Let Me Be Remembered...

Well as we wind down to the end of the year, I thought that I would write about something that has stood out to me in many of the stories we have read. In many stories, characters have made efforts to make them remembered. They would build buildings or even do extreme behaviors. It has made me wonder, is it human nature to want to be remembered and not forgotten? We have seen in many books that we have read that the characters have done things to make them known in their society. Keating in The Foutainhead focused on building buildings where he would be known for the architecture and the design. However, Roark was the one who designed it. Keating was STILL willing to say it was his and be sure that HIS name was somewhere on the design so he would receive credit. Another story that shows how we wish to be remembered is Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian was willing to sell his soul to have his eternal youth. He was willing to stay young while others grew old because he wanted the rest of society to remember him for his youthful beauty. Onkonkwo is another one of these characters too. The guy wanted to be remembered for his success rather than being the son of a failure musician. We see this is society on a daily basis. Look at certain buildings in some of our major metropolitian areas. You see the same names on items and buildings. Trump. Rockefeller. Biltmore. Washington. Lincoln. All these people who felt, or others felt, they should be remembered. On apparel, jewelry and other everyday objects, there are labels with people's names where they felt the should be remembered for their contribution. Tiffany & Co. Ann Taylor. Chanel. Wendy's. Everywhere we look!!!! There is something about society that says we should honors thoughs who have made a contribution in someway and should be remembered. I feel that there are many things that should be a representation of someone who should be remembered. It is respectable to that person. Sometimes we go overboard though. There are times I feel like I see the same name repeated among a million things but don't have the same significance as others. For example, Heinz. When you think of Heinz, you think of the ketchup. However, when you use common names such as Smith or Miller, it doesn't stand out as something to remember.

You are beautiful....really?

As we read Picture of Dorian Gray, I couldn't help but notice the focus society had on beauty. It made me question, without society how could we judge what is beautiful or not? Society has been the leader in setting the standard for acceptance. Dorian's society was focused on beauty and youth. Many of the women characters mentioned how he was handsome and Lord Henry even convinced Dorian to sell his soul to cherish it. Selling his soul gave him the gift of being beautiful forever. If society didn't have an influence, would have Dorian sold his soul? Would it have absorbed his life? We see in our society today, the influences of beauty has an effect on people and their decisions in their lives. In simple cases, women get plastic surgery to look younger because society places a lot of focus on young women's beauty and their "perfections." At a young age, we see young girls taking photos of themselves in sexual ways that are an attempt to make themselves attractive. This young girl may mistake the request as a way for the receiver to see her beauty. However, they are only filling a desire if they receiver shares the items with others. Society places beauty around sex and desire. For Dorian, the beauty would advance him in life to receive the attention and desires he has craved. The beauty society has created had ultimately ruined him because he sold his soul to absorb his life in youthful beauty. In a way, these women are selling their souls because they are willing to give up their natural beauty and uniqueness for what society wishes them to be. They are giving up who they truly. We see how society places standards on beauty in many works of literature too. In many of the Gossip Girl books (yeah I know, lame. It was the easiest connection though!) we see how characters such as Blair and Serena feel the pressure of beauty in society that along with friends, will go to extreme lengths to be at a high standard. They are teenagers and are willing to have surgeries and try many different methods to perfect themselves. I personally think that society is the determining factor on what is beautiful. If I wore heavy loads of eye make up with bright red lip stick tomorrow in school, I probably would be told that it is ugly. However, if I went to another country in this century and previous, this may be considered beautiful. In Asia, women who wore makeup with the white powder on their faces, was once considered gorgeous. So why isn't it now? Because society today has changed their perception on beauty. 

Edna's Many Men...Uh Oh.

