I: The Poet Of Everybody

Taking into account the constant repetitiveness of the pronoun “I” throughout the poems, we could surmise that narration is an important focus. The verses are conveyed in first person, making the narrator quite superior due to the emphasis of his point of view. Still, the narrator tries to avoid superiority in relevance of the reader by referring to him as an equal: “And I shall assume you shall assume; / For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you” (2-3). This action is as well relevant with the content of the poem, sensing that both the narrator and the reader are equally affected by the mentioned perfume, or that the point of view of the narrator is the point of view of the reader. In comparison to this we can take Dante’s Inferno opening line, “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way” (Inferno I), which shows contrast between the “I” and the “our” posed in the verse. With this, the narrator places everything under his path. Because “our” can be everybody, just as the “you” employed in Leaves Of Grass.

With the prominence of the “I” in the poem, or the “self” of the poem’s speaker, Whitman seems to be putting himself in the center, but instead he is evoking an expansive being that expands the boundaries of a person. Verses throughout the poems make it apparent that Whitman, or the narrator, does not see himself of one individual, but rather a voice speaking for all: “I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d / between my hat and boots” (125-126). Through these lines, the narrator is portrayed as being an extraordinary identity, making us believe him as an elevated hero. Yet, the verses also invoke a universal being rather than an individual one. Describing the course of birth and death, the narrator is identified as a person, but when mentioning “am not contain’d between my hat and boots”, the narrator is seen as the representation of everybody. This technique of narration embraces the message that Whitman wants to transmit to us in the end: the narrator and the poet are everybody, therefore, the poem, is what we create: America.

Grass Grows, Birds Fly, People Die

The symbolism employed with the appearance of the question “What is the grass?” comes evident with the illustration of the bunches of grass in the child’s hands. This image becomes a symbol of universal regeneration: “Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation” (98). This rebirth of nature might allude to the color of grass itself, green. Green evokes hope. The dollars are green, making the color a symbol of America itself. But what is the grass? But grass also symbolizes union: the lone material that links the people from all over America, and consequently, all over the world. Grass grows everywhere, grass grows by itself. It also evokes democracy. Grass, like democracy, is equal everywhere. Throughout the United States, grass grows equally, just as democracy. Egalitarianism rests analogous within every corner of a nation.

But grass is also the receptacle of all dead bodies of the nation, and the world. In the leaves of grass rest the common people of the world. When thinking in terms of America, when invoking death we relate to the Civil War. In the wake of the Civil War, we can relate grass to the graves of the many thousands who died in native floor: the grass feeds on the bodies of the dead. Hence, these deaths signify that, eventually, everyone must die, and so the natural roots of democracy lay in mortality itself, whether due to natural causes or warfare bloodshed. Still, grass might encompass everything, or signify nothing. Here, the narrator suggests this: “I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, / And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps” (113-114). The mystery after death is what feeds democracy. And the result of these deaths, unfortunately, was the emergence of the greatest democracy of nowadays. In a leaf of grass we encounter everything. A leaf of grass is no less than the path a flap of a butterfly’s wings in Korea to set off a tornado in America.

George Orwell’s Politics And The English Language

His argument: The English language has become ugly and inactive due to the foolishness of our thoughts and our way of expressing them. This decay has further led to the decay in society.

Cases of Irony:

1. “Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.”
The essay itself can be considered satirical: satirizing the English language and its foolishness. Therefore, by employing the faults he is simultaneously criticizing, Orwell clearly is making an ironic sense out of it. To commit the same faults he is protesting against is quite ironic, but at the same time, boosts the argument of this essay by serving as a clear example of the writing he is criticizing.

2. “A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble.”
It’s quite ironic that Orwell is criticizing and, at the same time, recommending the reader tips to avoid bad writing, while his own essay is an example of a bad piece of writing. He is saying that careful writing is both good and bad. If you pay attention to every detail of your writing you might ruin the essence of the writing, but a careless writer might also result in a banal text.

Dying Metaphors (clichés): Worn out comparisons which have lost all evocative power, and are used for simplicity.

Meaningless Words: Words in a passage which almost completely lacking in meaning and do not point toward any object in the context of the sentence.

Pretentious Diction: Words and expressions (mostly foreign) that are used to dress up a simple statement and make it sound more scientific, and the general result is an increase in vagueness.

