The End

I’ve really liked writing a blog this semester. I feel like it really improved my writing skills and taught me how to write things that people will be interested in. I love sharing stories, especially ones that make people laugh. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to let me bore you one more time. :)

I feel like college is a topic I’ve successfully avoided bringing up until now, but something that takes up so much of my time was bound to make its appearance eventually. I’ve never done anything before that seems so arbitrary, yet actually matters so much. I feel like I should be super worried, but college applications seem to be one thing I prioritize and complete exactly to my plans (much to the dismay of my schoolwork).

At the same time, the ever-present feeling that everything is ending is hard to avoid. After I got my first acceptance, I was further cemented into this frame of mind. And while waiting to hear back from other places has me caught in a state of anticipation, I can’t help but feel lost. This major five-year chapter of my life is about to be over, and without the easy routine I’ve fallen into, I can’t predict how I’ll cope. I know I’m going to go on to (hopefully) bigger and brighter things, but I’ve found comfort in this life, this home that Uni has provided me.

I know that this next chapter of my life is going to be exciting, and probably better than anything I’ve ever experienced. I also know I’ve got to make it through another whole semester before graduation. But being a senior has given me a new perspective on my time at Uni, and made me nostalgic for something I’m still experiencing. College is an exciting part of my near-future, but I wish it could stay future for just a bit longer.

My Encounter with Law Enforcement

As many who have ridden with me know, driving is not my thing. In general driving gives me a lot of anxiety so to combat that I usually overcompensate by driving really fast and aggressively, which doesn’t always work out in my favor. However my worst driving moment by far happened in August 2016, about a month and a half after I got my license.

It happened when I was driving home from my volunteer shift at Carle Hospital. Carle’s parking garage is already really cramped and dark so I’m always really nervous when I have to drive there. However because I’d had my license for almost 2 months with no accidents I was starting to get really confident, blowing off the incredible danger and immense responsibility that driving a car entails. Anyway after I left Carle I was super jittery, but as I was headed west down University Avenue I whipped into the left turn lane so I could get onto Lincoln. The problem was the car in front of me, an excessively large black SUV, was going straight and I turned too close to it and hit its rear bumper with the corner of my hood. I was a pretty inexperienced driver at the time, so I wasn’t 100% sure I actually had hit it, but also my fight or flight response was to pretend like nothing bad happened at all, so I just kept driving. That obviously wasn’t okay with the car that I hit however, because they turn into the turn lane and start following me. Meanwhile I’m going into super survival mode and just keep driving, but when the SUV starts laying on its horn, I turn onto a side street and park.

The car follows me and I see the driver get out of his car, so I get out too. I know this is what you’re supposed to do when you hit someone, but in retrospect it seems really creepy that 16-year-old me has to get out of my car and talk to some rando dude on a hidden side street as it’s approaching dark. Nevertheless, the guy comes up to me and simply says, “You hit me.” I, 40 levels deep into my own personal hell, could barely manage a “Really?” The guy could probably tell that I was freaking out, which is why he just went over to look at the damage I did to his car. As we looked I start rambling about how I was 16 and had just gotten my license not 2 months before, which I guess is when he decided to tell me that he was the Chief of Police at Parkland (off-duty, of course). At that point I sort of went numb all over, except for my brain which was just doing the mind-scream thing.

Luckily that day God took pity on me, because there wasn’t even a scratch on the officer’s car. Mine had a big scrape on the front, but if you’ve seen my car you already know that I didn’t care. The officer then made his wife get out of the car so she could confirm that theirs had no damage, and when she was satisfied, that’s when I started to get lectured. I don’t really remember most of it, but I think the general gist was “Kids these days are so reckless with driving be more careful or you’re going to get your license taken away before you’re 18.” I was almost crying at that point, but I remember his wife was really nice and told me “Everything’s fine, we’re not mad we just want you to be more careful,” which did absolutely nothing for me but was a kind thought.

After that was pretty much nothing. They got back in their car, I got back in mine and drove away. I knew I was too shaken up to drive all the way home, so I stopped in the McDonald’s parking lot and had a small panic attack. After that I drove home. I told my parents because I was worried the police officer would call them or report it or something, but they just roasted me for not being careful and also didn’t let me drive my brother around for like a year.

This event happened a long time ago and while at the time it was the worst thing I had ever experienced, now it’s just a distant and slightly cringey memory. It was a good wake-up call when I needed it and I’m just lucky nothing and no one was damaged because of my recklessness. I’m a lot better and more careful driver now, at least when I need to be.

