"One should never throw the letter Q into a pivet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable."

“I AM SIGNIFICANT!” Screamed the dust speck. (Calvin and Hobbes)

"I KNOW" replied God.

 

This is one of the questions and my response to one of the questions at the beginning of the unit. Though unfortunately, I feel like everyone thought this was more funny and less revealing than I intended it to be. I will now proceed to set the record strait.

My response was meant to be a little funny, but my point was that everyone and everything is significant. Humanity might have useless and make things for no reason, but God does not. If you are here you are important, especially if you don't know why. In The Stranger Meursault did not think that there was any significance to the things that he did, like not caring about his mothers death, going out with a girl after the funeral. These things did matter in his trial, because everything we do affects something else. I'm not saying that these choices by Meursault had any bearing on the trial and should have been used as evidence, shouldn't, but the point is that they did.

Everything that we or anything does has significance because the actions we take or do not take act like ripples spreading outward, and dominoes affecting the next one in line. An example of this is the whole if a butterfly flaps its wings and a hurricane is created around the world. Another example of this is in the book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, here is the quote,

"He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant pivet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn't stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away.

During the following weeks Ford Prefect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter Q into a pivet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable."
Even if we don't see it, there is still a chain of events that results from our every action. The only we can do is to be aware that it exists, try not to start a bad chain, and hope for the best.

We The Marked

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass,
        when they were in the feild, that Cain rose up against Abel
        his brother, and slew him. (Genesis, 4:8)

When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield
         unto thee her strenght; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou
         be in the earth. (Genesis, 4:12)

And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slalyeth Cain,
        vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a
        mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. (Genesis, 4:15)

The above quotes are from The Book of Genesis, chapter 4. They are part of the scene that describes Cain’s murder of his brother Abel. Because of Cain’s sin he was forced to walk the earth forever and he was marked by God so that no one would kill him. Cain killed Abel because God looked with favor upon Abel’s sacrifice over Cain’s. This made Cain resentful. God warned Cain not to be resentful. Cain murdered his own brother because he was jealous.

            I believe that Cain did (Or maybe does…) bear a physical mark of his sin. I also believe that we all bear the “Mark of Cain” inside of us. It is that surge of anger, that jealous monster, the ugly-faced beast in our hearts that tells us to kill and harm our fellow man. Everybody has this, and we all have those feelings. This is the monster in ourselves. This is shown through Dorian in his killing of Basil, merely because his reaction to seeing the portrait angers Dorian. It shown in Meursault’s killing of the Arab, as opposed to turning around and leaving. In “Beowulf” Grendel is one of the descendents of Cain, and that is why he is an evil monster. As I said earlier, we all bear this mark and we all have monsters in ourselves.

            Though mankind has this evil inside of us that will always be with us, I still believe that man in inherently good or at least inherently not evil. If were inherently we wouldn’t try to justify the evil we commit. Even serial killers and sadist have a reason or purpose when they kill. If humanity was truly evil, we would just harm each other and not care why. We would just act. Instead we must justify, at least to ourselves, why we aren’t evil. Dorian did what he did because he felt it was wrong to deprive yourself of experience and even though it may not make sense to us, it did to Dorian. Meursault killed the Arab because he pulled a knife. The only person who is truly evil will be the person who kill, steals, lies, and harms humanity with no reason to himself. It will be the person who sees himself as evil and does evil things because they are evil, this will be the antichrist. The rest of humanity isn’t evil, we are merely The Marked.

The Thoughts of that Crazy Man Who Lives in the Mountains by Himself

Before we read A Room of One’s Own we were presented with the three main points that Virginia Woolf when writing this essay:

·         One must have money and privacy to write.

·         Genius needs freedom; it cannot flower if it is encumbered by fear, or rancor, or dependency, and without money freedom is impossible.

·         The writer must be born into a world which never allows grievances to appear, or must be born of a soul made of stuff that will not bear the impress of resentment.

In my opinion; wrong, half-right, completely right, in that order. Those were opinions before we read A Room of One’s Own and they are exactly the same after. I am stubborn and my opinions are not easily swayed, so Woolf would’ve had to write a powerful and very, very convincing essay to make me change my mind. She did not. I’ll get back to that.

