Homesick

So far I have really liked the Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. While I have only read the first two chapters of the novel I find the storyline really interesting and I am excited to see Ashima go back home to her family.

At least until now all Ashima has talked about is her family. Even when she is in labor and after giving birth she is continuously thinking about how here family should be there with her. This is clearly shown when it says, “these acquaintances are only substitutes for the people for the people who really ought to be surrounding them” (Lahiri 24). She just wants her mother to be with her though this tough time and I completely understand that. I don’t even think she had the chance to say a proper goodbye before she was whisked away by here new husband to a land completely foreign to her.

I think what bothers her more than her own sorrow and pain is that her new born son, Gogol, will have to grow up in this land without any aunts or uncles or even more important to Ashima, grandparents. She explicitly states this when she says, “She has never known of a person entering the world so alone, so deprived” (Lahiri 25). She just wants her child to be raised in the same way she was, around people that will love him no matter what.

Ashima is lonely in Cambridge and I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t tell her husband. At first I understood when she said she didn’t want to embarrass him but now that they have a child together things needed to change. That is why I was really happy to see her build up the courage to tell him that she is not happy there. I feel like they are just starting to communicate with each other and understand each other like a married couple should.

I can’t wait to see what happens as they go back to Calcutta to see Ashima’s family. I want to see how Ashoka helps Ashima get though this tough time and more importantly see if Ashima is even willing to come back to Cambridge.

No Pain No Gain!!!

Hey everyone,

We just started reading a new book called Notes from Underground. I have really enjoyed the book so far. Although I must say that it is a challenging read I do enjoy his writing. 

So far the underground man has puzzled me, at first he seemed insecure, contradicting himself in every other line saying he despises old people but want to live “till seventy! Till eighty!”(Dostoevsky 5). Later in the book he says he envies the normal man but does not wish to replace him. At this moment the underground man has confused me but I am excited to see what he will do and who he will be in these next few chapters.

One thing that I found particularly interesting about the underground man is the way he describes different forms of enjoyment through suffering. He talks about how when he was younger he used to get in trouble when he was not to blame but he would take it and actually have some sort of enjoyment in it. He later goes on to talk about a man moaning after a toothache. He describes this as pain that is enjoyable, a certain suffering that we love and need. After reading this I thought of myself and how I actually do the same thing, but under different circumstances. For example after a long practice or workout my body is soar, a certain pain much like the underground man describes, which I find enjoyable. I really thought that this was a great point that the underground man made. It was cleaver and ultimate true.

Notes from Underground has been really interesting so far and I am excited to see what other points he make that I can again relate back to my own experiences. I’m really excited to see what will happen next!!!

A Three Dimensional Story

Hey everyone. This is my essay for Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe hope you enjoy.

A Three Dimensional Story

Countless authors have attempted to dispel the idea of the single story and present a more complete picture through their writing. Achebe uses his novel, Things Fall Apart to provide a more accurate perspective of Africa and more specifically the Ibo people through the way he shows  them with their perfections and imperfections. Massoumeh Torfeh also tries to rid of the misconceptions associated with Iranian women in her article for the Guardian titled “Forget the stereotypes: Iran’s women are active and organized.” In her article she discusses how Persian women are intelligent and important members of Iran, both economically and socially. While both authors strive to rid of stereotypes such as Africans and Iranians who are uneducated and primitive, they accomplish their goal and provide a complete story in different ways. Achebe provides Okonkwo, a protagonist who is riddled with flaws such as being self-centered, controlling and an abusive individual along with great characteristics which include unmatchable strength and a stupendous work ethics to challenge the stereotypes associated with Africans, while Torfeh simply states the misconception and uses data and other evidence to rid of the single story of Iranian Women. 

Both Achebe and Torfeh use what they write to rid of the misconception about African and Iranian women who are uneducated and almost primitive in the way they act and live daily. Achebe uses his novel to show that the Ibo people are not as behind as others perceive them to be. He shows that there may be truth in the stereotype when he discusses the arrival of the white man who “was riding an iron horse” (Achebe 138). An iron horse, which they later learned it to be in fact a bicycle. The fact that the Ibo people could not differentiate between a horse and a bicycle may display them to be somewhat primitive, but the bicycle is yet another item which is not essential to their survival. Achebe is able to show that certain aspects of the Ibo people’s way of life may be primitive, but they are educated well enough in order to survive and strive. Achebe once again demonstrates that the Ibo people in their entirety, when he says, “Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great farmer and a great man” (Achebe 33). Achebe uses the quotation to display that the Ibo people are educated and have great capabilities. He shows that they can provide for themselves and actually exceed expectations. While he displays the Ibo people with their strengths and flaws, Achebe provides a more accurate description of the African people much like Torfeh does in her article. Torfeh uses the evidence that “Iranian women were attending universities” (Torfeh 24) and discusses how these women are woven into the social and economic fabric of Iran to challenge the idea that Iranian women are uneducated. Her article succeeds to dispel the single story and shows the importance of education to these women. Iranian women take pride in their education and are grateful to receive the opportunity to further their knowledge. While both authors provide more complete story, they achieve their goal in unique ways. Unlike Achebe who rids of these misconceptions by showing them to be partially true but lack the whole story, Torfeh challenges these ideas through factual evidence and does not accept some stereotypes to have any legitimacy. 