Why I Can't Be a Nun

In a lot of ways going to a Catholic school was pretty much the same as Uni, but there were a couple of things that were really weird. One of the main things was that they were always trying to push religious vocations on all of the kids, wanting to get the girls to become nuns and the boys to become priests. In fifth grade our big field-trip was a religious vocation field-trip -- all of the boys were going to a seminary while all of the girls went to a convent.

When we got to the convent, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. First we took a short tour and got to meet a lot of the nuns who lived there, and then we talked about becoming a nun. I didn’t think at this point I would be a nun, but I decided to keep an open mind for the trip. Anyway, by the time we were done talking, it was time for us all to go to the nuns’ daily mass with them.

I was really tired when we walked over to the church, as it was like 1:30 and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. About ⅔ of the way through the service however, I started to feel really bad. Nausea washed over me as my lightheadedness grew even more acute, compounded by the fact that we had been kneeling for what felt like hours. I decided the best course of action was to close my eyes for a couple of seconds to regain my strength. What happened next however, I will never forget.

I vividly remember waking up lying flat on my back, confused and uncomfortable because of the cold, hard ground. When I opened my eyes I saw between five and ten nuns surrounding me, looking down. In this moment, I assumed I had died and was now in heaven, but was strangely unbothered by this fact I thought to be true. As the nuns moved to help me get up, however, I remembered where I was and what must have happened. My blood sugar must have dropped and I fainted right there, in the middle of mass!

One of the nuns led me out of the church and sat me down on the bench outside. First, she checked for a concussion, but once she was sure I was okay, she left. She soon came back with a paper cup full of grape juice. I sipped on the juice and contemplated how I was going to face any of my friends after this embarrassing moment. Luckily I later found out that no one had actually seen what happened, so now it’s just a funny story I like to tell from time to time. I know for sure now though, I am NOT meant to be a nun.

On Uni

(** Disclaimer **: When I say “Uni” or “Uni students” or anything else like that, I’m making generalizations. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but everything I say here is based on my own experiences and those of my close friends. If you feel anything here is inaccurate or misrepresented in any way, please feel free to comment or talk to me in person.)

Uni has been my home for the past 5 years, and I don’t mean that in a cliche way. Some days I actually spend more hours at Uni or Uni-related events than I do at my own house. Uni has become central to how I operate in my daily life, and to be honest I don’t know how I’m going to react to the change when I go off to college next year. But when I ask my friends, classmates, and Uni alums how they feel about Uni, I get quite a bit of mixed opinions. Most striking is that the people who are often openly critical about certain aspects of Uni are the ones that love it the most. Uni has done some pretty controversial things in the past, and if I had to generalize I would say probably a quarter of our (senior) class loves Uni, half are indifferent, and the last quarter absolutely hate it.

I don’t doubt that people who hate Uni have good reasons. Uni has done some pretty terrible stuff to some of my closest friends, and attempting to invalidate that seems like a horrible thing to do. In my opinion, Uni’s saving graces are the teachers and the academics. The teachers are seemingly unparalleled from the horror stories I’ve heard from friends who go to other schools, and on the whole Uni teachers are some of the most passionate, most intelligent, and most caring individuals I have ever had the good fortune of meeting. Uni’s academics are also another strong point. This sort of goes along with good teachers, because they are allowed to teach information that isn’t common core and therefore is actually interesting, but also I think the “lab school” is just a good idea in general when it comes to teaching new and untested material. I truly think that I've prospered more at Uni than I would've at any other high school, and I'm endlessly grateful for that.

There’s also just a lot of things wrong with Uni in general. Aside from the obvious problems with organization and the lackluster facilities, one thing Uni really needs to work on is students’ mentalities. I’ve met so many of the greatest people in my life through Uni, but I’ve also met some who I truly wonder if they display psychopathic tendencies. The pervasive idea at Uni that people need to look out for only themselves and cut down other people at any opportunity is not necessarily evident on the surface, but when you look closely, it’s there. It’s there when you hear people joke about putting the wrong answers in a class groupchat, it’s there when people give purposefully bad advice about college apps, it’s even there when friends don’t know how to interact besides roasting each other. This mindset is not only seriously damaging, but also kind of scary.

People at Uni have other flaws as well though. They’re too pretentious for their own good, don’t know how to interact with people who have different opinions than them, and they certainly haven’t learned good life skills for what the world outside of an academic environment is like. And for some people, this will never be a problem. Because here is where Uni’s flaws intersect with the very basis of the school’s mission. By siphoning off the top students from surrounding schools, we’ve inherently created an elite group that thinks they’re special, and that group will go on to be future leaders and creators. We want to point a finger and blame the people running our country right now, but unless people start taking hard looks at themselves, I don’t see our futures being much brighter.