Ten Steps To Good Writing:

1. Avoid using complicated expressions.
2. Never use a figure of speech you are used seeing in writing.
3. Use a short word rather than a long one, if possible.
4. Avoid loquaciousness as much as possible (cut out as many words you can).
5. Never use passive when you can use active.
6. Avoid using foreign expressions, scientific terms, or other jargons. Instead, use its English equivalent.
7. Revise your writing before publishing in order to ensure best quality.
8. Avoid writing while thinking: think what you are going to write before actually writing it.
9. Evade dressing up simple statements with intricate expressions.
10. Maintain a constant style throughout your writing.

The Style Of Not Having One

I don’t have any style. Yeah, sorry. How can you have it? I can’t ask Santa to give me style for Christmas. I think I’d better ask Dante, Twain, Melville, Orwell, Hemingway, or even Flaubert how they got it. The question kept spinning in my head. I even dreamt about it.

In my dream he kept me telling, “Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work” (5). As I was about to finish the story as I read: “The beats of her heart grew fainter and fainter, and vaguer, like a fountain giving out, like an echo dying away;--and when she exhaled her last breath, she thought she saw in the half-opened heavens a gigantic parrot hovering above her head”. It happened to me that I had already grown fond of Felicite by the time these words reached my mind. I questioned how I came to know her so well if the narrator was in third person? I thought about Saul Bellow’s Seize The Day, where the narrator dives into the mind of the central character, hence making the reader see Wilhelm both from the inside and outside. In this case, my fondness to Felicite came from the insights I got to her thoughts through Flaubert’s narrator.

These words I had just read, for example, illustrate both Felicite’s inside and outside. Through careful description and metaphor, Flaubert takes the reader into her heart and mind. The reader feels what he is reading, the beats growing “fainter and fainter, and vaguer, like a fountain giving out, like an echo dying away”, making him understand both what we see of Felicite and what we feel about her. As well, both the narrator and author sympathize in the depiction of the stories central figure. The author exemplifies the character as being the leitmotif of the story by constantly evoking the story’s simplicity through the character. In other words, the story is of Felicite and Felicite is the story. A simple story. On the other hand, the narrator dives into her mind and makes the reader admire her simplicity in both thoughts and action.

It is basically the point of view of the story I was thinking about. The author, the narrator. I remembered the confusion present between these two figures while reading Slaughterhouse-Five. In A Simple Soul both figures coexist to describe, not explain. With the use of metaphors and careful description Falubert achieves this, while his narrator dives into her mind. Like here, I guess: “Her eyesight grew dim. She did not open the shutters after that. Many years passed. But the house did not sell or rent. Fearing that she would be put out, Felicite did not ask for repairs” (4). We get a glance to both her status quo and emotions, only described. Making it a quite simple story, since it only describes. But still, Flaubert’s powerful sentences and word choice make the reader disregard the story’s simplicity and instead enjoy it. His style is something…

I kept waking up tired to always dream about the text I’m reading in Pre Ap English class. Oh dear I already dreamt with Billy Pilgrim, Candide, genes, Macbeth, Oedipa Maas, and now Felicite? Give me a break. Anyways, I don’t have style I’m sorry. My bad luck was such that Tangen said next day in class, “Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work”. It made my rainy day.

Show, Not Tell, And Embrace Simplicity

One of the messages that dance through my mind while reading about Felicite is “embrace simplicity”. Since reading it from the Tao Te Ching more than a year ago, the message had stayed dormant in my thoughts. But how come it came back? Well, Felicite herself is quite a simple character, hence the title, the story, and everything in it. Still, simplicity isn’t quite adamant in every sense. “She kissed them several times and would not have been greatly astonished had Virginia opened them; to souls like this the supernatural is always quite simple. She washed her, wrapped her in a shroud, put her into the casket, laid a wreath of flowers on her head and arranged her curls” (3). The sentence evokes simplicity, but is it itself simple? It is clear how Flaubert’s use of punctuation is a very useful technique he uses to play with the story’s pace. Hence, making the how it’s told and what it’s told permanently interrelated with each other.

