the last blog

Not totally sure what this final blog is supposed to deal with, so I'll ramble for a bit.

I thought the blog was a fun way to engage the class but I feel like there needs to be some other kind of motivator that goes along with it, like monthly blog checks or something, just to make sure everyone stays on top of it. I know I got complacent about blogging and my blog suffered because of it.

The time spent it class was awesome. I always felt intellectually engaged, partially because of the breadth of material covered and then that material's application to everyday life. The instructor's assertion that if we know all the stories then we can find out which story we're in was something that was very intriguing to me. The idea that we could some how know how things would happen, based on the stories that we know now makes no sense and a ton of sense at the same time. Having no true way to see our future is a fact of the universe we live in, but taking elements from common stories and applying them to our own lives is very practical. After all what is the point of stories if not to learn form them.

I regret to say that I did not actually finish The Brothers K. I just didn't make the time to finish the book and as we have discussed during or presentations, it is just now that I feel ready to take the plunge and give this book the time and attention it deserves. If it's any consolation I do fully intend to read The Brothers K this summer in its entirety, and keep a journal of my impressions about it. The book demands more time and attention than I could give it this semester and because of that I feel as though I've missed out on a large portion of this class.

The three main topics that hit home for me, and will follow me for the rest of my life are these: How do you know what you think until you see what you say, and: There are no Boring books only boring people and the idea that books can be more real than experiences. The first topic is easily applicable to everything in life. Writing your feelings and ideas solidifies them. The second two are ideas that I will ponder for the rest of my life, probably bouncing between sides as I go through.

All things considered, this class was time excellently spent. It was engaging and active as well as exciting and informative, I hope to continue to take classes of this intellectual caliber for the rest of my academic carreer.

final paper

What I've Learned:

The tragic sense of life

Throughout the semester we have discussed a myriad of interesting topics and ideas. Each has had it's own impact on how I viewed literature and the world around me. Our discussions on dreams and the universal unconscious were fascinating, drawing me into a world I otherwise may not have entered. I will take what we have learned about archetypes and use it to interpret the nature of characters as well as the people around me. The central theme of “retellings” made me look at the stories I hear every day, and have heard all my life, in a new light. Everything we discussed I will carry with me into my future in literature and storytelling. One topic however, strikes the core of humanity and that is the tragic sense of life. No topic we discussed applies so universally to both stories and life as the tragic sense of life.

The tragic sense of life is something that we discussed fairly frequently in class this year, perhaps because it is a common thread that runs through existence. The tragic sense of life addresses the idea that all of life is suffering. The suffering is variable, some suffering more severely than others, but it is constant and universal. Upon inspection this philosophy is very well supported, simply by looking at our own lives. As mentioned in class we are born from a comfortable closed, controlled world out into a harsh, bright and drafty universe, a universe of suffering. Growing up in the western world we have a fairly comfortable life, but it its still wrought with suffering. We want things, our parents want to make us happy, they want to be happy and the way to happiness in our part of the world is through money. So they suffer for their money, spending time away from the things and people they love to achieve wealth. They use their hard earned wealth to first cover the essentials, sustenance and shelter, then addressing the wants, the things we use to mask our suffering. When we grow old enough we take over our parent's mantle, struggling for wealth. Then we die.

In literature suffering is often ratcheted up to a whole new plane of existence. Stories like that of Job, who has everything taken from him by God as a test of faith all the way to the great space epic Star Wars wherein the robot C3PO laments to his friend R2D2 that “suffering seems to be our lot in life.” The Brothers Karamazov seems to be a study on suffering. Old Man Karamazov, fights with his son and seems generally unhappy, Ivan is passionately opposed to “the world God created” because it allows suffering, Dimitry fights bitterly with his father is caught between two women, Father Zosima and Ilyusha both suffer with illness throughout the novel and both eventually die. Dostoevsky is a master of human suffering.

Living with a future put in such bleak terms one wonders what the point is. Why go on existing when to exist is to suffer? We suffer in hate and love, in prosperity or ruin, in good health or bad so why not just take our chances on an afterlife and escape it all? The unknown prevents us from taking action. We know what we have here, even if it is only varying degrees of suffering, and that prevents us from taking a leap into the unknown. All of that aside, suffering is what makes life fun.

If we were to live a life without suffering things would get boring very quickly. If solving problems wasn't hard and rewarding, why bother doing it. If you could write a best selling novel, teach a shark sign language and climb mount everest in the same day that'd be pretty cool, but not if everyone else was doing it right along with you. Suffering is what makes life worth living because our suffering defines us. We learn from our trials and tribulations much more than we do from our successes. For example I feel much more passionate about the topic that I am writing about simply because I had to suffer to write about it. I could be turning my brain into soft goo playing video games right now but instead I am writing a paper. I will, however feel much better about the time I spent languishing over this paper than if I had spent that same time dismembering zombies in a virtual universe. Suffering makes the little victories that much sweeter but without suffering we would have no motivation. If there were no consequences for our actions, or lack of action, who's to say we'd ever get anything done.

Suffering in literature parallels suffering life, without it we would have no story to tell. If Old Man Karamazov and his sons all got along famously and never encountered a problem we wouldn't have a story at all. Suffering in literature allows us to study our own suffering from a distance, easing the pain of directly addressing our suffering by addressing the suffering of a far off character. Literature leaves it to us to bring the stories of suffering full circle and apply them to our own lives. Embracing the tragic sense of life, understanding that life is made up of suffering, allows us to live life to the fullest, despite the hard times. Those hard times define us, no one has suffered like you have and because of that you are a unique and interesting person, living a story that has never been told exactly this way before. Enjoy it despite the suffering.

