We are all pieces of a puzzle

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Why you gotta be so rude? Don’t you know I’m human too? Concert is over, back to real life. Siri, turn off all alarms. Morris stares into the closet, what to wear? Tight on time, city bus pulls up to save some of it. Morris sees David from the neighborhood on the bus. Doubtful if they’re on a hello basis, both decide to keep quiet. The Q train meets Morris as he arrives to the tracks. Luck is with him today. Please let there be a seat today. Luck continues. After a series of sleeping and waking up.. This is 14th street union square. On your marks, get set, go. Are they giving a prize to the first person that makes it to the 6 train? Still have to be quick, that train fills up fast. Luck continues to have its way. Until he comes off the 6 train. Was it something he ate the night before? The fast pace gets even faster, stomach is not cooperating. Left on Lexington, jaywalk across. Enters Baruch college from 24th street. How many times will it take for the card to successfully swipe today? Two. Morris runs up the stairs and slides into the elevator before the door closes. Of course his 9:05 class professor has to be strictest one on attendance. He gets to the classroom with a few seconds to spare. But he beats the professor by a few minutes since he is late to class. All that running for nothing.

Freud discusses how parents are “the source of all belief” to a small child and  that “the child’s most intense and most momentous wish during these early years is to be like his parents”. This is the most important thing a parent needs to keep in mind, especially when their children are at a young age. The early years of a child is when his mind and behavior is being molded and the base the child uses to mold those behaviors and actions are his parents. If a parent wants to raise their child so that they grow up to be like them in hopefully a good way with the right morals they need to understand one thing; actions speak louder than words. A child will emulate their parents not off of the words they say, but off of the things they do. For example if a father tells his son repeatedly  to be nice to his mom, but he himself will argue with her in front of his son, the words of the father become meaningless to the child. the child will think to himself, “why should i be nice to mommy if daddy isn’t?” I have learned this from my nephew, who won’t listen to what anyone says, especially his parents. But what he will do is copy their actions and repeat their words, so my brother and his wife are very careful in how they act in front of their son. We learn from this that a father can be a role model to his son not using his words, but his actions.

In the reading of her poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language,” Marlene NourbeSe Philip bends her words to portray the meaning of a problem of language that the slaves went through. The slaves were not allowed to speak their mother tongue or allowed to teach it to their children in order so that they wouldn’t be able to speak to each other and revolt or rebel against the slave owners. Without their native tongue, they were “dumb-tongued”. Instead of the native tongue, the slaves had the father tongue of English to speak, which was the slave owner’s language. If slaves were caught speaking to each other in their native language they would be severely punished. The word bending Marlene NourbeSe Philip does in her poem reading is with the line “English a foreign lan – lan – language- languish – anguish, English is a foreign anguish.” Here she is portraying the anguish the slaves were going through of only being allowed to speak English and not their native tongue. So English, which was a foreign language to the slaves, became a foreign anguish. This connects to Douglass’s slave narrative and highlights how difficult it was for the slaves not being able to speak to each other and not able to receive an education. This was the battle that Frederick Douglas was dealing with. He wanted to learn how to read and write in order to be able to help fight slavery. Once he learns how to read and write he teaches other slaves and when he moves to Massachusetts he becomes involved with the abolitionist movement through his writing and speaking.

The Tyger (Sheila Hua)

The tiger in Blake’s poem seems to bear more likeness to Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein’s monster is not a purely evil being. From the scenes of assisting a group of poor peasants and saving a girl from drowning, we can see that the monster initially has gentle and kind nature. However, when he is abandoned by his creator and shunned by the society only because of his outward appearance, he begins to seek revenge and show his destructive evil nature. Similarly, the tiger is like Frankenstein’s monster in how it is feared and dreaded by man. Additionally, the tiger also has two-dimensional natures, it is beautiful, but also horrific in its capacity for violence. Both characters are symbolic center to express the idea of undeniable existence of evil and violence in the world besides beauty (or good). Blake uses plenty of questions to demonstrate how fearsome the tiger is and wonders once the horrible heart “began to beat”, how would the creator feel, “Did he smile his work to see?”, and whether its creator would have the courage to continue the job. It reminds me how the creator of the monster, Victor, feels and reacts to his creation. Victor is horrified by his fearsome creation, which leads him to flee instantly and refuse to make further contact. He feels immediately regrets as the creature comes to life, and feels guilty for the deaths due to the monster. In conclusion, both the monster and the tiger are formed in a terrifying way in use of questioning the world by their authors.

