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.