As I said in my introductory entry, years ago I told someone I was somewhat envious that he was about to read this last section for the first time, that the ending was that good. While Sophia’s half of the story had its climax in her ninth letter, Yarostan’s story peaks here, specifically during and directly after the engagement party/spectacle that Mirna orchestrates for Jasna and Titus. The mystery is solved, and friendships that have lasted for years begin to unravel.
The real strength in this section, however – and one of the main themes of the book in general – is how it isn’t too late for Yarostan, or Mirna, or Jasna, or anybody else for that matter. Perspectives can take decades to develop, and that’s okay. Yarostan ends his story apologizing for “twenty years of ignorance” but somehow when I see the person he has become, it doesn’t seem to matter.
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The plot is thickening, and also quickening. Yarostan’s letter is quite intense this time around, and Sophia’s letter begins to tie up loose ends of the story. Yarostan has heard that foreign armies surround his country, ready to restore order if lawlessness persists. “Freedom inside a cage is still slavery,” he says, and I feel like this might be one of the preliminary themes of the book. How do we navigate as broken people in a world we didn’t choose?
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Wow, what a week. There are a number of issues that pop up this time around, but I think that the Vesna situation kind of trumps everything. After the dance performance that Mirna and Yara orchestrate to visually interpret Mirna’s sexual experiences with the devil in all its permutations, Mirna gives Yarostan a slightly fuller description of the circumstances leading up to Vesna’s death. The tale so far is that she fell into a catatonic state, the doctors describing it as a brain injury and Yara calling it a game gone wrong. Before Mirna’s full confession in Yarostan’s 8th letter, the impression had been that perhaps this had something to do with Yara catching Vesna kissing herself in the mirror and suggesting that their father would kiss her when he returned from jail.
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I was explaining the Insurgent Summer project to an acquaintance, explaining how slow-going the reading is because I’m taking copious notes. I said that it was the first time I had ever taken notes while reading. “Ever?” he said, his eyes widened. “Well,” I said without hesitation (and totally seriously), “I mean, in school yeah, but never in real life.” I’m not relating this anecdote to prove how I’m too cool for school, but I do want to reveal my anti-academic tendency. I suspect I felt this way before ever reading this book. My opinion on the subject has bloomed over the years. I now have a pretty harsh criticism of universities. They are not real life. At their best they are investments of time and money to procure a more desirable job for oneself in the future, and at their worst they are investments of time and money in order to avoid the responsibilities of real life. If you experience real life while in school, it is your own fortune (or dumb luck) and not the result of your tuition.
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The letters exchanged this time coincide with massive social activity in both countries. Zdenek’s factory is on strike as well as Yara’s school, and even Mirna’s conservative factory is starting to experience the murmurings of a possible uprising. In Sophia’s world, the local university has been occupied by students and workers and is serving as a hub for organizing strikes in neighboring factories. There is an air of excitement with most of the main contemporary characters, with Mirna and Luisa perhaps the only sour grapes of the bunch.
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This chapter was my first introduction to the book, brought in as an excerpt to an anarchist reading group. I read this letter that time without any real context to the rest of the story. I remember not really understanding why the people in the garage – Sophia especially – were having such dramatic responses. I might make a similar critique even upon this read, and I’ll expand later on that.
Although some of this letter recounts present-day events, most of it is a recollection of a time eleven years prior, in the garage where Sabina and Tina were living. There are two points I want to make in regard to Sophia’s present-day description before delving into the meaty substance of the garage days.
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In Sophia’s 4th letter we see that the letters between the two are beginning to concretely alter Sophia’s perspectives. In Yarostan’s 5th letter we see the change in him as well. His tone softens somewhat and he mentions “critical appreciation,” telling Sophia that he sees these letters as an expression of friendship and not an attack.
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Motivations aren’t always easy to suss out, even our own motivations sometimes. I’d like to think that my actions are motivated by my own desires and not a sense of getting ahead in life. That is, unless I’m clear in my own mind that I’m doing such-and-such a thing specifically in order to get ahead.
I’d like to think it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the case. Sophia would also like to think it, but it may not be the case as much as she thinks. Yarostan definitely thinks it, and he might be right. This set of letters focuses on manifestations of ladder-climbing, and it’s a running thread in both letters.
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In the third set of letters, Sophia and Yarostan are in many ways at odds. The first time I read this book, I began to like Yarostan much more than Sophia at this point. I think he really shines in his third letter. And Sophia? Well, we see how she sometimes isn’t a very good friend.
I believe that there are two main tensions in this set of letters: rebellion vs. pedagogy, and intentions vs. result. Come to think of it, these are perhaps the main tensions of the novel itself. I’ll just take on this third set of letters for now, though.
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In this second set of letters, a conflict gets drawn out that I think is a fundamental theme: the subjectivity of shared experiences. At this point in the book, Yarostan and Sophia are already beginning to acutely disagree about events that they both experienced in years past – twenty years, mind you. These aren’t small squabbles, either. Yarostan essentially tells Sophia that the strike in the carton factory, the event that she has held to her heart for all these years as the pinnacle of her life and the beginning of all meaning, was at best a puppet show and at worst the beginning of a descent into an even more repressive government.
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