April Blog: Change

This is the last one, right? I feel like this should be my closing argument for some thesis that I've been arguing for during these last eight months. I'm struggling to find a way to incorporate current events into this blog, so I'll just talk about the election. It seems that we are facing a transitory period for the political parties that has been brought about by people feeling like they have no say in their government. People feel like things have been getting worse and worse and nothing that they can do will change it. So, they are supporting Bernie or Trump as an alternative to the establishment that they believe has given up on them. Now... how to connect that to literature....

In many of the novels that we have read, we have seen characters that are unsatisfied. Characters that believe they are missing something and make some kind of change. For example, Dorian Gray is afraid of growing old and somehow performs some kind of magic that makes a painting age instead of him. In Jekyll and Hyde, Dr. Jekyll is unsatisfied with his life and tries to separate the good and evil within him. In The Stranger, Meursault just sort of does whatever constantly, so he really doesn't fit into this train of thought. However, the other characters make a change with the hopes of making their lives better. They tread into new territory that others have not been to in the hopes of solving life's great problems. Of course, in the end they fail quite miserably. They both die.

Now, to connect the literature and the current events more obviously, there is a desire for change that I see a lot. Many people just want things to change. People want change and they search for it through elections or through mystical paintings or potions that turn them into, like, trolls or something. I wonder if maybe the change we are looking for won't lead us somewhere worse than where we are now. I suppose that's the risk one has to take. I myself have wanted change for a while in my own life, yet I wonder if, now that I am on the verge of such change, it is really what I want. Again, that seems to be the risk that you have to take to make your life better. So what lesson can be learned by the failure of those in the aforementioned novels? I suppose they tried to change the unchangeable; that is, the fact of aging, or of the duality of human beings. Maybe this connection was  a bit of a stretch.

March Blog: Regret

I feel like regret is kind of cliche; it's such a common human emotion, yet we talk about it like it's the worst thing ever. "I regret nothing" is quite the lie, if you ask me. We've all done things that we wish we hadn't. I suppose that the concept of regret has more to do with dwelling on regret; that's what people mean when they say that they regret nothing. They mean that they don't dwell on it anymore. But why is regret seen as so awful? I suppose it shows the lack of control we have over actions that we have already taken. Nothing is so out of control as our past.

We are fast approaching the end of the school year. It has truly gone by faster and faster the further we have gotten. I think that the end of one's senior year of high school is one of those times in life when one thinks of regret often. People regret that they weren't as involved, that they didn't get better grades, that they let a friendship fade away, that they didn't appreciate it while it happened. I think many students spend their entire high school career waiting for it all to be over. I know I did. I suppose that I do regret how I handled high school, although I can't say that I would be willing to do it all over again. I wish I had been more than just a student.

Regret is something that I have seen a lot in our most recent texts. Dr Faustus eventually regrets that he sold his soul for ultimate power; Dorian regrets trading his soul for eternal youth; Jekyll regrets his excursion into human depravity. A common theme here seems to be reaching out to absolutes that do not truly exist. There is no such thing as absolute power, eternal youth, or absolute evil. These texts seem to be suggesting that the inner monster of the human being is that which clings to absolutes. Humans are creatures of duality; infinitely powerful and weak, young and old, good and evil. The defeat of our inner monsters therefore must lie in our balanced understanding of ourselves. They regret allowing their inner monsters to corrupt their views of the world.

My inner monster, I suppose, corrupted my view of high school. I always felt that public education was poorly handled by the government and wanted more to make me conform than to make me an individual. I clung to the belief that school was an absolute waste of my time. I now realize, as many do in hindsight, that this is not true and that I gained a lot from high school and there was a lot that I could have taken advantage of if I had just been more balanced. The final lesson my high school experience is teaching me is that I can't cling to absolutes; they do not exist. I plan to make the most of college to avenge the death of a Josiah-that-would-have-been if I had made this realization sooner.

P.S. Sorry this is late. Consider my tardiness an April Fools joke. #gotcha