In the case of this sentence, we take the word simple. The word itself is describing the souls, characterizing Felicite, and narrating her life’s and the plot’s simplicity. The word, in this case, also divides two different sentences. The first one, rather two different ideas amalgamated by a semi colon, while the second one is mostly predominant of commas. We could infer that before ‘simple’, the sentence is simple, while after it becomes more elaborated. Before and after the word two different approaches to a sentence collide, one simpler than the other. But then, is the idea being transmitted simple? The idea might be simple, like the character, and the title, but thus far into the story I’ve only read the word ‘simple’ once. To show not tell. He is embracing simplicity by showing the reader Felicite’s life is simple, not telling.

Between Solitude And Loneliness

When referring to loneliness, we are referring to the pain of being alone. Pretty different from solitude, which expresses the glory of being alone. Being alone doesn’t necessarily refer to suffering, so, is Oedipa’s status quo loneliness or solitude? It is evident that throughout the story, Oedipa has become isolated from other people since the moment she left her husband to execute Pierce’s will. Oedipa’s pure image of complete isolation can be depicted when being alone at the bar: “Oedipa sat, feeling as alone as she ever had, now the only woman, she saw, in a room full of drunken male homosexuals” (94). Apart from being alone, we can notice how she is one of the only female characters mentioned in the story thus far. In her engagement of mysteries, Oedipa is surrounded by male figures, fact that leads to a resolution for the boredom and isolation that evinces her. The solution: sex. You might me thinking, “Sex, always sex, is it coincidence that’s always the solution?” The question is, is it a solution or a new problem?

In this novel in particular, sexual affairs are seen as a more common act than usually depicted nowadays. I didn’t live in the sixties but I deny the fact that a married woman would go and have sex with strangers just for the fun of it. Earlier in the book we saw how she had sex with Metzger the same day she met him. Once again in this chapter, John Nefastis invites her to have sex with him, but she denies. Hence, sex is portrayed as being a way to avoid boredom rather than to achieve sexual satisfaction. To Oedipa, her isolation leads her to sexual affairs which lead to the withdrawal from companions like her husband, physician, and God: “Story of my life, she thought, Mucho won’t talk to me, Hilarius won’t listen, Clerk Maxwell didn’t even look at me, and this group, God knows. Despair came over her” (94). We can infer that Oedipa is embracing the consequences of being alone. But it seems by her actions, and by Pynchon’s prose, that she is continuing her progression. After being overwhelmed by the prospect of so many possibilities, so many truths, she comes to an understanding that this ambiguity allows her the freedom of choice, to decide which truth will be hers to pursue. In the end she is alone, embracing loneliness or solitude?

The Paranoia Of Having All The Facts

I haven’t seen so far in my short account of reading, a story that isn’t based on the development of a main character. Maybe you might be thinking, “Oh poor guy, he doesn’t know a thing about literature” or even “Ah, this blog sounds boring, I’d better go and read Duarte’s”. You are free to do that, honestly, her blogs are much better. Anyways, let me continue with my argument. A story always bases its context on the development of a central character. We can see how Don Quixote centralizes with Don Quixote’s development, Slaughterhouse Five with Billy Pilgrim, Candide with Candide, A Clockwork Orange with Alex, Nineteen Eighty-Four with Winston Smith, MacBeth with Macbeth, etc. Even if these characters are protagonists, antagonists, or anti heroes in their respective contexts, their development alters the development of the story.

When relating it to The Crying Of Lot 49, we can surmise that Oedipa (its central character) has a vast effect on the development of the story itself. At this height of the story we can identify pure paranoia in her way of acting: “Everyting she saw, smelled, dreamed, remembered, would somehow come to be woven into The Tristero” (64). The sentence can be interpreted as being a whole metaphor for paranoia in general. To Oedipa, every single anomaly might mean something. A fact which becomes quite ironic taking into account that she called Miles a paranoid, when she herself is ten miles past paranoia. This state of paranoia leads the construction of sentences and paragraphs to be complete strays of Oedipa’s thoughts. To the reader, it’s like being inside Oedipa’s head, where every time an event is introduced, a whole stream of thoughts follow.

