Mao II Chapters 6-11

         I think I have finally figured out why I don't care for this book, well a couple of reasons.  Firstly, there is no action--the action that does happen in the book feels muted.  For instance, Bill gets hit by a car and he's bleeding and everyone is rushing towards him and he just brushes it off.  It seems unimportant and insignificant.  Even in the earlier chapters when they go on the trip--Scott seems concentrated on having sex with Karen and then she has sex with Bill and then Scott has sex with Brita.  Seems more like a soap opera without the drama.
        There are a few parts that are still confusing to me because the book doesn't explain it or I just missed something.  When Brita is awake the answering machine comes on with a voice and I don't think the book ever mentions his significance or who he is.  Another part that confused me in the book is the part about the connection between Brita and Karen.  I know it mentions that Brita was skeptical about leaving this girl she barely knew at her home but how did Karen find her how and what's the connection?  Another question that I have is why is Bill so eagerly going along with George and completely leaves Charlie.  It seems that Charlie is much more trustworthy than George.  Bill even knows that George is working for the country that took the hostage and Bill knows that they want to take him--it doesn't seem to phase him in the least bit.
In these chapters I have picked up a few themes that seem to be repeating and significant.  The first is the mob or group importance.  Someone is talking to Brita about mass-marriage and the concept of what Bill thinks about it.  "By compressing a million moments of love and touch and courtship into one accelerated mass, you're saying that life must become more anxious, more surreal, more image-bound, more prone to hurrying its own transformation, or what's the point (pg 80).  The next instance of this group/mob theme is when Brita and Scott are talking after they have come back from their trip.  They're talking about how Bill doesn't understand that people want to do these mass marriages but the reason is to survive as a community rather than mastering every complex force (pg. 89)  One of them goes on to talk about how gender doesn't matter and that people should all become Moonies as one large collective group.  The last example that I found was when Karen goes to the community of homeless and walks around and sees this mass of people that are living under tarps and in boxes or sleeping on benches.  They refer to it as "tent city."
            Another theme that I found occurring in these chapters is the influence of the writer and the terrorist.  Bill talks about when a terrorist wins the writer loses--one line inn particular that he says, "the more clearly we see terror, the less impact we feel from art" (pg. 157).  I remember talking about this idea in class on Thursday and about WWII.  We talked about how after the war nobody could make art because it seemed to take the attention away from the concentration camps and what happened to the innocent people--I think specifically it was referring to Aschwitz.