Kirishanth’s Comments (group member since Sep 07, 2012)

Kirishanth’s comments from the ELEVEN READER'S CLUB group.

Poignant Verses: “Part two being that, like any guy his age, Rank believed he was immortal. And no, just because this belief was typical of any guy his age doesn’t make it okay for a guy like Rank. Rank, if anyone, should’ve known better. The gods had grabbed Rank by the neck a couple of times now and rubbed the barbed fact of mortality directly into his idiot face. And still the big lug ambled on his way, wiping the blood from his eyes, assuming it didn’t apply to him specifically.”

Vigil- a period spent in doing something through the night, e.g., watching, guarding, or praying
Avowal- a frank statement or admission
Apostate- somebody who renounces a belief or allegiance

Metaphor/Simile: “To wit: where there was a powder keg, Rankin Jr. was as fire. He was King Midas in reverse, our hero: fingertips Black Plague.”
Parallelism: “I accept you know the answers to pretty much every f*cking question I have put to you this summer. I accept that you will never respond to my emails. I accept that you have maybe not been reading them since May. I accept that you exist, or else you don’t, and everything that happened from the point where we stopped being acquainted with each other, either did or did not take place the way I said.”

In the final section of the book, it started to slow down, and the narrator started to be nicer to his father. In all I think that this book was action packed when recalling the past, and more emotional when talking about his present life. I truly enjoyed this book in all its entirety.

Poignant Verses: “Who wants to face the mess below the surface, right? And so you make stuff up. You get sucked into your own bullsh*t. You want to see where it’s all going. You let the story take you instead of you taking it in the direction you originally mapped out. The direction that your noble purpose dictates. The noble purpose gets lost. And maybe, before you know it, you’re screwing over everyone who has ever meant anything to you, without even realizing it.”

Metaphysical- relating to the philosophical study of the nature of being and beings or a philosophical system resulting from such study
Torrid- full of passion, especially sexual passion
Magnanimity- great generosity or noble-spiritedness

Imagery- “Every time I closed my eyes and tried to feel the Holy Spirit bearing down on me like a typhoon of love and terror, all I’d get was Zeus, aiming drunken thunderbolts, sticking it to nymphs.”
Irony- “I bought a house a few years ago just off Barton, so you’ll be disappointed to learn that I no longer have that elegant bachelor suite that overlooked the slag heaps.”

In this part of the novel the narrator is finally starting to open up to his father, because he finally wants to start helping him with his book that he is creating. Also, when he is talking about his past, he is talking about many situations where he is becoming soft hearted, where he shows his views on things compared to others. In all, it seems as if he is finally straying from his fake persona to show that he is a different person altogether.

Poignant Verses: “The gods, I wanted to tell Father Waugh, are known for being sh*theads, okay? So maybe the dear old fella’s not as dumb as you think. Gods don’t rush to the side of ailing mortals. They never help you in your time of need. They would double over in disbelieving glee at the idea of answering someone’s prayers, after which they might deliver a nice thunderbolt or locust plague by way of extending the joke.”

Euphemism- a word or phrase used in place of a term that might be considered too direct, harsh, unpleasant, or offensive
Echelon- a level of authority or rank in an organization or system
Punitive- relating to, done as, or imposed as a punishment

Metaphor- “The thing about Kyle’s magic is, it makes him a uniter, an axle.”
Sarcasm- “Yes but Catholics are insane,” I point out. “They worship martyrs. People who were burned at the stake and eaten by lions and tortured to death. The more you suffer the more gold stars you get. So of course they’re gonna walk for a month straight, that’s as good as it gets, that’s right up there with self flagellation. Look at me! My feet are mangled stumps! Look how pious I am!”

In this part of the book, it seems to have slowed down a bit, with the narrator talking about his father getting injured and about his twenty year old life. What really surprised me was how he did not show any hate for his father when he was yelling at him, instead he was speechless, trying to make amends with him to get him to calm down. Also, he now shows that his real persona is not a punk who cracks skulls, even in a sport that allows him to do so (hockey), but he is someone who does not wish to hurt people, and recognizes that death is not a fantasy, it is real and can get us all.

