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• 1 media/368b364277a0448894b20622706645d9.jpg 2024-02-27T13:15:29-08:00 Blogpost 4 10 image_header 2024-04-12T10:11:14-07:00 When I was first reading Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's “Among Friends", it felt very familiar. The group of friends meeting every week, the chaos of the changing relationships, people coming and going. I even had a friend who had a fake eye, and every time she was drunk, she would pop it out like a party trick. At different points in the story, I became reminiscent to times in my own life with its chaos. Although, for me, they were wildly different groups of friends, which depended on my age and where I was in the world, which does change the dynamic a little, but still nostalgic to me, until the final third. 
  
  The story is told achronologically, which also felt familiar. It reminded me of Billy Pilgrim and his self diagnosed illness of being "unstuck in time". A war veteran, too disturbed by the events he had experienced, created a story about aliens to explain his flashbacks and other PTSD symptoms. This stream of conscientious style of narration feels similar; like the ramblings of someone who has seen too much. This style feels very unlike anything else we have read in this class, mainly because it lacks a plot line. As Professor Efremova pointed out, there is no clear line that runs through the entire story, no single plot, but multiple mini plots that end with an unforeseen twist.
  
  I think the reason the twist is so good, is because it goes against not only the character building, but against the matriarchal actions we would expect. On Easter day, the narrator takes Alesha to her parents graves for the first time. Here we see the narrator having this wholesome moment with her son. She's patient with him as he overcomes his fears, and they plant daisies. Afterwards, she sends him on his way to their allotment, alone. This image of her being a good mother is reenforced before being stripped away by her later actions. There was an earlier scene where Kolya slaps Alesha for wetting the bed and the narrator smiles, but even this, for me, didn't break the image that she was a good mother. I think this is by design, the understanding of the role of the mother is being challenged by the author. The expectation is that the father is the abuser, not the mother, but even this twist is turned on its head. Tensions rise at the party, mainly caused by the narrator, until the "final act". Inside of a paragraph we end up despising the narrator only to learn of her scheme on the last page. The whole event was a setup and we are taken through a barrage of emotions and none of them are good. The good mother turned villain turned delusional antiheroine. Maybe this was what was best for her son, but how she imagines his forgiveness and understanding seems like a long shot to me, but maybe this is what she needs to believe. 
  
  Reading it a second time, I started noticing the gender roles more. The narrator has a way of calling out the men that I did not notice before. She says "flirting with Zhora was dangerous", but in the same paragraph claims it was all an act, a way to show his masculinity. All of the men show their masculinity in some way or another; Serge expressing it by scuba diving, or Andrea's impotence was overcome by being Nadya's hero. In this way, the author is challenging the idea of masculinity. The author does something similar with the women, when the narrator introduces them, she noted some item of their appearance, like with Lenka, "a D-sized beauty" or Tanya "the blonde valkyrie". Eventually, every women is viewed through the lens of motherhood or lack thereof; even Lenka, who comes in and out of the story, is seen on the subway post delivery of a stillborn. Which again, feels familiar, there were times, in my life, interactions with my buddies' wives were nothing more than them asking me about my relationships and if I want children. So the point of this element of the story feels too real, but I imagine this is a challenge to the gender roles of the times, I would just call this my experience.