 Similarly to the way Achebe strives to show the Ibo people as able to advise the missionaries on their customs, Torfeh does the same in her article about Iranian women. In order to display the Ibo tribe as more than just people who need care, Achebe displays the tribe as capable of helping others when he says “neither of them succeeded in converting the other but they learned more about their different beliefs (Achebe 179).” This shows that the Ibo people and the missionaries are equally able to teach and learn from each other. The quotation from Things Fall Apart also proves that the missionaries see the Ibo people as incapable and view the journey as a one-way learning experience. Achebe even goes far enough as to say that the missionary’s journey is a story all about the “Pacification of Primitive Tribes of Lower Niger (Achebe 209).” Achebe makes the misconception that African’s are incompetent and primitive blatantly obvious in order to challenge the single story of Africa. Like Achebe, Torfeh explains that other nations can learn form Iranian women just as Iranian women can learn from them. She discusses how Iranian women “gained the right to vote in 1963 - earlier than in several European countries (Torfeh 9-10).” She shows that the Iranian women can assist other nations as well as expand their capabilities and challenge the misconception that learning is a one-way street.  Torfeh and Achebe complete the story and dispel of the misconception that Iran and Africa have no knowledge or information to contribute to other nations.

Achebe and Torfeh take different approaches in order to achieve their goal, and dispel of a single story. Whether it is of Africa and the Ibo tribe or the misconceptions associated with Iranian women in the Middle East. Achebe introduces certain characteristics of the Ibo people and shows some of the stereotypes to be partially true but fail to tell the entire story. Due to these incomplete stories, Achebe strives to provide the missing pieces and create a more accurate idea of the Ibo people. Torfeh on the other hand, attempts to rid of these stereotypes people have of Iranian women and challenge these incomplete stories through factual evidence and data presented in her article. Torfeh’s approach to dispel the single story may differ from that of Achebe, but she just like Achebe is able to succeed and provide a more rounded and accurate picture of Iranian women through her writing.

Achebe and Torfeh use their writings as a way to dispel the single story that African and Iranian women are uneducated, primitive and incapable of providing any valuable information to others. Through the evidence they present, these authors are able to provide a more complete view of both Africans and Iranian women. Both of these authors hope to rid of stereotypes that they can no longer tolerate. Achebe and Torfeh are able to use their skills to disposes of single stories that corrupt the world and strive to present a more accurate depiction of all people.  

Okonkwo is Really Falling Apart

Things are really “falling apart” for Okonkwo in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo is a famous wrestler and great warrior in his village, Umuofia, but in spite of recent events he is “an exile, condemned for seven years to live in a strange land” (Achebe 133). This punishment comes as a result of him accidentally killing someone while firing his weapon in commemoration of another great warrior who recently died. Now Okonkwo is fleeing to his motherland with his wives and children and his life begins to disintegrate.

In Umuofia, Okonkwo was a hardworking man who had great wealth and possessed titles, but after being banished we find that “work no longer had the pleasure for him it used to have (Achebe 131). Throughout his life Okonkwo has worked hard so that he would not be an unsuccessful man as his father was, but now it seems as though he has accepted defeat. Work was such a large part of him that without his great work ethic he will crumble. His family needs him in order to survive and be able to return home in seven years but, Okonkwo is broken and without him things are sure to fall apart.

While Okonkwo has been in exile, Christian missionaries have now come to his new village in hopes of spreading the word of god and converting the people of the village. The people of the village are interested but none more than Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son who is drawn to the new religion. Nwoye was haunted by the “question of the twins crying in the brush and the question of Ikemfuna who was killed” (Achebe 147). These issues drew Nwoye into the religion ,and before long he left his family and joined the missionaries. Not only is Okonkwo himself falling apart but his family is as well.

In these past few chapters Okonkwo has suffered a great deal. His life has been in utter chaos. He has given up everything he has spent his entire life working for. By being exiled Okonkwo has lost his home, titles, and most importantly his work ethic. Okonkwo is certainly not the man he once was ,but is now broken and crumbling into pieces.

