Thoughts on A Raisin in the Sun: Selfishness

There is no doubt that Walter acts selfishly in the novel -- he takes Mama's money and spends it on his own dream, and he ignores his family's advice/directions, even though what he does directly affects them. He loses the money that has the potential to take them out of poverty and fulfill part of their collective dream; that is the lowest point of the play, and in that moment it seems that all hope is lost.

So why was Walter such an appealing character to me? As I read the book, I found myself siding with him, becoming angry with Beneatha for treating him so coldly, and excusing his drinking and irresponsibility.

It all goes back to the first scene, in which Walter passionately defends his dream, his desire to take control of his situation and provide for his family. I forgave him because his selfish actions stem from unselfish desires. I identified with his passion, his longing for a single goal, and accordingly overlooked his foolish and selfish actions.

One major point in Walter's personality is that he's often willing to risk too much or give too much of himself to attain society's definition of success. In the end, though, I can't condemn him for wanting this kind of success, for I am often guilty of making these same types of sacrifices.

What exactly defines selfishness? 
Can an action ever be wholly selfish or unselfish? 
And to what extent is selfishness acceptable? 

Field Trip to the DIA

I wish I had taken a picture of the nameplate. :(
I attempted to find the name of the painting afterwards
(through Google, very strenuous work), but to no avail.
Update: The painting is "Savoy Ballroom" by Reginald Marsh

On Friday, I went on the Spanish field trip to the DIA.

 “Ha!”, I thought, “I’ll miss English! Yippee!”

However, as I walked through the museum, I came upon a painting of African-Americans dancing in a jazz club during the 1920’s. I examined the faces of the men and women dancing in the picture. Gaiety exuded from every aspect of the picture, from the facial expressions and body language to the vividly colored finery worn by the black men and women. I began to feel a nagging suspicion that I wasn’t going to engage in the thought-free day I had expected.

I was attacked by a rush of thoughts about the poems we read in class -- Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” and “The Weary Blues” depict a much different view of life for African Americans, a life that “festers like a sore”. He documents the hardships that blacks faced and the heavy burden that society places on them because of their race. In contrast to the painter who portrayed the blacks’ lives as enjoyable, carefree, and even glamorous, Hughes portrayed the life of a black as melancholy and tiresome.

However, In the piece by Zora Neale Hurston that we read this weekend, the author seemed to reflect on her heritage in a more positive light, embracing her blackness and seeming to expect others to embrace it as well.

“[The orchestra] constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies...I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way.”
I can almost imagine Hurston dancing alongside the people in this painting.

Also, I was just kidding about missing English and the yippee.

Finishing The Great Gatsby

I loved the book, because I felt a stronger connection to the characters (despite their moral insufficiencies) than I did to some other characters we have studied in English thus far (in The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter). I think a lot of the problems we face today arise due to modernization; there is a constant battle between our desires to do good in the world and wasting time on the internet, going shopping, getting things that we want but don’t necessarily need… they all arise from our tendencies toward self-indulgence and materialism, what the characters face in The Great Gatsby. The contrast between the rich and the poor portrayed in the novel are readily applicable to class issues of recent times, from the Occupy movement to the portrayal of Romney as disgustingly and inaccessibly rich. The overwhelming wealth of the characters gives them freedoms impossible in the time of the Puritans, freedoms that the characters readily abuse. The Roaring Twenties was a time of extreme moral decay, the same exact moral decay that the Puritans were diametrically opposed to. The actions of Gatsby and Daisy and Tom make the Puritans’ extreme intolerance of pleasure and sin almost seem justified.

Key word: almost. We all know how well their City on the Hill worked out for them… In today’s context, the cruel punishments that the Puritans inflicted on those who broke their strict moral code seem just as wrong as the debauchery, betrayal, and complete lack of integrity in Gatsby’s characters. Furthermore, it is important to note how easily both societies are corrupted – the Puritan society through the Salem Witch Trials and Twenties through…well, everything. Each is so unstable that a single action (Abigail’s manipulation and Daisy’s words “You always look so cool”) can cause everything to tumble into murder and chaos…mass hysteria, if you will.

I feel that studying literature set in both of these extreme conditions sets a frame for the “best” sort of world we want to create today. We strive to find the happy medium in our lives, one that allows us pleasure – perhaps through love, a career, or hobbies – without compromising our morals, the things that allow us to feel empathy and tie us to rest of the human race.

