The Stranger Within

In this unit we read the book The Stranger about a misguided man that does the extreme and is punished for it... but not because of the crime, but because of how he acted before the crime. The actions of this man were very bland. He showed little to no emotion and commented more on what his needs were, then what his wants were. Like, when he would state that he was hungry. The main character was a stranger in a sea of people that were trying to be like everyone else and he was judged for this. He was sentenced to death because he was different. He showed no emotion at his mothers funeral and when he killed the arab. It was just done and over with. It happened, and he moved on. He did what he wanted afterwards like nothing extreme happened before then. The people in this novel, like the readers, judged him and never understood him for this.

What if, though, everyone just did what they wanted, just because they felt like doing it? What if we had no emotions to affect our daily lives? We could go to the movies after the death of a loved one. Or we could go on a date and have no emotional connection to someone, but be content with it, not overly joyed and passionately in love. Wouldn't everything be easier. When you think of it this way, it all makes perfect sense and you can commend him for his bravery to stand up to all those two faced strangers that pretend and do, not what they want, but what the people expect them to do. It's all just a story we are creating really. Over exaggerating something that everyone else is going through. There's nothing more special about your wedding then there is about the wedding that will be held in that same venue next saturday. We make it special, we over exaggerate the perfection and we expect everyone to do the same. In reality the life that Meursault is living is how life really should be lived... Everything would be simple, easy.

You don't need to sit there and cry for days after your dog dies just because that is what everyone else does and that is what is normal. You don't need to go into a funk when you lose your job because that is what everyone expects out of you. You don't need to give up when you are overwhelmed and stressed because thats what the world is setting you up to do, waiting for you to crumble because everyone else would. Be your own person, don't be a stranger to yourself.

The Women in Our Lives

In this unit we focused mainly on women in literature and how their role in the novel created controversy in society. The women in the literature like "A Doll's House", "A Thousand Splendid Suns". And "The Awakening" all have strong main female characters that go against the normal for society. Nora, in "A Doll's House" who left her family behind because she no longer felt that, that was what her role in society should be. She needed to get out of this doll house and break free from the restraints that society was holding her on and making her feel like a puppet to their little world. In "A Thousand Splendid Suns" the women in the novel were unable to express themselves freely. Only Mariam's mother who lived with no man and had a hatred towards men. And than later on in the novel Mariam had freedom after killing her husband. To be able to be themselves the women in the novel had to remove themselves from society and take away that male figure in their lives.
Now in society women are more accepted and have a better chance of doing and achieving the same thing as men do and achieve, but it is still not equal. Women are still viewed as the more fragile sex and they do not get paid as much. These are just two examples out of the many that still affect women. And until we stop raising our boys and girls differently it will never stop.
This unit really showed how far a long women have come to being equal with men and it showed the individuality and the ability that women have to succeed and live a happy life without a man. It was an interesting unit to cover and really showed the power of woman in literature and did not focus on the male hero like most novels do.

Where the Sun Never Shone

In the novel "A Thousand Splendid Suns" we meet two main female characters, Mariam and Laila. Mariam starts off the novel living with her mother as an outcast in society. Her father when she tried to go see him rejects seeing her and ignores the fact that she is there, like he is ashamed of her. Then when she finds her mother dead and her father is forced to take her in everyone in her father's family immediately tries to get rid of her. This is how she becomes married to Rasheed an abusive man that only wants a son and is strict on how his wife must look. After Mariam can not have a child they take in Laila who was left behind by her parents when they were killed by a bomb dropped by her house. She once realizing that she is pregnant with her friend's, Tariq's, baby; marries Rasheed telling him it is his baby. When it turns out to be a girl Rasheed hates the baby. He will not buy her anything, but when Laila has a boy Rasheed buys the boy whatever he wants and even at one point in the story leaves Aziza, the baby girl behind because they don't have enough money to keep her. At the end of the novel Mariam kills Rasheed with a shovel while he is attacking Laila. This is Mariam's second time signing her life away but this time it is by choice. Mariam, Tariq, and the two kids live happy lives after all they have been through.

