Always

In her conversation with Yolland, they repeat the word always to each other, and although Maire does not understand what this word means, it has an impact on her. She feels a connection to Yolland, and they do not speak the same spoken language, and understand very little about each other's culture, but they understand what the other is feeling emotionally, and this is enough to convey feelings. The word always sticks with Maire enough that it urges her to learn English from Hugh, and her first question is what does the word always mean? Unfortunately, he does not tell, her instead he tells her it a silly word, and not a good one to start with. He brushes off the word, and in doing so, I think it is symbolic in that nothing can last for ever, therefore we have no need for the word itself. The word was the turning point in the conversation between Maire and Yolland, and it seemed to convey that they would have a happy ending. However, things change, and in brushing off the word, I think that Hugh is saying that there will be no happily ever after for Maire and Yolland.

Tragedy versus Comedy

For much of the beginning of the play, I was under the impression that it was a comedy. Or at least not a tragedy. There were scenes that were funny, characters that were meant to bring comic relief, lines that were supposed to make the audience/reader laugh. I love Hugh and Jimmy's conversations and the way they interact with the other characters, they just seem happy in their situation, or at least oblivious to their potential troubles. Owen and Yolland's scene where they figure out the mispronunciation of Owen's name is very lighthearted. Then the romance begins with Yolland and Maire, and you think, ahh this is going to have a happy ending. Love is in the air. It makes you want to buy a plane ticket to Ireland...or at least watch P.S. I Love You...and then it ends. And you are like WHAT?! I mean the army is threatening to burn the village, Manus runs away, Maire and Sarah are both heartbroken, and Owen is stuck in the middle between the new and old. And all of a sudden you realize, this play isn't a comedy, its a satire! CRAP! How are you supposed to get those warm fuzzies? But the more you think about it, the way it ended, with ambiguity and openness to interpretation, means that the audience can create their own ending in their heads. And suddenly, you realize that if it had ended with a happy ending, you would have thought it a cop-out...

Names

The final part of Act 1 is a conversation between Owen and his brother on his brother's name. The English officers pronounce it wrong and Manus seems to take offense to it, finding it to be the English men's way of reducing the value of the Irish. I think that he thinks the English see the Irish as less of a person, and they do not even make an effort to learn about the culture, and this mispronunciation is one more way they can do it. Owen makes the argument that however they pronounce it, he is still the same person, but I think Manus argument, and I might agree with him, is that if you take the culture out of a name, you lose a part of yourself in the process. It will be interesting to see how this mistake in translation affects the rest of the novel.

Creative Writing

I hate writing papers...almost as much as I hate USC...and trust me thats a deep hatred. So trust me when I say, this creative writing assignment was just one more paper that I was going to hate, put off until the last minute, and then not even care what I was writing about, just as long as it got done. That is, until I started writing it, and discovered that there was so much in my head, so many ideas, plot twists and turns, dialogue, that could be put to paper. I found myself enjoying this paper, moreso than any other paper we have written in this class, and probably moreso than any other paper I have written in a long time. So it just proves that you really should keep an open mind about an assignment, book, professor, or even roommate, because you never know when you will find yourself enjoying it.

New Cultures

I loved the discussion in class about the struggle Omishto has between the two worlds she has been exposed to. The first, the one of public school and technology, is one that we can all relate to, and so it is comfortable, and seems normal. The other is the native culture that is introduced to her by Ama, and it is a foreign concept to most of us, and that is why I think I struggle with understanding every aspect of this novel. It is hard for me, someone who has never been exposed to a radically different culture, to understand the full severity of the situation with the panther. The idea that the panther and Ama are connected due to the creation story in the Taiga culture is something that is difficult for me to wrap my brain around, but at the same time I think that is a good thing for us to study them. I have enjoyed learning about each of the different cultures in all of the works that we have looked at this semester. As privileged American college students it is easy for us to live in a bubble, but I think that by looking at these different cultures it is opening my eyes to what is around me.

Lost Innocence

innocence...it's a subject that Lucy brings up towards the end of the novel, as she is evaluating her life. She says on page 153 "I was twenty years old-not a long time to be alive- and yet there was not an ounce of innocence on my face." It makes her feel disconnected from the rest of the world, as if she will never really belong to the city. She feels this way about both the city and her home island. She feels like an outsider in both places, and because of her conflicting experiences in both places she feels like she can't relate. Her experiences from her childhood have given her a different insights than the people that grew up in the city, therefore they don't really understand her, and vice versa. Then she comes to the city, and what she goes through there isolate her from the people she knows from home. She no longer can talk to them about things they could possibly imagine. She has become trapped between two worlds, and it makes her completely alone.