But Uni has a lot of other problems. Uni tries to come off as “woke” and on the cutting-edge of liberal, but to me and a lot of other students it seems to be a front. Everything from the lack of diversity, to disrespect of female students by administration and peers, to microaggressions targeting students of color and LGBT+ students screams “we want to seem like we’re progressive but secretly we really don’t care”. Known abusers have been let off the hook with a slap on the wrist. I’ve had friends come to me in tears because no one will listen to their problems. Is this a problem that the administration has let get out of hand, or is the problem the administration itself? Deficit and several almost comical blunders aside, I don’t know if I can say. I hope that this is just a temporary problem that Uni will continue to work on in the coming years, but to be honest, I’m losing hope. It seems like every time some issue gets brought up, we all get angry about it, and then the amnesia sets in. No one really wants to talk about this, or work on it. I don’t know why I waited so long to say this, I’m a senior now so I don’t have much time to do anything. But I want to fix it.

another blog post about writing *eye roll* *shrug*

i should go to bed. but instead here i am, laying in the dark, typing this on my phone. this happens several times a month, nights where i desperately toss and turn in my bed before finally i give up and grab my phone. i open a new note, and start to type. it sounds cliche to say that "writing is my escape", and it’s not quite accurate either. for me, writing is and always has been a coping mechanism.

a couple of years ago while we were moving i uncovered a dusty notebook, and as i was flipping through it i came upon a page that contained the words "I LOVE [insert name of first grade crush]" about seven times, and under that "[insert name of other girl vying for his attention] STAY AWAY FROM HIM" (yes i know i know, i was straight savage even back then.) the point of all this being, writing helps me work through stuff, especially emotional stuff. if my two options are furiously rage-typing into my phone for 45 minutes straight or crying in the back of the MTD, i'm gonna pick the first one (true story, and i only cried a little bit).

overthinking things late at night is one of my specialties, and my 1AM rants are a compelling mixture of legendary brilliance and utter trash. sometimes i just have too many thoughts in my head, but if i can get them down on paper (or more likely, in my notes app) usually i can calm down enough to go to sleep. even now, i should be sleeping but i've been thinking about saying some of these things for like a month now and so i need to write them out.

however i have written endless essays, applications, and coherent arguments this way, so i guess it's both a blessing and a curse. but the fact that late at night i think i'm the best freaking writer in the world is not so good. because then if i'm looking at it in the morning, the cringing starts happening, or god forbid, i found out i sent it to someone else that night. sometimes late at night i just really feel eloquent and enlightened, but it's also my 16th hour of straight consciousness and i'm physically holding one eye open, so none of the choices i'm making are really great. i just have to write the thing then or i'll feel unbearably restless.

it's really hard to describe why writing helps me think through things so well. i think i just have the tendency to get overwhelmed and not think logically when i keep things in my head. for example, when i think i have a lot of homework and start getting really stressed over it, i'll write down everything i need to do and see if it's actually as much as i thought it was originally. most of the time it isn't, but if it is, then at least i have a list of things i need to freak out about.

writing has gotten me through some of the worst points in my life. but the soothing emptiness that follows after i finish getting all of my thoughts out and my brain goes blissfully quiet is at times essential for me to continue to be a productive human being. the urge to write might not always come at the most convenient time, but i think in the end it's almost always worth it. also, sometimes it's fun to go back in the morning and read the stupid stuff i wrote while i was in a frantic, sleep-deprived state of mind.

Superstition

I’m in general a very superstitious person. If you look up the Wikipedia Page on Superstition, it defines it as any belief or practice that is irrational, including religious belief or any action that arises from irrationality. I’ve always been fascinated by things that I don’t understand. When I was 5 I was obsessed with Scooby Doo, and “broke up” with my best friend because she started liking horses instead of Scooby Doo. In 5th grade when we got to check out books for library time, I would always check out the same three books our Catholic school library had about ghosts and paranormal stuff. I still hold my breath when we drive past a graveyard, in order to not breathe in any spirits just floatin’ around.

Unlike most people (especially at Uni) I have no problem in believing things that don’t make sense or I don’t fully understand, which is probably a result of my upbringing. Those who know me probably know that I’m Catholic, which is a huge part of my identity, and since all forms of religion are technically superstitious beliefs, often can discredit me in some people’s eyes. I am always fearful that because I’m religious people will think that I’m anti-science or believe that God planted the dinosaur bones or something, but luckily this is hardly ever the case. I personally have no trouble in consolidating my trust in science and trust in a higher power, and it actually in some cases can make things make more sense.

