“Before the Law”, written by Franz Kafka depicts one mans struggles at obtaining entrance to the law. The law is something that the man fears, yet all he wants to do is gain access to it and understand its bounds. The only problem is that the man from the country is met by a gatekeeper who refuses to grant him entry. What is interesting about this relationship between the man and the law is that there is nothing really blockading the man from entering. Sure there is a gatekeeper, but all he does is sit down and verbally deny access. The gate is wide opened. The reason that the man is never able to gain access to the law is because he already has it. This story is a paradox. If the man disobeys the orders of the gatekeeper, then he would have defied the gatekeeper, hence breaking the law. The man’s problem is that he is not self aware. If the man realizes that he is indeed obeying the law, then he would have never came seeking the law. That is why he sits at the foot of the gate for the entirety of his life. The law is a metaphysical entity that is subjective. We decide what is right and what is wrong. If the man were to understand that law is in the eye of the beholder than he would have never asked for permission to enter.

Emily Dickenson Response:

Snow Flakes, By Emily Dickenson is a story about what an observer sees during a snow storm. This person does not like snow at first, as all she wants to do is put on her slippers and leave town. As this happens, our observer cannot help her individual toes. She notes that the appendages that once had been stowed away are now beginning to fidget. This is on account of the cold as they start shaking. Toe after toe are now, “marshalled for a jig” (Emily Dickenson, Snow Flakes). Emily Dickenson describes the cold through her involuntary body movements.

There is something magical about snow and how it makes people feel, which Dickinson illuminates in her poem. Snow brings memories of joy and happiness. This is because cold, rather snow, is often associated with holidays. Regardless of religion, many gift giving holidays all seem to coincide within the winter months. The coldness of snow represents a pureness that is felt as it creeps throughout the entire body. Life is all of a sudden out of our control and our body dances. Dickenson is taking shivering, which can be viewed in a negative connotation, and is flipping it on its head. She wants to point out how important it is to be optimistic in life. When we are presented with undesirable circumstances, we have two options: we can crawl into a crevice and hide from our problems, or we can seize all our options and turn them into opportunities.

Manifesto Response:

Seeing by Wassily Kandinsky is a manifesto about the meanings behind every color. Kandinsky is known as one of the first abstract painters, and it is clear that his artwork is expressed as a driving force in his way of thinking. Kandinsky pinpoints several color weaknesses. Blue cannot stand alone while brown gets stuck. But to what can blue not stand up for and brown get stuck in? Kandinsky says, “Blue, Blue got up, got up and fell” while “fatbrown got stuck — it seamed for all eternity. It seemed. It seemed” (Wassily Kandinsky, Seeing).  He answers this based on the idea of persistence and dependence. Both colors are trying to accomplish a goal, but cannot. They need the help of one another.

This is when Kandinsky indents his manifesto to include the words, “Wider. Wider” (Wassily Kandinsky, Seeing). By using this technique, not only are we reading that we have to broaden our horizons, but we physically see it on paper. These colors have to think beyond themselves and start to think of the whole spectrum of colors. We need to take “white leap after white leap” (Wassily Kandinsky, Seeing).  These leaps, are leaps of faith on behalf of the distinct colors. Normally we think of white as naked, bleak, and empty. On the contrary, white light contains all the colors of the rainbow and this prism is unleashed when Kandinsky says, “everything begins with a crash” (Wassily Kandinsky, Seeing). The crash reflects all the colors racing out into their magnificent ROY-G-BIV presence in the world. Each color compliments one another and it is that persistence that blue and brown have that allow them to succeed.

My Manifesto:

Dribble, Dribble lost it, turned over the ball.

Shoved, yelled and looked for whistle, but didn’t get the foul.

Shots from every spot beyond the arc.

Threes bricked — could not buy a shot all night.

It seemed. It seemed.

You must shoot with confidence.

Confidence. Confidence.

And you must lock down on D.

And maybe your jumper is not falling yet, but your man isn’t scoring.

Hustle after hustle.

And after this defense even more defense.

