The Devil Inside

In the middle section of "This Side of Paradise", Amory is more lost than ever. He is unaware of his own emotions, the emotions of others around him, and has trouble defining himself as a person. Amory stated "My own idleness was quite in accord with my system, but the luck broke (110)." Instead of taking responsibility for his own laziness and failure of getting on the senior council, he blames luck. Amory is using luck as a scapegoat, if he admitted that he was producing his own failure then maybe he would realize he wasn't such a genius after all. Not even a genius, it would just make him grasp a sense of himself and he's not ready for that yet. This reminds me later on in the book, when Amory's cousin Clara states that he is a "slave to his imagination". Amory seems to have no emotions at all and when he does, they are simply made up emotions that he has invented in his mind and believes he truly feels. We see this with his love for Isabelle or should i say lack of love. Amory convinced himself that he loved Isabelle and had such passion for her, but it felt like a great love story Amory wanted to create in his head rather than a real love affair. Amory had no real desire towards Isabelle, if anything he only liked the idea of her. Amory was so caught up with creating emotions that his actual feelings were lost along the way. Something did disturb me though, when Amory's father died and the one thing Amory thought about was "his old boyhood choice, slow oxidation in the top of a tree (111)." Amory had not an ounce of mourning for his father. In fact, he had no emotion at all towards the death of his father! With that said, maybe he just wasn't close to his father and i can understand that. However, what child thinks about how they are going to die? I just get this sense of negative air surrounding Amory, yet he is so involved in his imaginative state that he hardly recognizes it.

"You've lost a great amount of vanity and that's all (115)" replied Monsignor to Amory's declaration of losing his personality. Despite Amory's infectious imagination, he has grown a little from the overly vain boy we first met. He is no longer striving to "fit in" because in a sense he has. Yet, this only leads Amory into a lazy and unmotivated state. It's as if he needs something to hold onto and once he has it, he throws it away like a broken toy. Or maybe Amory is just growing as a person, realizing that fitting into a certain society isn't the highlight of life. Amory is reaching that point of self realization, but he is still so far from finding it. It's a journey. Amory is conflicted with what he wants and he is so unmotivated to figure out what it is he is searching for. With this said, he clings on to the characters of other people that essentially have what he lacks. In one scene, Amory is "taking down the "Kreutzer Sonata, searching it carefully for the germs of Burne's enthusiasm." He describes Burne's enthusiasm as germs, what does this say about Amory? That emotion is like a disease, if you want enthusiasm you need the "germs" of others to infect you? As he latches on to Burne we see a change in Amory's attitude, but i feel like he is trying to live through Burne's motivation and passion. The same with his cousin Clara, he is so consumed with her because she has this self confidence that he doesn't. He seems more in love with Clara's character and stature, rather than Clara the actual person.

Towards the end of the middle section though is when i get a sense that Amory is going to find his own path instead of binding to others like a parasite for emotion. Before joining the war, Tom tells Amory "What we feel now is the sense of all the gorgeous youth that has rioted through here in two hundred years (168)" I like the idea that Tom presents here, i can see Amory getting a sense of his own motivation from past generations rather than leeching on to people and trying to take over their same motivations. I also love this statement because it takes us back to the whole college experience. I think it defines what a college campus should feel like and how being in college can be one of the most inspiring times in all of our lives. People can inspire us in numerous ways, but this doesn't mean we need to be exactly like them. Inspire us. Shine a light on us so that we can find our own path, which i think is what Amory is finding out.