Author Archives: Armand Caguete

Reading Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich at a weird time like this, I would say, is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: no one thought they were going to be a good match until someone put them together, proclaimed about its delightful taste, and called it a day.

But I digress.

Everyone thought that, during its early days, COVID-19 would be nothing but ‘the regular seasonal flu.’ Authorities and common folk were cautious of its spread and yet, even when the first few cases have been found in the metro, higher-ups like the Baruch President were quick to dismiss the threat as low-level; telling everyone that everything will be handled effectively. Days soon passed and things started to go awry. Positive cases, even to this day, were piling up relatively as fast as the increase in the number of deaths. Consequently, everyone was told to stay at and work from home as the city went on lockdown.

Now, with hundreds of deaths being reported almost daily, it’s easy to be complacent while sitting comfortably in our own homes and safely throw the phrase, “At least it wasn’t me,” or “Well, [they’re] dead but I’m alive,” around without putting too much weight on neither the words used or the value of human lives (741). Additionally, it’s easy to put on a mask and falsely sympathize with people for their loss of a loved one to the virus the same way Ivan Ilyich’s friends did at his funeral: putting on a façade of empathy for a while then being immediately off to having fun and playing bridges (746). I, for one, felt the same thing of being relieved inside the walls of my own home while others were inevitably suffering elsewhere, but only for a short while.

In my case, my mom, who works as a nurse at a nearby healthcare facility, got the virus and tested positive. Because of this, Tolstoy’s masterpiece felt very relatable in the sense of his protagonist’s, Ivan Ilyich, sufferings and terrible feelings at the later stages of his disease. Needless to say, it was a very scary feeling between not knowing what else to do as I can’t really come close to her and give a hug, and thinking she might be in the same state of mind Ilyich was before his death, “divided between two contrary and alternating moods” (774). Fortunately, she has nearly fully recovered.

Reading a literary text as heavy as this in a time, such as today, when reading isn’t really the common thing to do is, in my opinion, both weird and compelling at the same time as it made me rethink the value of life.

While reading Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, I tried to play the film and listen to the audio. Because of this, I ended up stopping the film from time to time and confusingly looked for where in the script of the play was the scene the actors in the film were portraying.

This is because, compared to the written one, the film version removed some parts and dialogues between the characters. The part in the original text where Aunt Julie subtly attacks Hedda by holding her head and kisser her hair, as a reaction to the latter’s disgust against the former’s hat for being old and ugly, would have been great to see on film, but it wasn’t adapted. However, I found the alterations of some words in the play to give a more natural vibe and flow to the conversations was a great change by the filmmaker and made it appealing and easy to watch. Ingrid Bergman’s Hedda Gabler was an accurate depiction of the egoistic and, in my opinion, narcissistic nature of Ibsen’s protagonist. Her facial expression and subtle movements were a great interpretation of the bossy and kind of passive-aggressive attitude that Ibsen probably wanted to portray in the opening scene when Hedda ‘mistakes’ Aunt Julie’s hat for Berta’s. The written text, however, does not seem to give cues to tell its readers and make them feel about Hedda’s displease and uneasiness toward Aunt Julie.

In my opinion, the written version of the play is still superior to the film adaptation. Not only does it give a much fuller and better version of Ibsen’s masterpiece, but the written text also leaves its readers with a wider imagination of how they want the characters, such as Hedda Gabler and George Tessman, to be in their own interpretation of the play. The film, however, does great justice and adaptation to one of the great works of literature.

In his narrative, Frederick Douglass discussed the physical torment and dehumanizing effects afflicted upon him and other slaves during his time, and the challenges that came with it. Harriet Jacobs, on the other hand, on her autobiography entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, takes on the perspective of women and how they were sexually exploited and harassed during the peak of 19^th century slavery in America. In her narrative, she recounts that, even at the young age of fifteen, she was sexually abused by her master Dr. Flint. Because of this, it adds to our understanding of slavery that while slave men were forced to work under the sun and tortured if they ever disobey the command of their owners, slave women were abused inside homes and forced to accept their fate in silence. Their cries of agony, like any other slave, were forever shrouded in darkness. Sexual harassment, to me, is a hundred times worse than any account of physical torture by slave men as it degrades not just your body physically, but it also takes a toll on your self-worth and sanity, especially if you were just a mere fifteen-year-old girl. While both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs discuss and attempt to use their testimonies of slavery to push the abolitionist movement into full gear as the slaves still had to buy their way to freedom, the Slave Girl narrative hits home differently as it takes on the emotional states and challenges women had to suffer back then, such as Jacobs’s make-shift shed in the attic as a way to escape her master, and left me thinking: What if the same thing happened to my mom?

While women have been fighting for equal rights and freedom for decades, thus creating the Women’s Rights Movement in the late 20^th century, it’s hard to think that some forms of slavery still exist today and are geared towards prejudice against women and children. While physical torture has disappeared along with the slave trade, slavery in modern times consists of human trafficking and child marriage. In most third world countries, women are sexually exploited and sold for sex due to extreme poverty. Brothels, such as those in the Philippines, sell not just those of legal age, but also girls as young as twelve years old. On the other hand, while arranged marriage is a religious thing in other cultures, child marriage can be a whole different thing. To some extent, children, in countries such as Niger, are forced to marry even if they have never given their consent genuinely, thus making them subject to sexual exploitation in the long run.

