The Purple Land

The Purple Land by WH Hudson is a story of a young man with overwhelming confidence, going on a journey throughout South America with one friend: ‘his love of fate’. The reader follows the main character as he travels around ‘The Purple Land’ in an attempt to find some work to support his wife that he has left behind in the city of Montevideo. The reader is told from the beginning, that at the conclusion of the book, the narrator will be sent to jail by his wifes father. Which leads us to understand the exquisite metaphors that explain his journey and freedom throughout the beautiful country-side, need to be contrasted to a life in a prison cell, where he likely would have written this book.

Although being married, the narrator finds an enormous amount of love in the form of beautiful women. In one of the first houses that the narrator visits on his journey throughout the ‘Purple Land’, he stays a few nights with a family that has several daughters. The narrator has an excellent stay, playing with the families pet ostriches and listening to the families music that relies heavily on the guitar and poetry. Upon the narrators departure, he finds one of the daughters was very cold with him, and notices that everyone in the room understands why this girl had a reason to be cold. Even if he wasn’t married (he rarely mentions that he’s married), how was he supposed to flirt with this girl, in her own house, with all her family constantly around? He suggests that flirtation takes on many different dialects and languages that he may have overlooked. To flirt, they could have talked in solemn gestures, teased one another or whatever other actions had a flirtatious hidden meaning; which could only be interpreted by these two lovers and is to absurd for others to comprehend as an act of flirtation.  If only he was able to uncover this secret South American language, he would have been able to flirt with this girl. His conclusion is that “Love cometh up as a flower, and men and charming women naturally flirt when brought together.”

At another house, the narrator encounters the most beautiful girl that he has ever laid eyes on. Margarita is only fourteen years old, but like the flower that shares her name, she is one of the sweetest beings in all of South America. Staying with this family, he prefers to adore the beauty of Margarita rather than enter into trivial conversations with the owner of the estancia and his guests. They accept him as being a quiet man, but rather he is just a man with his eyes transfixed on beauty. The girl has a different skin color than her parents that are pure natives of the Banda Oriental. Margarita is half white and half native; the half white combination often leads to some beautiful women. The narrator, later on in the novel, hears the tragic history of this girl. How her mother named Transita was sold to a man for her beauty, how her mother died when Margarita was only three years old. Her mother’s dying wish was for her daughter not to fall into the trap of being affected by the splendour of her own beauty, and get taken advantage of by a beast in the shape of man. She was left with a simple-minded peasant family in the Banda Oriental. She loves what she is told to love. Later in the book, Richard is given the offer of marrying the girl, by a man that Transita entrusted Magarita with foremost. Richard does not tell this man that he is married, because it is hard for him to mix truth and lies. Instead, he subtly turns down this request, although agreeing on her immense beauty and the romanticism in her story.

The next girl that Richard meets is very politcally minded and tends to his wounds that he recieved on account of the Banda Militants . Her name is Dolores, and unlike Margarita, she is a grown woman that knows the meaning of love and womanhood. Every man that she has ever loved, has lost their life for the Banda-cause. Dolores has never learned to hate the war, because how can one hate the cause that loved ones have sacrificed their lives for? While tending to his wounds, Dolores and Richard become well acquainted. They enjoy many beautiful afternoons, talking to each other in the garden. Richard begins to have feelings of love for this girl, and one afternoon he kisses her. Before the kiss, he announced that he would consider giving his arms to the military cause, for Dolores; who very passionate about her political views, as a woman, can not do anything to support them through means of warfare. After this kiss, she lays in Richard’s arms for a few minutes, both in silence until she immediately runs away, and he immediately takes the mindset that he committed a foul.  After this, she refuses to have conversations with him, so he decides to take drastic measures to impress her. He talks with the militant leaders, and agrees to join them on their battle against the government troops. Later Richard finds her in his room.  They begin to discuss the kiss, where Richard finds that Dolores left because he would not explain himself; however she did feel a strong sense of passion for him. Richard exclaims that he was overcome by passion, and now realizes that he is willing to do anything to act on this passion. She insists that joining the warpath, is not want she wants from him, but instead his heart. She begins to open her heart up, and speak of her deeply burried and tightly packed love. Then Richard, for the first time in the book, explains to another character that he has a wife. Upon hearing that Richard has a wife, Dolores claims that he is a traitor rather than a cheater, and goes on an angry outrage slashing at Richard’s heart. Then Richard exclaims in anger that “her one desire is everything to her, her divine, beautiful country nothing.” They both feel terrible for their words, and hold each other tight thinking about their love for each other, while understanding they would not meet again for all of eternity. The title of one of the chapters involving Dolores is passion vs. patriotism. While Richard would be fighting the military cause for his passion with Dolores, other men fight for the passion of their nation. It is easy to see the similarities between passion and patriotism.

