The End

As I am sitting here, trying to think of what to write for my final blog post while thinking about how I will be graduating from high school in a week, all I can think about is how strange endings are. Some would say endings are beginnings. One chapter ends, another chapter begins. The end of my high school is coming soon, but the beginning of a new phase of my life will also be beginning. There is sadness in ending the chapter- in leaving behind a place that has been a home for the past four years, leaving behind teachers, friends, experiences, and memories.  There is also excitement to turn the page to the next chapter, to move forward into the future and to go to college, take new classes, meet new people, and live in a new place. There is happiness, relief, fear, nerves and many other emotions depending how one looks at the situation. Endings are confusing times of mixed emotion. Endings are bittersweet.

But what really stumps me about endings is how it isn’t until the end of something that we realize how truly great it is. This is something I have experienced countless times. Returning from vacations, returning from summer camps, being in a show, playing on a sports team, and graduating high school. You don’t realize how much you cherish something until you have to deal with losing it.

       Next week, I will be graduating from high school. Throughout this year, I’ve often heard complaints about how people are ready to leave, to get away and go to college. I know I am a victim of this too as I have many times been excited to get away from the stress of high school. But now all of sudden, when we only have a week left of school, it seems like people are finally realizing how truly great our high school and how blessed we are to go to the school that we do with the teachers and students that we know. With two days of school left, people are suddenly thinking “oh crap I’m actually miss this school”. This isn’t something new or specific to any age group; this is something I have experience all my life when in turning the pages in between chapters.

            But why do we do this all the time? You would think after awhile we would learn to cherish what we have while we have it, but no. We do the same thing over and over again. We don’t realize or understand what we have until suddenly we don’t have it anymore. Maybe this is just human nature. Maybe we can’t change this action or pattern. And maybe, that’s not such a bad thing.

People always say we should “live each day like it’s your last”. While there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that philosophy, why do we need to be thinking about losing what we have in order to enjoy it? Just enjoy what you have, realize that it may not always have it, but don’t dwell on the loss of it in order to appreciate it. In some ways it doesn’t matter that we do this. Living happily in the moment is better than thinking about what you may or may not have tomorrow. Rather than living each day like it’s your last, live each day simply as today. Live each day in the moment and don’t worry what tomorrow may or may not bring. Endings may be good, bad, happy, sad depending how you choose to look at it. But when you think about it, endings make up a small portion of our lifetime. Endings are simply page turns in between the chapters of our book. What really matters is the content, the pages, the chapters, and that’s what we should be thinking about each day, not what will be gone at the end of those chapters.

To censor or not to censor

Censorship has always been a part of our society; books, movies, and images have been banned from society for many years. Why do we sensor our media? The real answer is fear. Fear of infection people, citizens, children with what one person deems as a "bad idea".

This past week we read an article in English class about banning the children's book Babar because of its implications about colonialization. However, I don't believe it is right or just to ban any book that has "negative implications". If we ban one book for this reason, it seems that it would be necessary to ban most books that are out there. Most books have some sort of implications about society and I don't think it is any one person's decision to take away the freedom of speech from a writer.

Another thing I noticed about censorship was that it targets books and novels. If a novel has an idea that could be harmful to society, it is censored. However what about the much more critical written works such as opinion columns? Why can we read highly opinionated articles about a variety of issues in the united States but we cannot read a children's book like Babar in certain places. I believe there is a fear that books with these negative implications will become a permanent and ingrained part of our culture.

Most people at some point in their life have probably completed one of those surveys where you are forced to rank 10-20 different items in order of their personal importance to you. Some items that might be on this list are a healthy life, a good education, a well paying job, a family, a million dollars, a new car, etc. Surveys like these force you to prioritize many things that people desire and life allowing people to take a step back and reflect on what is truly important to them in their lives.

A few weeks ago in English class, we completed a very similar sort of activity. The list of items or desires was relatively similar to what you might see on such a survey. Some of the items included a happy marriage, physical health, an end to world hunger, providing worldwide contraception, gay marriage, no abortion, enough money to never have to work again, etc. However, there was a twist. In this activity, we were hypothetically given 100,000 dollars. Instead of simply ranking each item by importance, we had to divide up our assets and decide how much money we would be willing to give to support each item.