For example, we can see this relationship of event/stream of thoughts when she reads bronze historical marker at Fangoso Lagoons: “…The only other clue was a cross, traced by one of the victims in the dust… A cross? Or the initial T? The same stuttered by Niccolò in The Courier’s Tragedy” (71). These side thoughts might have an important influence in the development on the story’s outcome later on. Oedipa’s paranoia leads the reader to believe that she is starting to see things that are not there, which reminded me of Theseus’ lines in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet/Are of imagination all compact:/ One sees more devils than vast hell can hold” (V. i. 7-9). In reference to this lines, Oedipa I seeing “more devils than vast hell can hold”. To her, every single anomaly in an everyday life is part of a conspiracy. This sensation of paranoia makes the reader also believe that everything will finally come to be connected with this conspiracy. It might be true that it will in the end connect, or maybe it’s just a smokescreen created by this vast sensation.

The Play Within The Play: A Mirror Of The Story's Essence

When mentioned within the book, The Courier’s Tragedy reminded me of two texts I’ve had the chance to read previously: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Slaughterhouse-Five. We can recall from Shakespeare’s play the fact of “the play within the play”, where the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe is performed within the play. Meanwhile, Pynchon alludes to this piece in a similar manner that Vonnegut did in his own work. Here, Miles refers to it as “the same kind of kinky thing, you know. Bones of lost battalion in lake fished up, turned into charcoal” (48), creating a similar effect to the way Elliot Rosewater would refer to The Brothers Karamazov amongst other novels within the novel. Interestingly enough, the play reflects similar themes and issues as The Crying Of Lot 49. In his novel, Pynchon is constantly satirizing communication, which indeed is an issue present in this “play within the play”.

The events in The Courier’s Tragedy mirror those in the larger story, creating a similar effect to that of The Brothers Karamazov in Slaughterhouse-Five, or Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The connection becomes evident at the conclusion of Act IV of the play when Niccolò says: “No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,/ Who’s once been set his tryst with Trystero” (58). Trystero might have echoed in Oedipa’s mind the same amount of times a déjà vu echoes in yours, or even mine. It’s quite ironic that Oedipa, who had entered the play with thoughts about Trystero and not charcoaled bones, encounters with the term. The reader itself is in a similar position to that of Oedipa: he knows not about the whole mystery of Trystero. It’s interesting how everything connects to everything at this point: the story to the play, the play to the story, the play to Oedipa, Oedipa to the reader. Still, a new mystery is present to the reader: a mirror reflecting the story, a play inducing a mystery, and a play within the play.

Communication: The Most Powerful Drug Used By Mankind

Throughout history, humanity has arranged various ways to communicate. Since old little Lucy stepped on Northern Africa, communication has been a technique embraced by the thousands of following generations in order to convey ideas and feelings through voice, writing, or sound. We’ve seen communication through shapes in tablets, encryptions in pyramid walls, singed poetry, letters, songs, TV broadcast, books, and off course, the internet, which permits me to communicate with you. Through the Crying Of Lot 49, Pynchon evokes communication as a central figure of the plot itself. Since the beginning of the story we notice Oedipa’s reception of a letter: communication. After the reception of the letter, Oedipa undergoes a process of thought which involves television, fairytales, God, and the state of being drunk. These coincidentally are all related to communication in one way or the other.

The scene at the hotel room between Oedipa and Metzger is a perfect example of how television and the state of being drunk play a role in communication. In common culture, of course, when being drunk you feel things don’t make sense. To Oedipa, the sensation is no different: “She felt drunk. It occurred to her, for no reason, that the plucky trio might not get out after all. She had no way to tell how long the movie had to run. She looked at her watch, but it had stopped. “This is absurd,” she said, “of course they’ll get out”” (22). In this state of asceticism, Oedipa undergoes a process of uncovering in the bet they establish, were Oedipa will have to take one article of clothing every time she loses. Pynchon might have used this scene as just an example of how communication might affect our senses, or the fact of Oedipa taking her clothes off can be a complete metaphor of the story itself. We have noticed that since she received the letter in page 1 of this novel, every page has been like taking an article of clothing off: a new mystery is uncovered, a new hint is given to the reader.

A Tender Gender To Surrender A Gender Defender

A lifetime of tender genders that dwell to maintain the cycle of recycled gender-defender generations. These, fail to surrender and prefer to mêlée in serious contention of constant competition. Remain drab throughout the passing generations as nemesis in an eternal clash of tender genders.

