Black Magic

Dr. Faustus sold his soul to the devil for knowledge.  Dorian Gray sold his soul for beauty.  In this unit Monsters Inside of Us, we have had to discuss the difference between good and evil.  Humans: are they naturally good or evil? or are they a clean slate?  During the Dorian Gray Socratic Seminar we had to decide if we believed that Dorian was changed or if he was revealed.  I think that everyone is naturally pure and that experiences change us and shape us.  Power can ruin people; this is what happened to Dorian Gray the power of his beauty caused him to give up his soul.  It was easy for him because he could put his soul in the attic and not have to look at it.  Dr. Faustus gave up his soul for power also; the power of knowledge.  He was obsessed with the idea of knowing everything and having the ability to control others.  Faustus never saw the consequences of his actions until too late.  He always thought I have 24 years of pure knowledge and he never tried to repent until it was too late.  These stories went along very well with a movie that I saw yesterday.  It is called Mirror Mirror a play off of the tale of Snow White.  The evil queen had a mirror that helped her perform black magic and the mirror always warned her that the magic would come back to get her.  The queen continued anyway.  When the queen's magic finally ended, though, she turned form a beautiful young woman into an old wretch.  She never regretted her actions until it was too late.  The same as Dr. Faustus, who did not regret until the devils dragged him to hell.  The same as Dorian Gray, who finally saw the horror of his soul and tried to kill it but only succeeded in killing himself.  In my opinion all of these people must have started with a pure soul.  In Mirror Mirror I do not have the background to say if this is true or not.  In Dr. Faustus he sold his soul for knowledge his reasoning was pure and good.  The power got to him and he was taken away from God, as it was a part of the deal.  Dorian Gray never knew the power of his beauty until Lord Henry and Basil explained it to him and then the Yellow Book led Dorian away from love.  There are bad people in the world but everyone starts out good; it is the black magic that changed them.

You Should Be A Looking Glass

"Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size."  Virginia Woolf expresses the sentiment that women are expected to keep up the moral morale of their husbands.  In class we were given an excerpt, that we were read in psychology class also, from a 1950s high school home economics textbook. "The goal: Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can relax in body and spirit;" the game: being a god wife.  That's how I took it.  They were expecting you to play a game; make your life perfect to suit your husband.  It's not real life.  This reminded me of the musical our high school produced this year. How to Succeed In Buisness Without Really Trying.  One of the songs that the female lead sings is about how her dream is to wait for her husband to come home late.  This was absolute satire of the buisness world and the wives of buisness men so it did not bother me. It also written in 1961 and that was when women were still fighting for respect.  The part that stumped me was my own thought.  At one point a secretary walks across the stage and all of the guys follow her and watch her as she passes by.  I thought "Why are the watching her she isn't wearing tight clothing or anything!"  I realized I have fallen into the stereotype we were talking about in English class.  Women in our time need to be sexy and I could not grasp why men would stare at a woman in normal buisness attire.  The image of an attractive women may have changed but Woolf's quote still is true.  A woman is expected to be there to support men and make them feel better about themselves.  The image of women as the caring supporture will never leave.

There's no place like... work?

In class this month we have been discussing a woman's place constantly.  I even found myself pushing women into stereotypes.  The Awakening by Kate Chopin brought this stereotype to the surface for me.  I was appalled that a woman could dismiss her children and her husband and leave behind her life.  On the other hand I could understand her struggle she was trapped in a world with no power and no way take her life into her own hands unless she, literally, took her own life.  There is the argument that no matter what a woman should never leave her children, it is her duty to take care of them; it is almost laughable to think another way. In fact, it is laughable.  I remember when I was a child I watched a movie; its genre was comedy; its title Daddy Daycare.  I do not remember all of the details but the main point was that a man had to take care of children and he had absolutely no idea what to do.  He did not want this job, the tides were against him, and it was his misfortune.  Of course like most movies it had a cute happy ending where he figured everything out but the main idea was a man being a stay at home dad is comedy.  If a woman was at home with her children our superego would not bat an eye.  A Dolls House changed my opinion on the place of women.  Before I found myself falling into the stereotype where women should take care of their children always and forever.  Afterwards I realized it was very important for a woman to take care of herself before her children.  A woman's place is not to become the perfect mother; her best chance to be a good mother is to know herself.  A child can not learn from a mother that does not respect herself.  If the mothers desire is to go to work, then her children will respect her for doing so much.

