For Sale: My Son

"For many weeks there had been no executive, no sales, no income. But how we love looking fine in the eyes of the world- how beautiful are the old when they are doing a snow job! It's Dad, thought Willhelm, who is the salesman. He's selling me." pg 11. In Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, Willhelm's dad tries to make out of Willhelm, the main character, something he's not. Willhelm notice's it and therefore says that the true meaning of his father concealing the truth is intended to make his father look good. Could Willhelm's father be the cause of his actual situation? A father making up things about his son while in front of him could have a serious effect on the sons perspective of the father, and of himself. Thinking about it myself alongside my own personal experiences, my father has never invented lies about me to show off, but if he would ever do it, I think it would discourage me from what I want to do with my life. And I bet it wouldn't be true only in my case. When your father has to make something up about you, it's because that's what he considers to be what would be the best case scenario possible. By him making it up, it's also proving you aren't filling the expectations your father had for you in the first place. So the direct effect is a case of unworthiness in the son. His mind begins to change and take decisions based on what he thinks he deserves and should therefore do.

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It's not the same if a father is constantly telling you how proud he is of you and at the same time helps you to improve in your weaknesses than one that has to rely on making things up so that people can see him and yourself with 'good' eyes. Maybe this was the case with Willhelm's father, where he had to rely on making stuff up to make him look good. Could it have been that because of his father, Willhelm might have ended up where he is, without a job, insecure, and in a difficult family life without his wife and kids? The most probable answer is yes. If his father would accept him with his likes or dislikes, or maybe even give him support to overcome problems and be proud of all he has achieved, maybe Willhelm's situation would be different. We need to consider when we can help others overcome difficulties, and what the best way to help them gain self confidence is. If we are able to make a person feel he is able to do anything and achieve any goal, there is no doubt he certainly will.

How Much Will The Insurance Cost?

"From that time on, Felicite thought solely of her nephew. On warm days she feared he would suffer from thirst, and when it stormed, she was afraid he would be struck by lightning." What Felicite is feeling is not something new to our every day lives. We tend to think on "what if's" all the time, and many times we create things which don't really exist. We might miss a person that has gone off in a trip, or maybe we don't want something to happen in a certain way. We do something, or someone else does something, and then we begin to think on what the outcomes of that might be. Will he be coming back? What if he doesn't make it? What if something happens to him and nobody knows about it? All of these questions are common in our way of thinking of things. We imagine all the possible ways in which a situation could end up. Are we trying to be prepared for what is to come? The reality is that there is no way of being a 100% sure that something will turn out in a certain way. We could spend ages trying to prepare for a moment, but there would be no way to be sure that it will happen. There are so many ways in which a situation could end up turning out, that trying to prepare for some things is rather useless.

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Even though it is true we must prepare for our future, take cautions for what we know will have a big influence in the future, and perform actions that will affect us positively, we must also learn to let some things be. If we were to always be thinking of things we might think will happen or things we don't want to happen, our world would be submerged in an imaginary, chaotic world where we would forget about our present. Letting things be is sometimes the best thing we can do. We don't have control over many of them, so whether we spend our time or not thinking about it, it wont be any different to what is going to happen. When we can influence something, however, then that is the moment we should act and do all we can to change a situation, but when there really is nothing we can do to change something, the best thing we can do is to continue life as it goes, and let that moment come, whatever the outcome may be.

Happily Ignorant

"Felicite developed a great fondness for them; she bought them astove, some shirts and a blanket; it was evident that they exploited her." In A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert, Felicite was a person of virtue, a person who was devoted to serving people around her. But what happens when people know we are willing to give something simply for charity? This resembles one of the arguments mentioned in Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. People will begin to take advantage of her being so nice, while they themselves don't have to give anything back. While Felicite gives, the children take advantage and benefit themselves. And what is it that causes Felicite to not react and see the truth? In this case it is not so related to genes specifically, but on what her formation is. If she doesn't know that she is being taken advantage of, she wont care for the difference. Ignorance is different from genetical formation. But does that mean that we are born good, or that simply we don't see we are doing good by our own formation? Could it be that we are good because we are programmed to be so?

