Saboteur

Saboteur
-  Ha Jin

Within a month over eight hundred people contracted acute hepatitis in Muji.  Six died of the disease, including two children.  Nobody knew how the epidemic had started.

          

            That last small paragraph was probably my most favorite to have read throughout the entire story.  Upon reading through the first few pages of Ha Jin's Saboteur, I couldn't help but start to feel a small sense of anger in the pits of my stomach.  The prejudice that ran through the pages had me grow even more mad.  "Stop bluffing us...We have seen a lot of your kind.  We can easily prove you are guilty"  (Jin 275).  "We can easily prove"?  The corruption of the system had me thinking the entire time that the crooked cops were the ones to have been the "saboteurs".  It wasn't until the end of the story where I read the the last paragraph as shown above that I realized the title is in fact about Mr. Chiu.  He couldn't do anything to get the time that was taken from him back, the money he lost for the expired ticket they caused, or an apology for the wrongfulness they had done to him.  Before I had gotten to the end of the story I had asked myself, "What is he going to do?  He can't just leave and live with the lie that they forced him to sign about himself."  And then it was like, but what could he do that wouldn't get him put back in jail and others he cared for in danger too?  His disease.   It was probably one of the most clever things anyone could have ever done without even being noticed.  "If I could only kill those bastards!"  (Jin 280).  Do I think this was the right thing to do?  I'm not sure, it questions everything I believe and goes against my morals.  Would I have done this if this had happened to me?  Absolutely without a doubt.  So was he a criminal at the end?  My question remains unanswered being that the author addressed him "teacher" on page 280 and criminal on page 275.  Would that make me a criminal for indirectly committing something that widely affects people that surround me?  I think the saboteur of the story is not the corrupted police man, but quite possibly Mr. Chiu himself.

Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain
-  Annie Proulx

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives.  Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held...Let it be, let it be.

          Wow, I don't even know where to begin at this moment in time.  Initially when I was printing this story out a couple of days ago, the name alone was (sadly) a turn off alone in itself due to the movie made some years ago (which I hadn't seen only heard about).  I'm actually really disappointed myself to have worked up a preconceived idea of what I thought this story would be like and how I assumed I would not like it.  

           Turns out, I absolutely loved it.  The quote above that I pulled from page 277 is one of the last things Jack was thinking before he and Ennis split up for what both were aware would be forever.  Love is love.  That's the basis of this story.  Through man and woman, woman and woman or man and man.  No love comes in gender, comes in no form, it is just two souls wanting, attracting and desiring each other in no other possible purified form than in this one.  I nearly cried at the end when I found that that Jack had died.

            This whole time all he wanted to do was be with Ennis, a man who was scared and afraid of what society would do to them if they ever found out about their secret love affair.  And that had me pondering a significant and obvious question:  why do we feel the absolute need to hide what we love?  Who we love?  And how we love?

             Ever since I was young, I've always had this theory in life.  That no matter what you go through or what happens, the basis of life is love.  Love of a friend.  Love of a classmate.  Love of a dog.  Love of a spouse.  Love of your children.  It comes in all forms, but no life should ever go without a form of it.  And then there's this second theory:  Very few people find the meaning of what love means for them as a unique individual.  Some say they've found it and some pretend to have found it.  The truth in my mind is that only a handful of people find it.  Jack and Ennis found it and they didn't know what to do with it.  So was it a waste?  No.

               Not for Jack.  But for Ennis, all the time unspent with Jack was a waste.  And I think this reflects on the irrelevant and unnecessary times in our lives where we bicker at someone we love, pick a fight and then hold a grudge for the rest of the day when the rest of the day could have been good.  It's about the sleepless nights you stay thinking of that special someone, and yet refuse to speak to them because of a lousy point you're trying to make for what?  You love them, and they love you.  So what's the issue?  At any moment at any time any person can be taken away.  Just like that, without a sudden hint or explanation.  It just happens.  And it takes you by surprise because you took for granted their space they occupied in your life.  You took for granted what they fulfilled for you when you were actually happy.  You took for granted the love that you were so lucky to have, and now, you're without any of it. 

Absolutely loved this story.  Loved it.  Can't even explain in words how much I loved it. 

Everything That Rises Must Converge

Everything That Rises Must Converge
-- Flannery O'Connor

She sat forward and looked up and down the bus.  It was half filled.  Everybody was white.  "I see we have the bus to ourselves," she said.  Julian cringed.