I may or may not believe the government has strong evidence of alien life and is hiding it from the general public by discrediting witnesses and in general characterizing believers as “crazy”. I may or may not believe that Bigfoot is alive and real, currently residing in the pacific northwest. That’s the best part -- it doesn’t matter if I truly believe in any of this stuff or not, or if this entire post is in fact a joke, because it’s all harmless fun that doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s a good way to waste five hours on a Saturday afternoon surfing Youtube, digging myself further and further into an endless hole.

In conclusion: Ghosts? Cool. Bigfoot? Rad. Conspiracy theories? Wacky. But don’t take anything too seriously, because there's crazy people like me out there.

Further info on these topics for any that are interested:

Buzzfeed Unsolved (a personal favorite)

Creepy Wikipedia Pages

Unacknowledged (available on Netflix)

The Evidence For Bigfoot

Honesty

You know when you’re telling a story, but about 3 minutes into it you realize that it’s not as interesting as you thought it was when you started? And you’ve invested too much time in it at this point to say “nevermind”, and now there’s like, a lot of people listening to you? And you can’t let them down? And the pressure just gets to you, and you end up making up an ending that 100% did not happen, but everybody laughs, and you’re filled with a sense of guilty euphoria? This happens to me more than I care to admit, but now I’m spilling my secret and facing the problem head-on.

As I was reading through some of the older blogs looking for inspiration, I noticed that a lot of people write their first post about writing. Specifically, people usually mention their problems or issues they have with writing, or their insecurity about their own writing. I struggle with writing probably just as much as the next person, but that’s not where my main troubles lie. My problem isn’t that I can’t get started, or I lack inspiration, or I’m overly critical of my own work. My problem is that I’m a dirty liar.

I’m probably being dramatic. When I think “dirty liar” images come to mind of a shadowy figure sneaking around alleys late at night, someone that you would make a deal with and they, in turn, would stab you in the back. I’m not that person, and to be honest I don’t really lie in real life that much. I do lie in my writing however, and it’s a real problem. I don’t lie about big stuff, because that would definitely make things too complicated, but lying about minute details just comes so easily to me. Whether it’s to make something more eye-catching and interesting, or to make a certain event easier to explain, or simply because I think something sounds better, most of my personal writing is spotted with tiny fibs. If I ever get questioned, or on a rare occasion, caught, I’ll usually just blame it on my terrible memory, and play it off as a “well, I thought that happened!” The funniest thing is when I’m actually writing the piece, and my brain will go “THAT’S A LIE!!!! WHY ARE YOU WRITING THAT!!!!! DUDE!!!! WHAT THE HECK!!!!!!!” while simultaneously my fingers are going “Haha :)”

In class we’ve emphasized the importance of honesty in personal essay writing, and so this is obviously a problem I’ll have to work on this semester, and probably for the rest of my life. And it’s also not something I really understand the root cause of, so that’ll be a lot of fun to unpack :). But in all seriousness, hopefully I’ll be able to stop lying in my writing, or at least cut it down? I don’t know. We’ll see.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nonfiction Writing

Posts from now until the foreseeable future will be for my Uni High nonfiction writing class.

What Happened?

I don’t really see Macon as a hero, because none of his intentional actions were heroic - sure, he died for his cause, but he sure didn’t want to. The things he did on purpose, starting the day of apology, robbing people, were not heroic at all and had serious repercussions, often ending in injury, chaos, and death. And when it came right down to it, he wasn’t able to stand up for what he believed in, and I think his cowardice in the last chapter is enough to put any reader off. He could be seen as heroic at the beginning of the novel for robbing white people, but I see that as more of an outlet for his destructive behavior, and not really an effective method for implementing the change he was supposedly working for.

I don’t want to make it seem like I’m painting a one sided picture, because I liked Macon (or was at least intrigued by him) at the beginning of the novel. Sure, the things he did were kind of problematic at times, but I think Mansbach was showing us a person who genuinely did care, but maybe didn’t go about it the best of ways all the time. However, I feel like as one gets further and further into the novel, you see the eventual disintegration of Macon’s ability to follow his moral compass driven by his cowardice.

