Reading: Aleksandar Hemon 4

Aleksander Hemon seems to have an odd fixation on dreams. I say odd simply because he focuses not on the meaning of the dreams, what stories they tell, who people become because of them, but rather on the forgetting of dreams. "I normally remembered only fragments of my dreams; I forgot a lot of them, too, though I could often abstractly recall their intensity" (p 257). The chapter immediately following starts out with a similar statement: "Unsettling dreams have been swarming in Isador's head, but when he snaps out of slumber he cannot remember them" (p 268). These come after a very focused dream forgetfulness on 126-7. Brik basically repeats himself and Hemon adds a new character with forgetful dreaming. This kind of metaphor repetition weakens the more its use. Especially if the repetition isn't actually for a new character but rather just a recapitulation.

On 255, Rora spoke of how during the war, Miller (his boss) demanded he take pictures of fleeing children and actually paid some to run back and forth from sniper fire. Rora clearly found the man despicable, putting the value of the picture over the value of the life. "Still, I felt bad when Rambo clipped Miller. He deserved a good beating, but not death. Nobody deserves death, yet everybody gets it." The idea of deserving one the or another is interesting and brings up far too many questions. Do we deserve the lives we are given? Do we deserve fair treatment? What power sets out who is deserving and what is to be deserved? Are we somehow born with innate knowledge of the "inalienable rights" or do they come from society? If it is societal, how did it start?

I found this statement quite clever and got a chuckle out of the pure bluntness of it. "Seryozha was packing at least a knife, probably a gun, and I did not want to get stabbed or take a bullet in the head" (p 260). With this is quite simply referring to the top reason why they could not do anything to help Elena (the woman that was to be sold).

-Mark