The Road Awaits

Gulliver's Travels begins in the form of a letter, and all the implications this holds are held up by a line that says that these are not exactly correct and have been edited for content somehow, whcih gives the feeling that the author wants the reader to try to imagine what really happened. The pace is very brisk and I must admit a little confusing, especially as it uses an older version of english. The narrator refers at length to Yahoos, whom he seems to despise, it seems to refer to a kind of person, which must be stupid and brutish and impulsive, as he compares them to animals and refers to his book, which are of course the following chapters. He also says he now lives on an island. In chapter on the narrator introduces his family. The style is now far easier to follow. He is a surgeon, which is to say a doctor and Swift discreetly uses this to make fun of doctors, by showing how favoritism and mal practice run their trade. Swift also ironically makes the shipwreck happen after many voyages by the narrator, and only when he is now weary of travel and wanting to go home, in a parallel to Ulysses/Odysseus. I thinkt he tiny people on the island are a warning that things that seem little or insignificant can kick up a big mess and a lot of pain. It is also alot about entrapment, and how weighted down by our problems and by what society dictates (for example he does not kill the little men because he is bound by the laws of hospitality). It speaks about how easily oour freedom is taken from us, which is why I chose a trapped bird as my illustration:

Speak No Evil

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/opinion/23banville.html

This article is by an Irish man, who talks about the recent publishing of a report that details the abuse piled on children in insititutions like orphanages, industrial schools and reformatories from the 1930's to 90's in Ireland. It talks about a horror deeper than the sexual and physical abuse suffered by children at these places, but about the fact that the general population knew that these children were suffering and did nothing, in a way that the author compares it to the people of Nazi Germany or the people of Rwanda and Armenia during their respective genocides. As the author says they knew and yet they did not know, they allowed themselves ot be blind to the truth by reasoning that somehow the victims deserved it, and that therefore it should not be mentioned. It really sort of horrifies me that people can be so deliberately yet so unknowingly cruel, and that we continue to see an ever growing expansion of the human capacity for evil. Why do we stay silent when we know somethign is wrong? Even in Colombia people who knew of paramilitary actions said nothing and I have heard and witnessed cases of people knowing about child abuse and saying nothing. It is like a cushioned "Genovese effect" named for a woman, Kitty Genovese who was raped and murdered outside her apartment building. Her neighbors heard everything and some of them even watched. But no one did a single thing to help her. Every day I hope I won't get overwhelmed by the sentiment that we can simply shrug off abuse to others because it does not fall on us directly. This is a hope I hold for all mankind.

Old-Fashioned Love Letters

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opinion/25seligman.html?_r=1

In this op-ed a less-talked about side of war is uncovered. In it a woman talks about how contact with her husband was often strained, especially through the use of technology, like phones or webcams. She says that the only way she saved her marriage was to replace those conversation with letters. She explains that in this way she was able to send her feelings in a clear way that couldn't be misinterpreted, without time delays or fear of being cut off. It also gave both of them, and their children a physical thing to hold onto and it allowed them to re-read letters to keep a permanent sense of contact. I chose this article because I thought it was a a great insight into human relationships and the timeless value of a handwritten letter. If there is any doubt, ask high school girls about the letters they recieve and make for their friends. As a society obssessed with technology we may not recognize how older ways may be better and may connect us more progoundly than new technologies. The woman here connected with a man half a world away, and finally established a real connection between him and their children through the handwritten word, and feels it has kept them together. Maybe as a society we need to break out the stationery and get back to hand-written letters.

Red Balloon

For my secong painting I chose the one in the middle. This one does not seem to be trying to portray an image from real life or a religious or philosophical lesson unlike the other painting I analyzed. Instead it seems to be more content with just being, and being pleasing to look at, not to mention stimulating. However the artist does use soft colors and a lack of people to give the painting a more calm and peaceful look. The main focal point of the image is of course the red hot-air balloon, as it is not only the largest object, but it has the most solid red which is also the strongest in the painting. The artist also uses a surreal style, but balances the colors on both sides of the image.

Christ, I Presume?

The painting I picked to blog on is the last one. I believe it has a religious connotation and the man that is the focus point is Jesus. This assumption is due to the style, which pertains to an era where most paintings were religious in nature and the portrayal of the man, which is the way in which Jesus is generally portrayed. I believe the scene being dipicted here is "Las Bodas de Canaa" (I don't know how to say this in english) where Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding at the behest of his mother, Mary. The lesson this scene is used to teach is that Christ has saved the best wine for last, which means Christians will be rewarded at the end of a good life. I believe it is this scene because the food on the table and all the people and the sleepy possible enebriated man all support a party. The artist has used composition in way that he makes Jesus the main focal point, even with all the chaos around him, and juxtaposes his wise calm with the party-goer's frantic ridiculousness and lack of self-control. Jesus is the focal point not only because he has deliberately been placed prominently in the center of the painting but also his shirt has the lightest color, so it draws our eyes. The artist has also balance both sides of the image by dressing the men at either end in similar colors. The artist has also painted the things below the table as small and not very eye catching so one will see them later as details and not be distracted by them when one first sees the image.

Surrogate Children

Loulou is another surrogate child for the childless Felicite and again her deep emeotions are present in the pain she feels when he is mocked. She is fascinated because he reminds her of her nephew, another surrogate child and like earlier she gives a lot to the bird to recieve nothing in return except more pain. She also becomes deaf but is still servile. She is also so devoid of personality that her sins are trivial and inconsequential, even then she needs to directiosn of others as she has no will of her own. Even her room looks like a temple for the lives of others that she sees as greater and in charge. She depends on the parrot because it is helpless and cannot grow like the children and that's why she tries to get it stuffed, because she can't bear that loss. Even then her isolation from the outside world is evident. She lives almost entirely in her head with no outside communication and does her tasks in an almost sleepwalking state. The only tangible connection she has is Madame and the less tangible connection of her dead parrot which begins to color her almost fanatical religiousness. After the loss of Madame she lives totally disjointed form the outside world. She is unloved and her health grows progressively worse and when she dies no one will mourn. Even her stuffed parrot is beginning to decay, leaving her all alone. Even the end, despite Felicite seeming somewhat glad is sad in the sense that it is the anti-climatic end of the poor and uneducated.

Simple? Really?

When I started A Simple Heart I notice that the beginning sets up an air of mystery. Why would she be so loyal and for so long to mean Madame Aubain? And why only for the half century, has she died or will she quit? And what is she like exactly? Felicite, despite being the main character takes a while to show up. However she is obviously a dedicated and hardworking person and she must be old and a good servant to be so envied. When she does appear she is like a robot, dedicated only to work. Again my main intesrest in reading is finding why she's so dedicated. Also, the fact that the description of Madame's life and her house makes it clear that Felicite's life is defined by her employers and she has almost no identity of her own. Her life is later revealed to be sad and hard, with the only love she had known to be one of deception that was almost thrust upon her. She is almost to grateful to Madame and she seems fascinated with the children probably because she wants some of her own, which she'll never have, she also shows this devotion to her sisters children. Because of this she even heroically saves their lives and sees it only as her duty. Her religiousness is shown to have a childlike innocence and a grasping need to feel connected to soemthign greater than herself. The later loss of the children to school take more away from her identity as they were the only ones that exposed her to an outside world. Often the text implies her limited intelligence and education, which makes it easy for the world to take advantage of her and influences her deep emotion, like the heartbreak over her nephew's death or the profound gratitude towards Madame. Thsi links Felicite and Madame in a sort of unhealthy but unbreakable relationship of shared grief and gratitude.