One of the Socratic Seminar questions that we never really discussed was how each man played different roles in Edna's life. I feel that each character filled a void in her life that she felt was missing. Leonce was her void for society. He was the only thing that helped her fit into society because he had status and money. That was looked upon as a good thing and was important to the society she was living in. As a young girl, this is something she may have felt that is what she wanted. Robert was the emotional love she always wished for. Unlike Leonce, Edna felt that Robert expressed more love, admiration and affection towards her. Arobin then became her void for the physical love. She never had any real feelings for him that she would be attached to. The three men in her lives filled the void of what she felt she was missing at that time. This is similar to many other books we have read so far in class. Catherine in Wuthering Heights was in love with Heathcliff for the emotional love like Edna and Robert. However, due to society's standards, she married Edgar. This marriage however didn't stop her from loving Heathcliff. Another book that shows how a character tries to fill a void is Things Fall Apart. Although Onkonkwo didn't feel like he needed romantic love, he felt he needed to fill the void of not having much of a father figure in his life. So this emotional love was taken care of after he felt that the void would be filled if he acted as the best father possible to his own children. Also to act the opposite of how his father was. In our society today we see many people filling voids in their lives on a daily basis. We see this a lot with people dealing with addictions. People with problems in their lives may result to drinking alcohol. To these people, this may be a void for them because they feel it satisfies and takes care of their problems. Humans also tend to try and fill a void in their life by making large changes. Our society has a large divorce rate which could be contributed by people feeling that divorce is the only way to fill the void of them not feeling the love in the relationship. This could also be applied to cheating on their significant other. The people who tend to cheat are people who feel that they are getting something out of their relationship and they seek it in someone else. I feel that it is human nature for people to seek for something to fill the gap in what we feel is missing. It is uncharacteristic of us to not want what is best for ourselves or find things that give us discomfort rather than pleasure. Edna was acting as any other human would do. She acted upon her discomfort and tried to find ways to fix the problems in her life.

Is my belief actually better than yours?

Cultural Relativism seems at first, one of the simplest things to ever be accomplished. All we would have to do is accept everyone and their belief. However, this isn't realistic. We are all human and our thoughts and opinions influence us too much to have this perfected plan. In the article, I was very interested in the comparing and contrasting of cultural tradition and values. I thought it was interesting that many times we judge a custom or value without looking at the reasoning behind it. For example, the Eskimos. The Eskimos may kill their babies but it is due to the fact that they might not be able to provide for them. So in order to save them from malnutrition or even a unhealthy life, they believe it is easier for them to be saved from a poor life by killing them. This shows how someone (including me!) would first be like "What the heck! They kill babies! That is soooooo wrong!" But then when we learn of the meaning instead of assuming, there is understanding where they are coming from. Whether or not I agree with them, I understand why they chose to do what they do. I think despite the fact if there is a reason behind it or not, many people though neglect the reasoning and believe that their opinion is superior. The easiest book to compare to this is Things Fall Apart. People in Onkowko’s village accept that women are property and they are allowed to treat their property in any way they choose. This could include abuse. Due to the fact that our society’s values don’t agree with this, Onkowko’s does and makes us critical. However, if we lived in their society, we probably wouldn’t see much problem with it because of the reasoning that women are raised as property. We see this in our world today. The Middle East raises their people in a society where women are a lower status than men and can be treated differently. This is their belief and values which makes it hard to be critical of. I wish our world was able to all accept differences with each other. Unfortunately, I know that it is impossible. There is no way this could ever happen because many people feel superior to others and feel they have a right to judge. It’s human nature to do this. There are times I have done it myself. As humans, we can’t avoid wanting  to disagree with people because their values are very drastic from ours. However, even though it is our first instinct to judge, it shows more character if we took the time to understand the difference and find similarities and meaning. 

In response to the Beowulf article...

