Every Idea Comes From Experience

In Part 2 of HOD, the reader gets a better insight of Marlow's experience.  He meets new characters and encounters some conflicts and the reader receives a better view of the natives.  Whether or not the natives are liked by Marlow is unknown.  Are they evil or just like the white men? Various sentences from the book make the answer unclear.

I believe that everyone has their own idea of what evil is.  Society makes us see things in a certain way.  This creates fear.  Evil arises from fear which arises from ignorance.  Each society is ignorant of another society.  Although I have never conquered a new land, I can relate to Marlow's situation.  In the summer of 2011 I went on a family trip to Turkey.  The cultural was new to me and I was definitely ignorant.  The way women dressed surprised me and I felt very uncomfortable.  I thought it was bazar that the women would completely be covered up in such a hot climate.  When I asked my parents, they said that it was because of the men.  In their view women were not important.  They were lower in social status and they did not need to be respected.

I found this cultural idea insulting.  I could not believe that the women allowed themselves to be treated like trash.  I would think of the men as evil demons.  Looking back on it now, I realize that I was just being ignorant.  Our society finds theirs as evil because they lack women's rights.  They find it to be something normal because they have never had it.  I am sure that many of the women there think that the men from our society are evil.  Many of us just don't realize that the other society is just different.

The women of our society have the fear of being mistreated.  That is why we think that Turkish men are evil.  We are threatened by them.  In my opinion, evil doesn't exist.  There is right and wrong.  The things that we believe to be evil are just things that we fear.  We fear the unknown.  We fear things and people that are different then what we are accustomed to.  The question that comes out of this is:

Do evil things really exist or is it just fear of different ideas?

These Are The Questions That Haunt Me

While reading Heart of Darkness (HOD) many questions came to mind.  The first one came to me on page 68.  Marlow, one of the main characters, beings to speak about his experiences.  He mentions darkness many times.  Is Marlow surrounded by darkness? Could the title of the novel be referring to him?

On page 79, Marlow begins to encounter black people.  He refers to them as criminals which is ironic because he pities them.  Is this the beginning of enslaving african americans?  How did it all begin? If they are seen as criminals, why does Marlow pity them?

On page 88 Marlow mentions the word "wandering" many times.  Does it have any significance?  Will it reappear in the novel? Is his whole trip just a big wandering journey?

On page 92, a man named Mr. Kurtz is mentioned. It is unknown who exactly this man is.  Is he a spy? Is he really in charge of the most important station? Will we eventually meet him in the future? Why is he so important?

Whether the answers to these questions lie ahead are unknown.

The Colonizers

"Great Nations of Europe" by Randy Newman is ironic, honest, and hilarious!  It expresses the idea of colonization and how the citizens of each undeveloped country should prepare themselves.  The line that I find most ironic is:

"..hide the groceries too.."

He was obviously being sarcastic about it.  People did not have groceries back in the 16th century! It's humorous due to the way in which he uses it.  He tells them to hide certain things and then mentions the groceries.  The line I find to be most true is:

"Hide your wives and daughter.." 

The colonizers back in that time would most likely rape the women, no matter their age.  Most of the women would probably be used as house maids and would be taken away from their home.  

From Zero to Hero

Chief Bromden, the native american in OFOCN, had a drastic change in personality at the end of the novel.  Before McMurphy had arrived at the institution, the Chief acted as if he were deaf and dumb.  He would go around cleaning the ward and no one ever suspected anything.  The employees would allow him to be present in staff meetings because they thought he couldn't hear them and Nurse Ratched would never questioned whether he was faking it or not.  The only person who did realize the act was McMurphy.  On page 75, McMurphy tells the Chief to watch out for the attending. Without thinking, the chief immediately laid down.  It was not until McMurphy started to laugh did the Chief realize that he had made a foolish error. This foolish error led McMurphy to discovering his secret.  McMurphy said to him quietly, "Why, you sure did give a jump when I told you that coon was coming, Chief.  I thought somebody told me you was deef."  From that moment on, the chief was more careful about what he did even though McMurphy never shared his secret with anyone in the ward.

As time went on, the chief got comfortable with McMurphy.  On page 186 he finally spoke to him when McMurphy gave him a piece of gum. He replied with the simple phrase, "thank you." That night the chief started to talk uncontrollably about how long he had been acting and everything he had heard through out the years.  McMurphy told him not to worry about his little secret and like before, he did not tell a soul.  It was not until after the fishing trip that the chief started speaking to everyone.  He became McMurphy's close friend and they went through a lot together.  The chief got as big as he used to be, he gained confidence, and he lost fear of the EST.  On page 243 he firmly stated, "I won't cry or yell.  Not with McMurphy here."  In the beginning of the novel he would always start to yell when it came to the shock therapy.  He would also describe the fog.