Anger

Anger is a funny emotion. It can motivate someone to do or feel something completely alien, something completely out of the ordinary. It can create this reaction inside a person that is so opposite of what they have said their whole life, or in this case, book it makes the reader very confused. After Lucy hears her father has died, she feels many emotions, much of which she doesn't really know how to detail. But there is one line that sticks out to me that portrays anger. "My father died leaving my mother a pauper" I realize that Lucy did not have a close relationship with her parents, which is a subject for another blog post, but I didn't realize until this moment that if it came down to it, her feelings for her mother were so strong, whether they be good or bad, that her thoughts would almost immediately travel to her mother in this time of sadness. She is angry at her father for the condition he has left her mother in. She has attempted to express her distance and frustration with her mother the entire book, but when it comes to a time of crisis, she still identifies with her and is angry at the person leaving her mother in a vulnerable position. Even though this person is her own father! The contradictions in feelings I think is a frustration that Lucy struggles with, because she still refuses contact with her family, so who knows what she is actually feeling for her mother, but from this line, it is indicative towards empathy to her mother.

Sharing Faith

One of the things that I struggled to understand after reading "This Blessed House" was the reasoning as to why the previous owners left all of the Christian trinkets. Some of them, such as the towel or the snow globe, are small enough and of little enough value as to be understandable, and replaceable. But there are others, such as the sticker thing on the window, and especially the silver bust that I think would be dearly missed. That is why I came to the conclusion that the previous owners were attempting to witness to the new owners, whether they knew they were not Christians or not. If I were moving into a house that had all sorts of knick knacks that pointed to a certain religion, especially one that I was unfamiliar with, I would be curious enough to dig deeper and try and understand the artifacts and the meanings behind them. The previous owners could have thought this way too, and hoped that in searching for the meanings, the new owners would convert. In my religion class, we focused on conversion, and one of the main things we talked about was the stimulus that drove the people to seek out a religion. These artifacts would act as such a stimulus.

Enabling in "O"

The entire premise for the movie "O" is the deception that Hugo uses to destroy the lives of everyone around him. What he is doing is evil, and should not be tolerated. He should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and yet, we watch the movie, and feel almost as if he is not responsible for his actions. The directors did such a good job portraying him as the victim of neglect by his father that the view feels sorry for him. By feeling sorry for him, you are just giving in to what he wants, and falling for his lies in the same way that the other characters in the novel do. By giving him a reason to do what he does, it defeats the point of the lack of motives that Shakespeare portrays. The directors of the movie realized that a character acting in a mean or vindictive way for no reason would probably not go over well with viewers, so they gave him a reason, they enabled him. I think that Shakespeare purposely left the reason for Iago's action ambiguous to leave it up to the reader to infer their own opinions. Movies tend to take this ambiguity out and they leave nothing to the imagination of the viewer. I think that the way Shakespeare does it is much more satisfying, because you can truly infer that Iago is evil, and not give him a reason to do the horrible misleading that he does.

Casting

Casting in a movie is sometimes the thing that makes a movie successful, and as far as the movie O is concerned who is cast as the lead characters is the thing that makes the movie. The part of Hugo has to be played by a person who is believably twisted. It would be a very difficult role to play just because of all the different angles he has to the character. In the book Othello, the character of Iago has so many different sides, he has to convince everyone he is something he is not. Hugo does the same thing, he hides his true self from those surrounding him, and this means that Josh Hartnett has to almost create a different character every time he is interacting with a different person. I think that the producers and casting directors did a great job finding actors who fit the descriptions of the characters in Othello, and it is very easy to see how they could fit into a true production of the play Othello. Yes, the story may have changed a little, but the underlying motives of the characters have not, and the actors accurately portray these motives.

