Luke's Thoughts

After having finished the book, I felt that Open City  lacking and did not live up to its many positive reviews. The book started out slow and there did not seem to be much of an actual story line, but as I was reading I assumed that everything would come into focus in the end. I noticed about half way through the book that there still seemed to be a lack of development or concreteness to story, but even then, I still believed something would still culminate. I must say I did not peticularly enjoy or dislike the book throughout my reading. It was not until I had finally finished it that I truly developed an opinion or realized the point of the book. I remember having to think hard about the true meaning of the story, which may have been intended by Teju Cole. I finally began to see that the point of the book was not to develop a character who becomes the heroine of a story, but to create a medium to serve as a source to many different lives and experiences. Julius was created to not be important or defining, but Teju Cole designed him as a tool for his story and focal point that connects many other stories. Julius is a single man in a massive city and that city is his experiences and the stories of the people he encounters. He is meant to be hard to read or somewhat insignificant so that he does not over shadow the meaning of all the others. He represents how a person does not define themselves, but it is all the experiences a person has that define them. Even after this revelation after readin the book, I still did not particularly enjoy the story. Its idea was well thought, but the way it was delivered was not. So much of the story was inconclusive and even if this was meant, it was done to too much of an extreme. Therefore, despite the interesting and genuine concept, I find the book lacking.