Throughout the novel you see the abuse of women physically and mentally by men who feel that they are more superior. In the society that these characters live in, that is the case. The men make the rules and the men are always right. This results in the harmful treatment of women in the society by men like Rasheed who take advantage of the system and their wives and children. To see Rasheed even unfairly treat his children because one is a girl and the other is a boy shows to the extreme of how men treat the women.

To live when most of this is happening and not know the full extent of what is going on in our own world is crazy. We don't realize how great we have it to be in a society that women have the same rights as men. It's upsetting to read this story of the struggles of these two women that wanted a simple life where they were happy and free.

The Role of Women

In the book "The Awakening" and in the play "A Doll's House," both of the main female characters were faced with the decision to other stay with their family where they felt they were being suffocated or go off and do what they felt was right for them. Each woman chose a different path to take. Nora chose to leave her family behind and move on with her life as a single woman. Edna tried to escape her life through her affair with Robert, but when she realizes that he is the same as her husband she makes the decision to swim off into the ocean and commit suicide. The author in both the play and the novel, showed the stance of woman and went against society at the time.

I think that both of the females were strong in their way and that they had the right to do what they felt was best because no woman deserves to be unhappy. At the time that these plays were written women had one purpose and that was to have children, for the two main characters to not want to stay with their children is completely crazy! Even today woman are judged more than men when they leave their children behind. If a woman doesn't fight for her children or try her best to raise them and support them she is frowned upon in society, but if a man leaves it's not that big of a deal because they don't have that motherly instinct... It's still their child. I don't think it was right for Nora to just leave behind her children like that. Even if it was what was best for them because they know her, they love her and they will want her in their lives but they don't have that. Even children who are adopted still want to know their real parents and know if they still care about them. I think that women should have a choice on whether or not they have children, but if they do they should at least try. To me children mean everything. If I couldn't have kids I would be devastated because that's just how I see it. A woman grows up, gets married, and has kids. I'm also very old fashioned though. I just think that it is possible for a woman to have a life, but also have a family because that is her life. They are what will continue her traditions and her values. They are not her and they never will be her she needs a life outside of her family but she still needs to dedicate time to her kids.

Morals and other Truths

In the article "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism" the author discusses the importance of the difference in culture but also the importance of similarities in culture. The author says that we can not fully judge what is morally right or morally wrong. We can not judge other cultures without being judged ourselves. He writes about the Greeks and how they burn their dead, while the Callatians eat their dead. Each culture believes that the other culture is wrong, but which is morally right? The other says that we can not judge this. The author then goes on to discuss that what we believe to be true is just an opinion that varies from culture to culture. He goes on to discuss Eskimos who kill their babies at birth if they cannot take care of them or if they are female, to them that is morally right and that is what they need to do. To us that is morally wrong, but we don't know the full picture. They don't just kill their babies because they don't want to take care of them, they kill them if the can't. A mother nurses her children till they are four years old. She can only nurse so many children at one time. Also, she carries her children around because Eskimos are nomads who travel. A mother can only carry one child around. Lastly, if Eskimos didn't kill the girls they would have more girls and not enough food. There are also similarities, the author says, such as truth. There's no society that just tells lies to everyone. There has to be some trust in societies. Lastly, the author discusses how there are some good things that come out of cultural relativism, like how it warns us not to assume that all cultures act in one way and we need to have an open mind. What we think may not be the truth but just assumptions from cultural conditioning.

I believe that the author is right in his thinking. Every society is different, but we cannot judge other societies without know the full truth. Other societies practice different things that may seem strange to us, but what we practice may seem strange to them. There's no right or wrong way of going about life. We should accept other people's way of life, we don't have to practice what they practice, but accept it as being okay for their society. In my opinion there is good to Cultural Relativism because of how it shows use the differences in other cultures and that we need to have an open mind about other societies.

