Author Archives: vivian.zhu

Ling wrote her paper on “Contact Lens” and Suzan and I wrote our paper on “Good Mirrors are Not Cheap.” The two poems went well together. For the video we took the words literally and drew out the scenes. Hope you enjoy watching it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWnWXJSC6G4

Pretty excited to be working with Suzan and Ling. The poem I chose is Good Mirrors Are Not Cheap by Audre Lorde. Suzan’s poem was also Good Mirrors Are Not Cheap and Ling’s poem was Contact Lens so it won’t be that hard combining our ideas. First time I read it I had a story board outline going through my head. The other poems didn’t stand out to me except that one. We’ll probably do something like the Lonely Clouds; still not sure what program to use or how we are going to do it. Been busy with essays so I haven’t written out a thesis, but I have an idea of what I’m arguing.

The digital essay seems like fun.  The Lonely Cloud video was interesting. I’ve always wanted to try something like that.

I never thought having a group made a project easier due to past experiences. Since everyone chooses which poem they like, it’s probably going to be difficult representing their main point into the digital essay? Also the type of media they want to use is going to be hard to agree on?

In the story “Hills Like White Elephants” happiness was having the abortion.  The American told Jig the baby was the root of all their unhappiness. The American wasn’t ready for a kid.  He just wanted to try new drinks and traveling.

In the story “The Birth-mark” happiness was perfection for both main characters. In the beginning Georgiana didn’t seem to have any problems with her physical appearance until Aylmer kept reminding her with his facial gestures and overreaction. Aylmer said the only thing that was keeping her from being perfect was the birth-mark. He wanted to get rid of it and she just wanted the birth-mark gone so Aylmer thinks she’s beautiful. The whole time Aylmer was obsessing over the birth-mark rather than just accepting her for who she is. When he finally got rid of the birth-mark was he happy? I think he lost what should be his only happiness – Georgiana.

Both Jig and Georgiana are alike. They didn’t really care about themselves;  they were only trying to satisfy the men in their lives. In the end they both die. Although Jig and the American agreed with each other that their friends who went through with the abortion were much happier. I don’t believe that their friends were actually happier; the women who lose a part of themselves wouldn’t come out of the operation and just go back to what they were before. On the outside they may seem happy, but no one really knows how they’re really feeling inside. Jig was definitely thinking about the baby. Often times when people were talking to her, her mind wasn’t there. Georgiana drank the mix; she lost the birth-mark, but she also lost her life.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/MwvMjiOCyqY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Hills Like White Elephants

Jig and the American are waiting at the train stop. Maybe Jig is from somewhere else because Hemingway used “the American” instead of his name. It sounds like the couple is having some troubles. They were talking about drinks and then Jig brings up absinthe and blames it on her boyfriend? that he started it. Later on the man says the operation is “awfully simple.” She is probably traveling to a place where they can get an abortion for a cheap price. Maybe Hemingway said “the American” to point out that it was a cultural thing that normally Americans had abortions? Every time Jig says she could have everything, the man shoots it down saying they cant. She keeps repeating it; her mind is just elsewhere. She kept repeating “the white elephant” and that could’ve meant her baby because usually white is associated with being pure. The “everything” she kept repeating could have meant her baby or maybe her wish to have something to call her own. She probably doesn’t have anything because she looked “at her bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.” Jig would do anything for him so he could be happy. She said she didn’t care about herself and if it would make him happy she would do it. He told her the baby was the cause of all their troubles, but I think there’s deeper problems than just that.

I was doing the assignment and this song came up and it makes me happy. Maybe it’s the lyrics. (;

The game “fort da” is important to Freud’s studies because it shows that an eighteen year old baby who was in pain was trying to seek pleasure. People cope with unhappy experiences by finding some way to gratify an impulse. The child didn’t act out when his mom was gone, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t upset about it. The child invented a game of disappearance and return. He threw away a toy under the bed and would emit a loud ‘o-o-o-o’ and then joyfully say ‘Da’ when he retrieves the toy again. Even though repeating this unhappy experience over and over again was painful, it was rewarding at the end when joy returned. Freud also thinks that maybe throwing the object away is a way to gratify an impulse of revenge suppressed in real life, directed against his mother for leaving.

The child is like the men in the cave, they don’t understand things to be the truth and once they gain intelligence there’s no way of going back. When one man leaves the cave and finds out the real truth, he can’t go back to his original thinking of the shadows he saw. The people in the cave don’t believe him because it is so foreign from what they perceived of something. For the baby, he didn’t know what life was like for his family. He accepted that his mom was going to leave and didn’t act out, so he kept himself busy. But when the child was five and three-quarter years old, he acted out how he normally would when his mother left. He showed no grief when his mother died.

All of this tells us that happiness comes and goes. There is no happiness if there is no pain.