Garrett's Presentation

   The ideas Garrett presented on Wednesday were of the type I want to instantly stick my fingers in my ears and start repeating Lalalalalalalalala as loud as I could. I didn't want to hear a single word he said, because once the idea entered my head I would never know if, left to my own devises, I would have discovered it myself. Shame on me for being such a procrastinator and not finishing the book yet.
    The way in which Prof. Sexson gives us hints in class then waits for us to clue in is a testament of his patience as a teacher and his knowledge that discovering the hidden treasures in a piece of literature is the sweet reward for reading a 800+ page novel. I am anxious to chew on the entire Brother's K. I just hope a few of Sexson's hints are still stashed in my head somewhere.
    I know my last two blogs are only loosely tied into class topics, but I thought I'd practice writing and why squander my thoughts by not posting them.

Me Ole Brain

I find that the principle "... the notion that in order to be a good writer, one must practice. A lot. If you're not writing on a regular basis, you forget how to formulate ideas and become a sub-par writer."- Seth  Seth had learned this semester is one of the same ones I have learned. I just hadn't given it any thought until I read Seth's blog. I found it very difficult to articulate my thoughts or even come up with a thought some days. Now that it's the end of the semester I'm finally getting my Ole brain warmed up. I have chosen to revisit the anthology and the Brothers Karamazov over the summer. I have also chosen to keep blogging so I too can in the future see what I thought. Seth, I Thank you for your blog that got me thinking on the notion of practice makes better, I'm not shooting for perfection just yet. I actually would like to thank several of you for articulating so beautifully the same thoughts that I had made such a mess of in my head. After I had read one of those beautiful blogs my thoughts straightened right up, almost like therapy. So I Thank You for sharing your thoughts, they have made a difference in me.

Thesis paper topic

My topic for my paper will be that Alyosha does fit the archetypal design of the Hero.

The Crutch of Religion

I got to thinking quite the opposite as Annebelle has reflected in her blog thoughts. I realize she's still pondering, but she got me thinking. The mere thought of religious being the tool for humanity to bare sufferings is the exact ideal that I believe leads Ivan to reject religion. If religion can allow an individual to endure their sufferings by allowing god to be their strength, then doesn't that make the individual weaker for not learning to bare the weight of suffering themselves. Like Annebelle said she learns from the sufferings of others as well as her own. What do we learn? I believe we learn the strength of our sole, the strength of our heart, the strength of our morals. I have always bore the weight of my sufferings and I know without a doubt that I still do not know the limits of my strengths or the boundaries of my weaknesses. I say this because along the way I grew stronger and stronger because I taught myself by learning from my experiences. By no means does this mean I don't have a breaking point, but it means just that my breaking point is that much stronger. Ivan may see religion as a crutch, a crutch by which to weaken him, by giving him false strength through excepting the mysterious ways that god himself works. Ivan may believe If he believes in God then he is not relying on himself, he may believe he will never know his true strengths or weaknesses if he excepts the ways god works. How do you know your own strength until you've flexed your own muscles? Ivan may even see it as religions way of keeping us from knowing our own strengths, keeping us weak, to keep us relying on religion, the church, Father Z  rather than ourselves. One might say it's Ivan's ego that got him thinking these thoughts. Ivan's portrayed ego, may be Ivan simply figuring out what he thinks by saying things he's thought. Now that's a thought.

Thoughts, just as were Annebelle's.

Sparknotes

Reading the spark notes of the Brothers Karamazov is like watching the movie rather than reading the book. The director had to read the book so he could direct the movie, but the movie is never as good as the book they say. The spark note author had to read Brothers Karamazov so he could write a condensed version of it, which they say is never as good as the book. Just as the author of the Brothers Karamazov had to experience first hand before writing his greatest novels, because before his run in with the firing squad they say his novels were never as good as they were after he began to live. So that would make books the spark notes of Life.

Omelas raises a question for me

   The other day in class Prof. Sexson posed this question "Could you walk away from Omelas?" I had never heard of this piece of literature. My first thought was, What would the child choose? He should have the choice to bare the suffering or not to bare the suffering. Each person should have a choice whether they are to stay, or they are to go or to be tortured for the sake of the happiness of all others.
   What ever the child chooses I would leave Omelas.  I would have some peace of mind in knowing that the child had a choice in his role of Omelas, but I would still be disturbed knowing that people felt that one person's suffering exchanged for all the suffering in the world was just. If I think back over my "sufferings" I would not ask someone to endure a  lifetime of  anyone of them so I may never suffer again. My sufferings could never be so great or so minimal that I allow someone else to endure them. I'd rather ask to die.

A shovel full of blood

By having Annebelle tell us in graphic detail about her job as cleaner at a suicide scene, Prof. Sexson was asking us to step into her shoes.The image of a scene where there was so much blood it could fill shovels was albeit gross. As I pictured Annabelle in a hazmat suite slopping up that much blood my heart went out to her. Not for the mere gross factor of performing such physically nasty work, but for the psychological fortitude it required from Annabelle. Annabelle herself must have stepped into the shoes of every member of that family. The little blond girl who will suffer the loss of her father until she dies. The fiance who will suffer the loss of a lover and the sufferings of her daughter until her death. The father who suffered so greatly that his suffering over shadowed the suffering he was to bring about on his young child and fiance, we presumed he loved deeply. The mind is hard pressed to continue to think of such suffering, to think of such senseless suffering., but it continues. Under little encouragement my thoughts go to how this grizzly scene will now be carried inside the minds of the crime scene investigators, the coroner, the cleanup crew until the end of their lives. Not only do I feel compassion for these strangers I've never met, I can feel my heart being squeezed in my chest. Just by allowing myself to step into the shoes of someone else I am able to experience a physical response to misery that played out in another time and place. Why did my mind not stop at the image of the wet floor deep in blood? It is a much nicer image than that of the prolonged suffering of everyone that single suicide has touched, and the added thought that thousands of suicides are carried out each year. Would I rather step into the shoes of the suffering or the shoes of the naive? Part of me feels as though I have heard enough of the sufferings of others that I would be content with wearing naive shoes the remaining days of my life. At the same time I know there's something bigger and unidentifiable inside me that would not feel content with not knowing the truth in this world.