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The Good Life, Colonization Antiguans’ minds have been shaped from the…

- - - - The Great Gatsby
        It is a rather pathetic yet romantic story narrated by Nick Carraway. Living in New York City, he dines with his married distant relative Daisy from time to time and soon become acquainted with his millionaire neighbor Jay Gatsby through a fancy party. Gatsby is having an affair with Daisy, which is discovered by Daisy's husband Tom, who has a mistress called Myrtle. Gatsby accidentally killed her while driving Daisy home and was shot by her husband George later, who mistook him for the her paramour. At the end of the story, Nick leaves New York and back to the west.
      - Imitation
        The novel is full of imitation through which characters think that they can gain a good life compared to others. Myrtle's apartment location and gaudy decoration is an example of the imitation of the wealth.
        Gatsby imitates himself of being a gentleman both in front of Daisy after they reencounters each other and in front of Nick when he is talking about his past. Nick’s own background where his grandfather sent substitute to the Civil War also undermines his honesty. Daisy and Tom are also affecting a happy marriage when both know they’re unhappy.
        
        Considering that we can only see what the narrator wants us to see, then can we fully trust them?
        
        All imitation is bound up with class. Class influences all aspects of life. Myrtle mentions this with regard to her husband, George, whom she mistook for someone of better “breeding” and hence greater prospects.
      - Languages's Effects
        For The Great Gatsby, how languages are exchanged is especially interesting in how it demonstrates the societal values. Most of the information circulates through rumors with truth remaining unknown.
        Daisy refers to herself as “sophisticated” precludes sincerity when talking to others. Besides, her voice is always emphasized in the novel rather than meaning of words as "her voice muffled in the thick folds"(92) is depicted. She also loves gossiping, which can be seen from her revealing a "family secret"(16) to Nick at their dinner at her house.
      - Romantic Relationship
        Gatsby believes that his relationship with Daisy can be reignited with his tremendous wealth and his relatively high social status. In fact, he is so persistent in chasing Daisy back that he almost seems crazy.
        
        At the end of the book, class dynamics dictate which marriage survives (Tom and Daisy), which one is destroyed (George and Myrtle), and which one will never come to be (Gatsby and Daisy). Only the most affluent couple in the upper class pulls through the events that conclude the book.
      - The American Dream
        It is the most pessimistic critique of the
        American Dream because all the new money who strives to secure a desirable life in the 1920s seem to end up tragically at the end of the novel. In Chapters 7 and 8, everything comes crashing down: Daisy refuses to leave Tom, Myrtle is killed, and George breaks down and kills Gatsby and then himself, leaving all of the "strivers"--the desperate pursuers of the American Dream--dead and the old money crowd (Daisy and Tom) safe.
        
        The Raisin In the Sun is also a critique of the American dream like The Great Gatsby, though with more hope. The family starts out poor and pathetic. However, at the end, they move to a new house and one of the family member is thinking of going farther away from their home country. It shows the slight possibility of the rise of new money. Though being a critique, it provides a hopeful side of the American dream.
        
        Family appears to be a more important factor in this situation, which adds much more warmth to this play and leads it to a relatively happy ending.
        
        In this case, is pursuing an American Dream a good thing for every person while it can only give people a false hope and self degradation?
        
        Gatsby leaves his poor past behind and come to New York for a new life. He detests where he comes from.
        
        The good life that's thought to be sought turns out to be nothing, especially when Nick ponders at the end, "He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.
  - - - A Raisin In the Sun
        This play tells the story of a lower-class black family's struggle to gain middle-class acceptance. Each character in the plat is attempting to live the "good" life that they think is the best for their family. After countless arguments and realizations, they achieve a fairly happy ending for pursuing their dream.
      - Romanticization of Poverty
        Almost all female characters in the play are romanticizing the poor living conditions out of self consciousness to form a utopia. Mama is always trying to maintain steady peace inside the house even though quarrels happen everyday, forcing her son Walter to care more about the family rather than his business. Ruth lack any big ambition because she knows there is nothing she can do to change get rid of poverty. Thus she praise mundane life, refuses any change and tries to live it happily. Beneatha, fully aware of the poor condition that her family is in, still chooses to continue study medicine and wishes to be a female doctor, which uses up most of the money that the family has each year. She is fighting against the conventional expectations for women by "Not to marry a rich one but to be one". All three of them are struggling to maintain a good life even though they are under such horrible conditions. Is this utopia successfully formed?
        
