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Reading Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann felt like climbing into a cold, cerebral labyrinth—with no guarantee of coming back whole. At its center is Adrian Leverkühn, a composer who trades his soul for artistic genius. But this is no flashy Faustian bargain. It’s slow. Clinical. And terrifyingly plausible. Mann fuses dense intellectualism with creeping dread, and I often felt like I was wading through quicksand made of philosophy, music theory, and theology.

The novel is narrated by Leverkühn’s friend Serenus Zeitblom, a cautious, moral man chronicling the life of a genius consumed from within. Zeitblom’s tone is restrained, but through it, I could feel the chill of Leverkühn’s isolation, his detachment, and ultimately his collapse. The pact with the devil is framed not just as a personal tragedy but a national one—mirroring Germany’s own moral decay leading up to the rise of Nazism. That parallel haunted me throughout.

This wasn’t a book I read quickly—or comfortably. Mann doesn’t allow that. I wrestled with it. I felt intellectually inadequate at times, overwhelmed by references and abstract discussions. But every so often, there’d be a moment of piercing clarity—a line or idea that hit like thunder. Those moments made the struggle worth it.

What lingered most wasn’t the pact, but the silence that followed—the music that never got written, the warmth that never returned. Doktor Faustus left me unsettled, and that feels right. It’s not meant to soothe. It’s meant to challenge, to provoke, to make you sit with discomfort.

I didn’t just read Doktor Faustus—I survived it. And I’m still thinking about what it took from me.

Reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was not just a literary experience—it was a reckoning. Told through fragmented perspectives, the novel follows Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl in 1940s Ohio, who yearns for blue eyes, believing they will make her beautiful and loved. What unfolds is not simply her story, but an indictment of a society infected by racism, internalized self-hate, and generational trauma.

As I read, I didn’t feel like a distant observer. I felt complicit, uncomfortable, and ultimately heartbroken. Morrison’s language is both poetic and punishing. Her prose doesn’t ask for permission—it demands attention. I found myself stopping mid-paragraph, re-reading lines, feeling gutted by how brutal and beautiful they were.

What struck me most was how Morrison refuses to offer easy comfort. Pecola’s descent into madness isn’t romanticized. It’s raw. Her world doesn’t change. It breaks her. And yet, Morrison doesn’t write tragedy for tragedy’s sake—she writes to expose the forces that destroy innocence, especially for Black girls.

This novel left me silent after the last page. It sharpened my awareness of how beauty standards and systemic violence intersect. I didn’t just read Pecola’s story—I carried it with me. Morrison makes sure you can’t look away, and honestly, I don’t think I ever will.

Reading The Bluest Eye was painful. Necessary. Unforgettable.

Reading A Clergyman’s Daughter was like walking through a fog that gradually thickens until one begins to question not only the world but one’s own place within it. George Orwell’s novel, often overlooked beside his major works, struck me as one of his most human and quietly devastating explorations of faith, poverty, and identity.

The story follows Dorothy Hare, the dutiful daughter of a small-town clergyman. At first, I saw her as the embodiment of repression and obedience — her life reduced to routine, service, and silent endurance. But when a sudden breakdown shatters her memory and she finds herself adrift in London, I felt the narrative shift from the domestic to the existential. Orwell strips Dorothy of everything — class, religion, respectability — and forces her, and us, to confront what remains when all illusions are gone.

What moved me most was not her suffering, but her quiet perseverance. In the scenes of homelessness and humiliation, Orwell’s prose becomes stark and compassionate. I could feel his deep empathy for the marginalized, but also his realism — there is no redemption, only endurance.

Dorothy’s eventual return to her old life felt bittersweet. She regains her place, yet something within her has changed irrevocably. Reading that ending, I felt Orwell’s unflinching message: awareness may not bring happiness, but it brings truth, and that is its own kind of grace.

A Clergyman’s Daughter left me unsettled but grateful — a reminder that awakening often begins in collapse, and that even in defeat, the mind can remain defiantly free.

Reading Death in Venice was like watching a man descend gracefully into ruin, one exquisite sentence at a time. From the opening pages, I sensed that Thomas Mann was not merely telling a story about an aging writer’s obsession but constructing a meditation on art, desire, and mortality. The novella’s rhythm—measured, deliberate, and almost hypnotic—pulled me into Gustav von Aschenbach’s inner world with unsettling intimacy.

Aschenbach, the disciplined and respected author, travels to Venice seeking rest and inspiration, but instead finds himself captivated by the beauty of a young boy, Tadzio. What fascinated me was how Mann treats this obsession: never crudely, never romantically, but as something metaphysical—a collision between the yearning for perfection and the inevitability of decay. I felt torn between admiration and pity as Aschenbach’s rational mind dissolved into feverish longing.

