What issues or ideas stuck with you from Wednesday’s class?
– Some ideas that stuck out to me was that in Section IV how the idea was the more the man has the more perfect the man is, and it will cause they to have more misery. I believe that failure is important in life and to strive towards perfectionism makes life interesting and fun. To try and reach for a goal can motivate a person but when you finally achieve it life can be unentertaining and boring. Perfect means you don’t need to strive for anything, and you have no flaws which makes the challenging things seem easy when they aren’t supposed too.
What did you NOT understand?
– I thought the poem was very difficult to understand at times which made it annoying. I also thought Section VII was very challenging as well and I still don’t really understand the idea in it. The overall message I don’t understand mainly because the text in that Section seems confusing.
How did class go for you? What factors contributed to this?
– I thought class was good for me. I thought I understood my section and helped contribute to the class. I also thought everyone was else was super helpful in the class.
What is one line, image, or idea that has made an impression on you from “An Essay on Man”? What about it resonates with you?
– I thought Section II and Section III really stood out to me. I like the idea in Section II that man was meant to imperfect just so it can fit into gods’ creations. I feel like a lot of the time I want everything to be perfect but, most of the time it doesn’t come out to be. We shouldn’t get upset when things aren’t perfect because things aren’t supposed to be like. In Section III I also really enjoyed the ideas that men should be happy not knowing their future. The idea ignorance is bliss is important in this section and I agree with it. We should live our life with a lot of hope and happiness and some of that comes from our hope for the future.
Matthew, Thanks for these thoughtful responses. I agree that it was a productive class. I noticed that the idea of perfection came up a few times in your response, as it does in Pope’s poem. I think Pope is critical of humans’ desire to achieve perfection – both because it inevitably makes us unhappy and because it seems to embody a kind of arrogance. He believes we should be content as we are.