some writing from some essays about some books I have read
About Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
“I believe that humans are never satisfied. We are always waiting for something: waiting for spring, waiting for love, waiting to be richer, to be smarter, to be prettier, waiting for happiness, waiting for our own Godot. We live on an ever-growing mountain, constantly setting our expectations ever-higher for ourselves. Our waiting for our own Godot is simply “vanity and a chase after wind” (New American Bible, Eccles. 2:11). To wait for Godot is to wait for a better version of oneself. To wait is to be vain. Yet this better, this end game version of ourself is never achievable as we continually set our standards higher; we constantly chase after something uncatchable.
Yet in this long wait where we wish for the unattainable to happen, we waste the moment granted to us. In reality, we are only flower, we are fragile, and we die. We do not have time to wait for our ever-changing Godot. We miss the “appointed times for everything” by waiting for something that will never come (Eccles. 3.1). We let the times to love and to laugh and to embrace slip away. Let’s not waste our days in dreams of happiness, dreams of Godot. Let’s gather our roses while we can because before we know it, our moment will be used, our flower will die, and we will have left this world always waiting for Godot.”
About Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
“The title Remembering Babylon and the prefatory quotations by John Clare and William Blake are simply lenses in which to analyze not only the race based hierarchies within the novel, but within the past, present, and future. The fear of the Darkness, of the unknown, of the aboriginals relays how people use fear of the other to justify violence, racism, and persecution. When one can not see the humanity in another being, they allow themselves to claim they are superior. The clear distinctions between the Holy order of Jerusalem and the singual human lifeline of Babylon reveals the severing of humanity in order to create boxes in which to stack people into. Yet, Gemmy smudges these walls questioning not only the townsfolk worldview, but the design of the world. Should people choose to reassert Jerusalem with its hierarchical structures and hereditary perspectives or should society embrace Babylon, an acknowledgement of human diversity amongst a common and shared humanity? Humanity has chosen to forget Babylon in its quest for power. It has chosen racism, sexism, imperialism, and other power imbalanced systemic hierarchies instead. It has chosen to forget that humans are one, that the blood running through veins is the same. It has chosen Jerusalem. However, there is a choice to remember Babylon and accept the equality that comes with it. Yet in a power-hungry Jerusalem world, who knows if people are willing the blur the lines, which would result in a loss of power. Yet if individuals, like Gemmy, choose to live in Babylon, perhaps the hereditary structure of Jerusalem will disintegrate and the fear of the dark will cease to exist. Perhaps the Tower of Babel will be constructed. Perhaps Babylon will return.” About Age of Iron by J. M. Coetzee
"If the motif of blood questions anything, it questions our humanness and empathy, or lack thereof. Why do humans see people as tools and blood as simply a liquid? “How long, how long before the softer ages return in their cycle, the age of clay, the age of earth?” (50). In Age of Iron, I see the impact of our loss of humanity as people disregard their human connections and collective living condition that unites us all in order to fuel and maintain power. I see this as the consequence of seeking control. Why do humans have such a need for control that they are willing to sever their human condition? We cannot be fully human, if we do not have a heart. Without our blood-filled humanity, we shed our humanness. In our world, past and present, there is a clear pattern of selling hearts. Columbus, King Leopold II, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and even Donald Trump, one might argue, are heartless examples of the intense desire for power. They sacrificed not only their humanity in the conquest for control, but human life as well to create their stepping stones to the top. However, bloodletting is not the only way to bleed. Our collective bloodline can also be severed in more subtle, everyday ways when we fail to see another's humanity, when we classify people as other, and when we bestow power and privilege based on these divisions. Even I am guilty of bleeding. When I walk past the homeless person on the street corner without glancing at them or showing any signs of compassion, or when I disregard a person’s comment because I have deemed them inferior due to their level of education or school they attend, I have scarlet dripping down my fingertips. While I like to ignore it, we are living in a world that is constantly bleeding."
