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Joseph and His Brothers
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Q1 - The Stories of Jacob
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Anyone else struggling with this? I am finding it so dry and hard to get into to. I have read about 100 pages and nothing is sticking.
Yes, I'm certainly not finding it an easy read! 1. Jacob is shown as a weak but mostly worthy and even-tempered man who is perturbed by the difficulties of managing his relationships and particularly his large family of unruly teenage boys.
3. Major themes and motifs:
- religious practice and the difficulties of worshipping different god(s) than one's neighbours.
- dreams and their significance.
- competition, conflict and the question of whether to flee or fight.
- women being considered the possessions of their fathers or husbands, but with minds of their own.
5. Jacob has children by several different women. His first wife Leah was the older sister of the woman he really wanted to marry, Rachel. Leah's sons and daughter have a firm place in the family. Then he has sons by two "handmaidens", and two sons by his second wife, Rachel. Joseph is the elder of these and his favourite, which makes Joseph's older brothers critical and somewhat jealous of him. Jacob doesn't seem so fond of Rachel's second son Benjamin, perhaps because Rachel died giving birth to him.
8. Most of the conflicts arise out of competition for resources, or jealousy - sibling rivalry, or men desiring women who "belong to" other men. Resolution in the case of competition usually seems to involve one or both parties heading out for new territory. Clearly the world was not too densely populated at this time...
9. Dreams are often seen as sent by God, especially Joseph's. Both he and his father seem to assume that dreams (or a certain type of dream) will come true. They provide a signpost for one's path through life.
10. I did what was suggested in the introduction to the Everyman edition, and started with the story of Dinah. That was certainly easier to read than the prologue, but I was surprised to find I became annoyed and defensive when Mann suggested the Bible version was untruthful to make Jacob's family out to be more justified than they were. I wouldn't have thought I was that attached to Bible stories, or that there'd be an issue of true or not for me, but clearly what's learned early goes deep!
11. I can't say I'm really enjoying it yet. I have hopes of that changing.
I posted this under the general annual heading so reposting here:I have read up through the story of Dinah. I struggled a bit to get into Mann's themes of how myth is repetitive and exists in the present as well as in the past. "Pouring the present into given forms, into a mythic model, founded by one's forefathers, and making it flesh again." However, the retelling of the Biblical stories I am finding quite engaging. I love Mann's dismissal of what the "shepherd's told" and his recasting and retelling, changing timelines and implying character traits in Jacob and others that I don't recall having been called out in my Sunday school. He paints Jacob as rather totally dismissive of Dinah, the only daughter, though.
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It was interesting to see how he hesitantly accepted to be part of the grand joke orchestrated by Rebekah, which granted him with the blessing, and how he did not seek to abuse of it directly after his flight, rather “lending” it and himself to the greedy Laban with an eye in the future. Jacob is shown as patient and resilient; once he gets to Laban’s land and fell in love with Rachel, he hatched a plan and executed it, despite some delays and some ploys and deceptions from Laban.
4. Analyze Mann's narrative style in this section. How does the author employ language and storytelling techniques to convey the complexity of the characters and their relationships?
I’ll make two comments. First, Mann must have done some thorough research to go beyond this story as it is depicted in the Bible. There is a lot of knowledge that relates to the different pagan beliefs that abounded at the time; one must remember that this story was set 600-700 years before Judaism was established as a monotheistic religion. The family line of Jacob was an outlier at that time, and the detailed description of pagan rites highlight that fact as well as showing the gradual transition to monotheism for some of the characters (Rachel). Second, I’m still trying to understand why a story about Joseph and his brothers had to expedite the story of the sister Dinah and then to progressively go back in time by exploring Jacob’s life and how we get to the start of the story (the scene between Joseph and Jacob at the well). I’m hopeful I will find answers about this in the following parts.
5. Examine the dynamics within Jacob's family. How does Mann depict the relationships between Jacob and his sons, and what role do these relationships play in the unfolding of the story?
Jacob was deceived by Laban when the latter ensured that the former would unwittingly wed the oldest daughter, the unsightly Leah, instead of Rachel. Through another dodgy deal, Jacob was able to also get Rachel as a second wife and the two handmaids attached to the daughters as minor wives. Jacob had 10 sons and a daughter from Leah and the two handmaids and had belatedly two sons from Rachel. In normal times, Jacob’s blessing should have been bestowed on the first born; however, he would reserve this privilege for Joseph, the first born from his true wife. This favourable treatment would set Joseph apart and against the rest of his brothers. We already see some examples of this behaviour, for instance, in the chapter The Tattletale.
6. Identify instances of foreshadowing and irony in "The Story of Jacob." How do these literary devices contribute to the reader's understanding of the events to come?
I can only think of the most obvious one: the unwanted Leah, who ended up very fertile and provider of most of Jacob’s progeniture, while the true wife Rachel took years before finally giving birth to Joseph, only to die in childbirth with Benjamin (or Benoni, the son of death).