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The most reasonable answer would be that we are not born ignorant, but rather are affected by our surroundings on the choices we make. So does ignorance make us happy? In this case Felicite is ignorant, but at the same time she is happy. People are taking advantage of her, and she still is happy. So what is the pursuit of happiness? As Chris Gardner clearly states it in the movie The Pursuit of Happiness: "There's no 'Y' in Happiness, it's and 'I' ." Going further ahead from the literal meaning of that sentence, you identify the true meaning of the expression. You shouldn't ask yourself what is it that is making you happy. You should keep away from thinking material things are what actually creates our happiness, but rather think about yourself, and how it is possible that you yourself find happiness in what you do. This was the case of Felicite, who didn't have to look for a reason to be happy, but simply was. So it ties up closer to our formation, to how we decide to live no matter what others do around you, and learn to get the best out of every occasion.

I'm Seeing Imaginary

"Well? he said. Are you looking?

My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel I was inside anything." pg 228. The case presented here is of strange occurrence, and where the choices the characters make show a meaning to their actions. We have two characters: the narrator, who is only referred to as "bud", and Robert, who is blind. As they draw the picture of a cathedral, Robert asks "bud" to close his eyes while drawing it and then open them again when they are finished. Here is where these lines take part in the story, and whose occurrence show a lot about what is happening. Why wouldn't "bud" open his eyes? The only difference between him and Robert was that he had the ability to look at whatever the two had created. He decided not to. When he closed his eyes he says he knew about everything that was there around him. There was a reality he knew was present with all the things he knew surrounded him, a reality that wouldn't change no matter what. While knowing all this he thinks about how the emptiness of feeling nothing there begins to appear. Isn't it blindness when you know somethings there, but you have no way of assuring yourself of being certain it really is?

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Robert had actually told "bud" to open his eyes, to see and assure himself in what was in front of him, but the point was really to make him understand that depending on how we can describe something, we are able to see it one way or another. Robert could not see it in the same way as he did, but once they were finished there was a way for both of them to actually recognize it. But was "bud" trying to see something else apart from what Robert wanted him to see? He finishes off by saying: "It's really something. I said." pg 228. From Roberts point of view you would think "bud" is referring to how beautiful the piece came out after he saw it, but it really isn't like that. He is looking at nothing really, but is rather imagining while his eyes are closed. He is imagining a world he hadn't paid much attention to before, a world that showed him a new point of view. What he saw was not the picture. What he saw was what he thought the picture would look like. By actually not looking at it directly, he is opening his mind to what the picture could be. He knows it is there. He knows he drew it and how it must sort of look like. Now he uses his imagination, he constructs it in his head and sees how it is we can all see something, one way or another.

J.P Begins

In Where I'm Calling From inside of Raymond Carvers Cathedral you find a situation in which J.P is involved that is very similar to the movie Batman Begins. "He'd suffered all kinds of terror in that well, hollering for help, waiting, and then hollering some more." pg 130. J.P falls into this well, and suffers a trauma he believes has shaped him, with things such as the sounds that came around him and the feeling of bugs at his sides. It is not until his father gets there with a rope to help him that he can actually feel a little more secure. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne falls inside a well at an early age. There he suffers a terrible trauma as well with a colony of bats flying around him. He too is saved by his dad with a rope. But what could be the meaning of this in J.P's life? We know the case of Bruce Wayne, where it is only after he has confronted his greatest fear with his experience in the well with the bats that he can actually get to help others. And how else could you help others if you cant deal with your own problems first? Sometimes moments like these are necessary for us to take action in the future, but sometimes the same occasion can take to two very different outcomes. In the case of J.P, he had almost the exact same experience as Bruce Wayne, but his outcome came out different.

