Literature and Life

Today I spent a very fulfilling day enjoying my time out of school. Part of this day I spent watching two movies, the Book of Eli, and the Golden Compass, two movies which share nothing in particular except for one thing, an unexpected surprise ending. Ahem... ***SPOILER ALERT***... in the Golden Compass the main character in the film, Lyra, discovers that her primary enemy is actually her mother, and in the Book of Eli the bible that Eli has been carrying turns out to be brail so that the selfish town leader is unable to read it despite all the trouble he went through to get it. ***END OF SPOILER*** It is this shared characteristic which I believe led me to enjoy both of these movies. As I pondered this fact it occurred to me that, for the most part, such endings generally excite my interest, in both movies and literature. My favorite author, Dan Brown almost always includes such twists in his novels. So I came to ask myself, why is it that if I enjoy surprise endings and plot twists so much, that I truly despise surprises in real life? So I have come conclude that where people despise when their own lives are thrown off balance and enter chaos, yet they enjoy watching others enter such a situation. I myself have found that I do enjoy watching chaos, I have always found it amusing to watch as our orderly, calm English discussions give way to chaos as arguments take over. We humans are truly selfish, rude beings and unfortunately quite enjoy awkward situations for others, or atleast I do.

Am I Going Crazy?

Recently I have noticed the concrete logic which once surrounded my life crumbling before my eyes, and I have finally come to question myself, has Kesey's novel led me to realize my own insanity. In the past two weeks I have noticed exceedingly odd things going on around me, I do not mean general abnormality like seeing people unusually often, I mean seeing shadow-like figures watching me through doorways, and seeing people in the window who disappear when I go to look for them odd. Of course this may simply be a side affect of sleepless nights and utter exaughstion, but I have never had things like this happen to me before. Currently I fear I have lost my grip on reality and each time I see such things I tend to go and check that they are not there or to develop some sort of theory to explain the strange things. While finding odd combinations of things stacked on top of eachother in the backroom and baseroom closet may have comforted my fears of shadow-like figures, I am sorry to say that my realization that the motion sensor lights turn on moments before I see things watching me in the window did not comfort me. So now I leave you, hoping my insanity takes an unexpected turn and I return to normal. I have to go look for the figments of my imagination that just appeared yet again... Happy Winter Holidays!!!

What was Kesey Thinking? Perhaps he had a Little too much Acid

Last night I was staring at my book willing myself to read at one in the morning when I noticed something very peculiar. I was receiving all of the opposite vibes about the world the book takes place in than the vibes provided in the actual book. Now I don’t know if you have taken a look at the book yet, however, it is a picture of a human figure standing on the roof of a colorful purplish building, who appears to be staring at a dark, brown, forlorn sky. What I mean by giving the opposite vibes is that, at least in my mind, the sky represents the outside world, the building represents the world the patients live inside the hospital, and the man represents the people trapped in the hospital, longing to rejoin society. Yet this scene is what bothers me most, first of all we found out quite recently that a strong majority of the acute patients in the hospital are there by choice, and therefore do not have such an urge to rejoin society that I feel the cover implies. Furthermore, the dark, opaqueness of the sky, which as I said earlier I feel references the outside world, makes it seem as if the world is a horrible dark place which will only disappoint the patients, yet in the previous section throughout the majority of the time the patients spent in the outside world, they both enjoyed their experience and their conditions improved, thereby giving a far more positive view of the outside world than portrayed by the cover. Finally, what really frustrates me is the colorful building which I can only believe represents the hospital. I have yet to see any reason why the hospital would have some sort of positive portrayal, it seems to me that the hospital is a very dark, horrible place, what with all the lobotomies and electroshock therapy going on, with an evil nurse who seems hell bent on making the patients’ lives unbearable added in for good measure. Seeing how the cover and the actual book give such different portrayals of the patients’ world, I see only two reliable explanations for this predicament. First, is the possibility that being so caught up as a test subject with drugs and his strong connection to the patients, that Kesey has recreated the patients’ delusional view of the world on his cover, showing the psychopath’s failed understanding of society. The second is perhaps that Kesey was under the strong influence of his favorite drugs, thus causing such a distorted view from the book and creating a strange confusing view of the world.

Assumptions, Assumptions, A fools game

Ever since our discussion Tuesday afternoon the topic of assumptions has repeatedly wandered in and out of my mind, and I have come to realize just how illogical life is. Day in and day out we live our lives off of one big series of assumptions. We spend our lives following other peoples rules, yet why do we assume their assumptions are right when we have seen continuous proof of such assumptions being proven wrong. In ancient times Plato claimed that our earth was the center of the solar system, and we just assumed this claim was true until Copernicus decided to go against this assumption and produced his own theory that the sun was the center of the atmosphere. Countless other examples just like this exist which show the power others' ideas have over us and the way our desire to be able to control our own lives leads us to assume they are true. So the question comes to mind, does the validity of a theory lie in its being true, or in our desire for it to be true. Really with enough effort any theory in this world can be disproved, we humans hold much more power over our lives than we can imagine or accept. Secretly we control our own world, if we want to we can say the world is flat, from a human perspective this earth is flat, or we can say it is round, in the fact that this world is fairly spherical. Now why does this concept lie so well concealed and hidden?
Anyone could say why, I just explained that, but I believe it is man’s lack of self esteem and pursuing of conformity which hides our power from us. We are afraid to go against our peers, and do not believe that despite our strong desire to control our own lives, we do not believe we can do so. We fear our real power and so we hide it, out of our own glimpses and wish for that which we really have. However one day we will realize the ambiguity of things, we will discover that with real effort we can do anything we want to.