And in this defense a steal. A layup, a miss, 0-12 fg for the night…

But you are still the leader of the team and you must see this: Confidence is

Where it is.

That’s where everything begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

With a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . swish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I decided to base my manifesto off of Wassily Kandinsky’s Seeing. I used the same layout of his manifesto, but changed the theme. His art form is in the lens of painting. My manifesto is about basketball, and the ups and downs one can encounter during a game. There is a certain beauty I see in the flow of a basketball game. I started the manifesto much like Kandinsky’s in that colors are sometimes lacking, so too can one’s gameplay be thwarted in a game. You can be playing terribly, but all that matters is that you maintain your confidence throughout. A strategy I pulled from Kandinsky’s manifesto is his delayed solution. Nothing is going correctly for our player until the end of the game. A pure swish and the end of the game.

The Nineteenth-century British critics of Realism, written by Elaine Freedgood, brings to light the differences of Realism and Romanticism. By understanding this reading, and the notion of Realism, we can better grasp, Adam Bede by George Eliot. Fiction is inexorably linked to embellishment and fairytale endings while, “realism is responsible for representing social and individual experience as it really occurs in the world outside the novel” (326, Freedgood). This idea can be seen in Adam Bede as the author dedicates an entire chapter of her book explaining the realness of the character, Mr. Irwine. George Eliot believes that Realism is a much harder form of writing as she states, “falsehood is so easy, truth is so difficult” (2, Eliot). Even though writing in this way may prove more challenging a task, the fact that the ideals are down to earth make the message of the story much stronger. It is one thing to read a Romanticism story and derive a message out. It is a whole other understanding of Realism that enables the ability to empathize with real world situations that many of us encounter on a day to day basis. I believe it is important to move our youth away from the fictitious lies that Disney presents, as it skews our ideas of beauty and happiness. There are many figures in our lives worth looking up to as Eliot says, “I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure that they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles” (2, Eliot). Eliot is demonstrating that ordinary people with simple lives are often happy. We do not need to go beyond or own encounters to write a powerful and moving story.

Realism does have limitations when it comes to telling a story. These constraints mainly reside in the aesthetics. When a story is told with grandeur features, sure it is entertaining, but it is not real. The mundane, in Freedgood’s mind, is where a story truly prospers as she says, “the novelist must be true to her own experience of the world: a lack of such fidelity is a fictional sin of vast proportions” (326, Freedgood). Though not explicitly said, Freedgood is hinting at the notion that in order to convey important messages, the story has to be something you can sympathize with. In doing so, the reader has the ability of coping with the protagonist in every journey that he or she undergoes. Simplicity is beauty as Eliot suggests, “the world is not just what we like; do not touch it up with a tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed entangled affair” (1, Eliot). Embroidering stories with frequent occurrences of lucky happenstance takes away from the importance of a story. The tale soon becomes foreign and unrelatable. While Realism takes away from the aesthetics of a story, it also adds the most important element, sympathy.

There is one key difference between Harriet Jacobs’ writing and the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments/Frederick Douglass’, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July”. That difference is the context in which the piece is written. Harriet Jacobs has an intersectional preconceived disposition to her, as she is a woman and a slave. Frederick Douglass, though once a slave, is a man. The speech that he gives is while he is a free man. Here is where I would like to point out an important difference in the styles of the writing the two use. Frederick Douglass is using a forceful method, as he attacks the white men on their so called independence. He shares none of the same freedom, so why should it be called an independence day. Harriet Jacobs on the other hand is addressing white women, but she does this in a more subtle way. Although she mentions the “who” of the book in the preface, throughout her entire novel she utilizes the vague word “you”. In one passage she says, “do you think this proves the black man to belong to an inferior order of beings?” (39-40). She keeps asking questions to an audience who may never read her book, pointing out the anachronistic version of white privilege. Although this term is not yet defined, it is clear that white people in general have significant more rights than African Americans.