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When we look towards the present J.P is going through you see he is at a sort of alcoholic rehabilitation center. How did his condition end up being like this? Destiny? I don't think so. Something lead him to end up like this. If you see how a trauma such as the one that Bruce Wayne and J.P went through, you know its not something easy to overcome. Bruce Wayne could only get over it after living somewhere in the Himalayas with a bunch of monks. What if this event in J.P's life was something that got him to look for a way out of his problems by drinking alcohol? It wouldn't be something out of this world now a days. The two ways in which you can get out of a situation are clearly expressed here with two very different characters who had a very similar experience. The way in which you treat an opportunity and the measures you take parting from it can become decisive in what the future holds for you.

A Crazy Dream

"You dream! Patty said. Even if you don't remember. Everybody dreams. If you didn't dream, you'd go crazy." pg 97. Are we meant to have dreams in order for us to really live a happy life? What are our reasons for living? Once we begin to understand why it is that we persist in our everyday lives, go through hardships, and keep our heads up to go through the unknown, we will know we do what we do because we dream of the future and the things it could bring. We might sometimes doubt what is to come, and whether it will do good or bad to us. Some things might look as if though they were to really change our life, and so we hang on to that. It is this dream that makes us want to face the impossible. We want to get to places no one else has gotten to, to experience things we could only imagine, and to get something we think will make us as happy as we could possibly get. And so we work for it. If we were to sit and wait for things to happen, our life would pass by without anything good to hope for. Some of us believe in destiny, while others believe in the creation of our own paths. But the point we want to get to is the same. We all want to be happy, and we have a dream we want to accomplish.

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But what if we didn't have any dreams? What would be the case behind working all day if you don't know where you want to get to? Here is where the difference between destiny and the creation of our own paths differentiate. Would it be worth the while working if we were to think the future that awaited us was just something gray and boring? When we think of a negative future instance being something 100% accurate, we tend to really not put so much interest on how we get there. On the other hand, if we create a positive dream we want to get to, the way in which we act in our every day life would be a lot different. We therefore do need to have dreams to not go crazy. We need an inspiration, a reason to look towards the future. Those that have lost their dreams or think they did not come true when they wanted them to, tend to not enjoy things as others who still have them do. Dreams are meant to inspire us to pursuit greatness and to help us see all the great things we sometimes miss in the world of opportunities we are living.

Big Problem, Little Problem

"He passed away, said the nurse at the counter. The nurse held the hairbrush and kept looking at her. Are you a friend of the family or what?" pg 78. Many times we fail to notice the circumstances we are living and how much better they are from those that other are people are going through. We consider small problems to be a disaster, and we tend to stress out and think of life as something horrible, when really what we are living is paradise compared to what others are. For us to really get to understand why it is that we tend to look at everything in a negative way we have to understand that it is usually because we always want to reach perfection. At that moment, what really was happening to Scottie was not that big of a deal compared to what was happening to the other family with Franklin. As mentioned by Howard: "Until now, his life had gone smoothly and to his satisfaction." pg 62. Both Ann and Howard were accostumed to living a happy life, so any small problem turned into a big one, even if at the very end it turned out to be one.

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If we didn't want everything to be perfect, but rather considered everything perfect, we could get to seeing everything in a positive way. Small problems would become opportunities and big problems would become learning experiences. Living a happy life would be something permanent, where looking at small problems in a way in which we see them as something not that bad would be an advantage. Our life is determined not by the things that we encounter, but on how we recieve and live them.

Tickets Please?

"He was going somewhere, he knew that. And if it was the wrong direction, sooner or later he'd find it out." pg 58. This part of The Compartment in Cathedral is very similar to what happens in two movies. In Mr.Beans Holiday it turns out to be that Mr.Bean ends up making a tour through Europe by trying to get to the french coast. He won a trip to that paradise beach, but ends up getting mixed up with train routes and a little boy. He really has no idea of where he is going, and as well as with Myers in The Compartment, and he doesn't talk any of the languages there, being completely lost sometimes. He also has the dilemma that Myers faced when thinking whether or not he should visit his son or simply bypass it and go somewhere else, since Mr.Bean has to decide whether he goes to his destination at the french coast or tries to help the little boy get back to his father. Any small decision any of them decide to make in this case has a huge effect, since both choices are big changes that could come to the characters life.