By the end of the novel, his head was clear.  The fog was gone and he knew exactly what he was after.  He came out of his bubble and became friends with the people of the ward.  One night he even got drunk with the other patients when Candy and Sandy snuck in.  The change was definitely seen on the last page when McMurphy came back from all of his "special therapy".  He looked like a vegetable and the other patients did not believe it.  They started to say that Nurse Ratched had made a man look just like him.  In order to keep McMurphy's legend alive, the chief suffocated him so that the people would not remember him as a vegetable.  In a way, the chief was McMurphy's hero.  He finished McMurphy's work and eventually escaped.  He went from zero to hero.

Power, Authority, and Fear

Through out the novel OFOCN (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) by Ken Kesey, women are constantly present.  They portray many things, but the most important elements are power and authority.  A perfect example is Nurse Ratched.  She is the head nurse in the mental ward and every man fears her, even the employees that are above her in status.  On page 58 Harding, one of the patients in the ward, has an interesting discussion with a man named Randal McMurphy.  Harding says that all of the patients are rabbits and Nurse Ratched is the wolf.  Just like in the circle of life, the rabbits must fear the wolf.

Other then some feminine details, Nurse Ratched is seen as a man.  When Kesey describes her, he uses masculine features.  For example, on page 64 a patient says, "Her face is quite handsome."  Normally, a women's face is described as beautiful or pretty.  Handsome is an adjective used to describe men. The only point in time where the patients of the institution do speak about her being a woman is when they mention her breasts.  Many times they talk about how big they are and how ironic it is that she has them.  In my opinion, her "big breasts" symbolize, in a way, the amount of authority she has.  Her breasts are not the only thing mentioned about her feminine appearance in the novel.  On page 38 it says:

"She walked right on past, ignoring him just like she chose to ignore the way nature had tagged her with those outsized badges of femininity, just like she was above him, and sex, and everything else that's weak of the flesh."

Although she is a woman, no one dares to challenge her except Mc Murphy.  Mc Murphy is referred to as the patients' savior.  With just spending a week in the institution, he has successfully gotten under Nurse Ratched's skin.  This becomes a rivalry of who has more power in the ward.  In time, a rebellion takes place.  No one decides to do the house chores and everyone starts to challenge her in the group meetings.  Only when McMurphy visits the pool for the first time does he realize how much authority she has.  After speaking to a life guard, McMurphy decides to behave himself and everything goes back under control.  Many of the patients do not understand his change of attitude until he tells them that she is the one who decides who gets released.  

In order to keep control in the institution, the Nurse uses fear.  Her main resource is the shock therapy.  As soon as someone misbehaves, she sends them to the "Shock Stop".  Although it is quick and painless, it creates fear because it is unpleasant.  On page 162, Harding finally explains the EST to McMurphy.  Once someone goes through it, the person becomes calmer and is "cured".  The patients never return to their normal state, which makes it easier for her to keep control.  On page 164 McMurphy says that she is the heart of the problem.  Only he recognized the fact that she is the cause of fear.  She is comfortable with the idea of being the head of authority, therefore she punishes the patients for the rebellion that had occurred.  She wanted to assure the patients that she was still the boss.  Only when McMurphy stands up and challenges her once more does it become questionable whether she will continue portraying power and authority.  

Fog: Comforting or Disturbing?

Fog can be seen in many ways and the way it is seen varies from person to person.  In my mind, fog is something that blocks vision.  A person can't see through it clearly which causes it to be slightly disturbing.  In many circumstances, fog isn't seen as a positive thing.  It can be used as an adjective for hiding something or  a way to describe something that a person barely understands.  However, this is not the case for the Chief in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos' Nest.  The novel is written from the point of the view of Chief Bromden, a Native American Indian who is seen as deaf and dumb to the people of the Mental Institution.  From pages 3-67 it is unclear whether he finds the fog comforting or disturbing.  