                      I remember being enrolled in a particular anthropology class my first transfer semester here at Quinnipiac University.  The course of the class included rich materials from all over the world, having us study cultures I would have never have dreamed existed showing me how narrow minded my, what I thought "open- mind" to have been.  A particular culture was being taught while an issue of slavery was brought up on the side that sparked a spontaneous and interesting point of view.  "Raise your hand if you were born during this time period and you would have owned slaves in this area" My professor had said.  Immediately my arm without initial realizing twitched upward, judgment stopping myself.  Why did I want to stop myself?  Why didn't I just let it continue rising up for the entire class to see?  It was because although I am of this time period and view slavery and any type of racial/discriminatory comment or statement to be unacceptable,  if I were born and raised in a different time period and location that the one I was born into, I am sure that more than likely, such as in the South, if I lived on a plantation I would have owned slaves because it was a "normal societal" thing to do.  

                     Reading O'Connor's story had be reflecting back to that incident in class.  I disliked Julian's mother so much for her racial and discrimination against people of darker skin color.  And how it was "a shame" for kids to have been born half white and half black.  I'm pretty sure even in the outlining of this story I wrote some irrelevant comment around that scene and said, "this woman is so dumb" or something like that.  But at the end of the story, when she is viewed in the light and Julian sees his mother in a state of smallness, in a state beneath the authoritative rank she (thought) she held, a type of sympathy almost and pity washed over not only that of her son, but of myself as the reader.  I felt bad for her.  She wanted to give the kid a nickel.  When I read that I knew something bad was going to black flash.  It was an immediate insult to the black woman and her child.  As though they needed chump change from the bottom of someones' bag.  Do they look homeless or something?  No.  But I can only imagine that that was how they felt.  

                     It wasn't until the end that I fully sympathized with Julian's mother.  She was born in a different time period--circling back to my first paragraph.  She was born into this mindset that the blacks were of lower rank than her and she was of a different rank entirely and when someone is exposed like that from a young age, drilled into their heads as they grow into their teens and still instilled into adulthood, it is very hard to break from a mindset and thought process that has always been.  And that's why I chose the quote at the top of the page.  "She sat forward and looked up and down the bus.  It was half filled.  Everybody was white.  "I see we have the bus to ourselves," she said.  Julian cringed"  (O'Connor 3).  In her mind it will always be the whites and the blacks and we cannot hate her for it.  At least, I cannot hate her for it.  Although her attitude made me not only disappointed but also upset, it is not her fault that her elders brought her up this way.  None of us have any control over what gets instilled into our brains as defining what's "right" and what's "wrong".  It's how she was raised.  And I should think it very difficult to grow out of something that you have been your whole life. 

The Varoom Problem (Short Film)

The Varoom Problem (Short Film)

n  Honlodge Productions

“Sleep badly last night?  Is that your medical opinion?  I’m not a faker, I’m not a lunatic, I’m not a malingerer but a demon.  Am I going to be ex-or-cised?”

     I must admit before I get started that I was shocked by the outcome at the end of the short film.  I didn’t expect an ending that would leave me feeling uneasy especially with only a thirteen-minute film.  I found this film to be humorously sarcastic in relation to those who without evidence deem others whom are different to be lunatics.  The computer crashes and so of course rationally the person in charge of the prison blames this man who he judges as an irrational person to have had something to do with it.  *Note, I’m currently shaking my head.  Whenever we encounter something or someone in which we do not understand, it is as though we automatically associate them with an outside alien form of what we, in our minds, create the “average normal person” to be.  But if we dig a little deeper, then we can ask the question, what is true insanity?  Does it even exist?  Sure we had what the “average” person does in their day-to-day lives; notice the quotes around “average”.  A lot of times without even realizing it first handedly do we do the things we do because of what society has told us is okay to do.  Taking myself as an example, I act very different behind closed doors.  That is why in relationships (I know, I’m jumping around, but stay with me here) advise to “get to know someone first” before committing yourself one hundred percent.  And some may sit there thinking, “Why?  I already know them.”  Ah, but you don’t.  And this short film is the perfect example of that.  We know the idea they believe is socially acceptable to be in front of a crowd.  But how they act naturally in the comfort of their own space and sanctuary may be completely different.  And I think that is what The Varoom Problem was poking fun at.  We assume the worst when encountering a person so different from what we create in our minds as the standard for all people to meet when that isn’t so.  Sometimes people don’t wish to hide their true selves from the world.  Those are the ones who are brave.  And those are the ones in my opinion understand more of what’s surrounding them and others than those who choose to portray an ideal self-image.  Which is why the main character was deemed as “God”.  He didn’t waste time pretending to uphold a status to be accepted.  The interpretation of him as God is equal to a person who strays from what we deem normal.  Besides, what’s cool about being normal anyways?

