Week 1 ~ Part 2  ~  Brideshead Revisited
For Your Consideration:

Saturday: Relationships
Let's look at the relationships of all the characters to each other today (or anything else you'd want to add).
Charles and Sebastian, (ARE they like two magnetic poles, as Andrea has said?) Charles and his Father, Julia and Sebastian, Anthony and anybody, Sebastian and his mother, Sebastian and Nanny (what a contrast in her rooms and the downstairs? Her rooms are full of souvenirs of childhood), Jasper and Charles, Edward and his brother. Some possible jumping off places:
"Such a lot of nonsense."
  • 1. Charles explains to his father over dinner that he's run short of money:
    "Yes? Said my father without any sound of interest. In fact I don't quite know how I'm going to get through the next two months. "Well I'm the worst person to come to for advice. I've never been 'short' as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke?" (snuffle). "On the rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that. Your grandfather once said to me, 'Live within your means but if you do get into difficulties, come to me'....Such a lot of nonsense."
    What is your reaction to this scene? What does Edward Ryder offer his son? Do you approve or disapprove of his style of parenting? What of "if your son ask you for bread will you give him a stone?"
  • 2. Why did Charles tear UP the letter from Sebastian which was written in the black bordered paper? (Who had died?)
  • 3. "Well, darling, I've collected your chum," she said, again with a barely perceptible note of contempt.
  • 4. "She sucks their bood. You can see the tooth marks all over Adrian Porson's shoulders when he is bathing. And he, my dear, was the greatest, the only poet of our time. He's bled dry; there's nothing left of him....They never escape once she's had her teeth into them. It is witchcraft. There's no other explanation."
  • 5. What kind of relationship can anybody have with Peter Pan? What sort of relationship did Truman Capote have with the beautiful people of his day?