        Mama's hope for simple and sustainable life. and happiness for her family is her self-consciousness.
        
        She feels impotent in not being a white woman who may earn money much easier than a colored woman like her. This is the suffocating conditions under racial discrimination.
        
        Ruth's modest dreams of stability and her nurturing nature is her self-consciousness.
        
        Beneatha's exploratioin of her identity is her self-consciousness.
      - Walter's American dream starts off with desperation. He is the typical man of the family who struggles to support it and who tries to discover new, better schemes to secure its economic prosperity. Difficulties and barriers that obstruct his and his family’s progress to attain that prosperity constantly frustrate Walter. He believes that money will solve all of their problems, but he is rarely successful with money.
        
        Does it even end?
        "Who even spoke of an end? To life? To living?"
        
        Is American dream a "circle" like Beneatha describes? People are never satisfied and continues to chase after objects that are unattainable due to their conditions and finally see themselves at the origin.
        
        Or is American dream like "a long line" as described by Asagai? It is a line that people dreams never reaches anywhere.
        
        Beneatha even feels defeated for a while in the process. Instead of feeling idealistic about demanding equality for African-Americans and freeing Africans from the French and English colonizers, she broods about basic human misery. Never-ending human misery demoralizes her, and she no longer sees a reason to fight against it. Probably this is where all dreams end up, even though some get through and continue in this infinite line like Beneatha and some give up following.
        
        The hope comes in where Walter realizes that buying the house is more important for the family’s welfare than getting rich quickly. Thus, he grows up into a real man by refusing Mr. Lindner's money and values his family more than anything.
      - Far from being a good listener, Walter does not seem to understand that he must pay attention to his family members’ concerns in order to help them.
    - - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
        A Pakistani who has attended university in America tells a stranger about his school life and professional life there.
        
        It is a dramatic monologue in which we can see from Changez's perspective his attitudes towards the idea of "America".
        
        Is it America that he wishes to be connected with or is it the utopian idea of independence and equality that attracts him?
      - A Lover of America
        The greatest lesson that Changez gained from Princeton was how to become indoctrinated into the ideology of the American dream. He’s assuming what the American assumes about him, which is he’s not a lover of America but only a Pakistani.
        
        Changez constantly situates himself as an other. By trying to establish intimacy with the stranger in the cafe, he is actually creating distance, drawing attention to to his non-native status like a tourist.
        
        Changez feels a part of New York, if not U.S., which is also a kind of tourist idea.
        
        In both texts, characters seek to escape where they come from. Changez has a tie to his home yet he migrates to a different country as opposed to within a country. He reinvents himself like them--"a lover of America" just like how Gatsby reinvents himself as the successful millionaire.
        
        Globalization forces third world countries like Pakistan to be dependent on first world countries in order to attain a position that they might otherwise have been able to attain independently
        
