Author Archives: kristie.ching

What makes you happy will not necessarily make me happy.

Happiness is a desired that is shared amongst all people, but the definition of it always varies from person to person. In the past week or two, we have read many short stories that related to and depicted happiness. Through these readings, we can see that happiness really does always differ between people and circumstances.

When I was reading the story, “The Birth-Mark,” I continuously found it crazy that someone like this man would exist in the world. In order to make his wife “perfect,” he was willing to risk hurting her. Perfection? There’s no such thing. Nothing is perfect, which is exactly what this story tells us. To make his wife perfect, he wanted to get rid of her birthmark, but as a result of his wife dies. He was able to perfect her by getting rid of her birthmark, but she did no become perfect because she eventually dies as a result of the removal of the birthmark. Perfection is unattainable. Perfection does not always equal happiness. Perfection does not exist. Trying to make everything in life “perfect” is a waste of time, because no matter how hard you try nothing will every be perfect. Focusing on the imperfections in life will lead to an unhappy life.

After reading the first half of the story “Cathedral,” I was confused. There didn’t seem to be a point or focus in the first few pages. The title of the story didn’t seem to tie together with the actually story. Only after finishing the whole reading did I realize that the very end of the story is where happiness is thrown into the picture. I could finally connect different parts of the story with the topic of happiness. When I started reading and was introduced to the “blind man” in the story, I automatically thought it would somehow be related to perfection. Blind people are unable to physically see the imperfections in the world and imperfections of people. Are they happier because they cannot see flaws or are the more unhappy because they are unable to see the beautiful things in life?  At the very end of the story, when they closed their eyes and freely drew the cathedral, I thought of happiness. I think that the freedom to draw it in whatever way they wanted and not being able to point out the imperfections with their eyes closed, made their drawing of the cathedral perfect. Sometimes life isn’t about pointing out the flaws and imperfections, but more about learning to ignore the flaws and focus on the beauty of everything around us. In this story, the husband went from being very judgmental and focusing on imperfections of people to becoming able to accept and embrace the imperfections in life. By accepting the flaws in life, people may become happier.

I chose to do option #2 for this response paper because the title of the reading for Hemingway, “Hills like White Elephants” attracted my attention.

When I started reading this story, I automatically began to generate pictures in my head. Hemingway used such vivid words to describe the setting of the story. I pictured a beautiful, sunny paradise. I thought it was interesting how Hemingway did not bother to introduce the characters of the story at all. He simply labeled the characters as the “American” and the “girl,” which doesn’t tell us much about them at all. Since I wanted to understand more about the characters, I tried my best to read the rest of the story carefully. I, then, came to realize that not only was the description of the characters vague, but  the entire story didn’t seem to have a concrete meaning or point behind it!

Once the dialogue between the characters began, I got lost. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about and what the meaning behind any of it was. They were talking about different types of drinks, then hills, white elephants, happiness, love, and a whole mess of, what seemed to me to be, random topics. Honestly, none of it really made any sense to me at all! I did realize that a lot of the words and phrases were constantly repeated. I decided to try rereading the dialogue and still could not understand what the point of it what. I think Hemingway might have left out all the details of what the two characters were talking about on purpose, in order to let the readers, us, create our own meaning behind this story. Other than assuming that this might be a love story that somehow related to happiness, I couldn’t find words and meanings to fill in the missing details of the story.

Kristie Ching – Response Paper 2 (Option 2)

Psychologists and philosophers use different perspectives and methods to study happiness; even so, Freud and Plato both found a way to use comparable metaphors to explain happiness. Freud, the psychologist, uses “fort da,” which is a child’s game of “disappearance and return,” to represent happiness by showing the relationship between pain and pleasure. In Book VII of the Republic, the respected philosopher Plato uses his story of the “Allegory of the Cave” to show us that we need to step out of the cave and experience new things in order to achieve happiness.

In Chapter 2 of Freud’s Pleasure Principal, he describes and examines a child’s game of disappearance and return. In this game, a little boy throws his toy somewhere where it cannot be seen and then he reeled it back. When he throws the toy away he is experiencing pain, subsequently when he reels the toy back to him, he is experiencing pleasure. Freud explains that the boy uses this concept of the disappearance and reappearance of the toy to explain how the little boy calmly handles the departure and return of his mother, whom he is extremely attached to. He uses this to reassure himself that his mom will return every time she leaves. Basically, Freud uses the “fort da” concept to describe how pain, which in this case is disappearance, will ultimately results in pleasure, which is the reappearance or return.

Plato also uses symbolism and metaphors in his “Allegory of the cave” to show how people need to experience pain before they can experience pleasure, which in turn leads to happiness. In this allegory, prisoners who are only exposed to the illustration of shadows and fire do not know what it is like to experience anything other they what they already see or know. Consequently, when they are introduced to new objects they are able to experience things in the real world and make sense of them, which is pleasurable. Both creators of the “fort da” game and the “allegory of the cave” use symbolism to show how pain leads to pleasure. The little boy knows that in order to feel pleasure in the reappearance of his mother, his mother must first leave; similarly, the prisoner’s of the cave need to leave the cave to experience things outside of the fire, shadows and the cave.