This can be seen just by the mere existence of the Seneca Falls Convention. These are women who also don’t have the right to vote, just like black men and women, but by the fact that they are white means that they are a step up. They don’t have the same misogynistic and racist intersectional characteristics that Harriet Jacobs has. As such, these women are able to once again attack the men of their country demanding the right to vote and certain unalienable rights. The problem with their form of writing is that they completely leave out the black population in the Untied States. They claim themselves to be abolitionist white women, the exact people who Harriet Jacobs is targeting, but they themselves leave Harriet Jacobs out of the new Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Sentiments essentially quotes the Declaration of Independence verbatim as it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal”, but as aforementioned, nowhere does it mention the black population. This is why Jacobs writing is so much more important. The fact that this book is written by a black woman who endured the hardships of slavery speaks volumes to its importance. Harriet Jacobs is pleading with the women of Seneca Falls, as she may have read the The Declaration of Sentiments, and thought that these are people who may stand up for my injustice. To come back to my original thought, the concept of white privilege in the 1800’s is insurmountable. Whites are put on a whole other pedestal than African Americans, and as such Harriet Jacobs is not only standing up for the entire black community, but she is also standing up for all of women in America.

I will be comparing and contrasting the Chinese Lyric by Yu Fu and the Japanese Lyric by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. I will begin by discussing the similarities between the two poems. The Chinese Lyric poetry is about a nomad who has traveled far from home as it states in line 4 that, “hating separation, birds alarm the heart.” This quotation speaks to the fact that this wanderer might not enjoy his separation from home, but nature sooths his thoughts. As such in the Japanese Lyric poetry, we also have a traveler who is far from home, and his only comfort is nature. In lines 1-3 it says, “In the sea of Iwami, By the cape of Kara, There amid the stones under sea.” Once again, we have someone on the road, in this case by sea. As we as delve deeper into the poem’s analysis, we notice the motif of love. In the Chinese poem on line 6 it says, “a letter from home worth ten thousand in gold–”. This person has been gone for 3 months, as stated in the line before, “Beacon fires three months running”. During this time interval, he has not had contact with his family. Once he does, pure an utter joy is brought to him, as the letter is priceless. We know that the letter is priceless because it says it is worth “ten thousand in gold”. This line is also interesting because people usually say a picture is worth a thousand words, but here a letter is actually worth more than an image by way of the transitive property.

Here is where I’d like to draw my last similarity, as well as transitioning into the contrasts of the two poems. In the Japanese poem it is apparent that our nomad misses home as it says in lines 9-15, “My wife whom I love with a love Deep as the miru-growing ocean. But few are the nights We two have lain together. Away I have come, parting from her Even as the creeping vines do part. My heart aches within me;” I will start with the similarity. As aforementioned in the Chinese lyric, there is the concept of love, and here too there is the very same notion as it says that he misses his wife very much and that his heart is aching for her. With this similarity also comes contrast. The Chinese Lyric poem is much more ambiguous as to whom the traveler loves, while in the Japanese one it is very apparent who this person is, and that is his wife. Another contrast that I would like to point out is why the two characters left their inhabitance. In the Chinese lyric, it seems as though the person is fleeting for his life as it states in the first line, “The nation shattered” while in the Japanese Lyric poem it says in lines 27-28 that, “Coursing down the western sky. I thought myself a strong man.” I like to interpret this as the man who is moving west, possibly to the Americas or Europe from Japan. I believe the reason he is doing this is to make a living in order to send money back to his family. He sees it as an obligation to make a living for a wife he left behind, as it talks about him being a strong man. Not strong in the sense of the physical, rather in the sense of emotion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBfcGLBJ2Uc

Frankenweenie tells the story of Frankenstein in the medium of a movie. The monster in this delineation is a dog, rather than a human monstrosity. The movie came out in 2012, and was a big hit with younger audiences. It is interesting how one of the most famous horror stories became a staple of many childhood costumes and bedtime stories. Numerous children even dress up as the monster from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein on Holliween. Frankenweenie is just one of the many movies created that resembles or retells the story of Frankenstein.

