Blankets, Ch. 2-5

This is my second post and I'm still learning about this whole blogging thing, so these early posts are going to be pretty simple and more or less stick to the readings. Also, I feel I must apologize for the title of my blog. "John's Comical Blog" is at best a bad pun and at worst false advertising, as I fear that as of yet there is absolutely nothing of humorous value in my posts. So please forgive me for the title--it's still a work-in-progress.

After getting past my initial surprise at the presentation of Blankets, I was able to dive more into the plot and the characters in the next several chapters. What has struck me the most about the story thus far is the breadth of topics that it touches on. And, strangely, though my childhood experiences were very different from the protagonist's, I was amazed at the amount of the story that I felt I could relate to on a very personal level.

For one thing, I am also the older of two brothers. And Thompson's description of his interaction with his brother will almost certainly resonate with anyone who has a sibling, especially boys who have a younger brother. As an older brother, you feel at once both protective and dismissive of your younger brother. It is especially difficult to reconcile these conflicting feelings about your sibling when you yourself are still very young and immature. There were definitely times in my life when I found myself being cruel or disapproving to my brother without being able to justify my actions. Sometimes you just do things and afterwards wonder why it felt necessary to provoke someone that seems to look up to you. Every older sibling worries from time to time that he or she has done a poor job of protecting a younger sibling and the protagonist definitely seems to regret how he treated his brother as a child.

The setting of Blankets is the snow-strewn Midwest. I was born in Tennessee, but I've lived most of my life in Illinois, so I found myself relating to the narrator's experiences in Wisconsin and Michigan. Winter and snow are recurring themes throughout the story, and having lived in the Midwest really helps to imagine the setting. I have memories of playing in the snow with my brother and friends and going skiing. Hell, I still play out in the snow with my friends. I'm no huge fan of the cold, but if you live out here, you can't really get away from it, so you might as well make the best of it.

The other aspect of the story that I found myself identifying with was the idea of a long distance girlfriend. During my freshman year of high school, my family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma for my dad's job. We only spent a year there before moving back to Illinois, but at the end of the year, I asked a girl to the Freshman Spring Formal. We started talking over summer break during sophomore year, which eventually developed into a long distance relationship. My girlfriend came to visit me over winter break that year and it was just...weird. I mean, it was great to actually be able to spend time with the person that you've been talking to over the internet and the phone for the past year, but at the same time I think we both felt a lot of anxiety. I had to imagine what it must have been like for her, living in someone else's house, with someone else's family, without your own family there. And of course all of the tension and pressure that comes from having more or less unlimited access to each other. Even though you're careful to explain to the parents that there is a separate bedroom available for your guest, it's inevitable that both parties will end up spending their nights in the same room.

Like the protagonist, this was my first and only experience with having a girlfriend and it was hard trying to figure out how you're supposed to behave around each other when you haven't actually been around the other person the entire time. Suddenly spending an entire week living with someone that you haven't seen for over a year can be kind of awkward and I think Thompson really picks up on that in these chapters of Blankets. There is a constant tension between Craig and Raina where both of them seem unsure of their physical relationship. On one hand, they've been in correspondence for a long time and Raina's mother makes the comment that she could almost imagine the two of them being married. On the other hand, they've only physically been together for a matter of days and Craig seems reluctant to touch her. He seems uncomfortable around her, and yet at the same time he is incredibly satisfied just to watch her sleep. Thompson really captures the feelings of uncertainty and ecstasy that surround first love.