One of the statements I found to stand out from the article was that we never see any sort of human characteristics such as feelings and thoughts from Beowulf. In the article it says "No interior monologues or authorial descriptions of the hero's states of mind open up Beowulf's consciousness for our direct observation." I honestly hated Beowulf and I had no idea. After reading this statement though, I feel like this clears up a lot of my feelings. I didn't feel that he was human. Beowulf through the whole story showed no sort of expression. It was frustrating to try and figure out how he felt and why. By not having the audience in touch with his inner thoughts, we lose a sense of connection to him and can't relate. Another statement was "In Beowulf, fame and the pursuit of fame become an ethical and moral ideal..." I couldn't agree with this statement more. The more I think about it, the more frustrating I get with Beowulf. The idea of fame in Beowulf made it seem like it was ruining the characteristics and definition of a hero. It seemed as if that in order to make a difference, you must be famous. Which is so messed up. This can be shown in many scenes of the poem. The ancestors are only known for their fame in battles. Beowulf is pursuing fame by defeating Grendel, his mother and the dragon. There is a continuous drive for fame in Beowulf. Fame is the main focus of the actions carried out by many characters who pursue to be "heroes."

Two sides to every story

Something that we started to discuss but never got to finish was the discussion on how as readers we perceive villains to just be born bad and not actually seeing their point of view. As readers, we almost just accept it because it has become so common in works of literature. In Grendel, we saw a whole new view on Beowulf. Instead of hearing from the "hero," we were able to hear from the "villain." Grendel was able to provide us with information on why Grendel acting the way he did. Grendel wasn't evil. He was dealing with the emotions of alienation and the fact that society rejected him. Grendel wanted to be accepted. However, he started to see the humans as hypocrites and wasteful. When he felt that he needed to intrude on the humans because he disliked their ways, he was pronounced a villainous and evil. His approach to the situation may have not been the best but his approach to changing the wrong among humans is just a human nature characteristic. There are other books that show the point of view of the considered "villain" of a story. Wicked is similar to Grendel as in that the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz never meant any harm but was considered evil because she looked different and she stood up for what she believed in. We can also see it in Wuthering Heights (from what I read so far!). Heathcliff seems bitter and somewhat evil because of his behavior. When you learn however what happened in his past, you can somewhat understand why his behavior is expected. He is acting on emotions which is part of human nature. It starts to become the question on how you see it, who is really the villain and who is the hero? We see this every day in our own lives. Everyday we turn on the news about terrorists and we see them as the bad guys, the villains. However, in other areas of the world, they turn on the news and see these "terrorists" as people fighting for a good cause. This is an example of how society picks the villain and hero because its the view point you see it from. Another example is the media. The media has so much influence over who we see as the evil person and the good person. It happens all the time, especially during election times with politicians. Commercials are shown every commercial break with slandering comments about the other politician. Depending on what commercial you see, you may see one side as the bad side while the other side is good. I think that we don't feel we aren't willing to see two sides to a situation. We tend to want to be right and sometimes that makes us ignore the facts or opinions given from another view. I know its cliche to say "There are two sides to every story" but its very true. Sometimes seeing both sides help influence one's decision or even strengthens one's opinion.

Monthly Blog-Due September 30th

One thing I saw during the Socratic Seminar for The Fountainhead was the discussion on Ayn Rand's philosophy and her characters. A discussion question was would Roark (and Rand) find to be the destroyer of the world and I feel that it would be being a collectivists and secondhanders. By not being an individual, they are not thinking for themselves and then making themselves fail. Roark would be angry at people for not thinking for themselves and I think he felt that those kind of people were the ones to ruin the world. In the novel, Roark even spoke of how secondhanders are bad and how they effect themselves and others. Also how there are different types of secondhanders. In society today, I can see how Rand's belief is right because at the moment, we have collectivists on wall street. They are following other people and believe that unethical business techniques are the way to business when they really stealing from the American people. For example, Bernie Madoff. He stole many American people's money and he is not the only one. I think in a way, not being an individual does hurt the world we live in. In another way though, it helps keep somethings in line. If we weren't in someway a collectivist, this world would be insane. There would be a lot of commotion and no order. So a balance of both doesn't destroy the world. However, more power to either an individualist or a collectivist can cause trouble for many.