Monthly Connections, April (The Last One) Don't You Forget About Me

So I finally have a topic of my choice!!!! While contemplating the final thesis of my high school career, I automatically thought that it would be best to do a John Hughes film. Well, John Hughes didn't direct St. Elmo's Fire but atleast it's a brat pack film. So I thought I'd compare several things with John Hughes' representation of high school during the 80's to what I have found my own to be.

First and foremost, disappointingly enough, there is no boy that even compares to Jake Ryan at this school. I don't think I ever expected there to be one when I did first come to high school because with exception of a few Bethany and Sacred Heart kids, I already knew pretty much everyone in my grade and the grade above. Now could a Jake Ryan even exist? The book that had the most elements of a romance this year was Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff is definately not Jake. The next one I can think of is the relationship between Tariq and Laila. And in my own naive brain which of these relationships am I led to believe is the most realistic. I never heard about a rich, handsome senior paying attention to a shy sophomore. These characteristics do not carry over to Wuthering Heights or A Thousand Splendid Suns. Heathcliff was moody, mean, and could be downright scary at times. Tariq and Laila knew each other from childhood then didn't see each other for many years.

So, following that whole idea, next would be Pretty in Pink. That's not exactly one of my favorite movies but it has a similar plot so it will make sense to put it next. Same thing with the rich guy except the girl (which once again happens to be Molly Ringwald) is poor. I don't really think that there is a huge gap between who's rich and who's poor at school. But I also think that if someone were really rich, they would probably be going to Archmere or Shanahan or St. Mark's instead. So once again, this is the main story of a high school movie that I never saw or encountered in high school which questions the whole validity of it. But the character of Andie is probably the idea of commonplace people. This is similar to what we discussed in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Andie sees all of these rich people and sort of has envy, but not really envy. just something kind of like it. This is more relatable to most people including Prufrock. He's kind of pathetic, somewhat like Andie. But there are characteristics of the modern hero, much like Andie, and much like real life. We can relate to each character for not being rich or popular or even having the fullest head of hair.

I guess I might as well cover the three big ones, so yes, that would mean The Breakfast Club. I don't really know if the school can keep students all day on Saturdays, but I imagine that if they could, five random people in school probably wouldn't become friends just because they all had to spend one day together and they probably wouldn't have in the movie either because we never do know if they all stay friends. In the one scene they contemplate this as well. And Claire (Molly Ringwald again!) says that they won't. They won't say hi when they see each other in the hall and they'll never hang out like they do for the one day. I don't think Oxford has cliques like this. Well there are but I think most students who go here have friends that fit many different stereotypes, we're not as "divided"-for lack of a better word, as most of the high schools that you see in movies. Actually, I'm not too sure of the underclassmen, but this is my own interpretation of high school. There are several instances, like when teachers have their rooms setup in groups where my group consisted of different types of people. I think we each considered the others our friends (Particularlly in Psych last year and Statistics this year). Of us there were athletes and brains and a person who drove a sports car and even the 20 year old who dressed in all black, and we were fortunate enough to all be friends. But these are people that I saw everyday rather than just once and done. In The Power of One, Hoppie makes a big impression on Peekay, that lasts a life time. This is what we like to think happens to The Breakfast Club, and this is something that I would like to think was true about my high school experience.

So unfortunately, I've found my whole high school experience to not play out like a John Hughes movie. When I turned 16, Jake Ryan wasn't standing there waiting for me, and my parents did remember my birthday. There wasn't some rich guy who asked me to prom. In fact, I'm not even going to prom, and I don't consider that to be a loss. There wasn't a time that I was put with four other random people and we became friends over the course of a day. I know I skipped a few, but this was getting kind of long and none of the literature really compares to Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Of course, there were the similar feelings which is what I think makes most of his films, particularlly in the 80's, so appealing even coming to thirty years after their first releases. It's nice to think that somewhere there is that one great guy who doesn't care how much money your family makes and notices you even though you're plain Jane. Or that we can connect with people regardless of how different we think we are or seem to be. I think that a lot of people(including John Hughes) probably considered high school to be some of their best years. However, most of the people I know, most of them in the real world that is, don't consider high school to have been as romanticized as John Hughes made it seem. As for me, I believe that the best is yet to come in college and after I graduate college.