Venice itself becomes a mirror of his soul: magnificent yet rotting, luminous yet filled with the stench of cholera. Mann’s descriptions are so vivid that I could almost feel the oppressive heat, see the golden light shimmer over water tainted by death. The city, like Aschenbach, is both sublime and doomed.

What haunted me most was Mann’s precision—how he exposes the fragility beneath artistic discipline. Aschenbach’s fall is not only moral but aesthetic: in his pursuit of beauty, he becomes its victim. I couldn’t help but think of how thin the line is between admiration and surrender, between control and self-destruction.

When I closed the book, I felt a strange stillness. Death in Venice had not offered catharsis, but something more disquieting: the recognition that beauty, in its purest form, can consume as surely as disease. Mann’s prose lingers like the scent of the sea after a storm—beautiful, poisonous, unforgettable.

In Aschenbach’s death, I saw not failure but revelation: the ultimate, tragic price of loving the eternal through mortal eyes.

Reading A Happy Death felt like stepping into the intimate laboratory of Camus’s thought — raw, searching, and strangely serene. Written before The Stranger but published posthumously, it carries the early pulse of his philosophy: the tension between the body’s hunger for life and the mind’s craving for meaning. From the first pages, I sensed a quiet intensity, as if Camus were dissecting existence itself through the slow awakening of his protagonist, Patrice Mersault.

What fascinated me most was Mersault’s journey from restlessness to solitude. He begins amid the ordinary emptiness of work and routine, longing for escape. When he commits a murder — an act both shocking and curiously detached — it becomes less a crime than a pivot toward liberation. I found myself disturbed by how calmly Camus presents it, yet I understood: for Mersault, happiness must be wrestled from life, not granted by it.

The later chapters, where Mersault isolates himself by the sea, touched me deeply. His pursuit of a “happy death” isn’t about resignation, but clarity — an acceptance of life’s absurdity without illusion. Camus writes with a precision that feels both philosophical and tender, and I felt each word like a pulse, each silence like breath held too long.

When I finished the novel, I was left in quiet reflection. A Happy Death is less a story of crime than of awakening — a meditation on the courage to live fully in the face of nothingness. I closed the book feeling both unsettled and strangely at peace, as though I had glimpsed the fragile architecture of happiness itself.

Reading The Rules of Attraction felt like being dropped into a party that never ends—one where the music is loud, the alcohol endless, and everyone is both searching and utterly lost. Ellis constructs his novel through shifting voices, fragmented perspectives, and overlapping narratives. At first, the style unsettled me, but soon I realized it mirrored the confusion and alienation of his characters.

The story unfolds at a liberal arts college in the 1980s, where students drift through affairs, drugs, and half-hearted philosophies. What struck me most was how every character speaks, yet almost no one truly listens. Sean, Paul, Lauren—they circle one another in a haze of desire and misunderstanding. I felt a strange tension reading their confessions: on the surface, they seemed confident, rebellious, even careless, but underneath, I sensed a profound emptiness.

Ellis’s prose is sharp, ironic, and relentless. As I turned the pages, I often felt complicit, like an eavesdropper overhearing conversations I wasn’t meant to hear. The humor is biting, but the laughter is hollow, echoing against loneliness that no party can mask.

What lingered with me after finishing was not any single storyline—since most are left unresolved—but the mood: a portrait of a generation intoxicated and adrift. It made me reflect uneasily on how disconnection can masquerade as freedom, and how desire, when detached from meaning, leaves only a gnawing void.

The Rules of Attraction didn’t comfort me; it unsettled me. Yet in that discomfort lay its power: a reminder that sometimes literature holds up a mirror to the chaos we’d rather not see.

Reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Flies was for me like standing in a dark square, listening to voices that echoed both fear and defiance. The play, Sartre’s reimagining of the myth of Orestes and Electra, struck me not only as a retelling of a Greek tragedy, but as a profound meditation on freedom and responsibility in a world paralyzed by guilt.

From the moment Orestes returns to Argos, I felt the oppressive weight of the city, haunted by the flies that symbolize decay and remorse. The people live crushed under the authority of King Aegisthus and the manipulations of Jupiter, convinced that their sins demand eternal punishment. I was deeply moved by how Sartre captured this suffocating atmosphere—it reminded me of how fear can keep entire societies silent and submissive.

What stirred me most was Orestes’s awakening. His decision to kill Aegisthus and Clytemnestra is not just an act of vengeance, but a declaration of human freedom: the refusal to accept guilt imposed from outside. As I read, I could feel the shift from despair to empowerment, as if Sartre were whispering that true liberty comes only when we assume the weight of our choices.

The Flies left me unsettled yet inspired. It is not a play of easy catharsis, but of confrontation: with authority, with fear, and ultimately with ourselves. For me, it remains a stark reminder that freedom always carries the burden of responsibility.