Paper Idea

I'm not 100% sure on any specific topic at this point. I may look into some of the archetypes that we've discussed in class or one of the big issues like how do i know what i think until i see what i say or the nature of reality, weather reality is in books or in real life. if all else fails i'll just fall back on the what i've learned and why it makes a difference. in the mean time i'll put the how do i know what i think till i see what i say philosophy into action and flesh out some ideas

Presentations and reality

I've truly enjoyed all of the group presentations we've had in class but the one that was most intresting to me was the books vs reality debate that one of the groups held. I did feel that the actual debate could have been handled a little more professionally but that's not as important as the core issue that was discussed. I am personally very torn over this subject and was convinced of neither side's superiority during the debate.

On one hand I love reading and literature, some of my favorite memories and places come from books and even the activity of reading is very relaxing to me. The characters created by some authors are people that I know better than some of my close friends and are undoubtedly real in my mind. The grimy feel of London in Great Expectations, the space station in Ender's Game, Hogwarts of Harry Potter fame, all of these places exist in my mind and I personally know the characters that inhabit them.

On the other hand I've had some undeniably real experiences in my life. Running pell-mell down a mountain during a torrential rainstorm, careening down a snow covered face, exploding through white water rapids. These are things that I feel must be experienced first hand, not read about. I've read plenty of books about mountaineering but that doesn't mean I've climbed the worlds tallest most difficult peaks. I've never experienced an atmosphere so thin I need supplemental oxygen to put one foot in front of the other or actually pulled on a pair of crampons. These and things like them are all experiences that must be had, not read about.

I don't believe there is a black and white answer to this question, there is truth to both sides. You can achieve a greater understanding, a richer experience by reading about something rather than being there but there is something that reading and the imagination cannot recreate and that is true physical experience.

The death mother

As we began discussing archetypes in class i started linking each one we discussed to a familiar character. Many of them happened to be from Star Wars, simply because many of the characters from the star wars universe fit so well into each archetype. Luke Skywalker fits perfectly into the role of the hero, Yoda and Obi Wan fill the role of the wise old man, most characters from the series fit neatly into an archetype.

One archetype i couldn't place within the star wars universe was that of the death mother. The name did however immediately draw me to the Animal Mother character from Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. I began to wonder if the gender archetypes could cross gender lines.

In the film Animal Mother is a nihilistic, killing machine. He seems to be an invulnerable force, moving through the battlefield. During the climax of the film he advances on a sniper's position, against orders, to help his comrades. Mother blazes a trail forcing the others to follow, to prevent separation. In the same way Kali, the Hindi god of death and template for the devouring mother archetype, moves through time as an unstoppable force, initiating change and causing death. the characters follow the same basic archetype, always moving, causing change in their environments as they move through them and bringing death with them wherever they go. The only discrepancy between the two of them is their gender, Animal Mother is a red blooded american warrior and Kali is a goddess.

The idea that gender specific archetypes seem to cross the gender gap is very interesting to me and is something that I will look for in literature from now on.

tragedy and suffering

The Tragic Sense of Life is the title of a book by Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish author and philosopher from Spain who lived around the turn of the century. The all knowing wikipedia states that de Unamuno was a proponent of intrahistoria. The central idea of intrahistoria is that the history of humanity should be understood through the study of anonymous individuals instead of humanity's achievements as a group. If human history is to be considered in this context then the fact that suffering is universal and ongoing is apparent.

Humanity as a whole has been thriving for the past few centuries. The last hundred years in particular have brought a standard of living and luxury that our founding fathers could never have imagined. Despite humanity's growth however people still suffer. Depression runs rampant through the developed world, despite our privilege and those living in the undeveloped world live in squalor, suffering is truly world wide. Granted we try to move above and beyond the suffering, saying that today was better than yesterday, that we are happy with our lives. And may of us are happy because the suffering is buried beneath the fronts we put up. Suffering is common to all humans, weather it be illness and pain or the needs or wants of living we all know suffering.

Since suffering is universal it is vital in any true work of literature. The Bros. K carries suffering through the entire story, from the birth and separation of the brothers to the murder of old man Karamazov to the imprisonment of Dimitri and death of Ilyusha. The core of Ivan's famous argument against God is that the world is built on a foundation of suffering. At it's core the brother's K is a 700 page dialog on human suffering.

There must however be hope. Without hope the suffering becomes overwhelming and that is why the brothers K is tolerable to read. There is always hope, no matter how slight, that carries the reader along. As with our everyday life we must have hope to continue in this world of suffering, hope for a better tomorrow and a brighter future.

Solipsism

Solipsism was mentioned in class and it really grabbed me. As some of my previous blogs discuss I'm very interested in the definition of reality. Basically asking the question: What is really real and how do we know it's real? How do we know that we're not just a character in somebody's story, complete with an omnipotent narrator to guide others through our story? Or that we're not plugged into a computer, being fed sensory data, believing that we actually had stale toaster waffles for breakfast, not nutrient rich ooze?

We don't and that's the awesome part. Reality is the greatest of life's mysteries, one that we may or may not get the answer to when we die, if we ever actually die. If reality isn't real then on what grounds can we say that death is real? If we have no way to see our “reality” from another vantage point then we cannot observe it and therefore cannot prove it even exists.

Even if we could somehow “observe” reality how do we even know we can trust our own senses? They trick us all the time, with dreams and the like. I guess solipsism is the safest option we have, let me rephrase that.

The safest option you have. I'm a figment of your imagination after all.