Mankind Constitutes One Great Brotherhood

I would often ask my mother, “Mom, whom do you prefer, my brother or me?” As a mother, she should be neutral about the fact of having favorites. But as a person, she would tend to feel more identified or bonded toward either my brother or me. When I think about it, I find it difficult to arrive to a conclusion. If you don’t know, I am the big brother, leaving Antonio (my brother) as the small kid. Being brothers automatically connotes fight or disagreement. For example, I often hear the quotation, “juego de manos, juego de villanos”. But isn’t it better, “juego de manos, juego de hermanos”? We fight for every simple aspect presented in a daily basis. At a first glance, I could say I have the advantage since I’m older, and hence wiser, bigger, and off course, stronger. Unfortunately, I dwell with one notable disadvantage: “If I am competing with my brother for a morsel of food, and if he is much younger than me so that he could benefit from the food more than I could, it might pay my genes to let him have it” (128). As the big brother I have the pressure of being the example, the role model, and hence tend to behave altruistically towards such situations of competition.

Maybe I’m not as altruistic as my parents. Indeed, last week they scolded me for being selfish, egotistical, and only worrying about myself. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not true, but you know, they are my parents. Therefore, I accepted the scold and as I write this blog, I am trying to find a way to improve that aspect of selfishness I am embracing. I am constantly competing with my brother and parents. But this competition is not measured by strength, wisdom, or experience. It is measured with genes. I inherit my parents’ genetic information, and probably my brother’s genes are very much alike as mines. By having this share of genes, I have the tendency to act the way my parents want me to act. Referring to the example of my scold, I wasn’t acting the way they wanted me to act, but now I am striving to do so. When my little brother misbehaves there’s also impact in this sphere of influence. Parents always win. And without parents, the little brothers always win. I am in the middle. I am damned to continue losing forever. If I could have the opportunity to win anytime, I wouldn’t have to wait until I am eighteen to leave the house.

It's Cain's Fault

You might have already listened to this question before: is war ever justified? But before you argue with me about myself being monotonous, let words be presented to you, candid reader. Since the beginning, I shall say, the noble species that bears our name was condemned to be part of even the deepest circles of hell. I can say that way up in my family tree, one of my ancestors killed his brother. If I am not mistaken, his name was Cain and he killed his brother Abel. Since that moment, the entire species of Homo sapiens has inherited that mark: a sense of aggression against our own brothers. As humans we’ve developed the sense of killing, involving ourselves in an eternal cycle of recycled rivalry. It’s quite simple to regard that “the moral of this simple hypothetical example is that there is no obvious merit in indiscriminately trying to kill rivals” (68). We could argue that we are now condemned to kill our kin due to Cain: we inherit his genes. And in accordance to the point of view of this text, genes are immortal. Hence, this civil war of Homo sapiens is not expecting a peace treaty a couple of years from now.

In a war, we sought to kill the rival in order to win. But what if killing the rival is not the final solution? Tell me this: have you heard the saying that says, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend?’ We can simply apply that to World War II. Throughout history, the United States and Russia haven’t been the friendliest of all nations, still they sought to unite in order to crush the Axis powers. Yes, this was a great notion of union, but years later it would boost the Cold War. Tough choice isn’t it? So the solution is not to kill rivals. But I am getting off track here. Is war ever justified? According to basic logic, a war is between two belligerents, two rivals. It starts because these two belligerents clash over an ideology, territory, power, etc. We as descendants from Cain believe that killing our rival will end the war. But “in a large and complex system of rivalries, removing one rival from the scene does not necessarily do any good: other rivals may be more likely to benefit from his death than oneself” (68). In case of World War II, Russia benefited from the fall of the Axis powers because it would later become the power of the East. With the United States, Russia was friends at war, and enemies a couple of years later. Then, is war ever justified? We strive for a solution for the problem, but we end up finding a problem for our solution. We are damned with Cain’s genes. And genes last forever. That’s the only justification I have about the wars I’m experiencing today. It’s Cain’s fault.

