrialized cities, particularly London.
  - - - While previous wars used melee combat, WWI introduced industrial warfare that led the soldiers to see horrors beyond human comprehension. Suffering from an intense case of "shell shock" (known as PTSD today), Septimus returned from the horrors of WWI a shell of who he was. He is plagued by fits of madness, which his wife, Rezia, attempts and fails to soothe.
    - - Written by Ballard as a response to post-WWII England, The Drowned World is filled with military criticism. In The Drowned World, the military controls the actions of all characters and is meant to make decisions with humanity's best interest in mind. However, the military proves to be a corrupt force that praises Strangman's unnatural draining of the lagoon and shoots to kill anyone who attempts to re-flood the lagoon, resulting in Bodkin's death and Kerans' injury.
  - - - Strangman drains the drowned cities of Ballard's post-apocalyptic world in order to raid the streets on foot. However, when Strangman presents his previously looted artifacts to Kerans and Beatrice, Kerans reacts with disgust and compares the artifacts to grave-robbed goods. Ballard utilizes this interaction in order to highlight the odd nature of Strangman's materialism, as in a post-apocalyptic world, material objects that people of the 1960s deemed valuable are essentially worthless. Furthermore, Strangman's obsession with relics of the past and ability to drain London's lagoon illustrate his wish to return to the world he knew before the floods, despite Bodkins and Kerans knowing that forcing the world to return to its pre-flooded state is unnatural. Through Strangman and Kerans' disagreement, Ballard argues that in order to "prevent" rising sea levels and climate change, the average person needs to give up their materialism and change their daily lives in order to adjust to the changing world around them (rather than forcing the changing world to accommodate their materialism and lifestyles).
      - In the beginning of the novel, Beatrice Dahl desperately clings to the material objects that she had prior to London's flooding, including her grandfather's penthouse, in which she rarely leaves, preferring to spend her days drinking and lounging by the pool. When Strangman is later introduced, the pirate feeds further into Beatrice's unhealthy materialism, gifting her jewels that she becomes obsessed with. Like Strangman, Beatrice's materialism is a manifestation of her clinging to London's past.
    - - Annie Bedford's apartment and wardrobe are riddled with relics that are reminiscent of her old money, posh past. While Annie takes pride in her vintage and antique objects, her collection is decaying and crumbling around her, signifying that the romanticized past she relishes is long gone, despite her desperate attempts to cling to it.
- - - - While Karim is half Indian and half English, he feels no connection to the Indian half of his identity and calls himself an "Englishman born and bred" (1). This disconnect from his Indian identity is present throughout the novel, as others view him only as Indian - such as Shadwell, who asks Karim to play Mowgli in the Jungle Book, despite Karim's protests.
    - - Keisha spent her childhood as a Black English girl who lived in council housing, yet as she grew older, she changed her name to Natalie and focused her energy on moving up on the financial ladder. Due to this, others accuse Natalie of being a coconut - "white on the inside" - and, in the case of Nathan Bogle, simultaneously shame and praise her for her financial success.
  - - - While Karim's father, Haroon, willingly feeds into Indian stereotypes (particularly ones relating to Eastern mysticism) in order to garner social acceptance, Karim is less willing to participate in Indian stereotypes. Karim's hesitancy is seen when he resists donning a loincloth and speaking in a Bengali accent for his role as Mowgli in The Jungle Book.
    - - In a disturbing display of the anti-semitic ideology of Victorian England, Dickens describes the pro-union Slackbridge as a money hungry Jewish caricature.
    - - While racial stereotypes are a major theme of NW, a particularly raw description of the affect of racial stereotypes occurs when Nathan Bogle describes feeling shunned by his own community, as people believe that he, as a Black man, is dangerous.
    - - In a display of 1960s prejudice against African people, Ballard unfortunately feeds into African stereotypes with the character of Strangman, who is a pirate and looter, controls alligators, has a cult of Black followers who believe he is dead, and pursues an unwilling white woman. Need I say more on how this is racist?
  - - - In order to feel accepted by white, English society, Haroon pretends to be well versed in Eastern mysticism and philosophy, thus masquerading as a "Buddha" for his white lover's friends. Meanwhile, Karim knows that while his father has an interest in religion and philosophy, much of his "teachings" are hogwash, and that his father does not believe in the teachings or even his ability as a Buddha.