A New Perspective

The reading of Geek Love was unlike many of the novels I had ever read before in many different ways. For one, the novel had a very unique title that leads many in our class to assume a different story line. From what I have heard in class discussions, many people, including myself, thought that the novel would be about a couple geeky teenagers falling in love. If you read the story, you would very well know that this is not the case. Once you get past the cover on the novel, you open the book and read through the first couple chapters to soon notice that the novel also proposes a unique narration standpoint. Olympia, one of the main characters in the story, is the narrator that constantly switches from past to more concurrent events. She tells her own story and, as the reader, you can’t help but wonder if she’s telling the story with her own spin. Along with a misleading title and a unique narration scheme, the novel also proposes what I think to be a crooked set of morals and events. Some of the events that take place during the plot of the novel are very questionable, and I have actually spent some time discussing specifics in my second blog post “Sinful Actions?” In being unlike most of the novels I have ever read, it’s also a novel that reconstructed the meaning of “monstrosity” for me. Beforehand I had considered the meaning of monstrosity to be someone or something with foul physical attributes. After reading Geek Love, I have formed a new meaning for the word. Instead of a monster being someone or something with a foul physical appearance, it/they have to also have the personality to back the term. For example, Olympia has a foul physical appearance, and before my reading of this novel would have been considered a monster. After reading Geek Love, Olympia took on a new persona. Instead of being a monster, I learned that Olympia has gentle and good intentions for the ones around her. Her personality was representative of caring for the ones around her. Because of the addition of a personality trait into my definition of monstrosity, I have a new view on what a monster character really is. A character in the novel that I considered a monster before and after the reading of this novel was Arty. Arty has foul physical appearance, and on top of that, has a foul personality. He always did things for the good of himself. He used and manipulated his family and followers for the good of Arty, and couldn’t have cared less about the people surrounding him. This newly created definition has changed the way I see “monsters” in the novels we have read throughout this entire semester. It’s interesting how one novel can change ones perspective and bring new concepts to light, even after you’ve been reading for years and years on end. It’s shows that no matter what your age, you can still pick up on new information and new insights to things we haven’t thought about in our lifetime.