9. Dreams play a significant role in the narrative. Analyze the importance of dreams in "The Story of Jacob" and their influence on the characters' actions and decisions.
Dreams are usually revelations to the characters who experience them. In Jacob’s case, they are often interpreted as messages from God about what should happen or what should be done.
11. Overall thoughts, are you enjoying the book so far?
I am not sure if “enjoying” is the right word, but it was certainly not that painful. The first 40 pages were a blur and almost made me regret taking on this mammoth of a story. But there were better passages in the story, like part 5 (In Laban’s Service).
Book wrote: "Anyone else struggling with this? I am finding it so dry and hard to get into to. I have read about 100 pages and nothing is sticking."Me too! I just finished this part and have felt like its so dense in biblical lore without being told in a very humanizing or emotionally relatable way. Honestly, not what I was expecting exactly.
To kind of answer some of the questions:
Jacob is portrayed as someone with a lot of perseverance who is able to adapt to the literally biblical events that befall him. Some of the main themes so far seem to be mythology vs the 'truth' and if these distinctions matter, the prophetic nature of dreams, the cyclical nature of history, and determinism to some extent. I found the recurring theme of coveting women as property uh...not great but to semi answer the question of historical context, it is appropriate to the mentality of the times. I'm also not thrilled about the theme of dreams being prophetic its yanno trendy to Mann's time the whole Jungian thing, but I can't say I find very interesting or compelling personally.
But, I will push on and finish the book. I might break this one up with smaller books in between though.
I am approximately 1/3rd of the way through the book. I was reading in small bite size snippets and that was not working for me. The book didn't call to me and I wasn't coming back to it. However, in order to catch up I started only reading this book and found it a much better read. Once I fell into Mann's writing style (via translation), I was much more engaged. 1) The younger Jacob is a person who has two great loves, the interactions and discussions he has with his God which is largely in the form of musings but occasionally in the form of dreams, and his cousin Rachel. Later he equates Rachel's son Joseph with Rachel and adds an additional love. These loves form his primary way of being. He is a man in love. However, he is also arrogant, sly, persevering and politically astute. He knows what he wants, or actually, what he believes should be his by divine right, and proceeds to make it so.
2) Mann plays with Biblical symbolism but also throws in many other religions and their imagery as well as layering some Greek and Egyptian mythology on top. This serves to keep Jacob's relationship with his God in the context of a greater theme of human's and their need for Gods.
3). Mann doesn't skimp on the themes he addresses. There is a whole chapter on the nature of time and how one carries the past, and its stories forward, often repeating the patterns of the past. Other major themes would be family and the nature of jealousy and betrayal within a family as Jacob stole his brother's birthright. Against this theme of betrayal is the nature of divine intervention. Jacob did steal. He did betray his brother, at his mother's urging, but he sees it as being predestined in the eyes of god. There is the discussion of many gods and slow but steady movement toward monotheism whereby god and the believer made a contract with each other. What exactly this contract means in relationship to the unbalance of power is an interesting concept. God does not need believers as he is already all and has no needs, but nevertheless he welcomes Abraham and his descendants as "his" people. (Note the pronoun is always 'he' for Mann). There are also themes of forgiveness, of parental blame for their children's weaknesses, of sacrifice and its relationship with forgiveness. There are probably many more...
4) Mann assumes you have heard the Biblical story as told "by the shepherds" and then tells the reader what they got wrong and what is a result of 100's of years of telling and miss-telling. He leaps ahead and then goes back in time but unlike a modern book, he doesn't lose the reader on his way. He investigates many philosophical ideas about religion but at an arm's length. It is a beautiful and elegant writing style but it isn't always compelling.
5) The betrayals that are nevertheless "blessed" by God within Jacob's family is the core of the book. Jacob's arrogance and his love for Rachel set Joseph up with his brothers. His brothers are jealous and Joseph doesn't grasp what he is doing to make the situation worse. He all but rubs their noses in his preferred status.
8) Rebecca and Jacob's betrayal of Jacob's father Isaac and his brother Esau foreshadows further betrayals in the book. Laban betraying Jacob with substituting Leah for Rachel. The brothers being jealous of Joseph and Joseph being all but oblivious to what this could do to him. These conflicts are resolved by Isaac giving Esau a lesser blessing and Esau forgiving his brother when he realizes that he didn't want the responsibility of the first born or realizes that he can't have it so he might as well be happy with what he has. These resolutions may point to a resolution with the brothers but that is not my memory of the bible story. We will see...
9) Jacob has dreams that he is thoroughly convinced are given to him by God. They are not products of his imagination but a foretelling of what is to come both in this world and in the next. He often has to take the message of the dream and act upon it which requires an interpretive skill that others in the novel do not have until Joseph arrives with his skills. To be able to communicate with God through one's dreams is considered a divine blessing, an anointment as it were.