It Is All About Perspective

In class this month we have argued over whether the characters we have been reading about are heroes or not.  There was a great deal of disagreement when it came to Oknokwo; he is defined as a modern hero but can we view him as a hero?  People brought up the point that he beat his wife and he never helped others.  Though if you look at the definition of a modern hero he fits.  He is a character that has weakness.  In the article "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism" two of the arguments stuck out to me.  The first is the one right in the first paragraph about the differences in societies.  One believes that you should eat your dead and another is disgusted by the idea.  It does not make one belief wrong and the other belief right.  This is the way people grew up it is their culture. In Psychology class we studied the difference between sensation and perception.  Sensation is the same for every person it is what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste.  Perception on the other hand is how you process this sensation.  Is what you see pleasant or is it revolting or something in between.  The second argument in the article that provoked my interest was in "The Consequences of Taking Cultural Relativism Seriously."  The first consequence it listed was about not judging others customs to be morally inferior to our own.  When I first read this I agreed completely; people may be different but they have their own morals and it is not our right to interfere.  Once I read their explanation I had a change of heart.  Their example was about the Holocaust according to this rule it would have been morally wrong of us to interfere with what the Nazi's were doing to the Jews. This made me contemplate what is the line for when you can judge another's culture.  I think this is why humans judge others instinctively; it is the choice to not act upon these judgements or to act upon them that matters.  This brought me back to Thing Fall Apart.  The class judged Oknokwo as not being a hero because he hurt others although we did grudgingly beseech him the fact that he was a hero to his own society.  We took own judgements and each of us individually decided if we could pass up our moral judgements to allow him to be a hero.

Wuthering Choices

In class during the Wuthering Heights in-class teaching Mrs. Burnett said something that caught my interest.  Catherine had to chose between Heathcliff and Edgar.  She didn't have a choice to not chose.  I thought about this and she really did not.  During her time women were suppose to marry and have children and take care of the house.  That was their job and that's what they had to do.  This made me think about myself. I have no choice right now either.  Technically I do, but it doesn't feel like it.  I have no choice but to chose a college.  I must apply and I must get in there is no other option.  Otherwise I will be stuck working at Domino's my whole life.  Now there's nothing wrong with those who end up there; its just not fantasized about in our society.  (But there kind of is something wrong.)  Ever since I was born, I knew that one day I was going to grow up and go to college.  No other future even entered my mind; honestly I thought there was no other future.  This is just what you did.  Now I am finally realizing why some people do not go and why some people cannot.  This is more than some people can handle; it is more than some people can afford.  The stress is getting to me.  If I place the sentence right here then I will get in the college but if I place it somewhere else well! I will not be getting in!  I know that this is ridiculous and that one sentence will not decide my fate but right now it feels that way.  I can see Catherine sitting in her room etching the names of her two loves on her windowsill, trying to decided which one is perfect for her.  I am doing it myself in a different way. I'm sitting there with a calculator in hand seeing which college I can afford.  I almost wish I could write to her and tell her things do not change.  I think she would know that though.  Two hundred years later and I'm sitting here choosing a fate.  I do not have a choice but to decide.  I guess I am lucky though, I do not have to get married right now; I am just picking out the best way to educate myself.  I hope I am happy with my decision even though Catherine was not.

So you think you are a hero?

In our society everyone wants to be a hero; everyone wants to have a hero.  We go around searching for this so called hero but are we looking in the right place? During class this month we have looked at two kinds of heroes: an epic hero, Beowulf, and a classical hero, Oedipus.  Beowulf is big and strong; he is brave and risks his life for human kind going off to fight dragons and monsters.  Now this kind of hero can not possibly exist in this society.  A single man (or woman, but women normally are not heroes in our society) can not go out on his own hunting down monsters.  Maybe if he is a policeman he can catch criminals, but still, that is a force of people not a single person.  Oedipus is a classical hero; in my opinion, I think he is a hero because he took it upon himself to find Laius' murderer not for himself but to better the city.  Then when he finds out the murderer is himself he does not shy away from the punishment but takes it and this shows mental strength that many do not possess.  I think that many would have trouble thinking of Oedipus as a hero because they do not appreciate mental strength.  Superheroes are always super strong, they can fly, or they shoot lasers with their eyes.  There is not a hero that can take a lot of mental abuse and still have self-confidence.  There is not a hero that fights bullies with wit and not violence.  All of our heroes fight and use physical forces to overcome great odds.  Society does not want to read about, or watch a movie about, someone that uses their keenness to combat a bad person.  People love violence and exciting chases and physical displays.  This is what superheroes give to our society.  This is what people want and that is why heroes are so hard to find.  Not because they do not exist but because we are looking in the wrong place.

September Blog

In all three of the summer reading books The Power of One, The Fountainhead, and the Invisible Man segregation and bias were present.  In The Power of One Peekay is a white boy in an African area.  In The Fountainhead Roark designs buildings that were shunned by architects.  In The Invisible Man, the IM is a black man trying to fit into a white society.  In two of these novels the segregation springs from skin color and racism.  Peekay was made fun of and abused because he was white.  The IM was used because they thought he was smart for a black man.  In my Psychology class we watched a program that was done by Oprah.  Everyone in her audience was convinced of the fact that people with blue eyes were not as smart as those with brown eyes.  People believed this easily.  The people with blue eyes were offended that they were not being treated fairly.  After they found out it was an experience and not a true fact, a few of the people with blue eyes claimed they now knew what it was like to be a black person in America.  Now I have to say, I do not know what it is like to be discriminated against (not to that degree anyway.) I think that you can never understand unless you live in that situation every day.  These books and this experience that Oprah did are ways to get a glance at what it feels like to live the life of a discriminated person.  I find it interesting that these two classes were parallel in their teachings.