“The Buddha’s message was simple yet profound. Neither a life of self- indulgence, nor one of self-mortification can bring happiness. Only a middle path, avoiding these two extremes, leads to peace of mind, wisdom, and complete liberation from the dissatisfactions of life.” 

~Bhante Gunaratana, a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk

Starting The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Essential Question: How do class, gender, religion, race, and culture determine our relationships?

 Examining this question on the level of the infamous high school hierarchy, my first thought is that people associate with those on the same level as them. It’s the widely-held belief that “populars” don’t deign to speak to the nerds and outcasts. But it’s also those on the fringes who often feel “above” befriending the populars. I feel like a majority of people identify themselves as nonconformists and use this as a basis to separate themselves from that group. For a few of these people, it becomes easy to denounce those in the group as superficial, catty, or vapid. Because we like to feel that our own individual group is unique, we tend to generalize and stereotype others.  

In the book How to Be Black, Baratunde Thurston uses comedy to expose the intricacies of understanding race. He points out that although it is generally accepted that racism is bad, it is hard to differentiate between what is racist and what is not. Obviously, most people don't go out of their way to be racist, so at least in most environments that I've been exposed to, race has never been a problem in developing relationships. I do think that people of the same backgrounds are commonly friends, but I think this is partially due to the fact that their cultures automatically give them something in common to bond over, not that they are intolerant of people of other backgrounds.

“Like vampires and extremely rich people, black folk can sense one another. Use your Spidey Sense (Blacky Sense?). Use your blackdar to inspect the workplace for signs of Other Negroes. They may be working security for the building. They may be in administrative support. They may be among the associate pool, or they may even be in upper management. Black folk can be anywhere. After all, you're here. But one of the biggest mistakes you can make as The Black Employee is to assume you are the only one.”

-Baratunde Thurston, How to Be Black

Self-Deception

Many ways to handle life are centered around self-deception, whether it involves pretending a situation is improving when it isn’t, simply ignoring the existence of it altogether, or exclaiming “Perfect! This is exactly what I wanted!” when, in fact, this is exactly what you did not want. I employ methods of self-deception all the time: When a spider sneaks up on me while I am doing homework, I leave the room and collect myself until it disappears from view; I then return and resume working while pretending that there isn’t a spider lurking in some corner of the room... Self-deception allows us to find peace with ourselves. People realize that although keeping in touch with reality is important, knowing the truth does not always equate a fulfilled or happy life, and they sacrifice their realities accordingly. But to what extent is blissful ignorance desirable?

In “The History Teacher”, Collins produces the image of a history teacher who is the definition of self-deception. He teaches his students things that he knows are untrue, but believes that he is somehow helping the kids by preserving their “innocence”. However, these same kids that he believes to be so naive torment each other as soon as they are out of his line of sight. The bullying is not only a great point of irony in the image of the “innocent” child, but also a reflection of the teacher’s inadequacies -- because he shields the children from the evils of the world, they are less likely to look critically at their own behavior. In this way, Collins asserts that age does not determine innocence or wisdom. Kids don’t always mean well, and adults (like the history teacher) can be painfully ignorant. 

I think the sort of existence that the history teacher leads is the saddest kind...even though he could live his whole life like this feeling perfectly content, his life will have gone to waste. As a teacher, his impact on the children could only be detrimental. As an individual, he loses much of himself in his indulgent creation of a fantasy world. I hope my self-deceptions never become so consuming that they define me.

Done with The Scarlet Letter! (FINALLY........loljk)

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a  part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled. (251)

This was my favorite passage of the book-- as I read this, I had the most inexplicable feeling of release; I realized all the built-up tension that the Scarlet Letter had created these last few weeks. Until this point, I think I was physically becoming stressed by the plight of the characters in the novel.

 We discussed this passage during class and (Ryan) analyzed Hawthorne’s use of flow from the varying sentence length to create in the reader’s mind a picture of silence, then a rush of emotion.
 
I love this passage, in particular, because it reminds me of a fairy tale ending. It contains the most positive and light-hearted tone of any other part of the book, and it carries such a sense of closure, not only through its characterization of the assuring passage of time, but also through the emotional fulfillment of each of the characters sharing this moment. Most importantly, it just makes me happy to believe that at least one character can live her life free from crippling social and psychological pressures and have her own “happily ever after”.

Absolve You to Yourself, Pt. 2

This week, we continued to read The Scarlet Letter. As we observed Dimmesdale’s gradual psychological deterioration, we came to discuss his battle with his conscience and its underlying question: not just what is good or evil, but what is the right thing to do? 

