Academic Paper

On the novel entitled Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Where I belong Most of us are fortunate enough to have felt the meaning of the word home. This word has a mass appeal and a universal existence. The word brings a sense of familiarity, that of safety and comfort. It is this characteristic that distinguishes home from a mere reference to a place where one lives, a house if you may. The phrase derived from this, feeling at home further emphasises on the existence of this essential part of the complete meaning of the word. Numerous such examples exist and in fact there are so many, that even in cyber space, despite the war between browser makers and their respective features, home page remains a common concept across all platforms, and the struggle of giant companies to pursue their users to somehow select their website as a home page, seems rather amusing. Like humans do The pace at which technology is rising makes it easy to imagine computers that can interact with humans using natural languages, gestures and can solve problems without programming. The characteristic that shall then distinguish a human from a computer would be feelings, keeping aside the biological definition of life. Feelings cannot be thrown away by humans and even if a computer is programmed to behave as though it has feelings, it can easily be deprogrammed to work like a diehard machine. This indirectly establishes the distinction and definition of feelings under consideration. Theres always a bigger line Life happens, whether we preparedly take action or are forced through the entanglement of demanding events. Experience dictates that consequence of action on outcome is not direct, yet its influence under pseudo-inert conditions are observable. Interesting is the phenomenon, that inductively proves the infinite extend of life. It is the fact that there perpetually exist both, situations better & worse, than the one any person happens to be in, at any given point of time. And it is this phenomenon that gives birth to the two diametrically opposite and disjoint perspectives to life, that of a pessimist and the other of an optimist.

The Model A collection of entities makes a set. This set derives its characteristics from its constituents, that is, the entities themselves. In a special case, without defining the beginning or the end, and instead stating the condition at any particular elapsed time, each entity partially depends on the set itself for defining its own characteristics. This very condition causes recursion to the definition of the characteristics of the set and that of each entity. For either of these to be defined at some elapsed time, characteristics of all the entities must be completely known at a given instance of time. This implies a dynamic relation between the characteristics of the entities and those of the set is established, before the said condition

is reached in time. Addition of constraints on the rate of change of characteristic to this model makes it analogous to humans and society. The matter gets further interesting when the distinction between stereotype and ideal, characteristics which can now safely be termed as outcomes of both the society and individuals, becomes blurred, while the dependence of a decision maker on these factors continues to exist, if not deepens.

Intrinsic Connection With the pieces on the table, its time to stitch them together with the story and its characters. The basic theme of the book revolves around home. Despite the clear absence of a real plot the book was a commercial success of its time. This can be attributed to various causes, but most counter-intuitively, this absence is what makes the book interesting & realistic instead of boring, so long as the reader can relate to at least one of the characters. The audience at that time was by and large, a fit to the family portrayed by Louisa, who has magnificently demonstrated how so much can be extracted out of mediocrity. The main characters of the book share a commonality that holds them together, whilst being unique in their own way, an experienced fact that anyone who has lived socially, is familiar with. Shy Beth, quick tempered Jo, gentle Meg & artistic Amy seem to suffice for categorizing the reader to be of any one of their types, thereby deeply involving the reader as though each decision is theirs to make, and consequently holding the reader by means of curiosity, whose origin cant be attributed to the existence of a mindboggling story or a sweeping plot. As the story builds, each of the Marchs constantly attempts to do whats right, instead of doing what they feel like. From the word attempts it follows that they might, and in fact do fail, making what is known as a mistake, an event whose occurrence is very closely related to the quality of being human. Consider the following sentence spoken by Megs character, while dressing up for Annie Moffats. I wonder if I shall ever be happy enough to have real lace on my clothes, and bows on my caps? said meg You said the other day that youd be perfectly happy if you could only go to Annie Moffats, So I did! Well, I am happy and I wont fret; but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants, doesnt it?... Though the conflict here is verbal, the ought to do and feel like doing are clearly differentiable. Another instance where she struggles to do the right thing and succeeds, comes later during the party. She did her best to seem gay, and, being rather excited, she succeeded so well that no one dreamed what an effort she was making. She was very glad when it was all over..