He first mentions it on page 7 when they take him to get "shaved".  Due to the unpleasant description of what is occurring, it seems as if the fog is not comforting at all.  It is disturbing since he is clearly going through pain.  From that point on, the fog is not mentioned until page 36.  He uses it in a flashback of when he was with a girl he really liked.  They were in a factory and the Chief describes everything that he remembers of that memory.  He says, "Her fingernails peeled down my hands and as soon as she broke contact with me her face switched out of focus again, became soft and runny like melting chocolate behind that blowing fog of cotton."  The memory seems to comfort him, making the fog in that specific point in time comforting.  He isn't giving in to it or running away from it.  It is just there.  In a way, this type of fog represents the Chief.  To the people in the ward he is just there since he doesn't speak and acts as if he were dumb.

In page 37, the fog is mentioned a final time.  Whether it is comforting or disturbing is unclear.  He is going through the shock therapy once again, and in the beginning it seems as if he wants to get away from it.  In the end, he says that he will someday give into the fog like others have.  Does the fog comfort the patients since it cuts them off from their senses?  This is what makes the meaning of the fog unclear.  

Waiting For Godot: The Film

The film Waiting For Godot is a lot easier to understand then the novel.  The camera shots, the scenery, and the acting allow the reader to see what is going on and not get so confused with the dialogue.  For example, Lucky's speech on page 45 is a lot easier to understand watching it than reading it.  

One things I noticed in the film is that the viewer can always see the tree.  It doesn't matter who is speaking or what is going on in the film.  The tree is always present.  In the novel, the tree is also mentioned many times.  In Act 1, Estragon and Vladimir ponder hanging themselves using the tree and a belt.  In Act 2, Vladimir points out that the tree has more leaves than the previous day.  Every important detail is strongly expressed and shown in the film.  

"Let's Go." "We Can't." "Why Not?" "We're Waiting for Godot"

Estragon: Let's go.

Vladimir: We can't.

Estragon: Why not?

Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot.

This play can have many different meanings, but in my opinion it shows the true meaning of human life.  In both Act 1 and Act 2, the two main characters wait for Godot.  Is he God? Is he a prophet? While reading the play and discussing it in class, I came to realize that maybe he is a form of God.  Many bible references are made.  One example is the story of Cane and Abel.    Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for this god-like character to come and save them.  Isn't that what we are waiting for?  Many people in the world believe that there is some type of God.  He is our savior.

In Act 2 there are many things that describe how hopeless Vladimir and Estragon are.  Their dialogue helps, but so do some specific words.  One of the many examples is:

"Vladimir: Where are all these corpses from?"
" Estragon: These skeletons." (page 71)

Corpse: (n.) A dead body, especially the dead body of a human

Skeleton: (n.) The internal structure composed of bone and cartilage that protects and supports the soft organs, tissues, and other parts of a vertebrate organism; endoskeleton.

Both of these words describe something dead. Something that is just there.  Both of these characters' lives are basically that.  They go and stay in the same place day after day just to wait for Godot.  He never comes.  Although another character in the play gave them the bones, they have meaning.  Just like the bones, Estragon and Vladimir just sit there doing nothing.  They may as well just be two corpses or two skeletons waiting for Godot.  

Choices, Stress, and The Stranger

"Life is a series of choices, creating stress."

Whether someone agrees or disagrees with this statement depends on the person's beliefs.   I personally think that it depends on the choice.  Almost all the choices someone has to make during their lifetime include stress, but some silly ones do not.  Life is definitely a series of choices because the choices you make defines you as a person and your lifestyle.

Many existentialists, like Albert Camus and Meursault, most likely believe that choices do not create stress.  Like mentioned in my previous blogs, they basically live on the phrase YOLO.  Who cares about what may happen to us? We live and then we die.  This is what Camus makes the reader believe through out the book until Meursault goes to jail.  From that point on, he regrets many of his decisions and eventually the trial focuses more on his soul then of his actions.  He constantly repeats that he should have fixed things and respected the death of his mother a lot more than what he did.  During the various trials, the judge and witnesses mention his past decisions.  For example, they mention him smoking during his mother's funeral.  When the jury mentions him shooting the Arab, Meursault blames it on the hot sun.  He was stressed and he pulled the trigger by mistake.

You decide whether the choices you make create stress for you or not.  It is something you can decide, but regardless, choices do make you and your life.  You will suffer the consequences for absolutely everything you do.  Some may be rewarding while others not so much.

Does He Really Not Care?

