journal 2 december 2014

Anybody who says that they were able to predict the ending of this play is lying. Although that may seem like a bold statement, I am sticking to my guns on it. Every aspect of this drama was wild, but the ending was so far out of left field that I am not sure I am able to wrap my head around it still. If I was asked to describe the ending of this play the only word I could think of would be "toxic." It is disturbing and horrific at the same time what Oedipus learns. I would see he handled it well when he blinded himself. No person in the world is able to handle a truth as disturbing as what he learned. I would try and put myself in the shoes of Oedipus, but that is too much to handle even when I simply imagine it. I'm not sure if I think this is an appropriate ending. I think it is a really good and interesting ending, but I am not quite sure I believe that Oedipus deserved this to happen. I do not know what the popular opinion about Oedipus is, but I happen to think he is a cool character and I felt genuinely badly for him. He did some questionable things throughout the play, but I have a hard time believing he ever acted strictly out of spite for anyone. He was an emotionally influenced ruler and person and wanted to act as boldly, confidently, and as quickly as he could. Overall, the ending was crazy but good at the same time. However, I am not sure I will ever be able to decide whether it was an appropriate ending or not.

journal 1 december 2014

Oedipus is about as wild as a drama can get. I feel as if I should dislike Oedipus as a character, but the truth is I think I find him fascinating. As a king, I would expect him out of everyone to know what is going on in the world, but he is the most confused character in the play. I admire how confident Oedipus is in what he does though. What makes this play even more ironic is that although Oedipus is confused about where he came from, he does not know he is confused. He goes through his everyday life without any clue about the damage he has done. I feel I can identify with Oedipus's values in the sense he is loyal to his people. Obviously I have never been the king of anything outside of my own little world I live in, but I can say I respect the goals of Oedipus. He knows he needs to save the people from the plague that has overtaken Thebes, and he does everything he can to do so regardless of the negative results that come from his approach. I identify with the experience Oedipus endured in the sense that I know what it is like to want good for yourself and everyone around you and having things not go your way at all. Like Oedipus, I too have realized the danger of not limiting my own free will which proves to be a significant theme in the Oedipus plays. Oedipus ruled and went about his business as king in a way that was very much so influenced by his emotion. This is similar to the way I do most things in my life, especially my writing. Oedipus never intended to do any harm to anybody. He was fighting for the common good of his people but realized his biggest enemy was the man he would see in the mirror.

Journal 1 q2

The poem "Our Greatest Fear" by Marianne Williamson may not be considered a master work to the average literature scholar. There are, however, many aspects of master literature expressed through the purpose and values expressed in this poem. There are many great quotes, speeches, and poems that I like to refer to when I am not feeling so confident. There is an energy within the syntax that inspires me. The way this poem is structured is so important to the expression of the purpose. That is hardly what this particular blog is about though. I feel that I can identify with every message this poem is conveying to me when I read it. It was meant to inspire, and it does just that. In my life, my greatest fear has been related to success. Not necessarily whether I will be successful or not but rather what will happen after I achieve any amount of success. I fear I will lose my self control and let my ego get the best of me. I fear people will look at me differently because I am successful. I am constantly concerned that I will become too successful or "powerful," and it will not allow me to be the man I wish to be. No matter how much success I have in my life, I refuse to forget my roots and from where I came. I want to be as great as I can be for me and not for anyone else. As a very accomplished musician so far in my life, sometimes I am insecure playing around people with less talent than me as awful and probably conceited as that seems. There have been plenty of times where I have played less than my best because I do not want to belittle the other musicians around me. This was the biggest factor leading up to my leaving the band program at St. Mark's. I felt I could not be great so "people won't feel insecure." Whenever I am faced with thoughts like this, I always look back at this poem. I believe, I was meant to "manifest the glory of God" in all that I do and that I can never be satisfied giving less than my best effort even if it costs the people around me a little self confidence.

The quote in The Old and the Sea, "A man can be destroyed but not defeated," is just one of those quotes that jumps off the page as you are reading. It is one of the quotes that will make you put the book down for a while and think about what you have just read. It had that kind of effect on me. I love the alliteration used in "destroyed" and "defeated" to add to the tone. I love that it uses words with just subtle differences in their meaning but antithesis is utilized to contrast the two. The quote is meant to make the reader think about whether the old man is being defeated or destroyed or whether the marlin he caught is being defeated or destroyed. This short quote basically explains in one sentence what this story meant to me. It goes back to the man versus nature and man versus man conflict I have mentioned when talking about this novella. An important theme of this novel is how far a man can oppose nature before he is defeated. He says that man is not made for defeat which we are not. We are intelligent beings unlike a fish, although a fish the size of a marlin may be able to physically destroy us. In the novel, Santiago was badly beaten by the marlin. His hand was so badly wounded that he will never fish again, but he killed this fish regardless of how much respected this creature. It was due to his pride in himself that he would not let this fish go when he fought with it while out at sea fishing. In the end, I believe that the old man was destroyed, not defeated. And the fish got the best of both worlds when it was destroyed by the sharks and defeated by the old man.