One must have money and privacy to write. Haha. First off, the only people that have complete privacy are those people that choose to live in the mountains alone, because they can’t stand what society has become. Second, when Woolf says money, I think she means rich, this might not be the case, but if it is, money has no affect on how creative you are, or if you have a story to tell. Maybe what Woolf meant was that you need to be able to sustain yourself.

 Genius needs freedom; it cannot flower if it is encumbered by fear, or rancor, or dependency, and without money freedom is impossible. I agree with what she says until she starts talking about money again. You don’t need money to be free; again I reference the guy who lives in the mountains alone with a crazy beard and a shotgun. But the first half is correct. Freedom itself is free and unaffected by the negative influences of life. You need freedom, or at least freedom of mind because what you write come from you and not a trapped, caged, negatively influence you.

The writer must be born into a world which never allows grievances to appear, or must be born of a soul made of stuff that will not bear the impress of resentment. I agree 100%. If you want to write well, in my opinion, it must come from you completely and not have been corrupted by all those little things that make every day difficult for the spirit. Any artist must have a resilient spirit that is unflinching and unchanging in the face of all the crap that the world just loves to throw at you. Also I think I’ll mention that crazy guy who lives in the mountains again, because I haven’t in this paragraph yet.

Back to why Woolf did not write a powerful and very persuasive essay. For me, the biggest thing was that she seemed to be contradictory. Woolf kept on saying that your work had to have integrity and not be affected by your anger and bitterness against the world, but it seemed like that’s how Woolf was writing to me. I also do not think Woolf’s essay was that great because she would not have been able to get her point off to her target audience. Her essay was about women writing, and it was written in a way that only intelligent, thinking people could understand. You know, the people who probably already agreed with her. The part of the population that Woolf would have to convince probably would not have known what she was talking about. Last time, that paranoid guy who lives in the hills and is self sufficient and is unable to deal live in what society has become. (That may be me one day…)

12 AP English

Monthly Blog

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”- Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence. Though everyone has the right to pursue happiness, should others come before your own happiness? The pursuit of happiness is one of the themes presented in A Doll House and The Awakening. In A Doll House and The Awakening the main characters search for independence and happiness. In A Doll House Nora does get her independence and begins to pursue happiness, but she gives up her marriage and abandons her children to do so. In The Awakening Edna does obtain happiness and independence, but kills herself in the end.

 The Awakening was all about Edna looking for independence from others and finding happiness. She does this, and is happiest when her husband is away and is even happier when Robert comes back. Because Edna is trying to be happy, she declines to go with her husband to New York and she sends her kids to stay with her sister-in-law. Some might say that this is irresponsible and that her kids should come before her happiness. I say that in this case, they did. Edna realized that she wasn’t a great mother and that she wanted time to herself, so she sent her kids somewhere that they could be cared for and be happy. If Edna had kept her kids while finding her selfhood, then they would have been miserable and so would she. Because they were with the sister-in-law, the kids were safe and happy, and Edna was able to visit them and a genuine good and happy time with them. Edna found herself and was able to do this not at the sake of her children’s happiness, but still putting their happiness before hers.

A Doll House was about Nora finding herself and her independence. Nora does not do this until the end, and in order to do this she must leave her husband and abandon her children. Nora was a bad mother and not fit to raise her children and she accepted this, but she should not have left because her husband was not fit to raise them either. She should have left them with someone competent, or stayed with them until she found someone.

I believe that people have the right to do whatever makes them happy and whatever they want, as long as it is not detrimental to others. Your rights end where someone else’s rights begin. However, kids are different. When you have kids, they come first, always. I’m not saying that if you have kids you gave up your life. I’m saying that when you have kids, you lose the right to put your life first. Kids always come first because they are our future. They are all that we could have been. Kids carry all of our hopes, dreams and problems. They are the next generation, and hopefully they will be better than the last. Therefore, kids are the most important.

Lately, more and more people are doing whatever makes them happy and not caring if it harms others. This is a large problem in America, where we have so many rights and freedoms. Because America is a nation of individuals, we sometimes forget that others matter. We as Americans need to realize that we cannot harm others, just so we can be happy. If we do, our nation will swiftly fall apart as we all try to rise, but tear each other down.