Saturday, October 20, 2007
What's in a Name ?
Lets discuss the names in Tom Jones, well only one in particular Tom Jones himself. While everyone else in the book is running around with names like Allworthy, Squire, and Blifil… the main character, the hero gets a run of the mill name like Tom Jones. Many reasons can be attributed to this like the fact that he is foundling so he has ability to make a name for himself, or perhaps to furthermore portray him as a realistic character, or to simply make him stand out. In today’s day the name Tom Jones is like saying John Smith its any common males name used as a symbol for the regular Joe with the common boy stereotypes, which is comparable to our character Tom. This should be thrown in to the melting pot of discussions and books on how boys are and should be raised nowadays, because hey it’s promoting the wild and impulsive.
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3 comments:
Great point: in fact, the hero's name was one of the things that bothered Richardson--he thought it was really "vulgar." In addition to being the most "ordinary" or generic name you could choose, the name is also an affront or implicit criticism of most "romance" novels which feature pretentious names, (including Pamela and Clarissa which came from Pastoral).
I never really thought about the relevance of Tom Jones name. I was always aware that it was a common name opposed to the others, but I never thought too deeply about it.(Perhaps it's because I have such a bad memory for names I never pay too much attention to them...but I should!) Thanks for pointing it out to me!
I feel that a name is very important to a person. It characterizes who they are. If you said " hey you" you would be really upset. Toms name is a common name but so is my name christina. I wish I had a different name because I feel like christina is so common and I don't get to express my individual freedom. Every name has a meaning. I was laughing that his name means to mock something because thats what goes on in the book. Great idea!! thanks
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