The End of the Line

My senior year is essentially over.
My Buckley chapter has ended; 13 years in the making.
What would I refer to it as? What would the point of it be? Who's to say. To be honest I think it depends through who's eyes are you asking. Things like this don't have nice, simple answers. Life rarely does have nice, simple answers though. That's just the way it goes.
I don't even know how to say goodbye, if that is even the right thing to say. This is a first for me, everything I do from this point on will be a first. That's an unsettling thought. I'm sailing out into uncharted territory and I don't really know what I'm even looking for, let alone how to find it.

College Packing List

1. XBOX and TV
2. Tempur-pedic Matress topper
3. Mini-fridge
4. Desktop and Ipad
5. Boy-hood sense of wonder
6. Questions. Lots of questions.
7. Peptobismol
8. Noise-canceling headphones
9. Extra socks
10. Secret book compartment thing for my secret stuff

Love to hate

Salamano has one of the more interesting relationships in the novella. On the surface, it would appear there is a lot of animosity and pent-up anger between them but his dog gives him purpose. Many people as they get older feel trapped and useless. Further evidence of this is Thomas Perez's relationship with Meursault's late mother. (Meursault even comments on the lack of phsycical attractiveness of the man). These two people, practically, should not be pursuing a relationship, for the reason illustrated by the first line of the novella. But they need each other to give each other purpose. They survive becuase they have each other. Raymond is also involved in a love-hate relationship with his girlfriend and they too live to be with each other, despite the obvious problems they have interacting and living together. The Stranger is rife with these types of relationships.

American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis weaves together a masterpiece of American consumerism avarice. Set in post-1980s New York City, American Psycho follows the "adventures" of Patrick Bateman, a young, successful inventment banker at Pierce & Pierce (also in Bonfire of the Vanities) investment firm. Patrick is deranged and the novel is filled with bone-chilling descriptions of gory and unnecessary violence. As per usual with an Ellis novel, he employs a very unique and detacted tone. He uses lengthy descriptions of non-consequential items to show how wrapped up in this lifestyle Patrick really is. He is incredibly crude and short with his temper. Patrick is the typical anti-hero and you learn to accept his dirty habits as they increase in volume and gore.

Conformity in the Classroom

Too often, people place a negative connotation on the word conformity, at least in modern America. At Buckley, we are pushed to think in our own unique way, and to produce orgininal thought, completely seperate of our neighbors. But pushing for non-conformity is an odd practice when the only person that can really spur it is the one being pushed in the first place. Futhermore, is it not non-conformist to heed to societal norms, when  being told not to conform? The best way to deal with an issue of over-conformity is to step away and let things settle on their own. Democracy, in fact, is the greatest tool society has to combat conformity as it is based in compromise and an amalgamtion of thoughts and ideas. (Facism is the tool of the confromist).

2 Kafka questions

4. Gregor is not horrified by his discovery partly due to the strong mental defenses his mind has put up. Evidence of his mind's defenses are in his ability to deflect, delay, and deny. He never fully accepts the fact that he will always be a bug and that his life has permanetly changed. He believes this to the fact that it hurts himself as he acts with complete disregard for his own safety. Kafka did this, I believe, in an effort to show how guarded and habitual Gregor really is.

7. This scene shows that human Gregor does still exist. He is buried deep down, and the habituation of his new life is slowly making him forget that his old self ever existed. This is Gregor's purest emotion in the entire novella. It shows him as something vunerable, something that only wants compassion and love. Something that is misunderstood.

Leaderless Discussion

The idea of whether or not it is the habituated thought that leads to repression or vice versa was certainly the most provacative thought brought up during the discussion groups. It's not any easy answer either. Is it the mindless and numbing effects of a completely scheduled and predictable life that leads to a deadening of the senses that allows for repression to take place. Or is it repression that bears down and refuses new oppurtunities. For Gregor, i think it's certainly the former.

Men lie

When left unchecked, all built up respression breaks down. On a long enough timeline, every man is susceptible to the morally degrading nature of the lawlessness. Conrad's Heart of Darkness illustrates this principle through such an esteemed man as Kurtz. The Darkness is what causes this moral degradation. Darkness is more abstract of a concept than lack of light however and stems its strength from the unknowing it wraps the mind in. A reoccuring symbol throughout the novella, darkness not only represents what we fear but also what we fear we will fear. Darkness gives people a rational to abandon all preconcieved notions of right and wrong and adopt whatever the situation seems to require. The difference between our desires and our actions could not be greater and the Darkness is the perfect realm for the id to reveal whom it really is.

Heart of Darkness provides a stage for the debate between dream vs. reality. Not only in the sense that we have discussed in class about whether or not Marolow is truly experiencing this or not, but in the sense of what people expect from a situation and what they actually get. Marlow was more than excited before his trip up the congo and after he will never see things in as innocent a way. Dreams in terms of expectations and reality in terms of how things actually turn out.

Rough Idea

The source of Marlow's psychosis is from the lack of structure that defines and creates the darkness of Africa. There are no laws nor those to enforce them, resulting in an anarchistic arena in which people's darkest and deepest fantasies may be pursued. "Both he and Conrad penetrated into the darkness, the darkness entered into when people sleep or when their consciences sleep, when they are free to pursue secret wishes, whether in dreams, like Freud's analysands, or in actuality, like Kurtz and his followers."(Karl). You spend enough time living in a world in which there are no consequences for your actions and you yourself become a savage. In fact, because the savages can be outwardly savage, they are not as "dangerous" as the English; the English have been repressing their instinctual desires for their entire lives so when placed in a world where they can entertain them, the results can be far more detrimental.

Heart of Darkness: A Psychological Journey

Heart of Darkness is not about the physical journey of a man traveling in Africa, but rather the psychological journey of a man traveling in an unkown, hostile land. As the story progresses, so does Marlow's psychosis. Marlow is meant as more of an everyman main character than anything else. He is simply a vehicle for the intense mental reshaping that takes place while on the Congo. Starting out very sophisticated and elaborate, his writing style becoming more disjointed and nonsensical. He struggles with what he is seeing and Conrad wants the reader to struggle understanding what Marlow says just as he is struggling with what he sees.

Heart of Darkness Q.6

The message Kurtz is sending with the painting of "a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch" is one of irony. There are two main symbols present in the painting: a woman carrying a lighted torch, which is most certainly meant to respresent lady liberty, and a blindfold, which most commonly refers to the concept of true justice. The amalgamation of the two symbols is what is most interesting. The irony stems from the pairing; instead of rendering lady liberty more just, the blindfold simply narrows the scope of her vision creating a more ignorant than just liberty. At this point I do not think Marlow would agree with the message of the painting because he seemed very uneasy when telling the story.

Heart of Darkness Q.2

London, to the Romans, was uncivilized, savage, and a mystery. Africa, to the British, is a dark spot on the map. Conrad starts the novel with this tale of old London to illustrate a point about the hypocrasy of British colonialism. Marlow is drawing this parallel. Marlow does go on to explain the distinctions between the two groups but the point has already been made. My favorite quote from our first reading: "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."