About The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Despite being fictional characters set in 1920’s America, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom share insights about the American Dream that still go unnoticed and unheeded. To this day, Americans equate money with happiness. Americans are surrounded everyday with the idea that wealth equals happiness. Kids are told they don’t go to school to learn and explore their own mind, but to do well so they can get a good job and make money. Every year award shows display the unimaginable and luxurious lifestyles the celebrities lead. Even at schools across the country, the popular kids are almost always the ones wearing Gucci and driving BMWs because society says that wealth matters more than a person’s character. The pressure of the American Dream and finding happiness through wealth is as inescapable as the Sirens of Odysseus luring people into a golden trap, but it also is what has turned The Great Gatsby into a Classic. The world today is as driven by the American Dream as it was in the time of Gatsby and perhaps more so. These characters will not be able to teach anyone anything until people put wax in their ears and realize that this siren call is nothing more than a trap and that money will never bring happiness."
About the "Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu
"Although he hid the paper menagerie in the attic, he still carries his childhood toys in the back of his mind, in the cultural attic of his body. America is like a house when company arrives. The main floor is spotless, filled with the essence of democracy, equality and freedom. Grandiose visages of American accomplishments hang like pictures on the wall. The second floor is like an exclusive country club where the privileged golf behind a cloak, hidden from the daily struggles of poverty that the people who serve them face. This floor is where classism, racism and social problems emerge, yet are purposefully hidden from company. The basement is creaky and needs a better foundation. In here lurks the historical reality of America’s racism, sexism, homophobia, ostracism, and pain. No wonder people fear the dank basement.
Yet rising to the attic, the diverse, enigmatic beauty of America is tucked away. It’s a treasure trove of personal idiosyncrasies and cultural identity. Our cultures and valuables were traded as we cloistered them to be American."
"Throughout American history, I can clearly see a pattern of people cutting ties to parts of their identity. In America, we hide parts of our identity in order to blend into American society, to become part of the Great American Disappearing Act. My attic is filled with the books, hopes, and dreams of my childhood, of the secret and unspoken love of the abnormal and the culture of my Italian ancestors three generations back. In the case of The Paper Menagerie, the boy has shoved not just his paper menagerie into his attic, but his Chinese culture and his mother as well. He feels as though he must degrade and distance himself from his culture to become an American. While American conformity forces people to let go of personal idiosyncrasies and cultural identities, true America resides in the attic. We are not a perfect batch of cookies, our shape, form, and futures defy the constrained, homogenous, American imagination. That is the American reality."
About Lily in To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
"Much of this social pressure Lily faces comes from being a woman in a patriarchal world. She is expected to comply and bend to femininity, submissiveness, and marriage. Yet Lily does not want to comply. Mrs. Ramsey, and perhaps most the people in the novel, think “she would never marry; one could not take her painting very seriously; she was an independent little creature” (17). Whether she knows it or not, Lily is already going against the grain not only in her paintings. However, to crush this independence the dreary, self-righteous Mr. Tansley constantly degrades her announcing that “‘Women can’t paint, women can’t write…’” (48). In the act of picking up a brush, Lily Briscoe defies the trap of social expectations. Eventually she concludes that the expectations of women are ignorant and supercilious and that “she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle” (102). When Lily frees herself from the manacles of pressure, she decided to move a tree in her painting more towards the middle. By moving the tree, Lily is taking back her voice in a male dominated world. She is in charge of her painting. She is in charge of her reality. She is in charge of the memories of time.
Time is tricky. It can take life and erase past. Under a hierarchical world that already strips Lily Briscoe of her voice and path of life, Lily paints to fix the flux of time that passes her by and contorts her reality. In painting, she expresses her voice and world view breaking free of sexist social expectations and takes back her narrative. In a world that constantly tries to define and label others placing them into restricted paths, it is essential to capture the validity of one’s reality free from the snares of time and social pressure. To comply to time is not enough. One must stop the clock, paint their moments, and take charge of their voice."