Love is not the only type of encounter that Richard is aware of along his journey. Early in his journey, he meets a man in a bar. The man tells him the story of a monkey in a tree, that proclaims that a revolution is imminent. The people that hear this monkey, exclaim that it does not affect them, because they do not live in the tree like the monkey. The city-peoples are the monkey, who claim the revolution is for all ‘the purple land’ and not just for the like-minded individuals of the city. It goes to illustrate how even slight differences in peoples lives bring about extremely different political views, and also that revolution is a sign of boredom.  Boredom of the undeniable slow and natural pace of progression.

There is a fight scene early in the book that characterizes Richard quite well. Richard decides that he would like to go find a cow so that he can provide milk for the workers of the estancia he is living at. He borrows a lasso from ‘Barbados’ the Barbarian, and then Richard and his friend ‘Eyebrows’ go to find one. They are successful in finding one, however they were not aware of the difficulties of catching a cow and he ran off with the lasso around his neck. They return to the estancia where Barbados is very upset about his lost lasso.  He insults Eyebrows and Richard very thouroughly, and then exclaims that he will make a lasso of human hide if his is not returned. After hearing enough insults, Richard lunges at the man. Richard hesitates because there was a knife in his own hand which he was cutting an orange with. Barbados takes a swipe at Richard with the Barbarians own knife; he misses. Richard then swipes at Barbados with his knife, slashing open an enormous wound down the Barbarians face. The fight is over and the Barbarian gets his wounds tended to. Later on, the estancia owners warns Richard that he should just leave. There will be no work for him at this estancia, and if he stays the police will likely arrest him. Richard then gets advice from his friend Eyebrows. Eyebrows tells him that Barbados will not hurt him if he decides to stay. Richard demonstrated that he was a fierce warrior, and now the other men will likely be envious of Richard’s characterization. Because of this characterization, other men at the estancia will want to prove that Richard is actually a good fighter and was not just lucky in his battles with the Barbarian. Some other guest in the house will pick a quarrel with him, and in that fight Richard will have to kill this man, otherwise the quarrels will continue for eternity. Richard decides to leave the estancia, and we get to continue on his marvelous journey around South America.

This is the story of a beautiful ‘life-characterizing’ journey throughout South America. Richard is excited to cross paths and find encounters, by following the path he was fated and never having regrets; until he ends up in jail and his regretful self wrote the beauty of this journey. He admits that he’s not the most intelligent man, but throughout the book the reader realizes that intelligence has very little to do with excitement and adventure.For the simple minded man, love defeats boredom.

Full Circle

It seems that most of us will begin our lives in the stale glow of a shiny white hospital room. For most of us the doctors and nurses in these rooms will be the ones who open our eyes to this world for the first time while the smell of the sterile room fills our nostrils as we take our first breath. It makes me sad to think that most of us will also end our lives in these same rooms filled with their fluorescent lighting and sterile scent. Who was it that said we eventually return to the place from where we first came? I think, for the most part, that he was right. Think about it. Statistics show that the strange men and women clad in their white and green smocks with their various apparatus hanging around their necks looking a lot like those who we fixed our gaze upon when we first opened our eyes will most likely also be the ones to close them for the last time when our moment comes to exit this world.

-any amount of books by ernest hemingway
-a good dictionary and thesauras. the dictionary should preferably be hardcover.
-the family minivan
-one of those tim hortons gift cards.
-a rain jacket very similar to the one dad has from MEC. blue or black. or the MEC ferrata hoodie. probably need a large: black. think about ordering it online. won’t take very long to deliver. i dont mind if it comes late.
-Tea… delicious varieties of tea.
-Rum
-A nice lighter, but not too nice because i will lose it very quickly.