A major theme throughout The Old Man and the Sea was the theme of how pride can motivate greatness from us. Pride in this novel, as a theme is not meant to be looked at in a negative fashion, but as a positive feeling about one's own abilities. While the old man, Santiago, is very prideful when he refuses to admit that he is poor and has no food to give to the young boy, it shows he is practical about his living conditions when he accepts food from other people. Later in the novel as he fights the big fish, Santiago refuses to give up because of his pride; not due to arrogance, but because he knows that this fish above all others is great enough to kill him if he lets it happen and that to offer less than his best effort would be an insult to the fish. I really feel as if I identify with the experience and values of Santiago in this novel. As someone who has been known to be somewhat arrogant sometimes, it is fascinating to me to read about a character whose pride is not equivalent to arrogance but it is used as a tool to put up the best fight possible. I am obviously no fisherman, but when related to competition, I feel I connect with Santiago's experience. When I played hockey before my devastating head injuries occurred, I was a bruiser on the ice. I was as tough as they came, and I would get in the faces of the biggest and nastiest players out there. Sometimes, however, my pride in my ability to throw punches and body checks got the best of me and I did not respect my opponents. That is when I was faed with the challenge of recovering from my first major concussion. I learned my lesson to always take pride in what I am good at and give it your all because someone is always going to be bigger and stronger than you. Do not insult your opponent with less than your best because that is when you will lose.

The way The Old Man and the Sea ended can be interpreted however the reader wants. That is the beauty of literature, is it not? What separates this novel from other novels is that it does not have your typical fairy tale ending which I really enjoyed. It keeps things interesting. I would call the ending happy in the sense that I believe Santiago, the old man, finally reached a level of satisfaction in his life that he had never before reached. He realized just how far men can push the limits of nature and that there is always going to be another battle to fight. At least, that is how I interpreted the ending of this novel. In a literal sense, the ending did kind of catch me off guard in terms of what actually happened in the story. I thought, probably like a lot of other people, that Santiago would catch the marlin and basically live happily ever after. I especially enjoyed the change of events which involved the attack of the different breeds of sharks. When the sharks had ruined the meat of the marlin that Santiago had worked so hard for and he saw just how wounded his hand was from battling the great fish, the old man realized he might have outdone himself that time. Him apologizing to the marlin was a really interesting part of the story to me. It showed how much respect he has for the sea and all its inhabitants. There are a couple other things that happen at the conclusion of the story, but I felt like this could have ended the story just as well. The story included the elements of man versus nature and man versus himself in such a way that it really hit home for me. Most people find Hemingway boring, but I loved this story. Perhaps it's my guilty pleasure, but I this story was an easy read that really had a lot of meaning to me, especially at the end. The young boy Manolin works to continue the old man's legacy as a fisherman through his work for the rest of his life due to how inspired he was by the old man. Say what you want about the tragedy of the end of the old man's fishing career, but I think this story was meant to end on a positive note.

In Young Goodman Brown, it starts out seeming like a story of a man who will end up being a hero while on his quest out into the forest as we see so many times in literature. The beginning seems very cliche in the way he says goodbye to his wife and tells her everything is going to be okay which I should have known better than to assume such a thing while reading Hawthorne. I noticed a couple of different plot twists throughout the story. When Mr. Goodman encounters the man with the staff, it seems as if it is following the same pattern of most stories of a hero conquering a quest. When I read more about this man's staff how it resembled a serpent, and alarm went off in my mind due to the nine years I have spent in Catholic school. It seems as if this part of the story was an allusion to the Bible story of Jesus being tempted in the desert. I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who thinks that. The theme of the store really lies in the topic of the corruptibility of Puritan ideals and religious values and how susceptible the are to giving into the the evil in the world. Goodman Brown is an example of Hawthorne's idea that morals in a society based off of religious belief is weak and corruptible because nobody holds true to their own values. Rather, they follow what they see everyone else doing. Another fascinating plot twist is when he sees Goody Cloyse, the minister, Deacon Gookin, and his wife Faith have all done their deal with the devil so to speak, and he decides to do the same because he is following their example. Hawthorne structured the plot of this story in such a way that it sets up the reader to be surprised for the changing events and descriptions of the characters and setting. I see the tone as satirical in the way that it makes a mockery of the whole Puritan society and their dedication to morals based off their religion. It shows that that this time period did not encourage much independent thinking at all. When reading this story I am confused for a good portion of it during the middle parts. The diction is very complex to me because, well, I am not a reader from the 1800s. After really thinking about what I have read, however, I understood more and more which lead to surprises in the story. The ending was the biggest surprise for me because I did not see Goodman Brown's wife Faith turning out to be evil. I thought of her as a picture of innocence in this story.