I found this activity very interesting. Usually in these types of surveys when you are simply ranking 1-20, there are only so many ways you can rank the items. The directions are very straightforward. However, there is much interpretation left in this sort of activity. One could choose to divide up their money in millions of different ways. There is no one prototype for how this should be done. Some chose to give at least some money to every category. Some could choose to give all their money to one category. Others may choose to divide up their money into four different categories they thought were most important.

Silence

One idea that we have talked about at times in English class is the idea of silence. It seems to me that our society undermines the value of silence. Some observations I have made about how silence is approached in our society:

1) Rarely to people take time to simply sit and be silent and to enjoy that silence is around them. Silence is uncomfortable for people. People feel the need to have some sort of background noise when they are doing something. People often listen to music to fill that awkward silent space.

2) Silence is awkward. If two people are talking to one another and there is a brief silence it is called an "awkward silence". We try to avoid those awkward silences.

3) People enjoy having the television blaring in the background even if they aren't actually watching it or it is a commercial.

4) Silence is viewed as a negative quality. People would simply rather be outgoing than shy.

5) In school especially, silence is not appreciated. Participation is measured by the number of times you verbally speak in class, not by your participation through notes or listening.

It seems very peculiar to me. I can honestly say I'm victim to thinking and believing all five of these ideas. I often wish I was louder, more outgoing, not as quiet. But now that I think about it, why do I wish I was louder? What is wrong with being silent? Why is one significantly better than the other?

Furthermore, why is silence like this in America? Have people always viewed silence in a negative light or is this a relatively new phenomenon for our generation? If so, what changed in society that made the idea of silence what it is today?

Hamlet: Feminism through the ages

One issue we are often faced with when reading texts from different time periods is cultural relevance. Often times, ideas or themes in texts carry great cultural and historical significance. These themes and ideas can help us to shed light on the way of life in another time, place, and world, although they may not always be applicable to the modern day world that we live in. Much of Shakespeare's work written late 16th and early 17th centuries falls into this category. Social norms, language, gender status, and culture were all very different in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in England than they are in modern day America.

In this blog post, I'm going to take a look at one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, Hamlet, through a feminist lens. Furthermore, I will be looking at different ways in which we can read this play and Shakespeare in general through a modern day lens and/or a 16th/17th century lens.

Two of the significant and only women characters in the play are Gertrude and Ophelia. Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and the Queen of Denmark who married Hamlet's Uncle Claudius following the death of her first husband, King Hamlet. Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius who falls in love with Hamlet during the play. These characters are very similar in certain ways; both Gertrude and Ophelia are very mysterious characters who are submissive towards the men in their life. It is very difficult at times to understand the motives of Gertrude. At times, she seems very loving and nurturing towards Hamlet, yet as a reader we question whose side she is really on. Does she truly love Claudius? Or is everything she is doing simply a coy to protect her only son, Hamlet? Ophelia at times seems very mysterious as well; we find ourselves questioning whether or not she truly does Hamlet. However the characteristic in both of these characters that stands out the most is their submissiveness towards men. Both Gertrude and Ophelia are completely surrounded by males in their lives. Gertrude seems to be living in submission to her husband, Claudius, while Ophelia seems to be living in submission to her father, Polonius. Gertrude betrays her own son to Claudius while Ophelia spies on Hamlet for her father. Although we can deem these characters mysterious and question their love for Hamlet, in both cases it is clear that a dominant male force is influencing their actions.

This male superiority was certainly a societal norm in Shakespeare's time, but it is almost irrelevant today. Women have gained a much greater sense of independence in our generation. One would think that perhaps a modern adaptation of this story would slightly adjust the role women play in this play however this was not exactly the case. In the modern film adaptation of Hamlet set in New York City, the societal character of women is relatively the same.

Regret

Most of my blog posts so far have all been about perspective and analyzing different perspectives on the same issue. However, today I'm going to be looking at a much more universal topic in which I believe perspective is minimally varied: regret.

Regret as an issue every one faces, it seems it is just human nature. We are all different and have our personal regrets, but are there some regrets that are simply universal to all people.

I would argue, yes. I recently read a very intriguing article in the Guardia titled "Top Five Regrets of the Dying." (see article here) According to this article the five biggest regrets of the dying were as follows:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Now as I was reading this article, it made sense and seem pretty reasonable to what I would think the regrets of the dying were, However what freaked me out the most when reading this article was how applicable it was to my life. I may not be dying, but in some way every one of these points could fit into my life and the regrets I have so far. After reading this article, I talked about it with a friend of mine who felt the same way as I did. Furthermore, I showed this article to my mom who also felt that these regrets were applicable to her life.