Monthly Connections March, The Value of the Soul

I thought that one of the more interestings we discussed in class this month was whether or not there is anything that any of us would give our souls for. Like everyone else said, I've always thought that I should hope that one day there would be someone that I would give my soul for. For instance, I should hope that if I were to become a mother one day, I'd willingly give my soul for the well-being of my children. However, like someone also pointed out in class, it doesn't really make sense to do that if I'm subjecting myself to eternal damnation for people who will eventually die.

So after much thought, the only thing that I see worth giving my soul for would be to ensure that not everyone would die in some kind of horrific catastrophic event. But I only thought of one situation where this would be relevant and it isn't that feasible. But if something was going to happen to make the world end and the only way to stop it would be for me to give my soul up, I would do it, because I believe living is the greatest gift anyone could ever get and I should think that everyone would do the same thing if they were in the same situation.

I can't think of a material thing that I would give my soul for, or even a thing that would only benefit me. Like in Faust or Dorian Gray, I don't think that I would be willing to give my soul for some kind of demon servant or eternal youth. But eternal youth is kind of a romanticized idea, there are many books with that underlying theme such as Tuck Everlasting, The Twilight Series, and The Named Series. Would I be willing to live forever with Edward Cullen? Yes, of course. But I think that this whole concept has something that Faust and Dorian Gray didn't have. In each of the other books, the idea is to live with someone forever. And on top of that the main characters in two of the three do decide to live for forever with their beloved. So maybe I would give my soul if the person that I loved would give his as well and we could be together forever. Fortunately no one would ever have to make a decision like that. Also, immortality isn't the only thing there is to giving one's soul.

However, going along with that idea, I once remember having a conversation with some girl about heaven. She was really religious, and I'm not all that religious so it was a new idea that was coming to my attention. Anyway, she told me that when we die and go to heaven, we spend eternity there. The next thing that I said was that I couldn't imagine being in some place forever even if it was heaven. So if Heaven and Hell really do exist, everyone is going to spend eternity somewhere anyway unless we get reincarnated.

So, stepping away from the whole living forever idea, I don't really believe that any person's soul is truly worth any material thing. Now, you said that you would be (or might be) willing to give your soul for total knowledge or complete knowledge well basically to be all-knowing. And this made me think of an article I read about the lady who went and killed professors at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. It talked about how she was Harvard educated and a genius. Then it said that she was so smart that she had trouble relating to other people. Also the book Flowers for Algernon. Charly becomes so smart that he has a hard time relating to people as well. So I think that it's kind of tough to want to know absolutely everything because if you did, you would be hanging out with members of MENSA and still having a hard time trying to dumb it down. It would be like constantly socializing with disabled people or babies.

Also what if you truly did know everything? Could you stand to live here on Earth where there are so many people who screw things up and do things the wrong way? There are things that even an all-knowing person wouldn't be able to fix. But if you could fix them by becoming president or some sort of emperor of the world, is that truly what you would want to do and if it was, do you think you could ever actually accomplish that? The solution may be something so far fetched that many people would think that you are insane and if it is still a democratic place, you wouldn't win. But if you could turn the world into one entire dictatorship would you do that? Would it be worth taking away the power of the people in order to accomplish making the world a better place? Or would you instead give up on society altogether with the realization that no matter how hard you try, the world is not going to change for the better or that it isn't worth fighting for and instead isolate yourself or make your own smaller society with like-minded people or atleast the people who trust that you are indeed all-knowing? And if you were to decide that none of it was worth it and you wanted to committ suicide could you do that knowing that you have no soul? That if Heaven and Hell do exist, a soul-less person probably isn't going to Heaven. Or you would prbably be more interested in the education of the world. But what is it that you teach your students? All the faults of this imperfect world? All of the faults of every single person to ever write anything that was ever published? Or some sort of essential question that you would know the exact answer to. You would know the exact answer, you could tell us, or you could read our papers and find all of the false conclusions led to by misinformation. Maybe this would grow to be so boring for you that you instead decide to write a book and lecture part time to college students who aren't able to comprehend a single idea that you have.