Poignant verses: “If you’re going to believe in one or more gods, I remember thinking, the gang from Mount Olympus made a lot more sense than the guy I’d been hearing about most of my life up until that point. Who are you going to believe runs the show if you are a citizen of Planet Earth with any kind of awareness as to what’s going on around you? Are you going to buy into the story about his great guy, who is actually somehow three guys, one-third human, and he loves everybody equally, and all he wants is for everyone to behave themselves? (But, oh yeah, sometimes tsunamis at Christmastime. Sometimes bombs on civilian populations. Sometimes mothers dying horribly.) Or do you believe in this self-absorbed pack of loons who couldn’t give a sh*t what happens on earth but just for fun decide to come down every once in a while to screw with us?”

Vertiginous- causing dizziness, especially because of being very high or exposed
Ordained- to order or establish something formally, especially by law or by some other authority
Etherize- to render groggy or numb, as if by an anesthetic.

Anti-climactic- “But in those days, Sylvie was a badass. She shot ducks out of the sky. She wrestled pike from the rivers. She castrated bucks. And then she met Gord.” (In this context, the narrator harbors great dislike for Gord, so in his perspective, meeting him was a massive loss.)
Antithesis- “… I started thinking about Gord and how disgusted he would be; how he always hated soccer because Europeans played it and Europeans are by definition homosexuals, even though the Russians have proven themselves able to play hockey once in a while like respectable hetero males.”

I truly enjoyed this section of the book, reason being that the narrator purposely called the father that he hates just to talk to him about soccer, which in his opinion is for homosexuals who run around in shorts.

"If being a grown man endow you with instantaneous authority, what do you suppose a body like mine was telling people?
It told people, I think: Make way.
It told people: Trust me.
Some people it told: I am your hero!
It told women: I'll take care of it.
Men it asked: How could I have anything but contempt for you?
It said: Prove it. Prove to me how big you are."

Oedipal- of or pertaining to desire felt for opposite-sex parent
Aversion- a strong feeling of dislike, opposition, repugnance, or antipathy
Monomania- a psychosis characterized by thoughts confined to one idea or group of ideas.

Sarcasm:"What are you KKK or something? Jews can't sing? Jews can't be born in the U.S.A.?"
Analogy/Metaphor: "I was born the illegitimate offspring of fornicators, passed like a puck to the nuns (which was what was done with us B-words in that particular time and place) and slapshot straight into the upstanding, two-parent home of Gord and Sylvie. Goal! Now I was somebody's son."

I am really enjoying this book so far. The character matches me in almost every way. Tall, scary and thought to be a thug. What intrigues me is why he acts like a thug in front of others. I think it may be because of the lifestyle he was in, single parent household, to whom he harbours great contempt towards. I can't wait to see what the rest of his childhood turns out to be like.

The book that I chose to read is “The Antagonist” by Lynn Coady. The reason why I chose this book was because the text sort of relates to me. The main character is portrayed as a person who does bad things and acts like a thug. He has other people’s standards to decide who he is. Just like how he is seen as a thug-like character, I am seen as a scary person as well. That is before people get to know that I’m kind and I don’t beat people up for any reason, or at all. He and I seem to have an easily misjudged appearance, one that brings people to believe that we are scary and dangerous.
From what I have read from the text, the character seems to have gotten into some fights, or is someone who is called over for a good brawl. The idea of violence caught my attention, because I love to see or read about a good fight. So I hope to read about some fights that occurred in Rank’s (main character) life.
What interested me about the author was that she had been nominated for the Governor General’s Award in the past, and the novel “The Antagonist” was a finalist in the Scotiabank Giller Prize competition. Also, in the review of Lynn Coady’s “The Antagonist”, they state that she is the most dynamic prose stylists in Canadian letters. She shifts from various characters, and in the description of “The Antagonist”, it is as if she was the main character describing it so that I can visualize the “manliness” emitted from the stated setting.