What do I look like to you? An animal you train at a circus? A slave that you can freely boss around? A person that will let you push them around? I am none of those things. I am my own person. I have my own conscience and my own feelings. If you think that being a “domesticated” human will make me a proper person, you are wrong. I will learn these things but not for you. I will learn to press my own clothes, to cook my own food, to buy my own bread and dress the way I feel like. What others think of me is none of my concern and the way I want to express myself is none their concern. Singing in Sunday school doesn’t make me a slut. Wearing something other than a dress doesn’t make me a slut. It would be better to leave this place if you think I have already become a slut. If you don’t want me to be a slut, then why are you teaching me how make medicine to throw away a child. I am intelligent enough to understand who to have a baby with so there is no need for me to learn these things.

All these standards in society for women degrade their individuality. It seems like we are training young girls to live up to other’s expectations. All these things are important to learn but not just for women. Men and women both need to know how do domestic chores. Society makes it seem like abnormal when the man stays at home and the women makes the money. In today’s world, all these outdated beliefs are hindering our ability to progress as a species. We need to be more open minded but certain individuals refuse to give up their rigid mindsets.

To be honest, I didn’t even know where I was or what the place was supposed to be. The place literally looked like a low lit motel from the 80’s with small rooms. After I talked to the worker there, I understood that the exhibit was just two rooms. I thought the hotel was part of the exhibit. When I saw the paintings, it reminded me of the Stream of Consciousness. “Mrs. Dalloway” was in the point of view of an omniscient narrator. Through that we were able to see each person’s inner thoughts. The exhibit also portrays people’s inner feelings in reaction to their environment. Adelson painted the people to look as if they are possessed by actual ghosts. These spirits are the ones that create the façade that other people see. In truth, the person isn’t really in control of his/her reaction to the environment. Also one of the guys in the painting, could really use a facelift. Even though he does fit the theme, but I think in this one Adelson might have gone too far. The theme of the exhibit is actually pretty interesting. It raises the question of if people are actually who they say they are. Some people pretend to be strong and confident but internally, they are intimidated by anything outside of their comfort zone. Today’s society forces individuals to take on such a façade and I think this is part of the negative environment Adelson talks about in her exhibit. We wear these masks so that it seems like we are meeting society’s norms.

This entire book seems to surrounded by negative emotions. Each character is either pretending to be someone because of something he/she went through or is unable to move on from the past. For example, Septimus is traumatized by what he saw in the war. Everything he sees in his everyday life, he connects it back to the war. In reality, a person who has PTSD would have some kind of help to get him through the tough times. Septimus’ wife, Rezia, didn’t seem to enough love him anymore by the way she took care of him. She only seems to keep the facade of her love for her suffering husband as a front for the public. Her actions make me think they she considers Septimus a burden. Mrs. Dalloway also has a facade of a happy wife. Through the point of view of the narrator, we are able to see what is happening inside each person’s head and clearly, Mrs. Dalloway definitely has whole load of regret in her life. As she thinks back to her youth, she wonders how her life was a total waste. She didn’t end up with the man she loved, her husband wasn’t the best lover and no matter how hard she tries, in my opinion, her life doesn’t seem to have much positivity to it. The real Clarissa is trapped somewhere behind the person that is trying to meet societal expectations. All the people in London, still seemed to be horrified by the war. The boom of the car exhaust made people thing as if a bomb had just went off. Being startled is one thing, but frightened and horrified is another. The tree connects all the people’s emotions and ideas. I feel as though they are trying to look happy but are still terrified on the inside.

This morning started off when Shantanu saw an old man slowly crossing the street and somehow, that reminded him of his grandpa. He just felt the void his grandpa filled each time I saw him and it has been a while since he saw him. Shantanu blanked out for a second and flashed back to the happy times they both took walks in the park. Then he decided to move on and once he got onto the M train, he noticed it was very empty and assumed it was probably because rush hour was over. It was similar to the time he was heading home from the city at 1 am. The moment he realized he was the only one in the cart, for a spilt second, he felt a rush of happiness. It felt like he owned the place; the king of the hill. Sadly, things just changed out of the blue once he got onto the 6. It went from a blissful silence to scary and creepy. A homeless guy, or weird guy (really couldn’t tell), just sat next to Shantanu. While homeless Harry asked him weird questions, like how old are you and where do you go to school, he thought to him what would happened if he punched the guy in the face. But luckily his stop came. He felt greatly relieved to get off the train. Once he got to Gregorys for coffee, he noticed he didn’t even need to say the order because the cashier already knew it.

As the industrial revolution spread around the world, people immediately started moving to the growing cities and in turn, changed their lives around. Eventually the new lifestyle even fused with old traditional ways. For example, farmers merged conventional farming techniques with new technologies. But out of this, the old ways started to die out. Futurism is defined as a progression into an advanced future through violently severing from the past. Umberto Boccoioni’s The City Rises, painted in 1910, shows the construction of a modern city on the foundation of a violent war. The painting depicts a battle between the past and the potential future. The upper left side shows a traditional port that existed in the 1800s and as you move towards the right, you can see the progression into modern factories and homes that run on gas. In reality, as more technology was introduced into daily life, cities were rebuilt to keep up with the change and the growing populations. Boccoioni painted a shaped in blue and red, which resembles a tornado, that is sucking in people who lived by the ways of the past and therefore cleansing the world for a more advanced future. The violent death of the past seems to be a rapid change. I agree with the painter that the past needs to be gone in order for the future to progress but it doesn’t have to be sudden and violent revolution. Revolutions can occur but they can last for generations and slowly allow things to change. The world has evolved rapidly in the last 100 years and will continue to evolve but there is no need for a drastic and violent change. In this slow and steady will win the race.

When NourbeSe reads her poem, you can see a physical connection and a symbolic connection through the mother tongue. Slaves during the 1800s were expendable so they weren’t too expensive to maintain. All they needed was some clothing and minimal food to survive. They weren’t educated because it wasn’t like the ability to read was going to help them while working in the field. Also it cut them off from the rest of world. Today we can learn about a country and its culture by simply reading about it. But if we didn’t know how to read and there were no photographs, how would we know about the place. The slaves were illiterate so that they wouldn’t know about the ideas of freedom and wouldn’t be encouraged to revolt. As NourbeSe and Douglas state, those who tried to learn a language were punished and served as an example to other slaves. This would condition others to associate learning with pain. They have no way of knowing that they can become free without seeing or learning about the outside world. When the overseer, Mr. Gore, says that he made the slave an example to prevent the enslavement of white men, you can tell

The symbolic connection comes in when NourbeSe says “I have no mother to tongue…I am tongue dumb.” Douglas didn’t know his mother for too long after his birth and all that he remembers isn’t enough to have loved her. Also he is tongue dumb because he didn’t get the chance to learn anything from her and therefore he lacked a human connection from early in life. You can tell that he didn’t care about her because when the time came to leave the plantation he felt no sadness or hesitation. He felt no “anguish” when he heard about his mother’s death because he didn’t know his mother or her mother tongue. There was no emotional attachment between them.

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