So a couple weeks ago I was poking around in my employers' library trying to find a book to read because I was in active avoidance mode, as far as my homework was concerned. Realize that typically when I am in this mood, I usually am looking for the cliche, easy-to-read, smutty romance novels that are both sickly sweet and strangely addicting. Maybe some time in the future I'll tell you a little bit about my horrible addiction to romance novels...
Anyways, I was in the library trying valiantly to forget that I was in college and had homework that was supposed to be done, when I came across this novel by Muriel Barbery called The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I'm not going to lie, the hedgehog part was what initially caught my eye. (Spoiler alert: There's not an actual hedgehog in the entire story.) But, as I read the front flap of the book trying to figure out if this was a Brian Jacques knock-off, I was faintly intrigued by the plot line of the story.
This story is told from the viewpoint of two narrators. The first, and primary, narrator is a older French woman in her fifties who works as a concierge at a hôtel in the center of Paris. Apparently in France, a hôtel is another word for an apartment building or a type of townhouse; it's not actually available for travelers or guests and functions as more of a permanent residence. Renee is not particularly attractive, or charismatic, and is generally overlooked by most of the people who live in the building. She's also an autodidact, or a self-taught person. While the rest of the building thinks she's spending her entire day watching cheesy soaps on television, she's in the back room reading Voltaire and listening to Mahler. And she's wickedly funny. She spends most of her time observing the rich people who live in the building, making caustic comments on their attitude and lifestyle.
The second narrator is a twelve-year-old girl named Paloma. She lives with her family, the Josses, who live on the fifth floor. As with Renee, she is also quite hilarious, in a horribly dark way. You see, although she's quite intelligent for her age (or at least she thinks so, since she's narrating about herself), she's disgusted by the bourgeoisie lifestyle of her family and their friends, and she's completely against becoming an adult like them. So, to avoid this fate and ending up in the "goldfish bowl," as she puts it, she plans to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. Yes. I know. Dark, right? But the thing is, as you read her entries and get a feeling for why exactly she has decided on this path and her impressions of the world, you, as the audience, get it, just a little bit.
A series of events happen that leads to a new resident coming to the building, one Kakero Ozu. It's never clear what exactly his profession is, although I think it had something to do with a technological corporation. However, the arrival of Ozu sets some new things in motion that cause both Renee and Paloma to transform beyond their current selves.
Now, this isn't some book review where I pass judgement on an author's work like I'm some kind of authority. And I don't want to spoil the end of the novel for you, just in case any of you in my dear audience feel the need to go out and read it for yourselves (which I totally recommend, as this is now one of my top ten favorite books, ever). What I actually wanted to focus on in this post was some of the ideas that came up in the novel, and why I thought they were so thought-provoking.
I might bring up this novel again in some later posts, because it is simply so rich and fantastic that I don't think I will be able to resist the temptation. However, to begin with, I think I'm going to start with explaining Paloma's concept of the "goldfish bowl." This is for two reasons.
Reason #1: I already mentioned the goldfish bowl, and there's has got to be at least one of you out there that is wondering what the heck I am talking about.
Reason #2: I also used to fear the goldfish bowl, feeling like I would be forever stuck in it. In my case, it was more of a geological phenomenon, where the location I moved to was surrounded closely by mountains and made me feel at times like I was suffocating. I still think it should count as a plausible reason though.
To understand some of the context of this passage, you should know that the book is set up like short journal entries or academic papers. Renee's entries are generally uniform and have titles such as "The Miracles of Art" or "On Wars and Colonies." Paloma, however, chooses to organize her entries under two categories: "Profound Thoughts" and "Journal of the Movement of the World." Each entry is also accompanied by a piece of original poetry, structured in the Japanese style of haiku (three lines) or tanka (five lines). Both of the main characters seem to have a fascination for Japanese literature and culture (another plus for me, as I am afflicted with the same malaise). This excerpt comes from her first entry, labeled Profound Thought No. 1, and accompanied by the following haiku:
Follow the stars
In the goldfish bowl
An end
I have never been very proficient at deciphering poetry, so I derived more meaning from the following passage, where Paloma introduces the concept of the goldfish bowl.
"Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding, and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don't want to go. The most intelligent among them turn it into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa's table: "What has become of the dreams of our youth?" they ask, with their smug, disillusioned air. "Those years are long gone, and life's a bitch." I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: kids who don't understand what has happened to them and who act big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears.
[...]
All our family acquaintances have followed the same path: their youth spent trying to make the most of their intelligence, squeezing their studies like a lemon to make sure they'd secure a spot among the elite, then their entire lives wondering with a flabbergasted look on their faces why all that hopefulness has led to such a vain existence. People aim for the stars and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd. That might deprive you of a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adult — not to mention the fact that you'd be spared at least one traumatic experience, i.e. the goldfish bowl." - pages 22-23, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
I apologize for giving you such a blocky quotation. If my English teacher could see this now, I would be in a world of trouble. I apologize, Mrs. Brown. This is why I'm majoring in Animal Science and not English.
I guess this quotation hit something in me because it reminds me so much of what we see out in the media nowadays. A bunch of scared, dissatisfied adults (or even teenagers) looking back on their life and trying to generalize all of their experiences with phrases such as, "Life's a bitch!" Not that I'm not occasionally guilty of this myself. And not that it doesn't momentarily feel as if I have come up with something witty and clever and deep and damn profound. And yet, then there are times when I look at all the memes on Facebook and the endless inspirational quotes, and I sit there and think, Okay, really... Who are we kidding here? Because there are times when I snap out of my self-absorption and think like Paloma, that this is all just some transparent cage that we swim around and around in, without even realizing that we are doing it.
Is Paloma absolutely correct in all that she accuses adults of? Is she (or rather, the author) the ultimate authority on how to make life decisions and judge the value of your existence? Of course not. But something about the way that she phrases this always makes me sit back and think... Am I in a goldfish bowl?
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