I guess what genuinely enrages me the most about Macon and his actions in the last chapter is the overall hypocrisy of it all -- he spent about 200 pages demonstrating how “down” and “woke” he was, and yet when any of that really mattered, he couldn’t stand up for what he believed in. It just gave me an extreme amount of dissatisfaction and sense of anticlimactic-ness, in the midst of a whole bunch of confusion over what exactly happened in the last pages of the book. Overall, while I think Angry Black White Boy was an interesting novel to talk about, but I don’t really see Macon’s actions as heroic in any sense of the word.

Thoughts on Chapter Six

I feel like my, and probably most of the class’s first impression of Angry Black White Boy could’ve been better. I found the prologue jarring, and that followed by the baseball section, and then finally the first chapter made for a particularly confusing first reading. However, now that we’re several chapters in, I’ve noticed some pretty interesting elements of the book, and in particular chapter six.

One prominent thread that we see throughout our time in Macon’s head is just how hard he’s trying all the time. It seems like at every moment he’s either internally berating white people (like at the poetry slam), trying to get black people to like him (like at Nique’s dorm), or explaining to the reader something about which he has vast and endless amounts of knowledge (“vast” and “endless” being sarcastic). Throughout all this time we also get glimpses into Macon’s insecurities (not being liked, being “exposed”, etc.), and this element is highlighted in chapter six.

Because Macon gets off at the wrong stop in chapter five (another example of the limitations of his knowledge), he has to walk through the park, which he knows is a particularly bad part of town, to get back to his dorm. Macon tries to fool himself into thinking it isn’t actually that big of a deal, but the passage reads, “He wanted to emerge unscathed and be able to say, People are tripping. The park is fine at night. And then he’d never set food there after dark again.” This is a really good example of how almost everything Macon does seems to be so he can prove he’s “cool” to other people, particularly black people, by doing things he really doesn’t want to do.

Another interesting/bewildering/hilarious element of chapter six is Macon’s recruitment to the People’s Cooperative Guerrilla Theater. I honestly wasn’t sure what to make of this when I first read it (I mean, they make him wear a dress and play Nora in A Doll’s House, what the hell are we supposed to make of it?), but I think there are elements of it that are significant. The sentry explains that the group had to go underground because they wanted to perform plays by playwrights who weren’t African-American, and they lost support after that (the sentry notably states “I ain’t just a raisin in the sun. I’m a tomato in the rain forest.”) Macon doesn’t seem to have a lot of experience with black people who aren’t super involved in black nationalism or black power movements (for example he seemed to get on way better with Nique than he did with Andre), and so these black men who want to do a diverse range of theater are almost an enigma to him. I think it’s also important the book emphasizes that while Macon is “the wokest white boy” (or trying to be, at least), he still is operating within his own prejudices (scared to walk through a “bad neighborhood”, assumes that the black guy is going to hurt him), and won’t be fully accepted until he recognizes and overcomes those prejudices.

Overall, I still think this book is really weird, but I’m starting to enjoy that weirdness. I definitely feel like an outsider looking in, because I’m not very familiar with the history of hip hop and the Five-Percent Nation, but honestly find the dynamics of the book very interesting. I hope the book continues to surprise me!

From the Perspective of a Five-Year-Old

One of my favorite things about this novel is Jack’s narration. This book operates at a fast pace and really leaves you on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next, and I think Jack’s voice really adds to this aspect of the story

One of the main reasons Jack’s narration is so attractive is because of how innocent he is. Jack’s worldview is completely unique-  one might be able to comprehend Ma’s situation (getting kidnapped and imprisoned), but the idea of living your whole life in one room, and thinking that room is the entire world, is a perspective that no one else shares. Because of this unique perspective, the events that happen seem at times more confusing, but usually they were made more exciting because Jack was narrating them. For example, we followed a few days of Jack in Room, from beginning to end, and despite him never leaving it never got boring. Also, if Ma was narrating this book, there might be points in it that were just too depressing (her headspace can’t be a fun place to be) that are lightened a bit from Jack’s point of view.

Another interesting thing about Jack’s narration is his voice. I live with a six-year-old, so I consider myself to have a pretty good understanding of how little kids’ minds work. One thing you catch onto pretty quickly is that while they often don’t make a lot of sense, younger children have an eerie ability to identify certain things that you might think they’re too young to understand and also are often pretty insightful. Little kids are also endlessly creative- like when Jack thinks of “tricking” Nick. The point is, Jack might not make sense some of the time, but his narration provides us with some incredibly useful elements, like complete truthfulness and certain insights that the reader might not pick up on anyway.