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Then there's also the movie Eurotrip, having a similar idea to that of The Compartment as well. In Eurotrip Scottie decides to go off to Europe to try and find a German girl with which he has only talked online. He really has no idea of where she is, and goes with some friends to roam Europe however they can and try and find her. Myers doesn't know where he is headed to towards the end of the story, which is mostly the idea in Eurotrip, where they simply go around Europe any way they can getting from place to place. They sometimes end up in places they don't know of, but they go ahead with the oh well attitude and keep roaming around until they get to her. In this case though, its a bit different in terms of the problem that the characters face. With Myers and Mr.Bean the case is about making a really important decision that will affect them greatly in the future, but with Scottie it's mostly a careless trip where they don't care about their actions, but rather on how they will get there.

It's Perfect

While reading Preservation within Raymond Carver's Cathedral, I came across a situation that reminded me of an event in my life. "She couldn't believe the mess inside. The ice cream from the freezer had melted and run down into the leftover fish sticks and cole slaw. Ice cream had gotten into the bowl of Spanish rice and pooled on the bottom of the fridge. Ice cream was everywhere." pg 39. At my house we have a Labrador called Tommy, and he is an eating machine that does not care what he eats as long as he thinks it might be fun to eat it. Since he is a dog which doesn't like strangers, we sometimes have to lock him up when people visit us, so I usually leave him in the kitchen and go and receive the people coming and bring them inside. One time though, I brought some friends over, and we stayed up until very late at night. When they were leaving I was exhausted, so I took Tommy to the kitchen and guided them out. When I came back in, I went straight to my room and fell asleep.

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The next morning I decided to go down and get a snack before breakfast. When I entered the kitchen I could not believe my eyes. Tommy was sitting down in front of the oven with a sad puppy face, and all the desserts my mom had prepared for a meeting she had that day were all over the floor and counters. The floor was full of tracks in all sorts of dessert combinations, varying from reddish strawberry tracks to dark chocolate ones. He himself wasn't so clean as well, having chocolate, pieces of strawberries, and white cream all over him. What was I supposed to do? As I thought about what excuse I would use so my mom wouldn't blame me, I went inside to see if there was anything still left intact. The snacks my mom had left out were all over the farthest side of my kitchen, and one of the Coke bottles had fallen, which by the looks of it, it seemed as if Tommy had had fun trying to bring it open. Everything was completely messed up. As I scolded Tommy for what he had done, I tried to fix some of the things up. I tried fixing some deserts that weren't as mangled with, but what was the point of it, I would have had to mix all the good parts of each dessert together in order to get something decent. As I gave up, I took my dog outside and just let him be, and I went up and told my mom the truth.

Back to Poo-tee-weet?

"The bird let go with its cry once more. May-awe! it went. Nobody said anything. What was there to say?" pg 18. Once again we go back to Slaughterhouse 5. In both cases there is a bird involved in which it gives a simple bird sound, but what do they mean? Poo-tee-weet? In Slaughterhouse 5 whenever Poo-tee-weet appears, it usually has little to do with what is going on, being it more of an add-on to make emphasis on a point. Slaughterhouse 5 talks about predestination, taking into account Billy, the main character, and how it is that he lives every moment of his life in a never ending cycle, moving back and forth through time. So by fitting Poo-tee-weet into context you can think of it as the add-on that is actually something that brings us back into a reality the story has, the reality of who cares? If things happen in a way that is irreversible, who would even mind it happening? The meaning of the Poo-tee-weet inside of Slaughterhouse 5 is put there to symbolize something completely meaningless. It's as if everything that is being said really has no point to it. But is there really a connection between it and May-awe in Raymond Carver's Cathedral?