Gabriel Dumont by George Woodcock

The book begins with an extremely emotional account of an encounter between Canada’s two greatest Metis. After having lost the Battle of Batoche, and therefore losing their way of life, the two courageous Metis leaders met in a pit and had a discussion. Nobody quite knows what was said between Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel, but I like to think that both might have shed a few tears.

One of the main emphasis’s of the book was the contrast in heroe stature of the two men. Louis Riel was a passionately religous man, well educated unlike most Metis, fighting the battles with a cross in his hand while dancing around and miraculously avoiding gunfire. Gabriel Dumont on the otherhand was more of a traditional Metis. Growing up in the days of Buffalo hunts and becoming an excellent navigator and hunter on the great prairie lands. An illiterate man, but what he lacked in education he made up for in courageousness and leadership on the battlefield. The argument that George Woodcock, the Great Canadian Anarchist, makes is that Dumont was much more of a heroe than Reil. However, he is disgruntled with the fact that Canadians do not appreciate this. He believes that Gabriel’s courageousness was overshadowed by Riel’s execution. Riel was a martyr for the great Metis cause, a cause that Woodcock believes Riel did more harm to than good.

I t is true that people are worshipped if they die during their popularity. In the US, you have to look no further to artists such as Tupac, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain whose records all seem to have benefited from their death. In Canada, during CBC’s contest for the Greatest Canadian, Terry Fox deservingly placed second. Would he have placed second if he had survived cancer? Would he even be more popular than Rick Hansen, who travelled all the way around the world on a wheelchair, if he had survived cancer? Canadians definitely glorify people that die for their cause. We take pride in someone who was at their pinnacle of glory when their time on earth ended. That is a large part of the reason of why we remember Riel, although his qualities were not superior to that of Dumont’s. I think this is a sign of a very sophisticated culture. A culture that is so overfilled with the enjoyment of life, that they cherish stories of death to deflate the balloons of their well-being. Very much like the Greeks, who also were infilicted with the overfullness of life, and took pleasure in Dionysian Festivals involving sacrificing animals and the ultimate ‘Devils concotion’ of sexual pleasure and pain.

While Louis Riel was a very courageous man in battle, Dumont is possibly the bravest man to ever walk the prairies. In the battle of Duck Lake, he was wounded by a cannon ball that shaved his head. Had he fallen into a state of unconciousness, his men would surely of become demoralized. Lying on the ground, bleeding profusely, he continued to fight. Even during the final of Batoche, he was still suffering from these wounds and a complete lack of sleep, but his leadership and marksmanship were still maintained. In the buffalo hunts, he was always at the lead of the pack, rushing through the storming herd of buff’s, fearlessly ready to supply food to his Metis friends and family. In the battle of Fish Creek, Dumonts army was outnumbered by a count of 5 to 1. But through Dumont’s knowledge of prairie warfare and leadership, his men were able to drive off the attacking army with heavy casualties. Extremely skilled in the art of sharp-shooting and navigating, later in his life he participated in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show where he was well known for his courageousness even in the Easter United States. Confidently walking through storming troops of horses and putting his marksmanship skills to the test, people travelled great distances to see the capabilities of this great Metis warrior. A great leader Dumont was. Never scared to go to battle.

There were times before Middleton’s troops approached Batoche to destroy the Metis that Dumont wanted to partake in guerilla warfare on their encampents during the nights. he figured flying through the camps on horses, firing off guns then retreating to the woods and making indian war-calls, would have demoralized Middleton’s troops and caused them to lack sleep. After a few days, they would be so exhausted that they would not be able to fight properly. But Riel, the man everyone turned to because of his religous visions, vetoed these ideas because God told him that the battle had to be won in Batoche; barricading the men into a city and fighting from pits, rather than fighting by the traditional style of plain warfare that the Metis were accustomed to. He knew that this was less probable to achieving victory, however, he sincerely expected a miracle to happen the day of the battle. It did not, and it was this insensibility, and lack of desire for battle, that caused the Metis to eventually lose the war and their culture.

While far too many years have past to reshape Canadians visions on the great Metis cause, one should not forget the courageousness of Dumont that has been overshadowed by the religious fantasies of Riel.

So here it is…

Hey dude,

Thought i’d throw up a blog and we can write criticisms on some of the books we have been reading.  But I’ll probably just write about anything most of the time.  username and password are below.

username and password

username: desilets

pass: (the company that we worked for in the summer)

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