The Lamb (Morris Khafif)

I believe that the Lamb in William Blake’s poem resembles the Creature in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein more than the Tyger in Blake’s poem does. The question if the Lamb knows its origin directly relates to Frankenstein’s creature and if it knows where it came from. The phrase “Gave thee life” (line 3) in the Lamb poem can also be the dialogue between Frankenstein and the Creature since Frankenstein gave the Creature life. Also in the poem the creator of the Lamb says “Gave thee clothing of delight, softest clothing, wooly bright (5,6). This is comparable to how Victor Frankenstein created the creature with all the best body parts and features for the creature to utilize, just like the Lamb is created with optimal features like growing wool to keep itself warm. Another key comparison of the Lamb to the Creature is the line “He became a little child” (16) in Blake’s poem. Frankenstein’s creature was also like a little child. When the creature came to life, even though it appeared like a fully grown person, it was like a child inside. It didn’t know much about the world or why it was brought to it, just like a child doesn’t know or think about that either. I believe that even though from the outside it seems like the Creature resembles the Tyger more, it really resembles the Lamb more on the inside, which is where it really counts. If you would just look at the inside of the Creature you would see that it is really innocent and does not really want to cause harm to anyone, which could also be applied to a lamb. A Tyger however is a mean looking animal and you wouldn’t identify it as being innocent.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been interpreted and done in many different ways with both similarities and differences to the original and to each other.  The first and most evident difference to me between the novel and each of the two clips was Victor Frankenstein’s reaction to creating the monster. In the novel Frankenstein calls his creation a “catastrophe” and is filled with horror and disgust from creating the monster. His intentions were to create a beautiful being with the best body features but instead he got a scary yellow skinned hideous monster that he says he wasted two years creating. In the 1931 film version, after successfully bringing life to the body Frankenstein refers to himself as a god and says that this is what it feels like to be god. He seems very egotistically proud of his creation unlike how Victor felt in the novel. In the 1994 film version of Frankenstein, Victor yells at the monster “Live! Live!” and when the monster opens it’s eyes Victor shouts “YES!” at the top of his lungs. This reaction is different than the other two in that it seems his happiness of his success is more about the fact that he was successful, and it doesn’t seem to get to his head as much as in the 1931 version. His happiness seems more pure and sincere, and less egotistical. Another difference between the two films Victor’s image and the process of the creation. In the 1931 version Victor looks just as you would imagine, in a white lab coat. The process in the 1931 version is also simpler and less active with Victor just turning one wheel. In the 1994 version, long haired and shirtless Victor  has to run around and pull a few ropes in the creation process. This depiction of the creation was a lot more of a work out.

In “Discourse on Method” Descartes proves he exists by coming to the conclusion of “cogito ergo sum” which means “I think, therefore i am.” He uses a method of doubt by denying anything that is not 100% certain or that can be doubted at all. One of the first things he calls into question is the ability to discover truths through the senses. He arrives to the conclusion that he cannot trust the senses since they sometimes deceive him. I could be jumping off of a plane ski-diving and really believe that  that’s what I doing at the moment because I can see it and i can feel it, while in reality I’m laying in my bed with just my underwear on snoring like a motorcycle engine. There is a lesson to be learned out of this, and important to realize that even if we think we think something is true our senses could be deceiving us. This is not only important to know to distinguish between dreams and awakeness but also important in our day to day lives of dealing and interacting with people. Many times our senses might tell us something about a person that will lead us to judge them in a certain way and follow itself by a list of assumptions about that person, meanwhile whatever we are thinking and assuming about that person can be far from the truth. When it comes to judging people we should use a similar method that Descartes uses and give the benefit of the doubt. With this method we will sooner or later realize that some of the things we originally thought about that person were false.

In his poem “A Song To Myself”, Walt Whitman teaches us a valuable lesson. In life we take many things for granted. Sometimes we need to pause for a moment and open our eyes to the many amazing things around us and to the miracles that are taking place on a constant basis. Whitman writes “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars… And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.” Here he is displaying his appreciation for the things that we usually take for granted in the world and is saying that even such a simple thing like a blade of grass is just as complex and deserves as much appreciation as the stars do. He also tells us that if we think that machinery is complex and deserves appreciation, if we would just stop and look at our own bodies that even a small hinge in our hands is much more complicated and fascinating machinery than any man made machinery out there.

To me it is an important lesson that we can learn from Walt Whitman’s poem. We take so many things for granted and we get so used to things that we stop appreciating them, and this happens with many different things and areas in our life, including people. For example, a child doesn’t realize how much his or her parents do for them, the child just takes them for granted. A person should wake up every morning and think for a minute about all of the privileges that they have in life, and their are endless. A good start would be being thankful for your bodily abilities. Every morning when I wake up I thank God for my ability to do different things such as see, breathe and even to be able to use the restroom. It reminds me that these are gifts that we have and we should not take them for granted, and this way we will appreciate everything in life a lot more.