Overall, Jack’s narration is really what makes this novel special. Five-year-olds are generally pretty fun to be around, and in this novel Jack operates as a narrator in a completely unique position. His narration of the latter half of “Dying” is honestly one of the most riveting pieces of thriller fiction I’ve ever read. I’ll be curious to see how his narration affects the last ⅖ of the book!

A Long Walk in the Opposite Direction

One prominent theme in A Lesson Before Dying that we haven't really explored in class is Grant running away. Grant thinks constantly about leaving the town he lives in and running away with Vivian. Grant has also run away before, like when he went to college and when he left to go to California to see his parents, but he came back every time. One thing we did talk about in class was Grant's adolescent qualities, and his urges to run away, but always come home definitely support that point.

An example of Grant's association with running away occurs when he and Tante Lou are fighting over how to deal with Jefferson. She says, “You ain’t going to run away from this, Grant.” (p. 123) She knows that Grant has run away in the past and would do it again, but she won’t let him because his task is too important.

Another example of Grant’s obsession with running away happens right after Grant learns of Jefferson’s execution date. When Reverend Ambrose wants Grant to go be with Miss Emma, Grant responds:

“I’m not going back down there right now,” I said. “I’m not going back down there and tell her he’s going to die April eighth. Not me.”

“You’d have the strength if you had God,” Reverend Ambrose said.

“That’s where you come in, Reverend,” I said. “I’m going for a walk, a long walk in the opposite direction. Excuse me.” (pgs. 158-9)

This really shows how Grant’s immediate response to anything difficult is to distance himself from it, usually physically. It’s interesting that Grant always seems to leave or stay out for a little while, but will come back eventually.

One of the best examples of Grant’s urges to run away is his conversation with Vivian after the bar fight. Vivian is extremely frustrated with Grant, he says:

I didn’t know what to say. Nothing I would say was going to change anything.

“I’ll leave,” I said.

“Sure, that’s the easy way out--leave.”

Even Vivian knows that Grant only knows how to leave when a situation gets difficult. She calls him out here and Grant responds by getting up to leave. But when he gets to the door:

I could see outside into the darkness, and I didn’t want to go out there. There was nothing outside this house that I cared for. (p. 210)

I think this is a greater metaphor for what happens every time Grant tries to run away. He constantly wants to leave the place that he grew up, but every time he looks at what lies outside of his community, he sees nothing he cares for. This could explain why Grant always returns to his hometown, even though he supposedly can’t stand living there. Therefore in order to truly find his place and be happy in his community, he needs to grow past his fundamental urges to run every time he experiences a difficult situation.

Overall, Grant’s urges to run away not only further the plot, but reveal a significant flaw in his character. While making Jefferson a man is Grant’s main task in his journey, he is going to need to overcome his impulse to run, either through the process of making Jefferson a man or subsequently, in order to truly rise to heroic status.

What Not To Do When You Hate Your Husband

It is almost impossible for a story set in the American South to be told without incorporating religious themes, given that Christianity in particular is so culturally vital in those areas, and As I Lay Dying is no different. Religious aspects pop up all over the book and are necessary to understand plot points, characters, and their significance.

One the first perspectives we get in the novel is Cora’s voice, which is interesting simply because she isn’t part of the Bundren family. One thing she does do well, however, is give her subjective, religiously-influenced, and often incorrect opinions about things. We don’t necessarily know she’s unreliable until later in the novel, but she does introduce her religious views very early on. In particular when she describes how Darl looked in on Addie laying in her bed, saying “He just looked at her, and I felt the bounteous love of the Lord and His mercy.” She likes Darl, and so her first instinct is to compare him to God. Contrarily, later in the novel, in a flashback where Cora speaks to Addie, Cora says “There is your sin. And your punishment too. Jewel is your punishment.” This line his hilariously ironic because Cora is simultaneously so right, but for all the wrong reasons. Jewel is the literal physical manifestation of Addie’s sin, but not because Addie loves him so much, as Cora thinks. Rather, Jewel represents sin because he was conceived through sin, and he is also Addie’s punishment because she has to see him and be reminded every day.

