For the synthesis of my commonplace book, I decided to go with option two because I really did not know what the goal was of my commonplace book from the beginning of the semester, so it was nothing but a “form of self-definition”. I say this because every time I read one of the books my only option was to choose parts from the book that spoke volumes to me. Whether it was a quote that I felt had more meaning than how it was written or an image online that I felt described the scene perfectly. This was my way of annotating the books. When I found quotes that needed to be analyzed that is what I thought should be added to my commonplace book. I also felt that not adding too many descriptions when I first added my quotes was a way to maybe re-look at the quote on a different day with a different mindset or after finishing the book.
One thing I knew about myself starting this commonplace book was that I had trouble “reading between the lines” when it came to books that were written decades ago. Reading modern day books, they typically have a straightforward meaning, but books written before the 1900’s typically meant more then their title. I went about reading these books differently because I knew that there was a deeper meaning then just what I think the book is trying to say. The way I did this was trying to find the main character. Now typically the main character is the person in which the book is about, but reading these books showed me that sometimes the book can be about someone else entirely. Doing this helped me to see why that character was focused on or what their story had to do with the deeper meaning. One of my entries that I feel expressed this idea was my entries about Dracula when I felt that Mina was the main character. On 4/15/2020 I added a commonplace book entry that had quotes which showed Mina’s strength. Mina was portrayed as a woman that did not fit in her time. She seemed to have been apart of every section of the book and she was associated with every character. This to me meant that her story was supposed to be focused on. The image that I chose for that entry expressed to me the urge to want to focus just on Dracula because the book is called Dracula but in fact Mina was the one that the story truly circled around.
One trend that I saw with my entries was the need to see who the monster was. Because our class focused around monsters it was fun to see who could be the unsuspected monster and was the one that we were supposed to see as the monster truly evil? One book that I found to test these questions was The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. In this book, it was easy to assume that Dr.Jekyll was good but the alternative form of him, Mr. Hyde, was evil and they were separate, but I pulled quotes that saw the two of them in a different light. A quote I posted in my 3/3/2020 entry said, “I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race” “I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.” (78) and “Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures” (80) Both of these quotes to me meant that Dr.Jekyll knew what he was becoming and therefore was as evil as the other part of him in which he blamed everything on. I was extremely happy with this entry because it showed my ability to find these quotes and answer the question that I had started the book with. That was something that I also tried to do when starting these books was try and see if the monster is truly a monster. Another example of that was Frankenstein in which I felt he was only a monster because he was abandoned and that made him resentful.
My favorite entries were any that I tried to analyze another character who could be the true monster. In Jane Eyre, I had found quotes in which Mr. Rochester could be the monster or in the Picture of Dorian Gray, I had analyzed that Lord Henry could be the monster in disguise. I had always read a book with one lens and that lens was to just finish the book. But, reading these novels made me look at every character with a set of questions that could be answered throughout the book. This was something that I wanted to work on, as a reader, to become stronger at analyzing books. I want to use this method in future reading. No matter what the book is about I think going into a book with questions or with an open mind as to the true character focus could be a good way to find the deeper meaning in any book.
