Where is the hope?

With progress, whether it be technological, scientific, or literary, there comes changes. Social alterations, lifestyle changes, different communication styles, new governing bodies with new ideals. It is the prospect of these eventual changes that spurs many authors to write works of literature illustrating the potential for oppression, false happiness, and complete ignorance. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, Ayn Rand wrote Anthem, Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote We, and most famously, Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, and George Orwell wrote 1984. Every single one of these novels follows the same general format: oppressive government, unhappy main character, unhappy side character, act of rebellion, governmental attack of the perpetrator, and then it's up to the author whether or not the rebel fails or succeeds. Yet, despite the repetitive dystopia archetype, every single one of these novels has a different message, perhaps more accurately a warning. These novels are not meant to be something that the reader "reads and leaves." They are written to stay with you, as a little reminder of what could potentially happen if you allow yourself to be manipulated or distracted and lose sight of the importance of individuality and "freedom."

In the case of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, both men created novels in which there is a present oppression, but entirely different factors are maintaining the oppression. As stated by the author of the essay "Conclusion: The Two Futures: A.F. 632 and 1984", "Huxley makes the point that terror is less efficient than pleasure; the stick is less guarantee of stability than the carrot"(120). Orwell, unlike Huxley, designed a society in which fear and pain keep the citizens of Oceania from outwardly disobeying the rules of Big Brother. Huxley focused more on the "carrot," the pleasure aspect of humanity, and how we gravitate toward things that make us feel good. Although both governments are "stable," in A.F. 632 the government is more stable in that it is created and dictated by the people according to their wants and conditioning, while 1984 is based upon the manipulation of the people to make them believe Big Brother is the supreme power in their lives. In both stories there is a cautionary note, a warning that if we continue to move forward as we are, toward new technologies and more than likely war, we have to be even more aware of the happenings in the world, and more diligent in our attempts to remain individuals who are part of a democracy.

Reading both 1984 and Brave New World, either situation has potential in our current society, and if one were to look closely, may already be happening. Pain and pleasure already dictate what we do or do not act upon in life. We are governed by our own materialist desires, our avoidance of pain, and our "need" for revenge upon those who wrong us. We get the latest and greatest computers, phones, cars, 3-in-1 appliances. We go to war with nations based upon suspicions and anger. We fear the government keeping tabs on our lives through our emails and phone conversations through the Patriot Act. We watch news stations that only tell half the truth and are guilty of rampant doublespeak. And yet we say we are educated, generous, individual, safe people. If we are not careful, we will turn into a 1984- Brave New World combination. It says in the essay "A.F. 632 and 1984", that"Both have obliterated the past and have destroyed all books that might bear witness to it, though in Huxley's world state the past has officially ceased to be recognized at all, whereas in Nineteen Eighty-Four the past still survives, though not necessarily the past as it actually occurred"(123-124). As a nation, as a collective humanity, we need to fight against the manipulation that occurs everyday in our lives, we need to be aware of what occurs around us, and we need to make sure that we remain individuals with the knowledge that we need to maintain the limitations placed upon our governments.

We cannot allow ourselves to be manipulated and altered in the ways that every dystopia novel abuses its humanity. these novels were written to open our eyes to the situations that happen everyday in our world, but that we may be too preoccupied or ignorant to acknowledge. Huxley and Orwell have both written novels that should prepare us to fight against situations such as those posed in their novels. Both works are fairly hopeless, yet, with that hopelessness, perhaps we will be more inclined to fight, to find that happy ending that we crave so deeply. Otherwise, "if and when we actually do enter those new and terrible worlds, it will at least be with our eyes open"(128). What is so fearful and hopeless in these novels is the basic knowledge that we allowed these societies to occur, and brought that oppression and ignorance upon ourselves.