Creatively Killing Creativity

For this blog post we were asked to discuss a ted talk we were interested in. I typed in “popular ted talk’s” and I found “Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?” to have the most views and decided it must be important.
Take a look and see how interesting it really is…

In this video he passionately talks about how the public education system does not value creativity as it does other subjects such as language and math. In his speech he goes on to discuss how we are born with creativity but as we mature we “grow out of it.”
Robinson defines creativity as ideas with value and importance. He says the body has been completely disregarded and the education system now only focuses on one region of our brains. I found it interesting when he said that creativity is now just as important as literacy. While I do think creativity is important, I cannot bring myself to agree with him. I feel that today’s standards require much more of a person that it did just a few years ago, from getting into a decent collage to getting a job, everything is changing. He even says how we students are told not to think about becoming an artist or musician because “there is no job in that” and there really are not many.  Because of this fact I find that the stress on subjects such as mathematics and English to be necessary.
I do think that arts such as dance and theater are important and if someone is truly passionate about it, I believe they should go after their dream, but I, personally am not interested in such arts. My high school does a great job of providing me with the opportunity to find my passion and actually embrace creativity. My school has certainly not killed my creativity but rather, inspired me to be more creative. Therefore, while Robison did bring up some fascinating facts and thoughts I must disagree with him when it comes to schools destroying our creativity.
While looking around I found this portion of a ted talk and I thought it was really interesting. It is about a way to communicate to all audiences all across the world. Check it out it.

The Academy Of Denmark

If I was told to put the story of Hamlet into a different time and place I would envision it some time in the 21st century, when Hamlet has graduated from high school and is leaving for collage. Characters such as Hamlet, Ophelia, Barnardo and Francisco, Horatio, Marcellus Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and other like them would all be recently graduated students from the Academy of Denmark, the most prestigious high school in the nation generating hundreds of thousands in revenue every year. Ophelia, being Hamlets high school sweetheart has even decided to follow Hamlet to the collage of his dreams so that they could be together. But Laertes being the protective older brother and star quarterback he is an object of Hamlet and their relation ship. The whole city knows of Hamlet and everything involved in their lives because everyone who is anyone has graduated from this academy. The story would begin with Hamlet opening the door to the dorm room of the collage of his dreams. As he steps in, he receives a call, a call that would lead to a set tragic of events, a call that his father, founder and dean of the Academy of Denmark has passed away. With the call comes news that his mother will be wed within hours to his uncle, Claudius and that he being the next in line will ascend the “throne” and become dean of the academy. And so the story would begin.
Act 1 Scene 1
As Bernardo and Francisco, two rebellious, troublesome brothers, empty their lockers and prepare to leave for collage they encounter their old friends Horatio and Marcellus. They all decide to take one last walk though memory lane on the beautiful campus of the academy and reminisce over all the mischievous things they did which resulted in suspensions received in the dean’s office. As they begin their walk a gust passes over them, minutes later the silhouette or a man passes before them and as they turn the corner the boys find the deceased dean of school standing before them saying “Fear what is to come, for we are all in trouble.”
And Scene.

To be the best soliloquy or not to be

For this post I had to find two videos showing different portrayals of Hamlet in his famous “To be or not to be…” (3.1.64-99) speech.
The first video I chose was...

And the second was….

Please watch them both. They are really interesting.

One similarity I noticed was that in both of these videos the actors speak in a soft quite voice making for a scary and eerie scene. I thought both actors did a great job showing Hamlet as a man lost and confused, struggling with the decision to commit suicide or not. I also found that both actors made it seem as if Hamlet was just thinking out loud rather than talking to himself. Both actors did a great job portraying Hamlet as the confused man he is.
While in both of the clips Hamlet seems disheveled, I felt that in the first video Hamlet was shown more accurately with his scruffy beard and ragged dark clothing. I felt that in the second video Hamlet seemed to poised to be having suicidal thoughts. I also thought that in the clip featuring Mel Gibson the setting was quite different. Although Hamlet is supposed to coincidentally run into Ophelia moments later, I think that Hamlet would not speak of such controversial things in public where other like Claudius and Polonius can watch and hear him, making the first clip better.
Although I feel the first video was set in a better place, I thought that the use of props such as the dagger made the scene much more dramatic in the second clip. I also felt that by using the mirror it made the scene much more personal, almost as if Hamlet is judging himself and taking a closer look on his life and what he has to live for in the mirror. I really enjoyed how different and unique this scene was from all the others.
Overall, I think that the best clip would be the first clip with Mel Gibson. While the second clip had a unique and different approach to the scene, by using the mirror and other props, I still feel that the first clip portrayed Hamlet more accurately. The first clip is more of what I envisioned this scene to be, Hamlet alone, thinking amongst the dead. I think that this scene with Mel Gibson is more of an accurate and true to how Hamlet is portrayed in the book.