To be or not to be...

To start off, I have to say that I had a lot of fun with blog posts this year. A lot of fun! Although they seemed like a burden in the beginning of the year (Every weekend?! 200+ words?! Blasphemy!), they helped me reflect on what I was reading and search for deeper connections to the text. I would anticipate the week's blog post, so that I could rant on, or hate on, a certain reading. The blog was my canvas and my brain would just explode onto it, sometimes in incoherent jumbles of words, but it was a therapy of sorts, allowing me to express my strong feelings about something that moved me entirely. In short, I think I should end my blog posts this year on a long note; I am a little reluctant to let it go after an amazing year, so I might as well delay this sad breakup in any way I can. 

To be or not to be -- that is the question. Hamlet is trapped in a well of internal turmoil, and his inability to carry out any action frustrates him to no ends. He plots his way to Claudius's murder, but hesitantly. This theme of frustration and inaction is carried throughout the play as he continues to torment Claudius and Gertrude as well as himself and Ophelia. He openly curses his mother, as noted when he says, "I will speak daggers to her, but use none" (3.3.429). Hamlet insults her in the famous bedroom scene and decides to leave Gertrude to her own torment, but he does not seem to openly denounce Claudius, instead choosing to plot slowly and make Claudius face his guilt. When Hamlet's wits escape him, he acts irrationally, but when his rational mind is in place, paradoxically when he is "mad", he holds back.

The question is, is Hamlet's inaction a virtue or vice? (This is going a little farther than where we got in class) Hamlet certainly did take long enough to kill Claudius, but even so, he killed Claudius in the heat of the moment, after his mother and Laertes lay dying, not in an epic showdown. In a way, it seems as if Hamlet never wanted to go that far, because his rational mind restrained him. His turmoil stems from his wish to kill Claudius and take the throne as well as his his to stay rational, an obvious fight between his id and superego (also referring to Freud). Hamlet's inaction not only prolonged everyone's death, but also caused him grief. However, revenge is best served cold, and Hamlet may have been waiting for the perfect moment to denounce Claudius and kill him in a manner worthy of dramatic hero movies; on the other hand, Hamlet's inaction allowed Demark to slip even further into ruin. It must also be remembered that Hamlet was scholarly and cautious. So, was his indecision good or bad?

Ending on a more random note, I find Hamlet adaptations everywhere. As a child, I watched Lion King. Innocently. My mind was completely blown when I found out that it's an adaptation of Hamlet. Suddenly I realize that it is everywhere. Hamlet has even crossed racial boundaries and the Chinese, Indian, European, etc. have all made some kind of reference to it. Just this weekend, on a lazy day, I decide to watch The Banquet, which is strongly based off of Hamlet, but I was completely shocked by the director's liberties, especially after reading the actual play. In this adaptation, the equivalent of Hamlet was infatuated with Gertrude, who is not his real "mother", but rather the Empress Mother after she betrays him and marries his father. There's no ghost and Hamlet is a complete pansy, even more delicate than the Hamlet in Shakespeare's play. Gertrude is actually the most crafty of them all, plotting to kill Claudius and take the throne as a female Emperor; Polonius and Laertes are equally cunning, planning to overthrow Claudius and  foiling Gertrude's plans. Laertes even ominously warns Hamlet to lay low, because his action will cause the death of everyone else. The lesson I gleaned from all of this is that Hamlet's plight is ubiquitous and felt by all.  Like "Shakespeare in the bush", we can all interpret Hamlet differently. We can all (as Ms. Valentino warned us) connect with him in some way, and his multifaceted character appeals to us because we are Hamlet. 

Well, blog, I think it's time to say goodbye. It's been a fun year with you and I'll miss my weekly posts, but I will continue to read on! 

Signing off for the last time,

Annie

Living Other People's Childhoods

David Sedaris is jealous that his partner, Hugh, is able to visit an Ethiopian slaughterhouse for a field trip. Which is ironic because in America, it would be highly inappropriate and it wouldn't be one of the first places to come to mind. The trip concludes with the short-lived introduction of a white little piglet with trotters clacking "delicately" on the floor. It is subsequently shot at point-blank range and although the children are traumatized, the teachers are hardly fazed. Hugh also recounts without much enthusiasm, the visits to actual fields, the room where a dictator was murdered, and watching hyenas being fed. For Hugh, his life is close to typical for him; for Sedaris, Hugh's life is unique and mindblowingly amazing. 

Of course, Sedaris imagines this from his point of view. His life in the slow, easy-going North Carolina does not even hit the radar of "astounding excitement!" To achieve this compare/contrast, Sedaris uses extensive parallelism, point-by-point, to highlight that his life is rather uneventful. While his pets are named normal names so normal that I can't even remember them, Hugh's pets are called Satan and Charlie Brown. Furthermore, Hugh has a monkey, the epitome of exoticism. (WHO DOESN'T WANT A PET MONKEY WHOSE ARMS YOU CAN RUN INTO?) Sedaris remarks that “the verbs are the same, but [Hugh] definitely wins the prize when it comes to nouns and objects” (8). He admits that he and Hugh shared similar landmarks in life; however, despite the difference in outward lifestyles, both shared almost the same level of contentment. Hugh saw nothing special about his daily life, and likewise, Sedaris saw nothing special about his daily life. It is all a matter of perspective.