Dimmesdale is obviously portrayed as a fundamentally good person, but his fatal flaw is that he never has the courage to confess his sins, to sully his reputation, or to go against the grain of society. However, I don’t think Dimmesdale’s sort of cowardice is necessarily repulsive. If he absolves his sins through confession, he will feel more comfortable with his conscience, but receive dire consequences from the townspeople; his internal comfort takes away from external comfort. 

Today, we consider wearing different clothes, being an “anti-bully”, and participating in non-stereotypical activities as our ways of “going against the crowd” -- activities that have comparatively undramatic consequences. It requires a huge leap of faith to make that kind of life-changing decision to forever be shunned by society, a leap of faith that a majority of people would not take. In fact, the grace with which Hester handles herself in that situation is incredible, and is only really possible in this fiction novel. Hester’s “sins” barely show that she is human, and Hawthorne points out her flaws almost as a show of her modesty -- for this reason, I find Dimmesdale to be infinitely more relatable as a character.

“Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week, we studied the uplifting ideas of Transcendentalism, a movement which placed  emphasis on the power of the individual mind and the inherent goodness of man. This was refreshing, especially since people my age (including myself) spend so much time on the internet, and it sometimes seems like the only opinions that matter are other people’s.  If you’ve ever scrolled down a YouTube video and read the comments, you know what I’m talking about -- witty and hilarious observations,  aggressive comments alienating other commenters for their beliefs or opinions, critical comments that the uploader is “hot” (or utterly hideous), added to the fact that even these comments are evaluated by other YouTubers through the thumbs up/down feature... These same effects are magnified on facebook in that the responses are from people you directly know (admit it, you feel a little embarrassed when everyone else’s comment has 10 likes, and yours doesn’t have any). Even though the internet does a great job of connecting the world, it has completely amplified the value of other people’s opinions...

We spend so much time worrying about how other people will react to whatever we do. An embarrassing moment is likely to last forever in our own memories, but to a stranger is forgotten in a day. In the end, it is often these moments of embarrassment that give us the experience to succeed -- small failures are inevitable on the path to success, and wondering whether others will accept these failures is a waste of time (albeit one that is difficult to avoid).

The Power of an Individual -- We Are All Connected

As we discussed writings like Paine’s “The Crisis” and Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence” this week, it became increasingly noticeable how forcefully their writings have shaped the values at the core of the American identity and how incredibly indelible their marks on history are as a result. As evidenced by the Chinese man who was recently jailed for wearing a t-shirt bearing the phrase “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”, people today are greatly affected by choices made even centuries ago.

According to the “Six Degrees of Separation”, everyone is about six introductions away from any other person in the world, i.e. you probably know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Ryan Gosling. In this light, one can almost imagine humanity as a giant web, threads sprouting from and connecting each of the 7+ billion people of the world together. Accordingly, each person influences those around him or her, who in turn influence those around them, and so on...the fate of everyone is based on individual choices. Obviously, some are more influential than others, and the Paines and Jeffersons of today will go on to change the lives of those living in the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th centuries.

Some wise words from Nick Cage:

Integrity or Death or...?

Should John Proctor have chosen to save his life? I have had a particularly hard time answering this question, and I most probably still won’t reach a conclusion by the end of this post. I think the reason that I struggled so much with it was that I honestly would have saved myself, even though I know the “right” thing to do would be to die. Nevertheless, I will make an attempt to defend my hypothetical choice.

Proctor defines himself with his integrity -- this is his tragic flaw in the play.  Saving his own life with a lie would sully everything he believes in, while sticking to his guns, so to speak, leads to his death. Essentially, his choice boils down to integrity or death.

...But not really. I think there are factors other than integrity and death that must be taken into account in his situation. He has responsibilities to his expectant wife, to the people of his town, and to life in general. If all the decent people in Salem decided to give their lives in the name of integrity, no one would remain to perpetuate the very message they died for. I feel sacrilegious in saying this, but it could even be a possibility that Proctor used the facade of maintaining his integrity as a personal escape from the horrors of life and mass hysteria in Salem. 

People make fun of Romeo and Juliet for killing themselves in the name of love all the time. Why, then, is Proctor’s decision to kill himself in the name of integrity not equally as foolish? In the end, is it really so wrong to choose to live?