Being Forever

“Do you want to be immortal?” asked Dr. Nathaniel Adams.
“No sir, absolutely not,” responded Gabriel Edmund Nero Eduard.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes sir, I’ve seen examples of people who’ve tried to become immortal, and I don’t want to be one of them!”
“People like who?”
“Well, you see, there’s Gilgamesh, sir, who tried to become immortal by building the city of Uruk.”
“Any other examples?”
“Yes, sir: John Wilkes Booth, with the assassination of President Lincoln. William Shakespeare, with the composition of plays like MacBeth, Hamlet, and Othello, and also Charles Darwin through his famous theory of evolution and natural selection.”
“Interesting, G.E.N.E. What can you say about Darwin?”
“Well, I know he was this famous guy who presented evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through a process called natural selection.”
“Then is it adequate to say that ‘We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator (21)?”
“Well, that’s a bit non-sequitur with our conversation, sir.”
“Not at all. If we are ‘survival machines’, that means that we are striving for survival in evolution. We are avoiding to be forgotten in this process.”
“Oh, that explains the question about immortality,” said Gabriel Edmund Nero Eduard.
“Indeed,” and by saying that, their conversation started to refer to immortality, and how we’ve tried to achieve it as human beings during evolution…

I couldn’t avoid hearing these two characters talk while waiting in line for the premier of The Selfish Gene, an awaited text that had created much excitement amongst biologists. Even though their conversation was rather interesting, they were being too superficial about the topic of immortality and evolution. I believe that genes are in constant competition with each other, since “they are called alleles. For our purposes, the word allele is synonymous to rival” (26). Since the moment we are born, genes evoke competition for our eye color, blood type, hair color, etc. They are selfish, according to this man who wrote the book. Why selfish? I don’t know, that’s why I’m in line to buy that book…

“You forgot to mention one example of immortality,” said Dr. Nathaniel Adams arriving at the counter where the author of the book, Richard Dawkins, was signing autographs.
“Well, I know, there are many examples I missed: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, etc. I could make an entire list of the Founding Fathers, the Presidents of the United States, the French Philosophes, if you wish,” said Gabriel Edmund Nero Eduard.
“Not quite, G.E.N.E, but I am still looking for another example.”
“Come on, can you please tell me what could it be?”
“Think about it,” and by saying this, Dr. N.A and his companion arrived to the counter where Mr. Dawkins was.
“Good evening, gentlemen. I couldn’t avoid overhearing your conversation, but you are quite true there is another example of what’s immortal,” said Mr. Dawkins.
“Can you help him out?” asked Dr. N.A glancing at Mr. Dawkins’ hand flourishing its autograph on the cover page of The Selfish Gene.
“Well, it’s quite simple, ‘when we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever” (35).
“Thank you, Mr. Dawkins,” and with these words they left the line, and I was next with Mr. Dawkins.

I didn’t establish a conversation with him. After listening to those two characters talk, I remained quiet, thinking about immortality and how to achieve it. Man’s great ambition is immortality. We hear myths about the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir Of Life, about alchemists who yearn to live eternally. After Richard Dawkins signed my new copy of The Selfish Gene, I left the premier. As I was leaving, I heard a man shout in the background: “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” I kept walking away through the darkness of the night. Wait a second. Genes are selfish, but still they are immortal? I thought that the altruists were those who remained immortal. It’s relative. George Washington was altruist. John Wilkes Booth was selfish. Still, both remained immortal.

Selfishness Through Temper Desire

When talking about the good in the world, we refer to the evil. There is not good without the evil, we can agree with that. We refer to the opposite in order to emphasize on the meaning we are trying to cherish. When referring to The Selfish Gene, Dawkins is not quite referring to selfishness. Instead, he constantly refers to altruism, and the altruistic traits that recur in the process of evolution. He describes altruism at the individual level in nature: “The commonest and most conspicuous acts of animal altruism are done by parents, especially mothers, towards their children” (6). The bond between a mother and his child is not only the gene they share. It’s a whole structure where sacrifice becomes self evident. Nowadays it’s a common cliché to refer at the mother who did everything she could to save her child. We see it in the Exodus, where Jochebed hides Moses from the Pharaoh in order to avoid her son from being killed. Such things can’t be explained. Such things are “behavioral, not subjective”, therefore the motives of taking such decision are irrelevant.

Since the beginning of the world, either through Big Bang or the Creation, everything was simple enough to have the endeavor to become more complex. From an atom we create a molecule, from molecules we create cells, organs, tissues, bodies, men. Men. Man was created from simplicity, and that led to instant selfishness. The Fall of Man is a clear example of how we are condemned to egotism. Why would Adam disobey God’s orders concerning the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? As the Tao Te Ching explains: “It is more important /To see the simplicity/To realize one's true nature /To cast off selfishness/And temper desire” (Tao Te Ching 19). Here we confront with four different variables: simplicity, nature, selfishness, and desire. Adam was tempted to eat from the tree, it was not his “true nature” to do so. From temptation came desire, but it doesn’t refer to only desire: to temper desire. It refers to a desire that annoys, and indeed man’s desire led to God’s rage, which later led to humanity’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. And man’s nature is determined from this episode. We are separated from the rest of the species due to the fact we know good and evil. We decided to cast off our selfishness instead of embracing simplicity, and that led to what we today know as our nature.