Sedaris' entire passage is covered in irony. He knows that Hugh's life is not necessarily the best, yet he portrays it as so. Sedaris wants the glories and experiences from Hugh's life, without the danger. Like a "petty thief", he borrows Hugh's life and adapts it as his own with no reserve. This allows him to fill out the gaps in his childhood and to flair and smooth it out as well. He realizes that there are those who are worse off than him, and that he should remain content with what blessings he has.

Advancing Backwards

Alice's Red Queen once said, "you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." We are constantly hungering for knowledge, to cure the diseases which may ironically, be caused by our own experimentation. We advance, only to fall backwards again, impeded by our blind search for the meaning of life. We find ourselves looking for antibiotics that cure what mankind as released onto itself. Like Victor Frankenstein who unleashed his monster into the world only to have his loved ones murdered, Marie Curie's radium not only killed herself, but was also used in nuclear weapons that killed others and currently leaves nations at the brink of disaster.

In Raymo's "Measure of Restraint", he relates the tale of the little girl who, unbeknownst to her, rubbed radioactive materials all over her body like "carnival glitter". The most dangerous part of knowledge and science is that it assumes the guise of innocence and harmlessness. Our GM (genetically modified) foods sit harmlessly on the supermarket shelves and eventually make their way into the body. What are the long-term effects? They are evident in other arenas of life. We eat antibiotics like we drink water, using them for any aliment. What are we seeing now, decades from the discovery of penicillin by Fleming? We are dumping millions of tons of bacteria into the environment, leading to the survival of drug-resistant strains that leave doctors to "keep running" and find new antibiotics that will, in time, be rendered useless again. Yet we have no other alternative. It's either keep ahead of the pack, or be eaten by the pack. A PBS special remarked that "time was running out" for certain individuals with multi-drug resistance, and that bacteria are gaining resistance too quickly for new cures to hit the markets. Should we let these people die? While Raymo's argument is understandable, it's absolutely irrational not to pursue science altogether. Man was bound to move forward, but he/she must do so with a level of caution.

You hear it on the news everywhere. Plasmids cut and glowing jellyfish genes inserted into bacteria or plants. Corn that is engineered corn, meat that is cloned. What are the consequences in the future. I think it was a bag of Sunchips that I ate once. It was the loudest, crunchiest bag ever, but had a stamp of approval "100% biodegradable" or some other greeny message on it. Although it sounded like an eco-friendly alternative to tossing it in the trash, the bag actually had a disclaimer: It would be reduced to plastic particles barely visible to the eye, yet "____ particles' effects on the environment are unknown at this time". In essence, we're trying to hide our own problems, the trash created from previous experiments, through new experiments. How much longer will it be before we realize that plastic or some unknown particle is killing us, just as the scientists realized that radium was deadly?

Much like how Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge and was banished from the Garden of Eden, we must approach science cautiously; it is a double-headed snake waiting to strike when we least expect it.

To be Poor or to be Rich

Being poor is terrible. No one ever wants to be poor, and whenever politicians and activists speak out about it, they denounce it and address it as one would best address a deadly disease, delicately, but not so. If you really want to get into the economics of it, poverty-stricken people would always have to exist, because wealth is very subjective. Furthermore, if everyone were "rich" and had endless money at their disposal, there would be mass inflation--and we can't have that--or everyone would be "equal" in wealth, making us all socialists or communists. Either way, we find that we must deal with our situations and that money does not necessarily correlate with happiness. (A good example which I am lifting straight from my textbook is the economic boom in China after 1994. Although urban people are wealthier by many degrees and conditions are improving, they are no more happy than the rural farmer.)

In Hazlitt's "On the Want of Money", he outright states that "Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without money." This is true; without two pennies to rub together, you find yourself wondering where to get your next meal from and where you can sleep safely from night to night. There is no security in abject poverty, but at the same time, too much security in wealth leads to dissatisfaction and boredom. Hazlitt goes on to detail all that affluent people can do, but also the misery and unhappiness that accompanies it. He makes us realize that material wealth is superficial, and that we'll be unhappy no matter how much, or how little, we have of it until we reach the self-actualizaion stage on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and pursue what makes us happy. Or as Alan Watts put it, "What if money were no object? How would you really live your life?" In a society that places so much emphasis on having money to be successful, a majority of us compromise our true happiness for it. In the end, Hazlitt illustrates, we all meet the same fate, rich or poor, and we all have just one life to live. We can live happy and die happy, or life unhappy and die unhappy. 

