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.