— Jin Qiu
If there is a text that we’ve read throughout the semester that has made me uncomfortable, it would be “Juliette” by Sades hands down. When I first read the text at the library, I was appalled by the graphic depiction of the various sexual acts and murders that Juliette committed in the story, all to advance her own pleasure at the expense of others. I had no idea that there was an author a few hundred years ago who can write such a book without being banned and it was the first time in my life that I encountered this type of raw writing style during my exploration of the classical literature. I had little appreciation for this text at first. The first time I read this text was at the library and I had no idea what it had in stored for me. I was actually too embarrassed to read this text because I feared someone might find out what I was reading. That was the first time a book made me felt this way, as if I was reading a pornography magazine in public, except without the graphics. Therefore, I quickly closed the PDF and didn’t continue reading until I got home. Even then, I forced myself to read this text (since I needed to do the homework) and I was extremely uncomfortable as my parents were in the next room and the thought of them walking in on me while I am reading this made it even worst. I was very upset when Juliette burned the innocent family since it was such a random and unexpected incentive.
While I did not find this text especially entertaining, it certainly provoked much thoughts from me after I finished. While in class, our English teacher told us that the word Sadism actually derived from name of the author of this book, Sade. And what was even more surprising to me is that sadism has a lot to do with psychology and even counts as a disorder. One thing that really stood out to me was during class discussion, when the English teacher raised the question that perhaps all of us have a little Sadism inside of us, only to what extent are we sadistic. I thought about it quite a bit because it made perfect sense. Sometimes a lot of us might laugh at a fat person walking down the street who suddenly trips on a banana and falls flat on his face. While it is mean and inappropriate to laugh when someone else is suffering an injury, nonetheless many people will find it funny (and to me it would have to depend on how he fell). I guess that also counts as being sadistic, however little of it that might be. The same thing can also be true for masochism. A person might show symptoms of a masochist if he or she likes to get tattoos on his or her body or constantly find himself scratching an itch from a mosquito bite with pleasure. All of these common examples were brought up in class and it made me appreciate the significance of this text. It allowed us to explore deeply the extent of our sadistic and masochistic side that we might otherwise never have thought about.