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A peacock in the short story of Feathers, presented in Cathedral, really has no importance within the story. It is as if it were just supposed to be there to do absolutely nothing. But once we take the idea of what happened in Slaughterhouse 5, you can give new meaning to the peacock's presence. By the peacock being there and making the May-awe sound every now and then, it shows something very similar to the purpose of Poo-tee-weet. Jack and Fran had never thought of having babies, and actually didn't even like the idea of it. After their visit to Bud's house, it becomes apparent that they decide to have a baby. But what was it that made them decide on having the baby? An ugly baby would have the contrary effect on a person who was in the same circumstances, I mean, who, that doesn't like the idea of having children, after seeing an ugly baby would want to have one? Well, here is where May-awe comes in, being it the source of what is to come. It's as if the whole situation that is created after the visit had happened not because of that visit, but rather because it was already meant to happen whether they visited or not. Isn't it a Poo-tee-weet of the moment, a May-awe of who cares? The meaning of the peacock could be said to be a factor which is trying to explain to us the meaning of why it was that the short story ended as it did. The real meaning of Fran and Jack having a baby has nothing to do with the visit, as predicted by the peacock taking the example of Billy in Slaughterhouse 5, but rather is something that was supposed to happen.

Wanna Know How I Won?

"So we identified two characteristics of winning strategies: niceness and forgiveness. This almost Utopian-sounding conclusion- that niceness and forgiveness pay- came as a surprise to many of the experts, who had been too cunning by submitting subtly nasty strategies." pg 213. This is a point of view that gives arguments that go against what normally happens. Normally when you try and do something, the person that ends up being victorious is that which did something different or better than its opponent. In other words, those that make a trick, or something we didn't expect, would end up being better than someone else. If one of the two beings that are competing is completely pure in the sense it will always forgive and will be nice, and the other is completely evil in the sense that it will always try and take advantage over the other, then it would be obvious the evil one would win. But in this case it is saying it won't. The one that shows purity will be the one to succeed. This idea brings immediately to your mind the picture of religion, and all the good deeds one must do in order to be successful. The three universalizing religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam have the idea of values that involve making us better people as one of their priorities. They teach us to act in a better way, a way guided in the opposite direction of evil intentions. And religion begins to affect everything around us. We see heroes in story books, brave knights in their noble steeds, and the triumphs that have happened throughout history. All of these come together thanks to the teachings of religion to show the values of forgiveness, of purity. It's not always the case.

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Today in class there was a clear example. We played the game mentioned by Dawkins known as Prisoners dilema. Two of my classmates played against each other, trying to get as many points as they could. Obviously, the one who constantly used Defect, or in other words not help in any way, ended up winning. But the second round we played, we played to push a grade up, or pull it down, depending on who won. The attitude of the players changes completely. One of the players decided to begin the round by helping while the other didn't. Since that moment the one that didn't help was in advantage, and they continued to use Defect for the other rounds until the last round came. If the player that had always used Defect used it again, he would of definitely won the pull up on the grade, but since he knew his friend could lose and end up with a lower grade, he changed to helping him. The final result was a draw. What is going on here is how he used a helping attitude to help his friend. But isn't this in this particular case bad, since by not being nice he could have won a higher grade? It actually isn't. By helping his friend he is actually helping himself. If he would have won, great, he got a higher grade in just one occasion. Now, by actually being considerate to the other person, he is actually gaining his friendship, and could therefore get the help from him in other instances. And he doesn't only get a closer friendship with him, but by committing the action in which he showed compassion, everyone present at that moment actually felt closer to that person, so he is getting even a better deal then if he had gotten the higher grade. So forgiveness and niceness actually proves to be better with a group in which mutual help is active, rather than thinking in your own selfish intentions when in the group.

