RDB: Jude I

"Everything seemed turning to satire"(135)

Oh my dear lord in heaven, if not for Great Expectations I would have thought this to be the most miserable narrative in existence. As it is, I'm beginning to think that victorian novels were designed to be the soap operas of their times. How in heaven's name could the story of a single person contain so many miserable people!? The crappyiness of the people in this story ceases to affect the reader by the very absense of anyone NOT crappy with whom to compare them, its ridiculous! Raised by a hag who wishes him dead, entrapped by a harlott who lacks any clear motive at all, enamored of a city that cares nothing for him, enamored of a woman who enjoys toying with any man within her reach, Jude lives a life so horrendously pointless that I find it difficult to connect with him in any way, even when dredging through the worst memories of my life.

As it is, I can in fact identify with how Jude would have felt during his extremely brief attempt to actually get into a college. "...he found himself clinging to the hope of some reply as to his one last chance of redemption."(93) is in fact an excellent example of how it felt to wait for an acceptance letter from UT, especially given how late in the year they send theirs out. In fact, if I recall correctly, I had my housing secured well before I had any such assurances of my education, as idiotic as that is. Even more so I can identify with his...well...lostness throughout the entire thing. Even if he had succeeded in gaing acceptance, what then? Jude spent twelve years trying to get into college for college's sake, with no plans of what he would do with his education, in fact no real interest in what he would do with it whatsoever. I cannot deny that I did exactly the same thing. All of middleschool and highschool was this mad dash to prove myself worthy of college admittance, without a thought to why I wanted to go, or what I would do with what I learned.

I fear that all my life so far has been learning for learning's sake, a sentiment that Newman obviously glorifies, but there is no great mother church to provide me with food and lodging for the rest of my life, simply as a reward for being intelligent. I'll be twenty-five and dead broke when I finish "learning", and I doubt that any of that learning will lend itself to any particularly practical pursuits, such as obtaining lodging or sustenance. Jude has found himself in much the same predicament, hell his only practical skills are those he picked up purely as a means to achieve is much vaunted "education". Ironically enough, his dreams of college have gotten him nothing, while the masonry is at least keeping his fool self fed and housed. When he doesn't throw away his wages on women who bring him only misery that is.

But I digress, in terms of the fear, the not knowing that accompanies the pursuit of entrance into a school of higher learning, I can indeed connect with the story being told. And Jude reveals for us all the heartbreaking tale of failure in the pursuit, a side which, by dint of our being in college at the moment, none of us is familiar with. I watch Jude drift now, from ambition to ambition, never settling long enough to achieve any, and know all too well that I could be him. I see qualities in him I know I possess myself, I see him make choices that I too would make, even when, as an observor of his life, I scream at him not to. It is indeed a revealing glimpse at my own life, my own soul, to watch Jude flounder in waters I swam myself, when we both started out swimming in much the same fashion.