Along the lines of Addie’s views on religion, Addie’s chapter itself is full of religious ideologies. The fact that Addie has an affair with Whitfield, the preacher, has so many religious implications, but one of the most interesting being the way Addie further explicates her views on sin. She explains that, to her, sin is just a word, the same as love, and we can infer that her views on God are similar- that she thinks God is a person or concept with no substance. However she then says “the sin the more utter and terrible since he was the instrument ordained by God who created the sin, to sanctify that sin He had created.” This comment basically negates what she said earlier about how sin and God weren’t really real things (but hey, who said this book had to make sense). She also goes on to say “I would think of him as dressed in sin. I would think of him as thinking of me as dressed also in sin, he the more beautiful since the garment which he had exchanged for sin was sanctified.” Basically Addie says she finds him attractive because they’re sinning, and also because they’re double sinning because he’s a priest, which is very weird but also not that weird. She ends her chapter by saying (referring to Cora) “She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.” To me, at least, I thought this revelation was pretty profound. In particular “sin is just a matter of words” struck me, because it emphasizes that, to Addie, sin is not a word, but both an action (her affair) and a person (Jewel). It also shows that Addie isn’t particularly penitent about her actions, and either doesn’t believe in salvation or doesn’t think it will ever be granted to her.

Overall religious themes are present in many scenes throughout the book, much more than I can touch on in a single blog post. Many of the characters are motivated by what they perceive to be a higher power and their own philosophies which are affected by their religious views. The novel functions primarily because of a few strings that connect all of the events, and I think understanding the religious aspects of the story is crucial for gaining a deeper understanding of the novel.

Hitchin' a Ride

One element that is prevalent throughout the entirety of The Odyssey is hospitality, whether it be given or received. We see hospitality given generously or forcibly taken, and our opinions of characters seem to be formed dependent on their use or abuse of the construct, at least to a certain degree. When we watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? in class, I was interested in finding a parallel for hospitality. I think the closest parallel to receiving hospitality in The Odyssey is travelling in someone else’s car or catching a ride with someone.

Everett and his companions ride in other peoples’ cars frequently throughout O Brother, Where Art Thou? The movie really begins when they go to Wash’s (Pete’s cousin’s) house for some help, and they can finally start their journey when they take his car. Then, as sort of a “do unto others” type thing, they pick Tommy up off the side of the road. They don’t argue about whether or not they should do it - the kindness is simply extended, just like hospitality in the Ancient Greek culture.

Later, the group meets George Nelson, who drives up to ask them for directions. While they are deliberating, he tells them, “Hop on in while you give it a think.” While George Nelson doesn’t have a direct parallel in The Odyssey, it still shows another example of hospitality being extended to our “Odysseus” and “his crew”.

Soon after, perhaps the best examples of the group’s travels happen, during the video montage. Spliced in between clips showing the rising popularity of the Soggy Bottom Boys, we are shown multiple instances of Everett and the gang attempting to catch rides with people. In one clip we see the group hitchhiking on the side of the road, but then turning around to hide themselves when they see it’s a wagon of prisoners. This could perhaps be a parallel to hospitality offered to Odysseus and his crew that end up to be harmful or even detrimental, for example when Polyphemus ate Odysseus' crew members after giving them hospitality. Another clip shows a man getting out of his car to go into a store that Everett and his friends are coming out of, and when the man is safely inside, the group jumps into the car and drives off. This could possibly be a call to all of the times Odysseus and/or his crew abused hospitality or “overstayed their welcome,” for example when Odysseus repeatedly tested Eumaeus to see how far he would extend his hospitality.

Overall I think car rides in O Brother, Where Art Thou? are a very strong parallel to hospitality in The Odyssey. They are offered often and sometimes even expected by Everett and the rest of the group. The story would be very dysfunctional without the characters catching rides as often as they do, much like how The Odyssey would make little sense without hospitality as an institution. Using car rides as a parallel for hospitality was a creative and interesting choice, and I think O Brother, Where Art Thou? is more intriguing as an adaptation of The Odyssey for it.

Why do we like The Odyssey?

The Odyssey is a legendary story that has been passed down for thousands of years and loved throughout many generations. Why has this been one story to prevail, when so many more have been lost through the years? What about this story makes people want to keep telling it?

I think the reason for The Odyssey’s success is that at some base level it speaks to something we all long for. This is an emotional story at its core- it’s a homecoming, and a very sentimental one at that. We, the readers, are introduced to Odysseus’ story, his intense and difficult journey home, and we identify with him despite the fact that none of could actually be in those fictional situations. We desperately want to see him get home, because we all know how satisfying it can be to come home after being away for a long time.

Campbell wrote that the reason we enjoy and long for these stories is because of the “collective unconscious”, or a part of the mind that contains elements or cognitive structures that have evolved over human history. We all have collective unconsciouses, and they cause us to gravitate towards narratives with certain fundamental elements. One of these structures that shows up across cultures is the hero’s journey.