Halo effect

The paintings in the back of the book, and the ones in the front, each has a different interpretation on Desdemona and her personality. My favorite one is the one where it appears that Desdemona has a halo, and is lying on the bed as Othello kills her. This view of her as an innocent and docile girl. I tended to view her as a strong-willed woman, who by the necessity of the culture, lived a quieter life than she might have wanted. You see how passionate she is a couple of times through the book. When she stands up to her father and marries Othello, shows she has the backbone to follow her heart. Plus the fact that she insists on following her husband into a war zone, shows that she won't back down. The fact of the day, however, is that a woman must stand behind her husband as a docile creature, only there to be seen and not heard. Desdemona, being a well-bread Venetian lady, acknowledges this cultural identity of women, and lives in a manner that follows this. I think, though, that to depict her as an angel goes too far, and would be seen by Desdemona herself as an insult. I think that she would want to be seen as an strong woman, who knew her place in the world, but still attempted to make her mark on her husbands life.

Adultery

I found it ironic that the entire premise for Iago's deception is Desdemona's unfaithfulness, but in Act 4, Scene 3, she has a conversation where she admits to Emilia that not even for the whole world would she be unfaithful to Othello. She seems to truly believe in the sanctity of marriage, and she cannot see how anyone could be unfaithful to the love of their life. Iago, however, is doing his best to convince Othello that the very thing his wife despises is the act that proves she does not love him. His whole plans hinge on the assumption that Othello is gullible enough to believe his wife could do such a thing, and in reality, she claims not to be. She is perhaps the purest of them all, because she is the only one to refute the possibility of infidelity.

Manipulations

I think that Shakespeare would roll over in his grave for this comparison, but I am about to draw a connection between Iago and Lisa, from "Girl, Interrupted" The two are master manipulators, and while people don't realize their full intelligence, they are always planning and working the situation to their advantages. They are always two steps ahead, and the situation rarely plays out in ways they didn't anticipate. Obviously I haven't gotten to the end of Othello, so I have no idea how its going to end, but I know how its going right now, and for much of the movie, and the book, the way we are able to realize how they are manipulating the situation and how the characters are oblivious drives me CRAZY! I hate sitting on the sidelines, feeling helpless as the other characters play right into their hands. The entire situation with the hankercheif drives me nuts, I just want to reach in and shake Cassio and Desdemona and Othello and ask them how they can be so oblivious! The same goes for Susanna, the way she lets Lisa push her around, and plants ideas in her head, it seems like it should be obvious, but Lisa and Iago are so good at hiding their true identities it is impossible for their true nature to be revealed.

Eyes

I am legit going to have nightmares after seeing the movie Girl, Interrupted. Angelina Jolie's character, Lisa has the most disturbing eyes I've seen since Voldomort's in Harry Potter. They were so captivating it was impossible to look away. In the movie, she sucked everyone into her world, dark and demented that it was. Susanna was not crazy when she went into the institution, but being around Lisa, and seeing her eyes, and subsequently getting sucked into a dark and twisted world by them, she began to see the world through those eyes. This slowly drove her crazy. I think that when we have friends who we are so close to we spend every waking hour with them, like Lisa and Susanna, we begin to see the world through the other person's eyes. And in the case of Susanna, it drove her even more crazy than she already was. It is often said that eyes are the windows to one's soul, and in the case of Lisa, this is true. The viewer looks at her, when she is staring deep into the camera and you know that somewhere in her is a little girl who is starving for attention. She controls everyone around her because she feels like she has no one and no control of her own life, and by controlling everyone else's mind she has a purpose in life. The despair that I saw in her eyes was heartwrenching and at the same time, I know that, because it was the 60's her condition, whatever it may be, probably went untreated or misdiagnosed. Something that modern medicine could have helped, drove a young women to the depths of despair. And this despair was evident in her eyes.

Cars

In the movie "Cars" Lightening McQueen ruins the road going through Radiator Spring. His punishment is to fix the road, and as soon as he is finished repaving the road he is free to go. He then goes on and attempt to fix the road in the fastest way possible, and in the end, the road is a mess. He went through and did a sloppy job, and his only goal was to do it and get it done and over with as fast as possible. He is then told to go back and fix it. So McQueen has to go back through the road and fix his mistakes, cleaning and smoothing the road out in such a way that is drivable. When he is finally finished, after much revision, the road is finished and so smooth the citizens of Radiator Springs are in awe.

This story line coming the movie is very similar to my writing style. When I'm writing a paper or short essay, I often wait and then sit down and write the entire essay in one sitting. I then will go back and edit my mistakes. I am like Lightening in this way, except I don't have to be forced to fix my mistakes. I freely admit to the fact that my writing is not always clear the first time it comes out of my head...in fact it is often a jumbled mess. I usually need to go back and smooth things out, in the same way that Lightening had to do.