Becoming the Role

          As we read The Crucible last week, one theme that repeatedly appeared was the mass hysteria that took control over the citizens of Salem during the Salem Witch Trials. We noted the ease with which the townspeople fell into the roles that contradicted their true characters (or at least what their characters appeared to be outside of the trials). It seemed as though the characters were deliberately directing their eyes away from logic, truth, and reality. Within their disguises, the townspeople truly became forces of evil, condemning the innocent and disturbing the rigid social structure of the Puritan community.
        Although the extreme situations in The Crucible seem almost absurdly impossible, a psychological study on prison life conducted in the 1970’s at Stanford proved how real those situations could be. In this two week long study, 24 average students were selected and assigned to act as either prison guard or prisoner in a mock prison. The students quickly adapted to their roles; in fact, after only six days, they seemed to forget that they were acting in a simulation, and the interactions between the “guards” and “prisoners” became so aggressive that the study had to be stopped.
          It’s so simple to fall into things; sometimes your life just falls into place in front of you, and you’re going too fast to make rational decisions about which path to take. In retrospect, the decisions always seem obvious...Sometimes I look around me and try to figure out who, out of the people I know, would be the “good guys” in these scenarios of mass hysteria (and who would I be?).  It’s truly scary to think that we can become so easily what we pretend to be, that we can so mindlessly throw away our identities for new ones.
For more information on the Stanford Prison Experiment: http://www.prisonexp.org/

Stereotypes and Judging Others

Recently, we had a speaker named Mykee Fowlin come to our school to talk about diversity and the importance of accepting others. He spoke about how little changes in attitude can make huge impacts on others and sometimes even change lives. The whole auditorium was moved by his words; after he was done, many had tears in their eyes.

As my friends and I were discussing the speaker, one of them questioned the actual impact of his speech. She pointed out that although he had a beautiful message to tell, most people would only truly take it to heart for one day and forget his words immediately after. And, to some extent, I completely agree.

In the book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell explores the human mind’s ability to process images and spit out conclusions within a split-second – essentially, to judge a book by its cover. Of course, stereotypes go hand in hand with these types of judgments; one particularly compelling example used in the book is a study on racism conducted by Harvard using an Implicit Association Test (IAT). This test studies the associations that a subject’s brain makes between positively or negatively connoted words and photographs of black or white people. 

I consider myself a very open-minded person -- yet as I took this test a couple years ago, I found myself deliberately slowing down my reaction times so that I could ensure a test result that put me in a good light. The conscious part of my brain desperately hoped that my subconscious didn’t have any traces of racism in it.

Even the best of people can be quick to judge others. Sherman Alexie makes this evident through his characters like the 7-11 worker, someone who is generally innocent but suffers from misconceptions about Native Americans. Stereotyping is something that’s built into us, and it's harder to let go of than it may seem. I know that the problems associated with stereotypes are not going to disappear in one day. They are not, by any means, ever going to disappear – where people are different, there will always be marginalization. In the end, Dr. Fowlin's speech only reminded people of what they already know about how to treat others, but usually choose to ignore. However, people DO need to be constantly reminded that in order for them to consciously pursue becoming a better person. Ultimately, although the path to a more tolerant population is an individual journey, this journey is definitely influenced by literature, pop culture, and whatever else is heard or said in daily life. Simply being exposed to voices that encourage tolerance is, in itself, a positive, if small impact in the larger battle against marginalization. 

(In case you're interested, you can take the IAT here: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)

The Allure of the Trickster

In “Coyote and the Buffalo”, Mourning Dove creates the morally complex character, Coyote, whose adventures are caused by his vanity, greed, and cleverness. In the end, his downfall leads the reader to learn that deceit as a means to success is not as effective as going about it “the right way,” or, rather, the conventionally accepted way.

The tale of “Coyote and the Buffalo” suggests that all tricksters will inevitably run into problems and must reform themselves. However, Disney’s tricksters, Phineas and Ferb, create impossibly great schemes on a daily basis and are never punished. Phineas and Ferb are not the traditional tricksters; they do not deliberately attempt to deceive others (in fact, they treat even their obviously disdainful sister, Candace, with respect), but their deception merely falls into place by chance. They never face consequences for their shenanigans, as evidence of whatever grand project they build always miraculously disappears before their parents get home.

We all want to be tricksters, those who get through life without ever having to lift a finger -- that’s why we sympathize with Coyote despite his lack of moral fiber and root for Phineas and Ferb even though we know we know their parents would never approve of their dangerous projects. And, at the same time, we all are already those tricksters -- I think that’s why people enjoy sharing procrastination stories, why people brag about never studying for tests, why skinny people are proud of eating a lot and having “fast metabolisms”. It’s all about being clever, having the natural ability to transcend the conventional...being invincible.

First Post

I can blog. YAY