In our society even, there's small differences. If you go to different parts of America there are people who speak with different dialects and have different morals. Not everyone is the same. Some people don't go to church, or practice different religions. Also, there's differences in the way we go about life, like whenever I go south my one friend always comments you Northerners. He told me that if he ever went up north to visit he would be judged for things he says or does, just like when I go down south. In our society though we accept different cultural backgrounds because not everybody is the same. Some people are German, Irish, Native American, or Scottish. Everybody goes about doing things different ways, but we are more accepting of it,

When Tragedy Strikes

    In Oedipus there's the topic of fate that plays a major part in the death of Oedipus' parents and the blindness of himself. Oedipus' parents tried to avoid the fate of their son by having him killed, but when one of their men couldn't do it, they were faced with the fate that they were given without even knowing it. Oedipus went to live with another king and queen who took him in as their own. When Oedipus got in a fight with a man he found out the truth about his prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He refused to believe it, but fear drove him out of his kingdom. He ended up having a confrontation with a man on his journey and ended up killing him. When he arrived in the next kingdom he married their queen and became their new king. Later on after having a daughter with this queen he found out the truth through Teiresias that his prophecy, in fact came true. His mother/wife found out the truth and killed herself and then Oedipus because of all this blinded himself and banned himself from his own kingdom. In the end no matter what he did he could not escape his fate.
     In modern day we do have those people that believe in prophecies and believe in oracles and fortune tellers. People go and get their palms read or go and get a tarot card reading. There's also those people that want nothing to do with fate and they believe that they are in control of what happens, that there is no god that can determine what will happen to them. There's a big controversy over whether or not our whole life is planned out for us and whether or not we can be in control of our life.

The Meaning of Earnest

In "The Importance of Being Earnest" we are introduced to two characters, John and Algernon, both are from completely different life styles, but they have one thing in common. That is they both want to be Earnest... or Ernest. Both John and Algernon come up with a secret identity to hide who they are. Everyone around them believes them and they begin to have a new identity. They begin to forget, in a way, who they really are. This new identity is no longer just an escape. It's their life. It's what they live through now. There's too many connections for them. John loves Gwendolen who can only love a man with the name of Ernest. Algernon loves Cecily and he steals John's made up identity of Ernest to capture her attention and have her fall for him, but she also says that she can only love a man with the name of Ernest. This becomes a conflict for the men because they can no longer lie about who they are. It has gotten farther than both of them have planned for it too. When Gwendolen and Cecily find out the whole thing blows up for both John and Algernon. The women stand their ground and refuse to talk to the men, but this doesn't get them far. The men get easily distracted as they fight over the new crisis of how their loves despise them for lying to them, they begin to fight over muffins and completely go off topic forgetting about the women. This angers the women and they finally talk to the men. In the end, everything works out for John and Algernon, but the lie that they told could have cost them their love.

In our society we face the same problems, now we don't fight over muffins instead of worrying about our made, girlfriends/fiancées, men are more considerate now, hopefully. We still deal with identity theft, like when Algernon stole John's fake identity. We also have people who are "two-faced." I always tell my dad that he never has to worry about me lying because I won't do it because I'll end up forgetting what I told him and mess up anyway so I mind as well tell him the truth in the beginning. Algernon and John had to cover their tracks and lie to the ones they care about to get out of situations but the truth always comes out and in the end it did and they almost lost everything. Lies in relationships come out, especially now with online dating. The person online can be someone completely different than who they say they are. It has become easier to lie about who we are, which makes it harder to trust people. It is becoming a greater problem with advances with technology. Just today on the news I saw a video of someone photo shopping a photo for a magazine. It took 30 seconds for them to completely change the model from her eyes, to elongating her neck, to sculpting her back, and making her legs longer. It's so easy to lie now that we have to watch out for the John's and Algernons that are not as Ernest as they say they are.