March Blog

In class, we read the book Dr. Faustus, the story of a man of science who sells his soul to the devil to gain ultimate knowledge.  The discussion in class was whether or not Faustus was truly evil.  Some people just assumed he was evil just because he associated with the devil.  But Faustus struck me as a man who valued  knowledge over religion to the point where he would do anything to learn more.  It was not that he worshiped Satan, he worshiped knowledge.  It seems that no matter what you are doing, if you are doing it for God then it is good but if you are doing it for Satan then it is bad.  You can see this in the movie, The Boondock Saints.  Two Irish brothers became vigilantes on the word of God.  They are killing people but they are killing them for God so it is morally right, or so it would seem.  Killing people for God is okay but learning through the Devil is bad.
 In the end, I believe that the play Dr. Faustus is Christian propaganda, designed to make people convert to Christianity.  But it also has another effect, people who read this connect knowledge to Satan.  So, learning is bad.  This makes science seem like the work of hell.  Do not mistake this anti-Christianity.  I am not anti-religion just pro-knowledge.

A Switcheroo

Over the past month or so we have been discussing feminist literature and its impact on society.  I think one subject which has not been covered in this unit is possibility that men and women are changing roles.  I see it in works like the Awakening and A Doll House.  For hundreds of years, it was thought that all women could do was stay at home and rear the children because the mental capacity of women is lower than that of men.  We know now that is not true at all, in fact in recent years, more women are going to college than men.  In the Awakening and A Doll House, the husbands are the workers supporting the family but their mindset is a conformist mindset.  It is the wives who have the ability to think outside the box.  In my opinion, this takes more intellectual power.  The husbands are sheep blindly following the pack.  But characters such as Nora and Edna have the daring to be different.  Edna even recognizes that she is different to the point where it drives her to suicide.  For Nora, her outstanding is more of an accident.  But both these characters have something in common, they leave their husbands.  These works, written in the 1800s, were ahead of their time.  Nowadays, the women being the breadwinner is more and more common.  In my own family, my mom is a director of a library and my dad is a stay at home writer.  A hundred years ago, this would have been unheard of.  Until next time, I'm quite content in AP.

I actually turned this one in on time!

    Speaking of turning things in on time, our class is reading Waiting for Godot, an existentialist play about two men waiting for someone named Godot (I don't think he shows ever up).  Existentialists believe that life has no meaning and so we can do what we want but because society is used to a certain way if we don't do things that way we will cause despair.  At first I thought existentialism was depressing because life has no meaning but then I realized that life is what you make it.  It's like the old Johnny Mathis song "Life is What You Make It."  I don't know, my dad told me to put that and now he is playing it on the piano.  But the point is that you have to make the choices that will define your life.  I was born a baby and if I die a famous movie director I will be the one that made that happen.  Not my parents or God, just me.
    It's like that movie Yes Man starring Jim Carrey.  Jim Carrey is a tedious boring man who always says no.  Then he attends a seminar in which the speaker convinces him to say yes to everything.  By saying yes, he goes on a serious of misadventures that change his life.  He ends up a happy man with the girl of his dreams and a host of happy friends.
So really, existentialism is a happy thought.  Sure Jim Carrey has some moments where his life sucks and you're not sure how the movie can end happy but the end is happy.  Life is going to be full of sad moments but sadness makes the happy moments even better.  Existentialism is along the same lines as Carpe Diem or Seize the Day.  Life is all about the choices you make.  Sounds a little similar to the Chaos Theory, rights? Did you like that segway?  Unless of course, I'm totally off with my theory on existentialism.  Until next time, I should have taken CP.

Who wants to marry their mother?

As a class, we just finished reading Oedipus, which discusses fate.  According to Oedipus no one can escape their fate and trying to escape it will just make it worse, hence Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother.  But, the other end of the spectrum is the Chaos Theory, which states that every little thing you do affects the entire world.  Another name for this is The Butterfly Effect, a butterfly flaps its wings and because of a chain reaction there is a tornado in China or something.  All this talk about fate has got me thinking about the choices I've made in life and how they've changed me.  In fact I realized that I can directly relate fate versus Chaos Theory to my own life.
For the longest time, I thought that I wanted to be a writer.  I wrote short stories, poems, and even started some novels.  But in seventh grade I realized that a lot of my friends were in the School News Studio.  So in eighth grade I joined the News Studio.  This led me to take TV Video I in high school which made me realize that I wanted to be a filmmaker.  Crazy, huh?  If none of my friends had been in the studio I might still be a writer.  But at the same time, my filmmaking has led me to begin writing screenplays.  Maybe it is my destiny to write just not in the way I thought.  While you think about, I'm going to go to band practice.  Till next time, I should have taken CP

Simply Misunderstood

    In Ap English, the class read the poem Beowulf.  Or at least the first half in which Beowulf slays first Grendel then Grendel's mother. Let me start from the beginning, some Finnish people build a giant hall and start partying.  Grendel gets mad that these people are making so much noise so he goes to the hall to get some payback.  Along comes sadistic Beowulf and chops his head off.  Still think Grendel is the bad-guy?  Let me put it like this, when a flea or a mosquito starts buzzing in your ear, what is the first thing you do?  SLAP! Try and kill that annoying bug any way you can.
    So say you're Grendel and in the middle of the night a whole bunch of fleas start to party.  You would probably wake up and reach for the Raid.  That's what Grendel was doing, reaching for the Raid...metaphorically. This poor monster was trying to get his beauty sleep and instead he gets decapitated.  And to add insult to injury, Beowulf kills Grendel's mom too.  Beowulf isn't the same when you see it through the eyes of the real victim: Grendel.
    In the 1996 movie "The Rock,"  Ed Harris plays a general who has become disenchanted with the government's treatment of fallen veterans.  He takes over Alcatraz Prison and threatens to launch deadly missiles unless the government reforms.  Sounds like a typical bad-guy, right? Wrong!  All he wants is some compensation for his fallen allies and addressing his fellow "villains" he says this: "A couple hundred years ago, some guys named Washington, Jefferson, and Adams were branded traitors by the British.  Today we call them patriots."  History has a funny way of heroizing some people and making others villains.
    Another good example is my favorite literary character: Roger Chillingworth from "The Scarlet Letter."  He comes back to town to discover his wife is pregnant and he isn't the father.  How would you feel?  English teachers claim that people like Chillingworth and Grendel are the bad-guys when really they are the victims of the Beowulfs of this world.  Just remember the next time you watch Star Wars, Darth Vader has feelings too.  Until next time, I should have taken CP