Amidst the common misperception that Frankenstein is actually the monster, Disney too tells the story as if Frankenweenie is the creation, whereby his creator should be Victor Frankenstein. But this is not the only place where Frankenweenie departs from our novel. In Disney’s movie, the dog dies and is brought back to life. It is stated in Frankenstein that Victor cannot bring anyone back from the dead, rather only create the living. These two reshaping of our story are amongst the most common deviations because it helps create a form of brand recognition around the original Frankenstein. Frankenstein has become synonymous with the monster itself.

Since this is a movie geared towards children, there is no sense of despair in creating the monster as Victor had. I feel as though this adaptation is somewhat true to the novel in some aspects. This modern retelling of the story helps capture an important idea of the novel in regards to the alchemists. Alchemy is a science whereby someone transforms something through a seemingly magical process. Although not inherently obvious to the readers, electricity is most likely the source for life of the wretch as is with the dog. Mary Shelly eludes to electricity when Victor Frankenstein, “collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet” (57). Shelly is up to date with her knowledge of the sciences as electricity is the leading thought of the source of life. Frankenweenie is able to convey this message from the novel by creating a modern retelling of the most up to date knowledge that they have. Shelly used science as the bases of her story, but Disney uses a very different method to separate itself from 19^th century Geneva. Frankenweenie belongs to a modern family that has a house, a backyard, and a pet dog. The movie utilizes many motifs of love and sacrifice in order to grasp the attention of its viewers. It does so by sympathizing with the idea of man’s best friend. All the Monster in the novel wanted was to be loved, and Disney takes this idea and makes it the focal point of its movie. This in essence changes the feeling around Frankenstein to one of care and friendship. When we look at what drove the monster crazy, it was the idea of a lack of social affection, but if he only had that feeling, he would be happy.

The passage that I will be focusing on is Victor Frankenstein’s nightmare. The important question I have for this section is why did Victor Frankenstein have a nightmare at this time? After all he did just complete his life’s work which encapsulates his interest in the natural sciences from a very young age. This should be a monumental moment of triumph, but instead his studies and accomplishments are stricken by horror. Victor Frankenstein terror of the monster is what I find interesting. It is not as though Victor Frankenstein never saw the creature before. He had selected every fiber of its being and only chose the best qualities to put into his so called monster. He gave it lush black hair and pearly white teeth, but when the monster finally arose, Victor Frankenstein was scared to death. I feel that the reason for his horror stems from his family which he has distanced himself from. I will answer this, by explaining the meaning of his dream.

Victor Frankenstein’s mother wishes that he and Elizabeth get married as her dying wish. And in his dream, Victor Frankenstein sees, “Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, the became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms” (58). This is a direct reference to the sacrifice of his mother to save Elizabeth from Scarlet Fever. In the hopes to stop any future occurrences of the aforementioned, Victor Frankenstein completely abandons his family and friends in order to devote all of his time to his study of life and death. When he finally accomplishes his sought out task, he realizes all the people he left behind.

His mother’s death took a major toll on him. He idolized her as she is the woman who nursed his future wife back to health from Scarlet Fever. In a way to cope with his sorrow, he tries to understand everything that causes life and death. Just like Caroline gave up her life in order to save Elizabeth’s, Victor Frankenstein is devoting his life to understanding why diseases happen in the hopes that he can stop them. Victor Frankenstein is carrying out this entire experiment to fulfil some grandiose feeling of regret he has for leaving everyone behind. It is only when the monster is created, that he realizes nothing he has done has helped bring his mother back to life. Even worse, he has neglected his mothers dying wish. That is why I believe the entire reason as to why he created a monster can be summed up in his dream. He sees all of life’s beauty in Elizabeth, but once he understands the complexities of life and meddles in its vast greatness does he realize that it can only bring pain, hence the transformation of Elizabeth into his dead mother.

Thursday December 13^th. Thank god its not Friday, because if it were something bad might happen. This is the day I stopped believing in superstition. It is also a day that I will never forget. I am in the sixth grade, full of glee and bliss with an innocent mind. I remember running around during recess that day when it began to snow.

Sweat drenched my cold face,

I wonder if school is cancelled,

I sure hope it is.

