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Book Club: Discuss/find out about a Classic Tale Set in Wyoming: The Virginian
Front-Ranger:
Time for a pic of "The Virginian"!
Front-Ranger:
"She had come to read to him for the alloted time, and she threw around his shoulders the scarlet and black Navajo blanket, striped with its splendid zigzags of barbarity. Thus he half sat, half leaned, languid but at ease." Sigh. The Virginian is healing from his wounds and soon he will be able to walk again, will be able to leave the bed where his nurse has sequestered him.
Front-Ranger:
Chapter 28, "No Dream to Wake From" is a climactic one-page chapter, the only similar one in the book. It is the book's "dozy embrace." This is when the words of love are finally expressed between TV and Molly Wood. He is still recovering from his wound, and she is still nursing him. Here, as in life, the woman benefits from all the feeling that men have built up among each other in the day-to-day adventures in life. Lucky us.
The reason it's called No Dream to Wake Up From is because they are living what most people just dream or talk about. I feel that way many times recently meeself.
Front-Ranger:
Authors like to underscore the unusualness of a relationship by having the lovers embrace in an unusual way. In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis embraced Jack from the back, not facing him. In The Virginian, the patient was sitting on a chair in Chapter 28, with Molly crouched in front of him. He encircled her bent head in his arms, and they remained that way for a long time, peacefully together at last.
Front-Ranger:
Chapter 29 "Word to Bennington" is a rather tiresome chapter about TV's and Molly's letters back home telling of their intentions, and the stuffy New Englanders' reactions to them. If you want to skip it, that's okay with me, but there is some awesome writing and enlightenment of TV's character.
Stay tuned, because the story takes a decidedly wild and interesting turn in Chapter 30!
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