10) Genesis 37-50 isn't very long. The Biblical text is rather straightforward and one does not need to interpret very much to understand that Joseph's brothers were jealous of his father's love for him. Mann gives us a complicated and richly detailed accounting of how Jacob knows about betrayal within a family and exactly why Jacob would love Joseph more, why he didn't hide it and why his brothers suffered under this condition rather than being happy for their brother.
11) As stated above, once I started reading in bigger chunks rather than in little pieces I did begin to enjoy Mann's witty asides, his reinterpretation with a more modern viewpoint and his amazing ability to draw characters that reflect his philosophical leanings. Overall I am enjoying the book.
1. Jacob is a great deceiver. He is quite contemplative, and embarks on a spiritual journey, armored with his machiavellian mind and blessing.2. The Well, The Sun and the Moon, the archetypes: Cain and Abel, recurrence, time, Blessing, faith. Love.
3. The themes of recurring events, people, tropes, archetypes, are carefully laid out in a mysteriously mystic fashion. Mann words his writing almost like a riddle, one must parse through his philosophical ramblings and concepts, which are introduced and immediately interwoven into the stories of Jacob, as a facet and function of the lives and spirits of the characters.
4. Mann writes anachronistically, ironically, modernistic to capture a humanistic side to these ancient peoples, an impression of them we don't usually get when we learn of them in the history books.
5. Jacob is devoted to the beautiful Rachel, he is also a master manipulator. He plays favorite to Joseph for possessing her beauty and his wit, charm, and spiritual glow. It's funny that although Jacob and Laban are related and family, Laban effectively enslaves Jacob for decades, trading this some time with the blessing as well as his wives and some concubines. There is straight up incest, grooming, pedophilia, played straight, presented unabashed in all it's perverse glory.
6. Mann creates a pattern of the shared properties between different biblical stories, utilizing this to foreshadow similar events happening between different characters. One example is the story of the grand joke Jacob played on Esau, only for Jacob's blessing to cost him the punishment of playing chess with his life against the devil Laban, cast out and given the Mark of Cain, banished to his uncle's evil realm in the underworld.
7. Mann names numerous lands, peoples, tribes, cultures, etc. He is not lacking in any proper nouns or adjectives, he makes excellent use of characterization and imagery.
8. I'm now realizing that Jacob's primary conflicts are with his family. Though he also has a conflict with the Shechem tribe, which his sons genocide for the sake of their defiled sister. Jacob is revealed to be a stereotypical jew from the perspective of a politically incorrect person. It's interesting that Laban has different Gods, Jacob must reconcile and deal with this but also there's an understanding that they are real in a sense; Jacob communicates with them and it is said that the Most High is speaking to Jacob through the idols.
9. Jacob's dreams are what give him fuel to embrace life in all its triumphs and failures. I especially like this moment after he disgraces himself in front of Eliphaz, where although on the outside he is disheveled and looks hellish, on the inside his soul is raised up and he's ready for whatever life has to through at him, religiously euphoric. I loved when Esau is rejected by the disgusted Jacob, the latter thinks to himself "That is neither God's intention, nor my soul's."
10. Mann will take a single line from Genesis and stretch it out to a whole chapter. The first couple dozen pages are simply Joseph and Jacob pondering beside a well, another common symbol by the way. There is plenty characterization to be had, brevity is not to be found in this novel. Great if you want to read pages describing the intimate details of a character's body.
11. This is a mighty book.
2. Explore the symbolic elements and imagery used by Mann in "The Story of Jacob." How do these contribute to the overall meaning of the narrative?
3. Identify and discuss the major themes and motifs introduced in "The Story of Jacob." How do these themes set the tone for the rest of the novel?
4. Analyze Mann's narrative style in this section. How does the author employ language and storytelling techniques to convey the complexity of the characters and their relationships?
5. Examine the dynamics within Jacob's family. How does Mann depict the relationships between Jacob and his sons, and what role do these relationships play in the unfolding of the story?
6. Identify instances of foreshadowing and irony in "The Story of Jacob." How do these literary devices contribute to the reader's understanding of the events to come?
7. Place the events of "The Story of Jacob" in their cultural and historical context. How does Mann weave historical and cultural elements into the narrative?
8. Explore the conflicts introduced in this part of the novel. How are they resolved, and what impact do these resolutions have on the characters and the overall plot?
9. Dreams play a significant role in the narrative. Analyze the importance of dreams in "The Story of Jacob" and their influence on the characters' actions and decisions.
10. Compare and contrast Thomas Mann's portrayal of Jacob and his family with the biblical account. In what ways does Mann reinterpret the biblical narrative, and what effect does this reinterpretation have on the story?
11. Overall thoughts, are you enjoying the book so far?