Ben saw a bunch of kids going to a Nine Inch Nails concert. Being the original human beings that they believed themselves to be, they were dressed in black with long black hair, thick eyeliner, and other heavy paraphernalia. Because NOBODY is capable of understanding the woe in their lives, that is except Nine Inch Nails, they cherish their moments with him.
Julie Karagin, as one of the richest prospects in Russian society, has made melancholy fashionable in her time. On page 549, Tolstoy gives a great description of her melancholy attitude and actions. “She adopted the tone of a girl who has lived through a great disappointment . . . This melancholy, which did not keep her from making merry, also did not keep the young people who visited her from passing the time pleasantly. . . . Only some of the young men. . . entered more deeply into Julie’s melancholy mood, and with these young men she had more prolonged and solitary conversations on the vanity of worldy things. . . “
Especially because these groups are trying to get out of the mainstream, which I guess they are away from the main mainstream, I find it ironic that 1) the trend exists for every generation and 2) was prevalent enough for Tolstoy to make a comment on it way back when. Does the melancholy crowd grow out of it and realize that they weren’t really all that original or misunderstood?