Environment

Of the many things that I am passionate about in life, protection and conservation of the environment is one of the most important to me. Some call me a tree hugger, others call me a hippie, and some simply scoff and mutter "what a liberal." Yet I absolutely refuse to back down to their arrogant, or perhaps more accurately, ignorant, stares, and their pathetic name-calling. I find it ridiculous that educated, in many cases well-educated people, turn to me and laughingly comment: "Who cares about the environment? We're going to be dead before anything major happens anyway." With that attitude, the world's going to be unlivable even sooner than scientists are predicting. The polar ice caps are melting, the weather patterns have become sporadic, the dumps are filling in, fresh water is a joke, and the rain forest is being destroyed daily. The scoffers should just wait. They may be privy to extreme climate changes and natural disasters if they do not change their thinking. I do think that, although the damage has already been done, people need to realize that if we were to work to stop further injury to the environment, we need to work together to lessen our impact. I want to know that my great-grandchildren, even my grandchildren, will be able to experience the countryside that I have grown up in, not as a piece of parkland, but as a natural, untouched and original piece of land. People do not seem to realize that instances such as massive hurricanes and tsunamis, and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, these are all messages from the earth, telling us to take it easy on her. If we don't respect the world around us, we can't really expect it to be nice back. Yet what's the average American's solution to this? "We need more oil, let's dig up Alaska," or "Let's research the potential for life on another planet in our solar system." If a person were to pay attention to statistics, it has been shown numerous times that our oil supply is going to run out, and if there is not more research conducted we will be without an energy source because of our reliance on fossil fuels. Also, Alaska is one of the few pristine, near untouched pieces of wilderness left in North America. To mar that landscape with a pipeline is taking away that last piece of nature that land-hungry Americans have left. And then the idea of one day living on Mars: in order to survive on Mars, we need to pollute it. We need to emit greenhouse gases, and essentially begin a process on that planet that could be just as destructive as what we are doing to our current planet Earth. where's the common sense there? Sometimes I just do not understand how readily people turn to the seemingly easiest solution to a problem, without first exploring the impact of that solution.
To preserve the environment is to assist the future, to make sure that future generations have someplace to live that is clean and safe. If we, not just a few individuals, but humankind, starts the process of cleaning up and protecting the world around us, there is a much greater chance that our families will still be able to live on Earth without fear of pollutants and other environmental factors. There is no easy way out, but some do not seem to realize that. More research needs to be done on alternate fuel sources, more environmentally friendly house and building construction, and new technology for things that tend to be difficult to biodegrade. Without knowledge and awareness, we may as well just accept our deaths now, because the environment will have been destroyed by the time our offspring reach maturity anyway. More action needs to be taken, and the name-calling and dismissing tones need to cease, because one day they will regret never trying to make a difference in their world situation.

Genetic Engineering

In our modern society, science has become the main tool in addressing the problems of the world. Science is being used to stop global warming, develop special plants to feed third world countries, and it is being used in the prevention and treatment of diseases. However, questions arise when science is used in the manipulation of human chromosomes to develop the ideal child, following a grocery list of desirable traits. As valuable as this genetic engineering is in avoiding certain genetic disorders, a line of morality is crossed when alterations are made in gene codes that will influence character traits and other pieces of individuality.

For parents of children with genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis or Downs syndrome, genetic engineering could mean the end to their child's suffering, or even preventing that suffering. All that these parents ask for is the use of gene therapy to see if their children or potential children can be rid of the disorders that have affected, or may affect them, them from birth. the predisposition for cancer can also be eliminated through the use of genetics, saving daughters the possible inheritance of a breast cancer gene. when used in the name of medicine, genetic engineering is a very valuable tool, because it can prevent issues during recombination of the cells of the embryo, or the duplication of genes on specific chromosomes. With this technology, parents would no longer have to worry about these types of lifelong genetic ailments and it would save them the emotional pain of watching their child struggle through a life of medical issues. For example, in Brave New World, certain diseases are prevented through the early insertion of good gene sequences to avoid the occurrence of genetic disorders. It is through genetics that the genetic diseases that we know of today could be eliminated, and the ailments that we experienced would simply be bacterial ones such as the common cold or the flu.

