My gears have been ground.

It really bugs me that these plays have such dramatic, big leaps. Yes, I know that they have to do that so they can fit it into a couple hours, but it still bugs me. Example: Cassio drinks a couple glasses of wine, and a few lines later, he is attacking a man with his sword. In real life, a couple of glasses of wine will not cause someone to take someone else's life because they said something about their momma. I understand that Shakespeare needed to keep the story moving, but I would appreciate a few more realistic events.
I will say, however, that I like the fact that Iago just tells the reader what his plan is. Because this is a play, there is not enough time to develop his plan in detail and have it revealed through action. The fact that Iago has these soliloquies where he laughs and reveals his evil plan. This allows the action to be more ambiguous (i.e. the random hankerchief) while still being understandable. Overall, I'd say that this is my favorite play by Bill, because I feel like the concepts talked about are more relateable. Perhaps even timeless?

Crossing the Bar

This guy has a pretty good message in his poem. In the poem, he wishes for a death without sadness. He understands that death is going to happen, so he doesn't want to feel sad himself and he doesn't want others to feel sad either. He wants to go in a peaceful way and know that he is going to be going to a better place. This is a good message for anyone in any time period to listen to. We are all going to die at some point, so why be sad while doing it? He also wants no sadness of farewell, so he doesn't want those around him to mourn either. That is the most difficult part. Most people have trouble dealing with the loss of a loved one, so being happy when someone dies is not a very easy task. And though it isn't easy, it will ease the pain in the end. This is a timeless message that everyone can relate to at some point in their lives.

This isn't a play.....

My mistress' eyes is one of the few that actually make sense this week. The tone makes a hard shift towards the end. It starts as almost a negative tone towards his lover. He says everything that is better than her. It sounds like he is just bashing her for no reason. He then gets to the point of the poem. He switches to a loving tone that says that he loves her despite all of the things he mentioned.
I think that this is a really true poem that has a timeless message. Most people have friends or girlfriends or parents that they get mad at sometimes, but love them despite that. Shakespeare writes about a topic that is easy to relate to. I know I have felt that tone shift and I'm sure most people are in that boat with me.

Tone.

The tone of this novel is tough. I've thought of plenty of words, but none of them really encompass the entire novel. Despite this, I've found a word that come pretty close, and that word is regretful. The novel is mostly about people looking back at events in their past and trying to alter what happened so that they feel better about their actions. They try to save themselves by telling the story with some half truths in it.
O'Brien doesn't come out and truly set the tone until the very last sentence. "I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story," (page 233). O'Brien tells us that he is trying to save his old self through the story that he is telling. Each chapter tells a different story with its unique tone, but the majority show an attempt to correct someones past.
This tone that O'Brien creates adds a timelessness to the novel. At some point in a person's life, they will want to redo something from their past. Even if it isn't as extreme as the novel's examples, the feeling of regret is one that everyone can relate to, no matter their time period.

My favorite paradox.

"I hated him for making me stop hating him," (page 190). This is my favorite quote in the novel. It's a paradox that O'Brien uses to describe his situation with Jorgenson. Tim wanted to hate him. He wanted so badly to despise the guy and get revenge for the pain that he caused him. Despite that, Jorgenson's apology and remorse caused O'Brien to, against his will, forgive him. Tim hated that. He hated that he couldn't hate Jorgenson any more. He hated that he had been forced to forgive the man that caused him pain, and, subsequently, he hated that he could no longer hate the war that had brought on that pain.
O'Brien brings a great deal of timelessness to the novel with this one sentence. Every reader has wanted to be mad at someone, but that person has forced them, through their actions, to forgive them. The reader can easily relate to the story that O'Brien is telling and the feeling that the situation elicits.

More of this first person stuff.

As I previously said, most of the novel is written from the first person point of view. It involves sentences like "I wasn't there when he got hurt, but Mitchell Sanders later told me the essential facts," (page 208). The first person point of view is a very effective choice when writing a war story. It creates a believability and a timelessness that the third person point of view struggles to create. The reader knows that the author experienced the events that he is writing about, so they are much easier to believe. The reader is also more likely to feel sympathy for the characters because they are more easily seen as real people, because they are talked about as having relationships with the author. This makes the novel and its stories come to life in the mind of the reader, because it is written from the first person point of view.
The timelessness comes from that fact that the story comes to life. The reader doesn't see the story as a factual account of something that happened years ago, but rather as a set of events that could easily happen in their lifetime. They can now relate to the novel on a deeper level. The novel, though about an event that happened in a specific time in history, can be applied to any era and any person's life. This comes from its being written from the first person point of view.

And Brett loves...?

I have found the million-dollar question. With how free Brett is in her love life, it's pretty difficult for me as well as most other readers, I would assume, to tell who the person that Brett actually loves is. It isn't Cohn. She runs off with him, but talks poorly about him behind his back and supports those who don't like him. It isn't Mike. Though she is supposed to marry him, but she is so unfaithful that she obviously doesn't want to marry him. It isn't Pedro. She runs off with him after the fiesta in Spain, but she quickly realizes that she doesn't want to be with him. At this point every person that she ran off with or was going to marry is out, so who do we have left? We have Jake. From the beginning of the novel, Brett has flirted with a lot of guys, but she can only have deep, meaningful conversations with Jake. Whenever one of the two needed help, they would only feel comfortable going to the other. On the final page of the novel, 251, Brett acknowledges how they should be together by saying "Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together." I think that in the time of their lives after the novel, they will continue to live as they have, but understand their love a bit more.
Hemingway puts this relationship in the novel to show the reader what traits he believes make a couple truly in love. These traits are true no matter the time period that the reader lives in. This adds to the timelessness of the novel.