Complicity

Complicity

By Tim Parrish

            Back outside, a wasp hovered over the hedges lining the sidewalk, then disappeared. Once, I had reached into the bushes to retrieve my football and grabbed a whole nest.  I remembered them boiling toward my fingers.

            The short story, “Complicity” by Tim Parrish I found indeed quite complicated.  I couldn’t figure out why Mr. Parks was the way he was, using physical violence as an active parental discipline technique.  I did not understand how Bob befriended Mr. Parks who helped him get a job as a police officer when his father despised him.  I have outlined the quote above and chose it as one of necessity because I wanted to focus on the placement in which the author put it.  A day after the “in home invasion attack” on Mrs. Parks, we find Mr. Parks sitting outside the house with a shotgun by his side.  Jeb was then reluctantly invited into the garage of a man’s home that doesn’t even like him.  “I had reached into the bushes to retrieve my football and grabbed a whole nest”.  It’s an analogy you see, and a hint from the author of who committed the crime.  Jeb had reached into the bush knowing only that his football was there not expecting to be in the center of danger from the wasps.  This very similar situation can be applied to Jeb walking to the garage of the one who committed the crime against Mrs. Park, which would only lead to Mr. Park.  And I found that to be so interesting for the Parrish to sneak that in there like that.  I had to read the story a couple of times to confirm my belief in it being Mr. Park who beat his wife.  Although obvious in early pages where Jeb was playing basketball outside and heard the ruckus only to see Mr. Park leave in a haste off to work, this little flashback of something totally different and yet, all the more similar confirmed that it was in fact Mr. Park.  And I wonder why now?  Was it because Mrs. Park had walked out when Mr. Park was abusing the children outside?  Making him son hit Jeb and then making them kiss before releasing them?  Was this some sort of point he wanted to make to her and everyone else that this is what he could do if you crossed him?  All of these questions are left unanswered because we know that he did it, and yet if he wanted everyone to know he would have let them be aware of his crime.  But he didn’t.  He acted as though he was going to be the protector; he was going to keep his family safe when the only unsafe person here was him.  

     

There Will Come Soft Rains

August 2026:  There Will Come Soft Rains

-- Ray Bradbury

            Smoke and silence…Dawn showed faintly in the east.  Among the ruins, one wall stood alone.  Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: “Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”’

            Humans are living evidence of evolution.  We have grown from nomads to independently living individuals capable of caring for making rational judgments, sustaining life and ourselves with ease.  A day is the same as everyday other day for us.  But to ponder the question of what was going through Bradbury’s mind noting that this piece of writing was published in 1950 leads me to ask, does he think we will one day evolve so much to a point where technological advances will overtake the human race one day?  “And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn/ would scarcely know that we were gone” (qtd. in Bradbury 3).  It’s like no matter how far we go with our new advances, the world will as a whole stay the same.  The sun is still going to rise in the mornings, and set in the evenings.  The moon will still come out as light during darkness, the seasons will continue to pass like ritual clockwork.  The only thing missing would be us.  And it is interesting to note that being in the year 2014, a lot of technology has overtaken us already.  When friends go out in groups for dinner, you can almost always expect the majority of them to be glued to their hand held touch screens, lighting up with whatever was more important in their hand then what was going on in the real world.  To imagine that a man from the 1950s made such a claim that is so relevant today stuns me.  Technology is such a big part of our lives, some people have anxiety without it and it’s hard to believe that not too long ago were we without such luxuries.  To have a house maintain itself on its own, as though in authority of all who lived in it is quite a thought within itself.  I wonder how a man who wrote this so long ago, would have known how on point he was nearing the futuristic time period he labeled in his title. 

 It is like the rain will come to wash us away.  After the decayed, after all is gone.  Growth comes from being watered.  It will begin a new evolution from its purest form.