It is when parents who ask geneticists to design an embryo for them that has all the traits that they request that things get difficult. The coding for a child with the desired traits, such as blond hair and blue eyes, with an athletic build and an outgoing personality, removes the connection between parent and child. These traits, if being requested, are probably not traits that the "parents" have themselves. There will be no saying "Oh my goodness, you do have your mother's eyes don't you?" or "You are just as stubborn as your father." This elimination of inherited connection leaves the parents with something more to be desired. As perfect as the child may be in their eyes, in a sense it is not truly their own child, it is more like an adoption of some other person's child. And what happens when the geneticists mess up, and the child that results is not what the parents ordered? Do they send it back? Where could they send it back to? It leaves a child without a home, and without true parents because it is not what its parental programmers requested. Also, if we think that right now there are major bragging competitions between parents about their children, imagine what will happen when everyone is trying to one-up everyone else by designing the best child. Then where is the individuality and naturalness of that child. They're not even a product of their parent's genetics at that point, and they have no real point in being created other than to be used as a tool for social status. Parents can say "I made my daughter/son just like this so that they would be the best baseball player since Babe Ruth." Where is the morality in that, is what I ask.

As a society, if we are to utilize the science of genetic engineering, we must place some controls on the industry. The use in medical technology is acceptable if it is simply preventing potentially harmful or life threatening disorders, because it allows the child to live a well-rounded, healthy life. The use of genetics to program a child is a major problem though, because it allows for parents to pick and choose traits and create a child that is unnatural, superb in certain areas, and apparently free from flaw. The creation of a race of "perfect" children could be on the horizon if genetic engineering is not controlled, and the abuse of that technology is very likely. Parents should be able to take the child that they receive naturally, and be completely happy with that child because it is designed just the way nature intended it to be characteristically.


I am sorry that my post is late, my electric was going on and off all yesterday afternoon and evening because of the wind, and my parents didn't want the computer to have a power surge happen. I think I could venture to say they're a bit paranoid about the computer being french-fried....

Thankful

In thinking of something that I am thankful for, I tried so hard to find something that would not be seen as the generic Thanksgiving response, but in the end , I failed in that quest. Sitting at dinner tonight, my family members seated so close together we were bumping elbows, I came to the realization that I am truly thankful for my family. Life would be so boring without them. No inside jokes, no moments of hysterical laughter, and none of the occasionally bloody battles we fight with one another. I would never sit through the after dinner talks about the classmates from high school, and where they are now, or the disputes over who really got shot in the forehead with the BB gun that summer. I would never have experienced the heated arguments about politics and who is doing what wrong and "if you're so sure that's right, why don't you go and get elected" that always seem to wriggle their way into dessert conversations. Sometimes I think maybe the dessert is too sweet, so we feel the need to sour it up a bit. I am thankful for all the satisfied sighs of bloated contentment after a surprisingly filling holiday dinner, because those sighs are some of the few moments of silence we experience on those nights. Without my family, I would never know how fun, but completely overwhelming, a truly raucous and chaotic group of people is. I would never have experienced moments of sensory overload, as fourteen cousins compete for the attention of their respective parents, in the quest for the largest piece of pie. My ears would not hurt after holidays if it were not for my family, my head would not feel as though it were spinning off into another dimension if I did not have my family. If my family were no longer here, I would be so lonely. If there is one thing that family has over friends that makes them far superior, it is that, no matter how mad or upset you become with one another, you always have a connection to them. That cliche... that I cannot remember at all at this point in time, about friends going but family always being there, is so true, and something I am very grateful for. I would be lost without my family. They are a piece of my identity, the people who make me laugh so hard I cry, and who make me so angry I want to rip my hair out. I am thankful for my mother's loud laughter and witty comments, no matter how shocking they may be. I am thankful for my father's quiet observations, and his well-placed comments in a conversation. I will always be thankful for the companionship of my three younger siblings, because we made our childhoods absolutely memorable, and we were best friends for the entirety of our pre-middle school years. As common as being thankful for your family may be, I think my thanks are more for who my family is, and how they make my life so dynamic. Without them I would be an entirely different person, a far more boring and bland person, with very few stories to tell. I wouldn't have experienced the walloping from pillow fights, the days of misery out in the fields, made more interesting with a few well-aimed dirt clods, and I would never have had the connections with people like I do with my brothers, my sister, or my parents. They have taught me so much, and I am probably still learning. They are such a loud, happy, and stubborn group of people, and they make my life so interesting. I will always be grateful for being born into this family of craziness, a family that at times seems almost surreal, and to outsiders can be totally overwhelming. My greatest fear used to be that my family would scare my friends away if I invited them over, but I have come to realize that, if my friends can't handle my family, they don't deserve me, because, in a sense, I am my family. My family has shown me that there is more to life than material things, that if a person does not like my family they are not a true friend. They have shown me how being true to yourself is the most important thing that you can do, that the comments of other people should not affect me, because I am my own person, and I control what happens in my life. I know that my family will always accept me, no matter who or what I decide to be, and even if they voice their opinions, good and bad, about what I am, they will always love me. I am thankful for family dinners with my family every night, for family movie nights, for the badly sung happy birthdays, for the loving pokes and jabs we bestow upon one another as we pass. Who would have thought it took a chorus of "shut-ups" at dinner for me to see that my family is the one thing that I am most grateful for? We may be rude, we may not hold anything back, but we have fun and we each have a cause in life, and we all have a love and appreciation for one another that cannot be destroyed. Family is what holds me together when life gets tough, and I will never in my life deny them, no matter how embarrassing they are being, because without them, I have no identity. They define me, and I define them, and I am very thankful for that.