A Perpetrators Decision

"A perpetrator holds both gun and briefcase, sees both paper and blood." (Written as the review "Gun and briefcase" by Timothy Snyder for the book The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Little). We are to decide on how we are to carry something along. In The Kindly Ones Little introduces a character that is supposed to tell everything as it happened during the war. He would not mind how harsh or absolutely peaceful the event may have seemed, but told it exactly as it was. Many times we want to do something, and so we go ahead and use whatever our method is to actually make it happen. In this case it's saying that a perpetrator must always have a Plan B. He can do things in a more peaceful way by talking things out and getting to an agreement, or he can also carry them along by using more violent methods where one of the two might end up hurt in some way. That is what the briefcase and the paper symbolize in this case, meaning a peaceful way in which to do something, while gun and blood symbolize a more crude and violent method. This choice is expressed in Shakespear's Macbeth with the decisions Macbeth and Lady Macbeth must take. Macbeth wants to become king, and so he must choose a method to do so. Since in the story he is predestined to become a king, his method to become one could be more simple than he could possibly think. That's the problem with destiny, it makes us think on doing the easy stuff because we will get to the same outcome anyway.

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But what if even by knowing we are going to get somewhere we decide to take the harshest path? Macbeth didn't even think on doing things in a more civilized and peaceful way, but decided to go after the violent and dangerous path. The plan he came up with alongside his wife was one which involved the murder of the king in order for him to become one. Why would he decide to inflict pain and spend more time on this plan then just wait for the right moment if it was predestined? His choice was one which would be almost contrary to what destiny is supposed to cause the people who believe in it to act according to. When we choose whether we use a peaceful or a violent way in which to do something we are always influenced by what we personally want to do. Macbeth, being a general in war, may have found this an easier way for himself to treat the matter, since most of his experience is related to violence. So both Macbeth and the main character in The Kindly One are to decide on how to carry something along. One may choose to do something according to your experiences, as in Macbeth, or one could also choose to do something in a way in which we decide to be indifferent on the method we choose to apply.

We Are Who We Created

"Whether a female develops into a worker or a queen depends not on her genes but on how she is brought up." pg 174. Are we to decide on what we become? The example given by Dawkins explains how it is that a bee develops according to how she is nurtured. Are we the same way, or do we think we turn out to be someway because we were meant to be like that since the beginning. When talking about whether its nature or its nurture, its important to think on how both of them may affect us. One may give us such and such characteristic, and the other might put in some more. When talking about nature, I believe its guided more towards how we are physically, and on how we develop and function. Nurture on the other hand, puts in the rest of the package, including our emotions, way of thinking, and actions. If we are raised in a certain way, we will achieve and become a person that is unique. By raising a person to think about greed and about always trying to beat other people in different things, that person will end up being a totally different person than someone raised with values such as respectfulness and benevolence. A worker bee can become a queen or a worker, raging from what we consider in our society as the top and the bottom of social levels. Do we want to become a worker or a queen? And who is it to decide, the one that nurtures us, or do we also have a significant role in it?

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To understand it I had to put my family and myself in the picture. Since I was small I was always raised with the values my parents introduced into my life. I grew up believing in those values, and would use them whenever they came up,but there comes an age where we begin to gain more conscience of what is happening around us. When I reached this point, I began to modify some of these values for some which I considered would be better. You might think this was because I met other people and therefore got their ideas, but it isn't always the case. There are moments when you simply look around you, and you begin to understand why some things work in a certain way. This way you are actually molding who you become unconsciously. The values inserted into you at the beginning have some effect, but what really matters is what you make of yourself, not what others make of you. So we do make our ourselves what we want to become, and what we want to achieve. The idea that we are made to function in a certain way with which we will always stick to is made just to prevent us from actually deciding our fate (It should be clarified that when I use the word "fate" I intend to consider fate not something that was meant to be in a certain way, but rather a conclusion of the actions we have already committed. ). We therefore can decide and take action in choosing to become a queen or a worker.