So anyway, there isn't really anything real that I could imagine giving my soul for.

Monthly Connections January, Feminism

I think I've always considered myself somewhat of a feminist, and it's not hard to see why because theoretically, all females should be feminists because the basic underlying idea of feminism is that women can do anything men can do. At the same time, however, I think that one day if I were to get married and have a family, I wouldn't mind (I might even want) being a housewife and homemaker. This is kind of a contradiction but this is the viewpoint from which I read and evaluate the lives of characters such as Edna, Nora, Mariam, and Laila.

So in my mind, the perfect marital relationship would be the husband and wife in a loving, caring relationship. There isn't anything that they wouldn't do for one another. The characters I previously listed do not have this, they are far from it. Nora is probably the closest to it because atleast she had several illegal actions that were "out of love" also her husband did tell her several times that he loved her. Mariam and Laila are actually in an abusive marriage where there husband is actually beating them and on the verge of killing them. And Edna is somewhere inbetween but more towards the side where Nora is.

So it's hard to judge Mariam and Laila because they were actually in a life or death situation. They were actually at a place where they couldn't leave because the Taliban would find them and beat them if they tried to leave and then Rasheed would beat them even more when they came home. Both of them also do not have a family to turn to because in Mariam's case, she is far from her homeland where she would have relatives and Laila's parents were killed. So I can understand when someone says that there was literally nothing that could be done.

This can be compared to what Edna did. She kills herself because it's "the only way out." This is simply not the case when you compare it to A Thousand Splendid Suns. Mariam and Laila could have killed themselves but they didn't. Maybe this is because they loved their children more than Edna did hers, or they realized the value of life because they were in a war zone and they both lost their parents. I don't have children but in my mind, I think that parents in real life, especially mothers, would love their children more like Laila and less like Edna or Nora. Anyway, out of the three pieces that we read, I think that A Thousand Splendid Suns would have made the most sense for the heroines to have killed themselves or left but it was the only one that didn't. Okay actually Mariam is killed and I thought that that was kind of stupid because I would have wanted her to run away with everyone else but she did kill her husband so she actually committed a crime that is punishable by death plus A Thousand Splendid Suns isn't a feminist novel and her motives were in the right place, she was sacrificing herself for people she loved.

So after reading a book like A Thousand Splendid Suns, where the protagonists are in such bad situations but still manage to rise and succeed, why do we consider Nora and especially Edna to be so great? Both of them give up on the lives they lead and it's not in the place of others. The fact that Laila can succeed in a Taliban infested Afganistan should shame them due to the fact that they "can't succeed" in the early 1900s America or 1870s Norway where women weren't prevented from so much as leaving their houses without a male relative. Of course, Nora, Edna, and Mariam and Laila are all living in completely different worlds. But it seems like if A Thousand Splendid Suns had ended the way The Awakening had ended, Laila would have been lying there getting beat up by Rasheed and slowly lost consiousness until "the musky odor of pinks filled the air" or maybe all Tariq wanted was a wife so she would have let the Taliban take care of her. Or if Laila had been Nora, A Doll House would have ended with Nora and her children leaving. And if Edna had been Nora, she would have just left to make a new life for herself rather than committing suicide.

So had each of these books taken place in America today, the only one that would remain the same is A Doll's House unless Nora and Trovald had decided to get marriage counciling and everything became okay, but really out of the three novels they are the ones with the best relationship. Edna would have abandonned her family and gotten a job or she would have been perscribed anti-depressants, or she never would have married Leonce in the first place because it's not like she loved him. And maybe Mariam and Laila would be like the Mormans. But they would have pressed charges against Rasheed or ran away with the children and of course they would of had the option of never having to have married him in the first place. Which they both did have in the book, but they didn't forsee the consequences.