In The Odyssey we are introduced to Odysseus when he is right in the middle of his journey - we don’t get to see his call to adventure or initial entering into the unknown, and this would be a very different (and much longer) narrative if we did. However, focusing on the latter half of Odysseus’ journey gives us the context we as readers require in order to relate to the character, as well as witness the satisfying climax of the story. We experience Odysseus’ taxing trials, see him weep and long for home, but eventually get to see him go home and reunite with his family. These are fundamental experiences that almost everyone can understand, which is why this story has stayed relevant despite being thousands of years old.

What The Odyssey has achieved by staying relevant years later is incredible - it seems familiar, yet it is so chronologically distant from us. It touches elements of our deep psyche and has penetrated many aspects of our culture. Most importantly, The Odyssey can inspire us in our everyday lives to succeed on our own quests, and never give up on our journeys home.

Mulan as a Hero's Journey

Do I enjoy hero narratives? I think it would be unfair to say I didn’t. The sheer volume of media I consume yields a large number of hero narratives, and I find some sort of enjoyment from almost everything I take the time to exhaust. Before I discovered the internet and Netflix I was reading, like, 5-6 novels a week. Now I’ve just sort of replaced all that with online reading material, TV shows, and movies. Obviously I don’t enjoy badly adapted hero narratives, but I think this is a mistake people often make when they say the just “don’t like” hero stories. The truth is, I like having someone to root for. In modern mainstream media the trend that seems to be emerging is darker, grittier narratives with more morally ambiguous characters. While these stories can be entertaining and satisfying to a degree, sometimes I just want a simple good vs. evil dynamic, and hero narratives tend to often fall into that category.

One hero narrative that has deeply inspired me through the course of my life is the 1998 Disney film Mulan. Based on the legend of Hua Mulan, a young Chinese woman who takes her father’s place to fight in the army, the animated musical action-comedy was released in the midst of the Disney Renaissance. The film takes place in Han Dynasty-era China (the ordinary world), where Fa Mulan, the daughter of a wounded warrior, disguises herself as a man to keep her father from having to return to war (the call to adventure). Mulan enters the camp (entering the unknown) and a series of comedic situations follows, most having to do with Mulan being a woman disguised among men. As the story progresses we see that Mulan is not only becoming an amazing warrior through her hard work (tests), but she is also building meaningful relationships with her comrades (allies). However at one point she gets wounded and her commanding officer sees that she is a woman, so he dismisses her from the group. When she is leaving, she recognizes that her troops are going to be ambushed by the enemy, and so she goes to warn them. The movie culminates in Mulan using her superior strategy and skill to defeat the enemies (the supreme ordeal), saving her friends and all of China. She is awarded and then returns home to her family (master of two worlds).

As you can see, Mulan follows the structure of the hero’s journey very closely. She’s not your stereotypical war hero, but I think that’s part of what makes this movie so enjoyable to watch.

From the beginning of the film, we see that Mulan is out of place in her current situation. The first scene shows Mulan preparing to attend a meeting to assess her marriagability. It becomes clear that this (dressing up, etiquette, etc.) is not really her strong suit, but she is determined to do her duty well and bring honor to her family. However in a highly comedic scene, Mulan does terribly in her meeting and ends up horribly offending her assessor, who states that she will never get married and is a dishonor to her family. Mulan is humiliated and devastated by this, showing just how deeply she values her family and the concept of honor. Mulan’s desire to honor her family is a prevalent theme throughout the movie, and also an ideal that has made an impression on my life. Also the concept of Mulan struggling in the role that she was supposed to play is an important element, because I think not “fitting in” is something that everyone can relate to in one situation or another.

Probably one of the biggest (if not the biggest) obstacles Mulan has to overcome on her journey is the sexism she faces. Her comrades, who really respected her up until it’s revealed she’s a woman, become “enemies”, or at least antagonists, at the flip of a switch. It’s interesting that Mulan faces sexism at every point in her journey: while she’s still at home with her parents, when her army friends find out she’s a girl, even the scary Hun she fights at the end demeans her for her gender. The lengths to which she has to go to prove herself are ridiculous- she’s only accepted by her troop after she saves all of China and the emperor awards her. I think that the creators of this movie really played with the idea that Mulan had to work so much harder and achieve so much more than her male counterparts in order to be validated, because as a girl it definitely is a relatable experience.

Having first viewed this film at such an impressionable age, I completely fell in love with Mulan’s character. She wasn’t the average, (in my opinion) boring Disney princess that sang, waited around, and got saved- she was the hero of her own story, and incredibly relatable while doing it.