And for the same reason atoms create molecules and cells create tissues, we ought to derive from somewhere, don’t we? According to Darwin, Homo sapiens is the last stage of a constant process of evolution that started millions of years ago as a simple prokaryotic species. But if we look it the other way around, what is our other possible origin? It is quite obvious, according to Dawkins we are “all descended from the same ancestor” (17) , hence just as traits are transferred through the beautiful process of inheritance, we are also being gifted with Adam’s selfishness and temper desire. Since the moment we are born we are selfish, our mothers are not, though. In the Chronicles of Narnia, people from Narnia used to call human beings “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve”. We are the sons of Adam, we inherited selfishness. Our mothers embrace altruism, which nowadays is quite helpful for the survival of young children in this world of self destructive selfishness.

Embracing Life’s Sequence From The Garden

Three characters stood in no place. They kept talking to each other about their philosophies and perceptions about life and the world. The first one, Billy Pilgrim, had actually been a Prisoner Of War during World War II and had survived the controversial bombing of Dresden of 1945, and he now stood there, in no place. He talked about free will. How we are “trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why” (Vonnegut 77). According to him, we just live the events, and hence we cannot affect the course of our life. By being trapped in the “amber of this moment” we are living unknowingly, we experience, but are unable to explain what happens to us. Without a why, we are unable of questioning our existence. He argued that we cannot affect our past, present, or future. We have predetermined fates, such as John Calvin argued. Therefore our free will is absent, or minimal. We don’t have control of our lives. We are trapped in the “amber of this moment”.

The second character, a bit old and worn out by the age, agreed with Billy’s point of view. He had lived centuries, even millenniums before. Epictetus thought that we are like “an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be: short if he wants it short, long if he wants it long (…) what is yours is to play the assigned part well. But to choose it belongs to someone else” (Epictetus 17). To him, all events that occur in life are determined by fate. Hence, they are beyond our control but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. Individuals, however, are responsible for their own actions which they can examine and control through strict self-discipline. Suffering arises when trying to control what is uncontrollable, or when neglecting what is within our power. I believe that you must “detach your aversion from everything not up to us, and transfer it to what is against nature among the things that are up to us” (Epictetus 2). He believed that free will is beyond our control.

According to the third character, “there is a chain of events in this best of all possible worlds; for if you had not been turned out of a beautiful mansion (…) you would not be here eating candied fruit and pistachio nuts” (Voltaire 144). Everything happens for a cause. For every cause there is an effect, hence we are living under a constant stream of cause-effect sequence. According to him, we cannot affect this sequence. As I may interpret it, if I hadn’t applied to Pre AP English 10, maybe I wouldn’t have read Candide, and hence wouldn’t have considered writing this blog entry. Therefore, I am condemned to be part of this sequence of events, and I cannot affect it. To him, Pangloss, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. God created the world, God is perfect, therefore the world must be perfect, too. Pangloss is ravaged by syphilis, nearly hanged, nearly dissected, and imprisoned, yet he continues to embrace his optimism. He maintains his optimistic philosophy even at the end of the novel, when he himself admits that he has trouble believing in it. He maintains his philosophy, and advocates a passive view towards evil in the world. Something quite admirable.

As the three characters continued talking about their philosophies, a fourth character appeared out of the blue. He seemed to be interrupting, but his point was relevant to their conversation: “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” Pangloss agreed with him. He thought that “when man was placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there “to dress it and to keep it” (…) which proves that man was not born to an easy life” (Voltaire 143). Since the very beginning we were assigned a huge responsibility. In our hands was the garden, therefore we are condemned to eternal suffering: the suffering that implies dressing the garden. We were given freedom, but this freedom required a responsibility. Then, are we still ready to be free? Remember, every power requires great responsibility. The fourth man had kept saying: “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” After he went, I realized that he was Freud. Meanwhile, the three men continued talking, discussing, and I kept writing…