Why so cruel?

One thing about this novel that really disturbed me was the outright cruelty with which some of the characters treated each other. On pages 146-147, within a few lines of each other, the following things are said-"Shut up. You're drunk," "Go to hell, Mike," and "Damned noble of you." Stuff like this happens throughout the entire novel. It's pretty amazing how cruel the characters are to each other, and I was wondering why Hemingway would put that into his novel, but I think I've figured it out. Hemingway seemed to be a rather bitter fellow. The way that he has the characters treat each other makes that very clear. Also, I think that he saw a certain cruelty in society, and it angered him. He wanted the readers of his time to see how the characters acted and wonder if they treated others the same way. Hemingway was hoping to make a change in his society by doing this. I think he is also challenging readers of any time to make the same change in their lives. This creates a timelessness in the novel, because it can be read and related to by anyone from any time period.

Conflicts- external style

As I've previously said, the novel has some internal conflicts in a person's head, but it also has some external conflicts between two or more people. The major external conflicts involve the main issue that Hemingway focuses on in the novel- love. Most of them are between Cohn and another major character. Cohn punches Jake and argues with others, but I'm going to focus on the conflict between Cohn and Mike. Mike is a bit upset about the affairs that Brett has and he knows that Cohn has feelings for Brett. On page 146 he tells Cohn just how he and Brett feel about his being around all the time. "Why don't you know when you're not wanted? You came down to San Sebastian where you weren't wanted, and followed Brett around like a bloody steer. Do you think that's right?" In a very cruel way, he confronts Cohn about his being around Brett all of the time.
Hemingway uses this to show the reader the effects of speaking their mind. Hemingway obviously doesn't like the way that society has no filter when it comes to what they say, and he is using this external conflict to show the negative effects of that. He creates a timelessness in the novel by using issues that are not specific to his time, but rather can be applied to anyone's life.

Conflicts- internal style

In this novel, the major character that has the biggest internal conflict is the narrator, Jake. His debate has to do with Brett. He obviously loves her, and it seems that she has feelings for him too, but she also has feelings for other men. When they are alone, she seems to love him too, but when others are around, she doesn't act the same way. On page 42, Jake tells us how this issue makes him feel. "This was Brett that I felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing."
Throughout the novel, Jake is constantly watching Brett run off with one guy or another. He doesn't want to make Brett upset, but he is constantly debating in his head whether or not to make his feelings more obvious to her. This is a debate that many people have in everyday life, and Hemingway is playing to that. He adds a timelessness to the piece by creating an internal conflict that not only produces drama in the novel, but also draws the reader into the characters' relationships that are easy to relate to.

And now, why Pedro?

Pedro obviously isn't a main character. He only appears in a few chapters and doesn't really say much. But as Mike tells us on page 194, "Brett's gone off with that bull-fighter chap." The reason Hemingway has Brett run off with Pedro is to show the reader what type of person he admires in society. Pedro is honest and kind, yet he is very strong and courageous. Hemingway admires this type of person. The reader will most likely root for this character to get Brett over Cohn or Mike and, perhaps, even Jake. However, despite Pedro being the ideal man, Brett chooses to come back to Jake at the end of the novel. This shows that Hemingway realizes that the nice, honest man doesn't always win in the society he lives in. Hemingway is trying to get the reader to think about what sort of characteristics that they value. This creates a timelessness in the novel, because the reader, no matter what era they are from, can read this novel and relate to the issue being dealt with.

Why Bill?

Bill is a pretty baffling character for me. He seems pretty similar to Jake. He was in the war and likes to drink. I think he likes to drink, because he is mentally distressed from the war. His function appears to be a stable person for Jake (and even the reader) to relax with. He seems to be the character that is easiest for a reader to relate to. He likes to fish, he likes to drink, and he is nice to pretty much everyone. But the major thing that I picked up on is that Bill never seems to fit in. He doesn't appear to be a main character, and he isn't involved in all of the love issues that keep the novel going. On page 158, he says to Cohn "we're the foreigners." I think that he is talking about himself when he says this. He is the outsider of the novel, not in the sense of an outlaw, but in the sense of not fitting in.
Hemingway, because the novel is all about characters and their relations, needed to place a relatively normal character that was sort of left out. This allowed for that kind of person to relate to him. Hemingway created yet another character that allowed for the novel to possess a timelessness.

Robert Cohn as a foil.

"Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton," (page 11). Hemingway chooses for the reader's first image of Cohn to be one of a fighter. In the novel, he fights for many things. But one thing that is always true is that he is fighting against some other character. Cohn is not a typical foil character who goes against one character. Cohn, at some point in the novel, goes against just about every major character. He loves Brett, which causes him to go against Mike. They get in numerous verbal altercations over his obsession with Brett. He also physically attacks Jake on page 195.
Throughout the entire novel, Cohn spends his time foiling one character or another. Hemingway uses this type of foil not only to contrast other characters, but also to epitomize the extreme personalities in society that he does not approve of. Cohn serves as a character that can be molded into many types of people that are easy to understand because they are common in society. Hemingway uses this unique type of foil to bring a timelessness to the novel and its characters.