Feminism in The Glass Castle

Feminism is defined as "comprising a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and equal rights for women." In the memoir The Glass Castle an aura of feminist pride seems to surround Jeanette's mother, however, her ideas of feminism are slightly warped interpretations. She claims she wants independence, that domesticity is not her thing, that she does not need to bend her values for a man, yet Rosemary Walls is forever taking her ideas to an extreme, or defining her laziness as feminism. I understand, the woman is bipolar, but I think it is wrong to cry feminist if your views of the philosophy are incorrect and reflect poorly on the cause. One instance in the novel that truly disgusted me was on page 56 :

Mom didn’t like cooking much— “Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour,” she’d ask us, “when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”—so once a week or so, she’d fix a big cast-iron vat of something like fish and rice or, usually, beans. We’d all sort through the beans together, picking out the rocks, the Mom would soak them overnight, boil them the next day with an old ham bone to give them flavor, and for that entire week, we’d have beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If the beans started going bad, we’d just put extra spice in them, like the Mexicans at the LBJ Apartments always did. (Walls 56)

In the name of her independence, this mother defies many societal norms of the era in which this story takes place. The passage shows how the mother would rather be a self-absorbed person and let her children eat rotting food, as opposed to taking some time to make sure that the are eating healthy, balanced meals. Although this style of meal preparation is easy and food is always on hand, it is unsanitary, and completely lazy. As much as the mother disagrees with domesticity, she could approach feeding her family in an entirely different way, and still have time for herself and for her artwork.
The mother in this story also says many things that I find completely out of line for a mother to say. After attending a college seminar for a few days, Rosemary returns home and suddenly feels as though she is a new woman. Walls writes:

A few days later, Mom came home. She seemed different, too. She had lived in a dorm on the university campus, without four kids to take care of, and she had loved it. She’d attended lectures and she’d painted. She’d read stacks of self-help books, and they had made her realize she had been living her life for other people. She intended to quit her teaching job and devote herself to her art. “It’s time I did something for myself,” she said. “It’s time I started living my life for me.” (Walls 218)

Any person who decides that they are going to be a parent is making the decision to give up a part of their life for their children, and they just have to accept that. Although I do not feel a parent should live vicariously through their child, there has to be some level of involvement otherwise what was the point of having kids. Yes, the mother in this memoir wants independence, but I find it ironic that she of all people feels she has been living for other people. Throughout the memoir the mother is the one character who seems to not be living for someone else, and who appears to be the most independent, yet in this passage she claims to have been held back by her family. I find her striving for independence a joke, and if this woman were my mother, I would be pretty annoyed with her.
I think that the feminism in this novel was not actual feminism beliefs, but instead the way that these beliefs are warped and twisted by other people to defend their short-comings, neglect their families, and act downright ridiculous. If Jeannette's mother were truly an equality seeking, independent woman, she would have left her husband, cared for her children in a humane way, and made sure that she divided time between herself and her family equally.