Students doing what they are supposed to? Now there is an assumption

In class today Ms. Serensky mentioned her fear, which I believe to be correct, that we refuse to check our school email accounts. Why? Because they are obnoxious, pointless, and most importantly not the email that we have been checking for the last several years. Below is a simple guide to make your account forward emails to whatever account you do check. Now whether or not you follow this list is your choice, but if you fail to do so, do not come complaining to me when you do not receive Ms. Serensky's next email about what to do for homework.

1. Sign on to your chagrin email account, if you are like me and have never actually logged on to it you may find it helpful to know that the email is styled as such chaseplante.11@chagrinstudents.org and the password is your lunch code.
2. Click on the settings link, this is located in the upper right hand corner of the window
3. Click on the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab
4. Click the "Add a forwarding address" button in the Forwarding Section
5. Type in your main email address, preferably one you check regularly, click next, click ok
6. Now go to that address in a separate window, it should have received an email with a confirmation code in it
7. Type that code into the confirmation code box on the window with the forwarding section and click verify
8. Now check the circle next to the option that says "Forward a copy of incoming mail to [insert your email entered above here] and you cand ecide whether you still want emails saved in the school account in the next drop box
9. These Next Two Steps Are Essential!
10. Click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the window
11. Send a test email to the school account and make sure it is received in your other account, if it fails to do so then try again or hunt me down in the halls and force me to help you in the library

I will not be held responsible if you do not receive Ms. Serensky's emails, if you followed the above steps correctly then everything will work correctly, if for some reason they do not you should find me and ask for help. Do not, I repeat do not blame me if this does not work and you did not ask for help.

Machinery and Man

In the First 3 Chapters of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the protagonist, Chief Bromden, frequently refers to people as machines, "machines with flaws beat in that can't be repaired" (16). At first this seemed to emphasize Chief Bromden's insanity, some sort of inability to accept the individuality of humanity. However over the weekend I continued to consider Chief Bromden's situation, and the more that I thought about it, the more it seemed as if perhaps he really is not that so far off in describing people as machines, especially those that he comes in contact with. When you think about it, a strong majority of the patients in the mental hospital have had their humanity beat out of them. Unable to think for themselves and longer such as Ellis, nailed to a wall drooling all over the floor or Ruckly, who spends his life staring at an old photograph (16, 17). Without any real personalities, what do people become? Once they have lost their personalities people lose their individuality, they do not think anymore, they simply do as they are told. In my opinion, Chief Bromden's description of these people as machines really is not far off, they now simply do as they are told, under the control of the hospital staff. Speaking of staff, I have noticed they seem somewhat robotic as well. Thus far the staff have seemed entirely unemotional, cruel and ruthless as they slowly attempt to “fix” their patients. The only expression of any sort of emotion we have seen thus far has been by the head nurse, who experiences some sort of “overload” when she sees some of the staff misbehaving. As the staff submits to their protocols and work on their patients the become far less human, they do not care about the effect on their patients, they simply turn a blind eye to the morality issues which their work provokes. Chief Bromden is surrounded by people who lack expression of emotion, his fellow patients have lost their humanity while the staff have abandoned theirs. He has become trapped in a world where true humanity no longer exists, only a hollow shell of what once was.

Insanity, Odd or Normal?

I was looking for more definitions of insanity the other night when I noticed that the definition "extreme folly; senselessness; foolhardiness" kept cropping up. This definition struck me as odd, as I felt that I, along with most people fit this definition. I quickly let this thought drift to the back of my mind, yet I have found that throughout the weekend it has continued to return itself to my awareness, and it has brought to my attention the possibility that perhaps the cliché "that everyone is a little insane," really is not that absurd. After all, I have been known to act senselessly quite often. At average I go to sleep at two in the morning, and get up at five for school, and incase you have not noticed, this is being written at 1:21 am, why? because that is when I prefer to do my writing. Does my preference to write so late at night make me insane, by that definition one would think so, but personally I disagree, for several reasons. First, I find it far easier to concentrate at write when it is quiet, a state my house really is never in unless everyone is asleep. One other strong contributor is that once it gets late my mind starts to slow down, allowing me to focus better on the task at hand, rather than having the other parts of my brain wandering off and distracting me. If we lived by this definition of insanity I could be shipped off to the loony bin any day now, but alas I escape my proper sentence. Now perhaps it is just me that has avoided my impending doom, but as far as I can see I think most have landed in the same position. I currently have a friend, I am not kidding, who each night looks outside and sees a little girl in a white dress swinging on their swing. Now whether we decide the little girl is real and she herself is crazy for enjoying swinging in the pitch black darkness, or she does not exist and it is my friend that is crazy I feel the principle still applies. After all my friend is not crazy, at least in my opinion she is not as she seems for the most part fairly normal. Now if the little girl is real, then can we really pass her off as insane simply because she finds it right to swing in cold darkness? Perhaps… but perhaps not. In my opinion everyone is a little crazy, but what separates true insane from average abnormality is persistent displaying of craziness, such as complete and utter disregard for ones safety, and that the truly normal, are perhaps close to insanity than the abnormal majority.