Author Archives: deon.marecheau

For my digital essay and paper #4 I believe I will be focusing on John Donne’s “The Flea,” It falls under the subtopic of metaphysical poetry, which is poems that uses elaborate conceits, and expressing the complexities of love and life. Metaphysical poetry has always really fascinated me because it was a way of how the highly intellectual people of the seventeenth century communicated issues without being public about it. This poem is about how a man was rejected sex by his lover. Specifically, I will attempt to tackle the idea of how sex is linked to happiness. Why is the character in this poem so attached to idea of sex? Is it because he thinks he needs this to be happy?
As for my digital essay, I will be illustrating a series of situations where a man is not happy after being rejected sex. Specifics are not known at this point but I will keep you posted definitely. It will be very captivating. = )

Creativity… “Create”, and “vity” mixed together. Well for starters, the first word that I see in “creativity” is “create”. Create is defined as to “Bring something into existence”. When I think about creativity I think of doing everything except what someone else is doing. For me, there are levels of creativity. Either something is mildly creative, or some is extremely creative. A paper mache can be considered something that is mildly creative in my sense. Something that I would consider really creative is the creation of a theory, or an engineering marvel. However, there has been something else that has been in the back of my mind ever since our last class; lesbians. I have to admit, these guys (excuse me, females) are so creative! The very idea of loving another female is very interesting. For men, I think it’s another story. If you see a gay couple (men) it just feels like “hey, there just two homosexual men”, however, when it comes to a female couple it’s something different. The human body is design to attract, or be attracted to the opposite sex (and that is a fact). Going against one’s nature requires some skill and well…”creativity”. When I had this discussion with some friends of mine over the weekend (both male and female) they mentioned a phrase that was quite funny, but upon further thought it stood out to me. The phrase was “the power of the penis”. Not to be extremely sexual or anything, but I think it’s safe to say that most women well… likes penises. And according to my definition of “doing everything except what someone else is doing”, lesbians fit that paradigm perfectly. In fact, on my levels of creativity I would place them in the extremely creative section where all the people who created engineering marvels are. I really commend them for the creativity; it must have taken a lot to resist “the power of the penis.”. Wait, I think I used the word creativity so many times. Perhaps I need to work on my creativity.

PS: Professor, it would be really cool if you could invite a lesbian/writer speaker to class one day.

In “Hills Like White Elephants,”, the female and male couple seeks to solve a problem. That problem is a fetus that they have someone created (obviously through sex). They go about disputing whether or not the woman (Jin), should go through having an abortion. In “The Birth-mark”, Georgina, a woman of immense beauty is flawed by a birthmark on her face. Her husband/lover goes about utilizing science, and sorcery (what science is based on), to solve the problem of removing this hideous mark from her face.

Something interesting to note between the two stories and happiness is the following. As I mentioned, I am a strong advocate for science. Science speaks to me like another language. This is because of its use of empirical evidence, and strong link to practicality. Someone students from out class mentioned, “Science isn’t necessary for happiness”, or something along those lines at best. But did you notice that in both stories, happiness was attained, or at least attempted through the use of science! After all isn’t an abortion science? Scraping the uterian walls, and/or puncturing the amniotic sac? You got that right! That’s hardcore science! Experimentation, a procedural operation one may say. Why are people trying to achieve happiness through the use of science? What does this make science? This makes science an alternative to nature, an alternative to life, a HUGE part of life. This makes me think of atheists. Most people whom I have met who are atheists obviously don’t believe in God. On the contrary, this does not mean that they don’t believe in anything. Everyone has a belief and I believe atheists possess some sort of belief.  The majority of people who are atheists, that I have spoken with, claim to believe in the theory of Evolution and the Big Bang theory. Isn’t this essentially science? This is what I mean by an alternative to life and nature.

It is interesting how people look to science to attain happiness. In the two stories, people have tried to achieve some form of perfection through science, ending up with something worse than what they started off with; sadly for Georgina, it was death. This may sound controversial with my current idea about science playing an important part of everything.  Although it has the potential to accomplish great things, it has its fair share of consequences as a result of misuse. For example, referring back to the point I made about atheists looking to science for the answer to life, a good deal of the atheists I have spoken to, if not the majority of them, cannot explain the theory in which they place there deeply kept beliefs. All they know is that the history channel thought them about some animals that mysteriously crawled out a lake, pond, and ocean and grew legs. Essentially, people don’t know or understand the science behind it. This can produce disastrous results as well as a general disdain for science. This is why there is a probably a stigma against science prevalent, in our little community; a lack of understanding. The bottom line is that science presents itself as a general alternative to nature, and it is very possible for science to give us the result s we are looking for, and in this case happiness. Although Georgina and Jin didn’t get the results they really wanted, you have to take into account that science is an evolving disciple. There’s more that meets the eye.

After reading “Hills Like White Elephants”, I immediately thought “Sex”! The way the two characters went at each other reminded me of a show from the 1980’s called “The Wonder Years” in which two teenagers  who knew each other, while growing up, experienced many of the “teen-like” issues, some of which include; first kiss, and first time having sex. The way the man and the girl sort-of argued made it seem like a teenage drama on whether to have sex or not. For example, on page 168, the girl says “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”, then the guy replies “I love you now. You know I love you”. To me, this seems like a typical dispute that teenagers will go through about having sex because the female might think that the only reason the guy is with her is to have sex, and then wont “love” her anymore –like we know what the hell that means-. Or the teenage couple might be afraid of their relationship losing its passion after the introduction of sex.

Personally, I didn’t understand what role or motif the alcohol, and beer played in the story. I did not see the point of mentioning it other than it being used as the conversation topic for the couple, and an attention grabber for the audience. Maybe I’m missing something… In addition, I was particularly interested in the way that the story started. Seeing that we are all pretty much young adults, drinking alcohol and partying (I speak in general terms) is a HUGE part of our life, for the most part. So including that in the introduction really grabbed my attention.

Something that particularly kept me at a conundrum was the fact that the story turned out to be about abortion. I am satisfied that I came somewhere close to the topic, but I believe that the author can be quite misleading at times. For example, on page 167 “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig”, then “I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig, it’s really not anything, it’s just to let the air in”. Particularly, the confusing part was determining what “Jig” really is! At first I thought it was a sexual position of some sort, because initially, I thought that the story was about something dealing with sex. The only logical thing to do is follow that thought process. Overall, it was an interesting and captivating story to read that took a strange twist, although its slight ambiguity (In my opinion) was annoying, it gave the story its fascinating characteristic.