There are examples of these situations in the world today. Begining with A Doll House, you could look at a sub-plot on the show Gilmore Girls. When Sherry leaves Christopher and daughter Gigi, it's because she's a strong independent woman and she wants to further her career even thought that means abandoning her family. When it's the other way around, a man leaving a woman and child the way Christopher left Lorelai and Rory (even though he was sixteen) the person leaving is the bad guy, he's abandoning what is his responsibility to pursue sonething else. Even though it's not exactly feminism, it's pretty screwed up if a woman leaving a man and child is uplifted because she doesn't want to be a mother and has her own aspirations, wheras a man leaving a woman and child is looked down upon because he's not taking care of his responsibility. Would we even have read A Doll House if Torvald had been the one who left in the end? The same applies to The Awakening. Would Nora or Edna have embraced their roles as mothers at the disappearance of their husbands?

Monthly Connections, Cultural Relativism

I really enjoyed the article. I especially liked the author's conclusion. He made excellent points on the subject and I found that I couldn't agree more with him.

The first thing this article made me think of was Waiting For Godot and existentialism in general. During the discussion in class, something that you (Mrs. Burnett) said stuck out in my mind. About how ridiculous it is for someone to say to someone else "no you can't come here because this is our land" even though if you think about it, we're all here and who's to say what land belongs to anyone. Now, you didn't say it like that, but that's the idea. This was an allusion to illegal immigration and immigration in general (or at least that's how I interpreted it). Anyways, after you said that, I thought that it kind of made sense for people to claim land because that's how society is. If there weren't boundaries, things could be chaotic. And I felt that this article did a good job in describing situations like that. Even if it is ridiculous to say you can't come here, this is my land, there has to be something to keep order because that's how people can live with other people. On smaller terms, most people would not let some random person off the street come into their houses. They made or paid for their houses so why should they have to? But, one could say "Hey, this is just space on the earth and who are you to tell me where I can and can't go?" I see it the same way with countries, it's the same thing but on a larger scale. And if you really want to live in a country, what's so bad about doing it by the rules?

Like the article said, everything can be seen from the different sides and with Cultural Relativism both sides are not any better or any worse than the other. So going back to the immigration issue (which isn't necessarily culture-bound but I think it can be seen using this idea), one side believes that it's okay to cross borders into countries and live in them without having used the proper procedure. Whereas the other side (which is the country) believes it is wrong that these people want to live in the country and show no concern to the laws of the country in the first place. Of course there are the existentialists in the country who believe that it is okay for anyone to come into the country because it's all land and we're just people living on the same planet. The first idea according to Cultural Relativism would be that since neither idea is better or worse than the other, people may come and go or stay as they please. In a society as big as the one on earth, this is not such a great idea for several reasons:
1. In order to co-exist, some type of order must be maintained
2. By not following the order (law) that is in place, there cannot be peaceful co-existance
3. Without peaceful co-existance, there is turbulance and chaos
4. And then we all die

So as humans, we must compromise on ethical terms (like if a woman is considered property in some countries, it isn't okay for her husband to torture her). People can come into and leave countries or stay in them. But there is a proper order for this. Why? Because this is what allows humans to live peacefully. Like the article said, it would be impossible for there to be places that allows murder or place no value on the truth. Likewise, it is impossible for there to be places to exist that have no care whether or not people come and go as they please.

Monthly Connections November, Beowulf! (Once Again)

So I feel kind of bad because all of my blogs are dealing with Beowulf in some way which is completely unoriginal of me, but oh well. Hopefully next month will be something other than Beowulf (I'd much rather be writing about Wuthering Heights but that's what I get). I cannot believe that some people spend their entire lives trying to "tear up" Beowulf and find all of the hidden meanings, symbolism, and historical influences. I don't really know what kind of satisfaction someone gets trying to figure out if Beowulf is a Christian work or not because there's always going to be the other side telling him he's wrong, plus he's never going to find out whether he's right or not. Well, I could understand the sense of wonder, but reading the article, I just don't understand why one man would be so curious as to know about every single aspect of Beowulf.

