Tragedy?

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." - Karl Marx

"Comedy is tragedy plus time." - Old adage, probably not by Mark Twain, but most certainly attributed to him

As we were walking out of Martin "The Horror" Sheen's little shindig, Phil pretty much summed up The Conquest of America, something to the effect that it's exactly The Sparrow, only real. Upon, further review, yep, that sums it up to a great extent. I could go on about how great the lies that we always learn about the conquest of America are (Conquest? America wasn't conquered! The land was just there, and it was, like, free! Conquered! Pish! Communist...)

However, I'd prefer to just mention the events in their relation to the two quotes up top. Putting those two together, I'd challenge that the first time is not itself tragedy, but simply comedy with a lack of removal. My first comment in class about The Sparrow last week concerned my being infuriated with the book while simultaneously enjoying it for presenting its events practically as farce: You know, thanks to the flashback format, that the mission and Sandoz are doomed, but you see the whole thing play out as farce. It is, in a very real way, comical. The frustrating part is that the farce is hidden and not specifically brought out by the narrative voice, except in the few circumstances we discussed. Since I was reading Flaubert at the same time as The Sparrow, it reminded me greatly of the narrative style of Sentimental Education, though American sci-fi and French realism don't exactly line up. Still, style indirect libre much?

Here, too, we can view history with the same detached irony because the process is so farcical. We know what the endgame is, and I couldn't help but laugh along the way? To paraphrase Maddox, Oops! I'm racist.

By the way, freaky sidenote, the last page of the epilogue has a completely flattened bug in it. Even weirder, since the book came shrink wrapped from Amazon. Not going to lie, I tossed the book across the room when I saw it.