In reading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, I was astonished to look at slavery from the perspective of an actual victim of that era in American history. There were many things in this text that stood out for me, but I centered only on three things that I thought truly encapsulates not just Douglass’s account of his experiences as a slave in the early 19^th century, but also the idea of slavery itself. Among those three is a quote found on page 242, in which Douglass writes:

If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul,–and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”

His whole narrative is about his experiences as a slave in 19^th century America and shows the detrimental effects and unjust doings of both slavery as a whole and the slaveholders he had. In this text, and the ones that came before and after it, Douglass recounts his experience being part of a group of slaves in which they sing their feelings out while making their way towards the Great House Farm to collect their monthly allowance. These, he noted, were “wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness” (241). In what seems to be a joyful moment for them to express their feelings as they go to collect the fruits of their hardship, it also depicts their deepest sorrows in realizing that it’s just another day in the cycle of their life-long suffering. In relation to slavery, this shows not just the physical effects of what slavery has done to countless bodies that left them bloody and scarred, but also the dehumanizing effects it makes in a human soul. It adds to our understanding that slavery does not just inflict physical torment with every swing of its lash to its victims, but it also leaves crushed souls in its wake. Like the narrative itself, Douglass, in this passage, calls out people who may think that slavery wasn’t all that bad as it was economically uplifting and challenges them to be one with the slaves, hear their pleas and cries of agony, and, as the old saying goes, “walk in their shoes.” This text also reveals Douglass’s mental health at a very young age and his abhorrent feelings against what slavery, may it be physical or emotional, can do to a mere human being, and thus sprang out of him a strong will to fight for the end of slavery. In the end, I deem this quote as the most significant because it shows a more powerful reason to abolish slavery than mere torture accounts as it also damages the innermost self and attempts to raise the question, at least for me: How evil can a human being go against his fellow brother?

For it to be considered a “Great Work,” in my opinion, the literary piece must have a message that had its fair share of aging through time but is still considered valid today. In that case, Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man” delivers exactly that. From start to finish, Pope’s philosophical take on the relationship between man and the universe on his first epistle was a very challenging yet interesting piece to read. Various allusions and references of different contexts to God and the bible left me confused and wondering what they meant so I had to reread a line over and over again until I got the idea. In this work, Pope argues that Man “[p]erhaps acts second to some sphere unknown” (line 58). At first, the message he is trying to convey wasn’t clear to me. Reading it for the first time left me with more questions than answers. In all honesty, his use of deep English words and historical references did not make it easier for me to enjoy such a relatively wonderful piece of literature, but the poetic lines kept me engaged throughout. As an avid reader, these left me clueless, so I thought initially that he is probably just illustrating that Man is second only to and created by God because of his references to the Garden of Eden, the Angels, and the Natural Order. The second time around, however, made me realize that the message he is trying to tell his readers is that man is ignorant of his place as a piece of a bigger machine called the universe and the natural order. Philosophically, this holds value to me as it made me think about life in general and the rapid technological advancement that has been happening both in Pope’s time and in today’s society, and so I asked myself: If Man is indeed a part of a bigger picture and second only to God, then doesn’t technological advancement impede the natural order as we become enslaved to it, and thus, artificial intelligence, if made self-conscious and power-hungry, as seen in movies such as I Robot and Ex Machina, would be the new God? Mind-boggling, I know, but you can’t deny that this may be true. I don’t know about you but removing technology in this generation and the future so the Natural Order is satisfied would mean going back to the primitive era, and I don’t want to be another Mr. Flintstone.

Hey there, my name is Armand Jayson Caguete, and I am an aspiring data analyst.

My family and I come from the Philippines so it’s pretty much in the culture to name children with two first names. You can call me Jay for short so you don’t have to worry about picking between the two, and it’s also just one syllable so it’s probably one of the easiest names to remember. I am turning 22 this year, but have only been living in New York for almost 3 years now. This is my first semester at Baruch as a transfer student majoring in Computer Information Systems specializing in Data Analytics, and plan to attend NYU after I graduate for a Master’s degree in Information Systems. Aside from my love for all things tech, I also have a passion for photography. I still consider myself an amateur, but I do try to improve my work with every picture I take. I also consider it as a backup plan, in case my career in the ever-growing field of technology plan goes awry. Aside from that, I also love to draw using the traditional technique of pencil and paper, play the guitar, and I am a big fan of TV series. My favorites include Scorpion, Sherlock, Supernatural, Vikings, and Friends. I also like to travel, and the number one destination I want to go to but still haven’t is Europe, especially Paris and the UK. Most of the traveling I have done in the past is explore the hundreds of islands of my home country, but I have also been to other countries such as Dubai and Hong Kong. I also (learned to) love math since it’s pretty much a staple in learning how to write code and read machine language. Participating vocally in class isn’t really the sharpest tool in my shed, so I am looking forward to trying for the rest of the semester.