Femija i peste

[maria.v]

A mundet te me thoni dicka per librin "femija i peste" nga Doris Lessing?

[Xhuxhumaku]

Ca ishte cun apo goc?

[mia@]

Po dite Anglisht ketu ke dicka qe te ndihmon. Me c'lexova femija e peste ishte me Down Syndrome.

"The Fifth Child" is the story of a couple in early 1970s Britain who decide to go against the conventions of the times and have a large family. The babies come sooner and faster than they expect, but not until the arrival of Ben, the fifth child, do they have serious reason to regret their decision.”

Source: Amy C. Rea

"Near the end of The Fifth Child, a despairing Harriet worries about what will happen to Ben when he grows up: "Could Ben, even now, end up sacrificed to science? What would they do with him? Carve him up? Examine those cudgel-like bones of his, those eyes, and find out why his speech was so thick and awkward? If this did not happen--and her experience with him until now said it was unlikely--then what she foresaw for him was even worse."

Harriet's fears turn out to be well justified. Ben, in the World begins when Ben is 18, though he looks like a beaten 40. He has been trying to live quietly away from the family that rejected him. As the monster in Frankenstein is befriended by another cultural outsider, a blind man, so Ben is befriended by an old woman living on the margins. When the old woman dies, Ben is first pursued by a manipulative filmmaker who wants to make him the star of a freak movie, then by a cold-hearted scientist who wants to study him to death. The close-focus domestic critique of The Fifth Child opens out to an international adventure story as Ben is whisked away to the south of France, Brazil, and finally the Andes. The remoteness of this last landscape is like the Arctic setting in which the frame narrator of Frankenstein first meets the possessed Dr. Frankenstein in pursuit of his Monster. Doris Lessing's doctor is a career-hungry American who is willing to trample ancient Andean culture, perform experiments that genetically deform animals, and cage Ben up like a monkey.

At the end of Frankenstein, the monster kills his creator and tells the shocked narrator about the suffering he has endured. Despite the bleakness of his early life, the monster gets revenge and a witness to it. The end of Lessing's Ben is, in contrast, utterly hopeless. In both of Lessing's books, the character of Ben is primarily symbolic. In The Fifth Child, he is a devil baby who provides a perversely satisfying service in making this smug family fall apart. In Ben, in the World, he represents all losers and misfits who become prey for selfish others. Doris Lessing suggests that the lives Ben and others like him might lead in this selfish, godless century are bleak. The only mercy they can count on is in death.

The Fifth Child

Doris Lessing
(1988)

Domain: Literature. Genre: Novel. Country: England, Britain, Europe.

The Fifth Child (1988), set in commuter land near London, is the story of a middle-class family which slowly disintegrates after the birth of the fifth child called Ben, a (putative) genetic throwback. He is born in the mid-1970s, closely after a cousin, Amy, who is a Downs Syndrome baby. Amy is well named, being affectionate and much loved, while Ben is both malformed and violent from the moment he is conceived. All members of his family try to love him, but are repulsed. Comparison of Ben with Amy shows that it is his cruel nature, not his strong, simian body and misshapen cranium, which alienates him from his family. His mother, Harriet Lovatt (a significant surname, playing on the word “love”) strives heroically to socialise him long after his father and siblings have developed ways of shutting him out of their lives.

The dominant genre of this novel is realism, yet it uses a subtle blend of fairy tale, science fiction and Gothic conventions to strengthen its nightmarish effects. The bad brother or sister or the changeling child who brings misfortune is a recurring motif of fairy tales. Ben is just such an infant, resembling, in his mother's eyes, a goblin or troll. At one point the father, David Lovatt, tells the children a frightening fairy story of a boy and girl lost in a wood. The girl looks into a pool to see a spiteful girl staring back. Harriet realises the girl is pointedly meant to refer to herself. Throughout her pregnancy, she has spine-chilling dreams of miscegenated creatures, half-man, half-beast, and monsters characteristic of science fiction or horror genres. From the moment Ben taps on the wall of her womb, he brings her pain and anguish. Breastfeeding becomes impossible as he persistently grinds her nipples to the point of bruising. Though long-suffering, even her hair stands on end when one day she finds him in the attic of their rambling Victorian house. This is but one example of the Gothic uncanny in the novel, which, as Freud argues in his essay “The Uncanny” (1919), arises when the unhomely (Das Unheimlich) erupts into the homely (Das Heimlich). Invariably, there is no place like home for the most disturbing of uncanny effects. Several allegorical readings of The Fifth Child, which this article will return to, are also possible.

Harriet, aged twenty-four, and David, aged thirty, are instantly attracted to each other at an office party in the 1960s. They share similar, though rather out-dated, ideas about marriage and large families. Their procreational fantasies stem from Harriet's desire to recreate her happy childhood and David's fierce need to compensate for his own, which was divided between the two homes of his divorced parents. He desperately wants his children to have a room each in their family home. Both parents are supremely confident about their ability to have six or more children. After four children, close in age, their dream is seemingly almost accomplished. Relations and friends come to stay at Christmas and Easter to marvel at and share in their domestic bliss. (Some stay longer than the Lovatts can afford). Despite appearances, the foundations of the Lovatt household are shaky. Although Harriet and David are self-congratulatory, they rely heavily on David's father, James, who pays their mortgage and Harriet's mother, Dorothy, whose unpaid labour supports the nurturing of babies and toddlers. This in itself causes sibling rivalry from Harriet's sisters, who also have several children, the misfortunate Amy being one. Against Dorothy's advice, Harriet falls pregnant again and, after Ben is born, she becomes responsible for four children, while Harriet concentrates on Ben's needs. Exhaustion sets in, jealousies increase, attitudes harden and the family becomes divided against itself. Extended family gatherings wither away after Ben is born.
Source:
http://www.vgskole.no/teachers/english/n...
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?r...
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