"Top Five regrets of the dying seemed to me to also be "Top five regrets of the living". Although I did not get to discuss this article with an extremely wide variety of people, I believe that most people could find some piece of themselves reflected in these regrets. No matter what age we are, where we come from, our friends and family, our gender, our race, these life regrets seem to me to be universal. What is your perspective on this article and the idea of universal regret?

Lost in Translation

The past couple of weeks, we have been reading a story titled "L'hote" in French class. (The title translates too both "the guest" and "the host" in English) . This story was about an Algerian-born French man named Daru who is a school teacher at an Algerian school. Daru encounters a French gendarme named Balducci who brings an Arab prisoner to the school at demands that Daru take the prisonner to police headquarters in Tinguit, a town 12 and a half miles away. (see short summary here) We first analyzed this text and its themes in French discussions. However this past week, we were asked to read the same story in English.

After reading both stories, we started discussing the two stories: how they were different, how they were similar, and what was lost in translation. Although the English translation told the story accurately, certain minute details were lost when the story was translated into English from its original language of French. Many French words have certain meanings and connotations that cannot be fully translated to English. The title of this story is an example of this complication. In French, "L'Hote" can technically mean "the guest" or "the host". However in the English version of the story, the title was simply translated to the guest. The double meaning of the word "L'Hote" was lost in translation. Although this may seem insignificant, the double meaning of the title in French carried a lot of meaning. Throughout the story, Daru is conflicted as to whether or not he should turn the prisoner in. On the one hand, he feels it is his duty to the country he came from, France, to turn the prisoner in. Yet he also feels some sort of connection to the prisoner because he was born in Algeria and he feels turning the Arab man in would be a betrayal of his Arab culture. This conflict leaves the reader to wonder whether Daru is really the "the host" or "the guest" in this country. He was Algerian born and he belongs to Algeria but he is of French nationality so he is also a guest in this country. Connotations and meanings of words is lost in translation because not all French words and phrases equate to English words and phrases.

After discussing the two stories, we went further in depth and had a discussion about whether or not it is important to read translations of stories in other languages. Some people argued that translated stories should not be read because translations often insufficiently portray the original story because much is lost in the complications of translations. However many people argued that it is very important to read stories from other languages even if they are translations because you can be exposed to other cultures and other world views. There are many ways to look at this issue. By reading foreign stories that are translated, you risk losing important meanings from the text that are lost in translation, but by not reading stories in other languages from other cultures, you lose the world views and perspectives that are carried in foreign stories. I personally believe that the gain is worth the risk. Language is a form of communication and it should not act as a barrier to communication. Although details may be lost in translation, much can be gained from reading stories from other cultures and other countries. Do you think students should read stories in other languages that have been translated?

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This blog post is going to b little different than my last few. I am going to be doing a book review on a book from probably one of the most popular series in America and the world:Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the final book in the series. Although it is the last, it is certainly not the least. It is filled with even more action-packed adventures and twists and turns. Rowling certainly exceeds the standards she had set for herself in her previous books, bringing the series to a surprising yet creative close.

I read the whole series by the time I was in 8th grade but this past summer I decided to go back and reread the book before the movie came out. When I was in middle school, I generally read these books for fun and entertainment. However when I went back to reread this book, I starting noticing things that I hadn’t noticed before, themes that connect to society. From the outside, Harry Potter seems unrelatable to us; J.K. Rowling creates a magical fantasy world and her books are generally used as an escape from our own life. But in reality many themes and ideas that Rowing uses in her book are a reflection of our society today. Ironically enough, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows serves as mirror in some ways.

The plot is generally filled with action, magic, and humor. Yet beneath the action-filled fantasical plot are underlying themes of prejudice, racism, and stereotypes. The most pressing example that I see of this is the relations between muggle born Wizards and pure blood Wizards.
In this fashion, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a book for all ages. It is a relatively easy read with a creative and unique plot that could entertain younger kids. Yet beyond the plot are a deeper messages about perspective and how people view others that are a reflection of our society. While a younger child may not take away these things after reading this text, young adults and adults can take away these themes as well from the book.