This establishes that feelings can make doing the right thing a challenging task. Jos temper, despite her earnest effort, forces her to cause numerous problems for everyone, throughout the book and is another example of feelings making a mess. At times, absence of feelings results in presence of mind, which is depicted by Mrs. March in the following instance. Beth opened her lips to say something, but could only point to the pile of nicely mended hose which lay on Mothers table, showing that even in her last hurried moments she had thought and worked for them. The question now seems to be, do we target to be machines that behave in a pre-determined appropriate manner and bury our feelings? Are feelings the enemy we need to fight? The ability of feelings to dissolve fights is just as remarkably strong as its ability to cause destruction. The fact that satisfaction & happiness in themselves are nothing but feelings, clearly marks the importance of feelings to the meaning of life. After Lauries mischief and an unpleasant confrontation by his grandfather, he says, He ought to trust me, and not act as if I was a baby.. Self-respect slash pride, in this case becomes a thorn in an otherwise healthy relationship between Mr. Laurie and his grandson. In the story, Jo, despite being straightforward, tactfully handles the delicate situation and tilts the balance to her side by observantly proceeding & striking at the old mans soft spot. This act is that of both feelings & wisdom. Mr. Laurence Youre a sly puss, but I dont mind being managed by you and Beth The former statement demonstrates another positive consequence of actions affected by feelings. A more subtle example of feeling & control, which initially seems rather amusing but on deeper thought appears to be a rather observable phenomenon, is the following. Mrs. March says She does not love John yet, but will soon learn to It perhaps follows from the fact that feelings can be developed, implying that over time & with consistent effort, an individual may feel the way he or she desires. Feelings can also be credited with being the strongest force behind philanthropy, behind all the selflessness of humankind. The theme of working for the greater good can be traced back to the beginning of the story, which is initiated with the Christmas dinner. The sacrifice begins with the girls deciding to buy something for their marmee instead. The very atmosphere is that of giving and the satisfaction and happiness that

one receives as a reward of it. This is further amplified when they agree to give their Christmas dinner to poorer people. Such incidents are scattered throughout the book. Further, notable instances where Jo sells her hair for financially helping her parents and Beth selflessly takes care of Hummels child, and in the process catches fever, deepens the philanthropic theme. However, the book doesnt quite reveal the secret to Marchs optimism, which intensified especially during the toughest trials of their journey. Louisa has as though assumed the morally correct, to in fact be correct, and has leaked her personal views through contradiction of a characters opinion, as is clear from the following That it was perfectly evident Aunt March was right in calling them as Unworldly as a pair of babies This was preceded by Meg & Johns engagement. Megs decision seems to be completely based on her faith in her parents as she hasnt had the time to know John personally, yet she agrees to try to love him despite him being poor. However, her parents havent quite pursued or even attempted to convince her for making the choice, as per the story. Also, her parents on the other hand, at least in Megs mind, believed that shes too young for such an affair. Consequently, it follows that Louisa is deliberately trying to make a character appear unworldly, even in a situation where love doesnt quite come in the picture and can therefore not be used to justify the act, as though overrating the importance of being unworldly, which seems unnecessary. It implies that being optimistic to such an extreme is not beneficial, despite the authors effort to prove the contrary. Looking at the bigger picture, the March family is almost of the variety that lies on the edge of being real and ideal. The theme of women being rightly brought up, to be docile and proper, to behave lady like, are evident at almost each stage of the story. Jos character however, isnt defined as black or white, with respect to the definition of a good woman. Jo seems to have a confusion which cant quite be resolved in terms of complete rational arguments, just as liking can seldom be rationally defined. What a sly fellow Laurie is! I said I wished bigger hats were the fashion, because I burn my face every hot day. He said, Why mind the fasion? Wear a big hat and be comfortable I said I would if I had one, This incident shows how on one side she has followed fashion and thus burnt her face but when her ideals are challenged she quickly reverts to giving comfort a higher preference and does indeed walk the talk. However theres more to this incident. Jo although termed a tomboy, plausibly followed fashion for some duration, since according to the society that is the proper thing for a woman to do. Numerous examples can be sited where Meg, in vain tries convincing Jo to behave like a lady and be proper. On the contrary, when she seemed to realize hurting yourself for fashion is rather silly as an idea, she swiftly jumped to the rational conclusion of comfort having a higher priority. Effectively, Jo was doing the right thing but as the distinction was based on the model, its dissolution led to confusion in her mind.

On the whole, the book doesnt demonstrate much extraordinance, however analysis of the story takes the understanding of reality to a whole new level, thereby proving the existence of a potential in the book, to appeal to a much larger audience than it initially targeted.

Written by: Atul Singh Arora IISER-M 1st Semester, Novemeber 2011