How to Alter Public Space for Dummies

Brent Staples comes across as a menacing, towering, young black male to all of his "victims". He describes the pain of being labelled and ostracized upon entering the social stage, and calls his ability to alter public space an unfortunate "inheritance". He is mistaken as a mugger, a potential attacker, and a thief time and time again. The black men are all connected in this way; they have experienced it and can only cope by sharing their stories. Staples understands that this idea has been deeply planted in society, and he does not expect it to change because despite the unfairness, there is a seed of truth. After all, how are you supposed to decide whether someone is a mugger or not when it is dark outside in a secluded place? (And if the news about last night's mugging is still fresh in your mind, it's bound to have a negative effect.)

This piece reminded me of the Trayvon Martin shooting incident that actually occurred just last year. Martin was an unarmed 17-year-old African American male who was suspected because he was in a guarded neighborhood, "cutting in-between houses...walking very leisurely for the [rainy] weather", and "looking at all the houses" as well as wearing a shifty-looking hoodie. Although there was a violent confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin, it's unclear who began it. The sad part is that black males take to violence more often and are more prominently featured in news stories than anyone else. This leads to the mentality that all black males are the same...which can be understandable to a certain extent. I've read Duke "alert emails" to all students, where the perpetrator of the muggings is described as a "tall, young, black male, wearing a grey shirt and blue jeans". The only difference is that some wear masks while others don't, so it's almost questionable as to who actually did it. So should we continue to allow black males to alter public space or should we stay cool and change this mentality? It's hard to say.

Well folks, I suppose the lesson is: When you're in doubt, always whistle Vivaldi Four Seasons.

Aerosmith and Gunsmith

NRA: Is rather fond of guns.

Perhaps opposites attract. Sarah Vowell and her Dad, in her "Shooting Dad", are as different as chalk and cheese and two peas in a pod. It all begins and ends with a bang!, with a gun/cannon shot. She loses interest in guns when she has her first interaction with one at the age of six, and subsequently, interest in her father and his hobbies. While her father loves working with guns and most weapons of destruction, she turns to music and the arts. Furthermore, their house is likened to a war zone, with only a few areas in the house that are not dominated, and her twin glumly says that she is the "loneliest twin in history". The differences are endless and almost insuperable. 

Vowell has a sudden revelation (as her father is lobbing cannonballs in a public mountain and she is madly waving around a microphone) where she realizes that she is just as quirky as her father is; the two have messy work-spaces and enjoy fiddling with various gadgets. Although Vowell still does not like guns, she concedes by admiring the awesome power of the cannon, and the effect it had on her. Both are artists of different kinds, aerosmith and gunsmith, and her father's gesamtkunstwerk is a symphony in which her whole family will eventually play a part in.

Debussy: Writes Clair de Lune.

Although the two have their differences, their relationship is not strained. She may not be as close as her twin is to her father, Vowell and her father have light, playful exchanges as they banter and joke around with each other, which is their manner of expressing love.  (Just as some married couples will argue and tease each other but not  really mean it seriously.) Ultimately, she sees past her differences and decides that she has much more in common with her father than she had thought. 

Cookin' with My Momma, Maybe?

"Bro, Dad, you can lean on me."
"That's my son."

In "Arm Wrestling with My Father", Manning conveys that there is more than one way to communicate with your parents. His father doesn't go to his orchestra concerts, but is more than willing to go to his lacrosse games and help him; arm wrestling becomes a favorite pastime, a symbol of their unspoken love. Their confrontation and role reversal occurs when Manning defeats his father in an arm wrestling match, but Manning doesn't want to overturn his father's strength and carry his father, who has gotten weaker and older. Manning's relationship with his father is very physical, and his father only softens at the very end when he realizes that his son has grown up and that he must lean on him. He understands that his father didn't need to tell him that he loves him. It is implied and strengthened through years of physical contact. 

Some parents are very expressive, while other parents are not so much. My parents, especially my Mom, fall in with the latter. [Now to pick on my Mom, who I like to pick on a lot just for fun, hehe.] While we like to chat with each other over funny news or bad gossip about celebrities' surgery gone wrong, I don't really recall her ever expressing her love for me verbally. She also never comes to my concerts or events in general (okay, I admit that maybe she comes during the last few minutes to wait for me to finish, but she also forgot to pick me up once and left me in the freezing cold), and takes a more passive stance in my life. But I can tell she loves me because she reads me news articles on how to improve my life, she comforts me in my perpetual failure, and she is confident that I will do well. I've realized now that a person can throw 'I love you' around and not really mean it, so maybe my Mom was wise to show it in other ways; I've also taken a long time to realize that the only reason why my Mom tolerates house chores is so that I have more time to study and become greater than her (maybe). Like Manning, I still want my Mom to take care of me and tell me that everything will be fine, and maybe I'm not ready to grow up yet. I haven't had the role reversal that Manning has, and probably will in some far-off-day-that-I'm-not-looking-forward-to, but I admire my Mom's steely strength and I've been able to understand and appreciate her a lot better. :)