Greed

Today in class, we watched the silent film Greed based off of Frank Norris's novel McTeauge. Greed was a very interesting film, I thought that it really did closely follow the book which is pretty unlikely in a film. It was interesting the see it without any dialouge, it made me pay attention that much more. I think that if someone watched Greed and they had not watched the film, they would not have known was going on. By reading the book McTeague, I better understood what was going on throughout the film and it was even nice without dialouge too.
The scene in the desert was really interesting and it was also really stressful for me as a watcher of the film. I felt myself getting thirsty while Marcus and McTeague traveled deeper and deeper into the desert. Even though it was filmed 90 years ago, I felt like I could be trapped in the desert as well which is absolutely amazing. I just felt really uncomfortable, I know that I would not want to be stuck in the desert like McTeague and Marcus were!
Overall, I really did enjoy the film a lot. I thought that it was a good way to end the unit of McTeague and the film allowed me to understand the book that much more. I look forward to read the House of Mirth!

McTeague

Reading McTeague has been very interesting. The beginning of the book was kind of hard to get into but then it kind of just took off. The character of McTeague is not my favorite and rightly so. As the novel kept moving forward, McTeague became less and less favorable. He firstly stole Trina right from under Marcus (even though the two are cousins so that is kind of gross). He then seems to pressure Trina into a relationship, love, and eventually marriage. He is slow, sluggish, and annoying when it comes to everything essential to a courtship. He always seems uninterested in everything he does and everything that has to do with Trina. McTeague is also very greedy as well and he goes as far to kill his own wife for the money that she would not give him. He was never a moral character throughout the novel and he just ends up being a murderer of his wife and his former best friend. His karma really does come at the end of the book though when he ends up being trapped in the desert with a dead Marcus handcuffed to himself.
McTeague never does get to redeem himself though, but I really do not think that he is a redeemable character. He had so many points where he could have been noble but he does not take the opportunity. He deserved everything that he got in the end. He was a horrible character who's nature did not show until greed took him over.
In the end, the book McTeague was an interesting read but I do not think that I would have picked it up on my own to read it. It had an interesting premise but I just did not like it as much as the other books that we have read so far in this class. I look forward to reading a different book with a different plot, characters, and ending.