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mkmerrill's picture

choice

Initially, I didn't like Ahab's wife.  I didn't feel that I connected to Una or her situation and that only increased my distaste for the novel (I also think that if I read the novel from beginning to end I might have had a better connection with the main character).  I knew that Una made the choice to go aboard the Sussex possed as a boy, but I didn't really understand her reasoning behind her choice.  Through our discussion in class I felt I better understood why Una made the decision to leave her family and venture out on her own.  As I came to understand her need to escape what she thought to be the predestined future for a woman in Kentucky (a life of solitude and continued sorrow) I was better able to relate to the choices she made.  I saw her decision to leave her family as a step toward her own personal freedom.  She wanted to get out into the world and experience life in a way she could only dream of if she had stayed in Kentucky.  I found that I related more to Una in the sense that I too would go to drastic measures to live the life I wanted to live rather than settle for a life a didn't want, but as we read more into the novel I felt that I connected less and less with her character (especially following their rescue from the small whale boat) .  I didn't like how Una was so quick to agree to marry Kit and how she just kind of let things happen.  It seemed to go agaisnt her earlier "take charge" attitude.  So in the end my opinion about the novel remained the same.

Overall, I think this novel was a pretty good finale because it was all about how the choices Una made affected her life.  I feel that this novel as Lee says depicts choice to the extreme, but I feel that it does a good job of portraying the importance of even small scale choices that we make on a daily basis and how the choices we make can change the way we live our lives.

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