"The sun was the same as it had been the day I'd buried Maman, ..." (page 58)

"And from the peculiar little noise coming through the partition, I realized he was crying.  For some reason I though of Maman." (page 39)  

Out of all the questions that arose from The Stranger, the one that puzzles me the most is about Meursault's mother.  Why does she keep coming up after her death?  The quotes above show some of the many times Meursault would think of his mother.  Did he not say in the beginning of the book that he just didn't care about her death?  The very first sentence in the book starts like this:

"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know." (page 3)

From then on, he does not really mention his mother until he starts speaking about Raymond and Salamano.   She comes up more and more often creating confusion in the mind of the reader.  Is he really an existentialist? He seems to care about some of his actions even though he does what he wants. In Part 2 of the novel, he finally admits feelings for his mother.  He clearly states:

"What I can say for certain is that I would rather Maman hadn't died." (page 65) 

All these things cause me to really ponder if Albert Camus is an existentialist or not.  Is Meursault a reflection of Camus?  Comparing the beginning of the novel with the end,  Meursault contradicts himself regarding his beliefs or ideas. I believe that Camus is some what an existentialist.  He expresses his ideas in a form of not caring about life in the end, but sometimes he makes it seem like he does.  Does he only care about certain unfortunate events?  I guess these questions cannot be answered by reading a book, but by asking the author himself.  A reader can infer what he or she wants from his texts, but only Camus knows for sure what was going on through his mind while writing the book.

Who Cares?!

Existentialism, the perfect word to summarize the famous phrase YOLO.  We live and we die, so who cares about what happens between those two points?! Just by reading a couple pages of the book, it is obvious that this is how the main character in The Stranger feels about life.  On the first page of the book the very first sentence is:

 "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know." (page 3)

How can someone simply not care when there mother died? A relationship between a mother and a child is so close and so amazing that you simply cannot explain it. It's as if he just simply doesn't care about life.  He goes where he needs to go and doesn't ask questions.  He accepts things as they are and doesn't really care about how it may affect him in the future.  Another quote from the book that supports this conclusion is:

"It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed." (page 24)

Here the character clearly states that from a couple days ago until now, nothing has changed.  Life hasn't changed and it has certainly not affected him. He couldn't care less about the past events. Instead of mourning for his loss, he goes off with a girl he used to know and sleeps with her.  This supports Jean-Paul Sartre's idea of "opposing the world's meaningless with revolt, freedom, and passion."  Sex expresses a form of freedom and definitely passion.

Sartre's thoughts of "do not make illusions about the future" is also proven in the last quote.  Once again he doesn't really care about what may happen in the future.  He lives in the now and is not concerned about the past or future.  YOLO!

Golden Days, Golden Age

The Great Gatsby is a novel that follows a young man's experience in the East (New York).  He sees his friends, Tom and Daisy, and befriends his neighbor Jay Gatsby.  Gatsby is a man who constantly throws extravagant parties without a second thought. Throughout the novel F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a series of colors to describe and change moods in each scene. The color gold is often used to describe a glorious scene. It is the perfect color to express the lifestyle of the characters throughout the book.   

"All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the Beale Street Blues while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shinning dust." (page 151)

Although there are many quotes with the color gold, this quote supports the idea.  By describing the slippers and the dust, the reader can visualize just how prosperous the people are.

When the color gold first comes to mind, I imagine a fairy tale.  A nice dress, jewelry, a "princessy" life-style, and a shining sun.  This is just how the people of the East live their lives.  It's their perfect fictional society.  They do not have a care in the world except for gaining money, spending money, and love.  Isn't that what gold usually represents? Extremely wealthy people who live life without a care in the world? Tom, Daisy, and Jay Gatsby are not an exception to this rule. Tom has a lover and only focuses on earning money, Daisy is a flirt who is self-absorbed in her own little bubble, and Gatsby spends his money as if he had a money tree growing in the backyard.  Nick, on the other hand, has worked hard to get where he is and focuses on everything life has to offer.  There is nothing "golden" about his life except for when he is with Jay Gatsby.

Another word gold can be used to describe is being successful.  Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy's, is a very famous golf player in the 1920's.  The papers call her "the golden girl of tennis." As if that were not enough, they use the word "golden" to describe how she looks.  It is mainly used to describe the color of her skin. "I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder..." (page 84)

As shown with the different phrases from the novel, gold is used to describe the life of someone who is very well off.  It supports the ideas of being successful, beautiful, and prosperous.  The people who are surrounded by it live a fairy tale compared to the people who have nothing at all.  As Fitzgerald writes about Nick's life, it seems as if Nick is surrounded by elegant people.  By thinking of the other colors used in the book, like grey, the reader can easily infer that this is what the author means when he uses the color gold.