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, is composed of a series of vignettes that, as separated as some may seem from the story, all come together to form a cohesive and symbolic novel. A prevalent theme of this novel is the focus on women, and the effect that they have on the soldiers -mere boys- caught in Vietnam. To some of the young men, girls are the one thing they can rely on to provide their dreams with a happy place. To others, the females of their life only cause them pain and misery as they watch them slip away. Of all the stories of women and their feminine destruction, the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is one that I felt depicted one of the most heartbreaking and brutal instances of a girl and her interaction with the soldiers in Vietnam.


Mary Anne is her name, this destroyer of high school hopes and dreams. She shows up at the medic's camp in all her blond and perky glory, the proof of miracles in a war zone. She is the subject of awe for so many of the men, as they enviously watch she and Mark walk away from them, hand in hand. In her first week at the medic compound Mary Anne seems to be quite the treat for the men, who for so long have been deprived of a pretty face. She is seemingly harmless, a picture of innocence, but there is something about her that the men just cannot quite place. As the men watch Mary Anne as she asks her constant questions, they are impressed by her zest for knowledge, and her need for answers. Although she seems to be somewhat limited on brains, the men believe she will learn just fine. After this comment, one of Mark's fellow soldiers says: " There's the scary part. I promise you, this girl will definitely learn." In a vague use of foreshadowing, Tim O'Brien indicates that the innocence of this girl is going to wear off, and she may eventually prove all of the medics wrong.

True to the soldier's comment, Mary Anne does learn. She soaks up information like a sponge, eager to learn as much as she can. She learns to shoot a gun, to paint her face, to walk without making a sound. She begins to go off on ambush missions with the Green Berets, not telling anyone that she is leaving. Mary Anne becomes the perfect soldier: emotionless, dedicated, and always in search of a kill. And one day, the "scary part" comes to be realized: "She had crossed to the other side. She was part of the land. She was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill." The scariness of the situation was not that fact that Mary Anne had learned as much as she had, but instead the fact that she went through such a drastic transformation. The change of Mary Anne from a young, innocent high school girl, to an intent and surefooted soldier is what stirs fear in the men. She is representative of what the men themselves are as soldiers, or what they are becoming as they spend more time in Vietnam. Mary Anne does not destroy the lives of men through her departure from Mark, she destroys the mentality that war will not change them, that they are the same now as when they left home. Mary Anne shatters the idea of normalcy, of going home to have things remain the same. Her metamorphosis is symbolic of the way in which war changes people, of how life can never be the same after the blood and pain of combat. For Mary Anne, the true effect of the war on her, in such a short amount of time, is her loss of innocence. The Vietnam War took so many naive young men and opened their eyes to the horror and destruction of war. Some loved it, some couldn't handle it, and some tried their best to ignore it. They all had to do their best to survive, and Mary Anne turning into a piece of Vietnam was her survival skill. By becoming one with her environment, she is adapting to her environment, and more accepting of the destruction around her.

Mary Anne, in becoming one of the soldiers, shows the change people go through when they are exposed to gore and violence on a daily basis. She is the epitome of adaptation. This girl is so frightening to the men because of how quickly she changes, and also how true her transformation is. Amongst men, they can deny that they change at all. But to have a woman come into the war, and see a stereotypically innocent and kind person turn into a war machine shows the men just how much they have changed. O'Brien effectively uses Mary Anne, not as a tool of destruction of men's emotions, but rather, the destruction of the men's lies to themselves. She destroys any notion that the war has not changed them, and she creates a living, exaggerated example of what they have become. That is the scary part.