Showing in Cinemas Near You: "The Not So Great Gatsby"

Surrounded by a society that is so indulged in self- image and status, I find it very evident that I, along with many others, have a false identity and it is so easy to get caught up into trying to prove that we are someone that we are not.  By a simple click of a mouse, one can change their appearance on a photo editing app and post it on Instagram, then wait anxiously to see how many likes they get.  If someone gets a bunch of likes, they might just convince their peers that they are “popular” or more worthy of attention.  Social medias play such a huge role at the moment in defining who we want to be and how we want others to see us.  I have been a witness to seeing the inside story of someone’s life, and then seeing them act in a completely different manner in public, distorting the image of themselves because they fail to grasp the fact that no one is perfect.  We fail to realize as people that everyone has faults and everyone has demons that they don’t need to hide, yet we spend countless hours trying to convince others of a falsity.  Even in the 1920s, people tried to get others to think that they were someone that they were not.  Jay Gatsby spends most of his time trying to prove that he was not poor and that he went to school in Oxford, while his past was much different and full of hardship.  He is so embarrassed of his past, something he couldn’t change, and needed to prove to Daisy and to everyone else that he was worthy.  As I said, the past cannot be changed, but how others perceive it can be changed.  Even if others view one’s past in a distorted way, the truth will always win over dishonesty which is seen countless times in Gatsby’s life.  The irony of it all is that the thing that makes Gatsby so great is a lie.  If everyone came to terms with their true identities, so much time would be saved and people would learn to love others for the people they truly are.

A Not-So-Fantasy World With Not-So-White Picket Fences

While reading “The History Teacher” this week in class, I was reminded of something that I read in my eighth grade English class.  In this particular class, we had to think about pretty deep things!(Well, at least for an eight grader)  Our teacher asked us to find the answer to the question, “is ignorance bliss?”.  We had to form an opinion on that question and write an essay after reading Flowers for Algernon.  I thought long and hard and still, I am quite unsure about my answer to that question. I think I may have said that ignorance is bliss, but after reading “The History Teacher”, I think I have changed my opinion.  The “teacher” in this poem euphemized every tragic event that he talked about saying, for example, that “the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age” making the children think that everything in the world was rainbows and butterflies.  They were ultimately ignorant about the world around them, causing them to “torment the weak and the smart”, while history repeated itself.  History is bound to repeat itself where learning is not present.  The teacher may have thought that he was doing a good thing and helping the children remain innocent, but in reality the teacher was stuck in his fantasy with “white picket fences”, not even realizing the harm he was causing to the rest of the world.  The use of a picket fence is to enclose things off and to protect someone and in this case, the "history teacher" enclosed the children's perception of the world, protecting their innocence in a harmful way.

  So my answer to the question...is ignorance bliss?  Well, I guess it may be, but that bliss is offset by the amount of affliction it will cause to those that aren’t tied up in a fantasy.

.!?:;CREAtiv/ity!!!!!!

    To stifle creative expression and freedom through the written word would in the long run, stifle creative minds.  I think of writing just like any art form, like a painting or a drawing, where no parameters are present, where the artist can play with any tools they have to portray different messages to the viewers.  Each comma, each semi-colon, each question mark or exclamation point, is indeed very important, but rules of punctuation are meant to be bent to portray the message the author is trying to communicate to his/her reader.  A tasteless sentence can be transformed into wild and playful passages with punctuation- or the lack of it.  In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, she communicates the message she was trying to present to the reader without any punctuation at all.  Authors should not be restricted by “the dogma of the period”(Source B), nor by any other rule of punctuation.  In the debate, Sarah and Lena talked about Emily Dickinson, who is a perfect example because she is very famous and has a beautiful style, yet never followed the rules of punctuation.  Emily Dickinson has a very unique style of poetry because of her seclusion the majority of her life.  In fact, she lacks punctuation because it makes her feel free from her isolation.  Additionally, humans are sensual beings and they should be able to express themselves through creative writing any way that they please.

Heart Wrenching Realities-both terrifying and beautiful

“Public fact becomes private reality, and the seasons of a Midwestern town become the Moirai of our small lives”(188).

    I find this passage and the story of the storm previous to this quote to be quite interesting and complex.  The storm of 1929, which was a public fact, is something that can be perceived differently based on the individual’s “private reality”.  Claudia mixes up a summer storm with the tornado her mother told her about, revealing Claudia’s admiration of her mother.  Claudia describes her mother as “...strong, smiling, and relaxed while the whole the world falls down...”(187).  In the midst of a tornado, even as she is getting pulled up into a spiral of chaos, Claudia’s mother is ironically strong and happy.  Within the terrifying storm of the loss of innocence, Claudia’s mother provides stability to Claudia.  The novel’s foundation is set on trying to find truths in a world that includes frightening realities and spiraling storms of disbelief and disturbance.  The first chapter starts out with, “Nuns go by as quiet as lust…”(9), paradoxically pointing out the dysfunctional nature society has thrust upon them.  Another way of interpreting the idea of a “public fact” and a “private reality” contrasts the perceptions of Pecola’s baby.  Claudia and Frieda hear only horrible things about the painfully ugly features the baby is sure to have if it lives.  The townspeople look only at the baby with disgust because of where it came from, a disturbing relationship between a father and his daughter.  Although Claudia and Frieda hear the story an abundance of times, they think of what happened in their own terms.  Since they don’t know how babies are made, of course they don’t find the origins of the baby to be anything but beautiful which is how they think the baby will turn out, revealing their innocence, but also their wisdom.  Claudia looks past the white standards of beauty and knows she would love the baby even more than she hated Shirley Temple, which I think is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

The Magical Glasses

In The Bluest Eye, Morrison finally provides a back story to the life of Pecola’s mother, Pauline.  Previous to reading this back story, I just thought she was a horrible mother and could not fathom how she could raise her kids in such an unloving environment, but after reading the back story, my thoughts have completely changed and I realized that I judged Pauline, while I only knew a tiny sliver about her life.  Morrison writes, “I loved them and all, I guess, but maybe it was having no money, or maybe it was Cholly, but they sure worried the life out of me”(124) which really made me understand that Pauline didn’t want to be a bad mother and it wasn’t even her fault that she was.  Pauline just had a rough marriage and there were many factors that played into who she was, but in the long run, Pauline was trying her best.  That got me to thinking about how judging others is such a common occurrence in society.  I mean I hope I’m not the only one who has ever made a snap judgement about someone without even knowing the person, then later realizing how wrong I was.  Maybe you have seen someone who looks sad in one of your classes or you have seen someone who is mean to everyone.  Instead of just thinking “They could be happy if they tried.  It’s their fault!” or “Wow that guy is such a bad person!”, it would make so much more sense to realize that they have reasons for the way they act and then try to positively impact their life.  This YouTube video relates very well to the topic of judging others and is definitely very eye opening so I recommend that you watch it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfeXxkbgCVE  The video shows a man who is only worried about himself and blames everyone else for anything that is not going as planned in the day, but that is before he puts on magical glasses that allow him to see a part of every person.  In the end, the man changes how he sees everyone because he realizes that he isn’t the only one going through something, in specific something that is not on the exterior and can be seen.  Most of the readers of The Bluest Eye most likely saw Pauline in a different light, almost like putting on magical glasses, after they could see the reasons why she is who she is.