I get back to class eager for an announcement from the principle. Rumors start flourishing throughout my entire grade that schools out. Finally, Principal Krausz gets on the loudspeaker freeing all of his prisoners for the day. I immediately ask my best friend, Gil, if he wants to come over. I call up my Dad to see, but no answer. I call my mom. No answer either. Oh well, what’s the harm, Gil has been over countless times. As the two of us are about to leave, my aunt comes to pick me up and sends Gil home. I get into my aunt’s car.

Why’s Aunt Debbie here?

The snow melts on the windshield,

I thought that was cool.

I get to my Aunt’s house, drop my bags and run outside to build an igloo with my cousin. I recall thinking to myself that there is nothing bad about snow. We get out of school early, and we also have something to play in. What a combo! After my cousin and I amass a mountain of snow, we begin what I like to call, “the dig.” In its essence, it is just a small hole in a glorified mounting of frozen rain. We finish the igloo and go inside to reward ourselves with a cup of hot chocolate. I walk into the kitchen and see my younger sister crying over the sink. I hope she is ok, but right now I am more focused on my cup of hot cocoa. My aunt calls me into the den where I see my mom.

Your father is dead.

I am so sorry Daniel,

He loved you very much.

The first thing that pooped into my mind was the last words I spoke to my father. I said, “Dad I think I lost my phone.” Why couldn’t I tell him that I loved him? This ate me up inside for years. They say that time heals everything, but it doesn’t. I miss my father everyday. Time does do one thing though. It taught me never to take anything for granted, especially family. At eleven years old I had to become the man of the house. A tough role for a 5-foot 4-inch prepubescent tween. I believe to this day, that the reason I try so hard in school, is because my father died. I was a struggling C student, but after his death I became an honor role student. Some people crack under all that pressure. I would not allow myself.

I am fatherless,

But I am stronger than ever,

Don’t ever give up.

Hello English 2850,

My name is Daniel Jonas, and no I am not related to the Jonas brothers. I am a sophomore here at Baruch and my intended major is Finance. I have never been interested in business until my tenure at Baruch College. I always wanted to be a doctor when I was younger, but as the years progressed, I realized that my mind is geared towards money rather than medicine. I hope money is not a bad motive for me later in life, but time shall tell. My favorite hobby is playing basketball. It is my solace when times are tough and has gotten me through many hardships in life.

According to Immanuel Kant, enlightenment is a “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity” (enlightenment 1). When referring to immaturity, Kant is describing the state in which society is stuck in. This immaturity is more of a sense of naïveté that people are fixated in. They lack the ability to have full freedom and knowledge to live autonomously. It is as though the only way people can achieve enlightenment is through anonymity from the greater whole.

The reason that achieving enlightenment is so difficult is because, “it is so convenient to be immature!” (enlightenment 1). Kant goes on to use the analogy of a clergy member through the rest of his essay. A priest is just a cog in the bigger whole, where he is substantially limited. Even though he has the ability to preach onto his congregation, he is still part of system in which he cannot depart from. The only way to truly achieve enlightenment is not through a single person, rather as a whole and over a long period of time, but to subject an entire civilization to such a restriction is near impossible, and in most cases intolerable. Kant offers one possibility which is to make a doctrine which is unalterable in its longevity, but even this Kant recants as impossible as “it is absolutely impermissible to agree, even for a single lifetime, to a permanent religious constitution which no-one might publicly question” (enlightenment 2). Achieving complete enlightenment is a near impossible, but there are certain degrees in which the vast majority of people can accomplish.

I believe that we are in an age that is enlightened, but not yet at full enlightenment. I would venture out to say that our current enlightenment stage has coincided with the internet boom. Members of society have always lived under a governmental power, whether that be tyrannical or democratic, we all live under a certain amount of oppression where we cannot freely operate. I believe that enlightenment needs a new definition, one where knowledge is the precedent and freedom is the tool to act upon our new found intelligence. With the internet came vast amounts of awareness of the intricacies of anything we can fathom, from how big the sun is, to how governments operate. Knowledge is the most powerful instrument that anyone can wield, and though we cannot use it to throw a rebellion against a power such as The Christian Church, we can utilize our knowledge to better ourselves in our great journey that is life.