So, I thought that the article accurately told about Beowulf. It pointed out several things that I didn't notice like how Beowulf only addressed crowds with exception of Wiglaf at the end. This sort of deals with him being an Epic Hero, a "larger than life" person. But this type of person wouldn't even be dealing with life if he never made personal connnections to other humans on personal levels. Isn't the purpose of life to create relationships? Beowulf would fail at making relationships because of his lack of dealing with the individual. Or is he so "larger than life" that he doesn't need to make relationships with individuals in a "normal" way.

A related point that was made is how some say that the true theme lies within the meaning of the story rather than the character of Beowulf. This would make sense as to why Beowulf lacks qualities that most all humans possess. This could also be why Beowulf isn't immediately introduced into the story. Rather than begin with Beowulf hearing the news of Grendel's massacre and then showing the massacre in a flash back, Grendel's massacre occurs followed by Beowulf coming over by a boat to "save the day". This is the opposite of how most of the issues were presented. For example, a character would be introduced followed by something about his past.

I enjoyed the comparison between Grendel's mother and the humans of the novel. It's a bit ironic that trying to avenge her son can be considered an honorable thing but it isn't because she and her son are monsters. But that was another point that I didn't notice until I read the article.

Monthly Connections October, Grendel and Other "Parallel Stories"

I've never been a fan of sequels unless the storyline was designed to be in a series of novels. But I'm not too fond of book series either, with the exception of Harry Potter. So I ask myself, why would anyone want to write a "follow up" novel to the poem Beowulf? To begin with, Beowulf was written long ago and it wasn't written in a modern language. I believe that there is a reason why writers write what they write and there is a reason why some things are left unexplained and why stories end where they end. The rest is open to interpretation.

The first problem I have with Grendel is the way it is written. It appeared to me that the author was trying to write in a style that was similar to the flow and diction of Beowulf. Except, he didn't really succeed. The wording just didn't match up for me. One of the biggest problems I had regarding this was the use of swears. These words didn't exist when Beowulf was written so why would an author use them in a novel that was supposed to take place during the same time? I can understand the use of swears in literature when someone is talking or when it is written on the wall like in The Catcher in the Rye, but I feel that it shows a limited vocabulary if the writer can't find a better word or phrase to use other than a swear.

Another problem I had with Grendel is when we were discussing it in class. Everyone made it sound as though this is actually how Grendel is in Beowulf, but it's not. This is only one person's interpretation, it's not exactly what the author of Beowulf intended for the character of Grendel. So I wonder to myself, why are we interpreting it as though it were? It would be like writing the Boo Radley version of To Kill a Mockingbird and depicting him as a total pervert until the very end when he saves Scout and Jem because he's had a sudden change of heart but then going beynd the story and making him kill everyone because really he's a psychotic killer. Not only would this be untrue to the story, it would be one version of how the story truly ends and it would be a version that not many people would like.

So how does this observation tie into "my life, media, or on a larger scale to something happening in society or the world?" Well, there are many books that have been published without the author's direct consent as informal sequels or follow ups or "sister stories" to previously written novels. In my mind, these people should not be writers because they are taking an unoriginal thought (the previously written novel) and putting a spin on it to make it their own. Why is it that Geraldine Brooks has to tell me what really went on to the Mr. March from Little Women in her novel March? I filled in the cracks for myself and I find it almost disrespectful that an author would believe that her version is so great that it should be published and readers of Little Women should just accept her version as the true version. And who the hell does John Clinch think he is to go out and say what "really happened" to Huck Finn's father in his novel Finn? Once again, he is trying to rework a classic and say that his version is true. There are so many informal sequels to the novels Pride and Prejudice and Gone With the Wind, and I find it overall insulting to the readers of the original text. Any "writer" who goes out and publishes an informal sequel--in my mind-- believes that the readers of the original novel are too stupid or too dumb or too uncreative to come up with an epilouge that they like. Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Margaret Mitchell, and any other writer who has written a story that someone created a spin-off of, ended the story or left out certain parts for a reason-- for the reader to decide for himself. Anyone who has accepted spin-off stories as true is a fool.

I was watching the new Beowulf movie that came out this morning and I took note of many inconsistencies between it and the book. Most people do realize that movies are usually altered when they have been created from books. This is not the case with novels. In class, we never discussed other possibilites of what made the character of Grendel from Beowulf behave the way he did. Well, we did but it wasn't in-depth to the point that we were saying that he had human qualities and could talk and was friends with this dragon that eventually kills Beowulf. The way I pictured him was as a monster who was evil and had to eat so he ate people. John Gardner told me I was wrong, he said Grendel is this guy who really just wanted to be friends with humans but they tried to kill him so he instead killed them, and oh by the way, he can talk and is capable of complex thought, and he's really not a bad guy at all. He just kills people because, well, they made him mad once. And even though he's some kind of creature, he's basically better than all of he humans in the novel. This was not my interpretation at all and I refuse to accept it because Beowulf has absolutely nothing to do with whatever John Gardner wrote.

I can understand when a writer wants to come back with a follow up or sister story to another novel they wrote, but I do not appreciate other authors telling me how a story ends when they didn't write it to begin with.

All of these novels should come with a big sticker on the cover: WARNING: this novel was written without the consent of (the author of original) and in no way expresses his/her beliefs.

Monthly Connection September, Howard Roark: The Hero of The Fountainhead

So during the first Socratic Seminar, Katelyn and I had a short discussion regarding whether or not Howard Roark should be considered the hero of The Fountainhead. I believe that he is for numerous reasons, while Katelyn believes that Ellsworth Toohey may be considered the hero to some people.

These two defintions of the word "hero" clearly define Howard Roark, not Ellsworth Toohey.

the principal character in a play or movie or novel or poem
champion: someone who fights for a cause

To start out with, the title of the book is The Fountainhead. This is refering to Howard Roark who, like a fountain, is welling with ideas--particularly about architecture, but these ideas apply to life as well. It would not make sense for an author to title a work after the antagonist(the title of Beowulf is Beowulf, not Grendel.) Ellsworth Toohey, in a sense can be considered a "fountainhead" but not in the terms of the novel. He tried to constantly manipulate people as a way of living. Howard Roark didn't rely on anyone but himself. Usually if a hero is living for others, it is to postively influence their lives, not to control it.

The novel also presented the situation in a way that Howard was the obvious hero. The fact that Toohey is undefeated at the end of the novel takes nothing away from the fact that Howard did succeed. He is the architect he wants to be, he has friends who understand him, and he has Dominique. Especially after learning all of Toohey's true motives, I don't see how any sane person would consider him the hero.

When Toohey gives Peter his big speech about how he intends to control everything, it becomes extremely obvious to the reader that Toohey is the "bad guy." His ideas are similar to that of totalitarian leadership in North Korea. Tell the people what they want because they are too stupid to know, make yourself a God-like figure, basically control everything. This is not the definition of a hero. There isn't a sane person on Earth who wishes to be controlled unless they are brainwashed. So, Toohey would not be considered a hero because his main objective is to control you! Some people may admire the fact that he is smart enough to get all of these people to listen to his ideas, but he cannot be considered a hero because he isn't letting people live.

So tying this in to Beowulf, it would be like calling Grendel the hero. Katelyn's arguement would probably be something along the lines of, if someone didn't like all of the people or the city that Grendel is terrorizing, maybe they would consider Grendel to be the actual hero and maybe even a martyr. This is not the case for the same reasons that make Toohey not the hero of The Fountainhead. To start off with, it is not how the story is presented. Grendel is killing people for no reason, which is very bad. I don't think killing is smiled upon anywhere. Also Grendel is depicted as the villain who the fighting hero like Toohey for Roark.