        "Though life is good, he cannot help but notice a definite sense of alienation and loneliness coursing through Erica", whom he met in Greece and lived together since then. This is a possible metaphor for his relationship with America: seemingly close yet distant.
  - - - The Dispossessed
        It is a story involving two cultures, one called Anarres where community and sharing is the key and another one called Urras where capitalism is the key. A physicist Shevek seeks a proper place to write his The General Temporal Theory. In this process, he finds out underlying truths about his supposedly utopian society Anarres, secrets of Urras where he lives for some time and other alien civilizations.
      - Keng, the Terran ambassador, doesn't understand Shevek at first, not knowing his stubbornness in offering the General Temporal Theory to all of the universe--not just one planet but the whole civilization. She seems to be assimilated by the Urras idea of buying and selling and possessing whereas Shevek insists in sharing for the common good.
      - A Utopia?
        This book depicts a failure of utopia. The Urrasati idea of utopia is largely characterized by wealth, luxury, and excess, which are representations of extreme materialism and vanity. This ideal view of utopia is very different--almost the opposite of that--from the Anarresti ideal of a society founded on principles of equality, rejection of the ego, and communal living, which is justified by Shevek's words "nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it you cannot use it” (Chapter 2). From the standard of nowadays' utopia, Anarres fits perfectly. However, as Shevek dives deeper into his research, he gradually came to the idea that Bedap suggests, which is there is an unseen government in Anarres, led by authoritarians who don't even know they are. It turns out that Anarres is still on the way of finding the true utopia.
        
        How much does the organization of a society affect the good life? Shevek is still dissatisfied ostensibly in utopia, suggesting that the kind of society one lives in is never enough. Shevek is looking at Urras, and also Anarres. They spatially confronts each other just like how we also confront our own idealism.
      - The society of Anarres is responsible for creating a good life and making a good life impossible. It forms a standard for such life in Shevek's mind. His society emphasizes morality more than law (which it doesn't have)
        However, Shevek discovers that this is not the truth. It is the communal priority that separates him and his family, keeping from gaining happiness in their companion for four years.
        
        Shevek gradually realizes that there is actually no freedom for the anarchists to choose. His friend Tirin is forced to go through therapy on Segvina island because he acted Urras in a play. Emergency postings continue after the drought and many reposting requests are ignored. The publication of his principles is chosen by Sabul. Just like in capitalist city Urras, most people cannot choose for themselves, they unconsciously let others choose for them because ultimately all representative systems are authoritarian.
        
        Community is what formulates Anarres and incorporates citizens while it is also what alienates people from having a good life. Communal living is the motivation and the basis for Anarres people. Nontheless, it also deems people who refuse job postings as "nuchnibi" and let others distance them. No law involved, just words and communal power of the majority.
        
        "WHAT PRISONS ARE, AND WHO BUILDS THEM."(332)
        
        The scene where they try out what prison is like in school could be a metaphor for the true values lies under the Anarres society.
        
        Is good life possible under capitalism?
      - Family Relationship
        The relationship between Takver and his daughter Sadik and Shevek seems oddly formal and distant to me. Yet, they treat each other with respect and a sufficient degree of love to provide each other a sense of a family. Especially towards the end of the story when they are together in the desert, everything appears peaceful and qualifies as a good example for a desirable life.
  - - - Madame Bovary
        Madame Bovary tells the bleak story of a marriage that ends in tragedy. Charles Bovary, a good-hearted but dull and unambitious doctor, marries Emma, a beautiful farm girl raised in a convent. However, Emma grows increasingly unhappy with her life, and even the birth of their daughter, Berthe, brings Emma little joy. She soon turns to Rodolphe, the landowner and an aquaintance Léon. However, this attempt to escape from her marriage failed twice and drives her crazy. Emma gets to indulge herself in countless debts that she commits suicide out of desperation.
      - A Utopia?
        For Emma, she has always believes there is a place that she can escape to and enjoy the upper class life, like the mansion where they attended a ball before they moved to the small town Yonville. She dreams that Rodolphe or Léon could be her savior of the provincial town. However, in this process of finding one and grasping to male for fulfilling her utopian-like dream, Emma actually traps herself deeper within the endless pursuit of a good life that is imagined as infinite.
        The fact is that there is nowhere in the world as a "utopia" but death, which is a heroic behavior that Emma finds out at the end of the novel.
      - What Emma desires for have changed gradually throughout her life. At first, she anticipates her marriage with Charles as a life of adventure since he seemed mysterious and glamorous. However, she soon finds that she is disillusioned and her only excitement derives from the flights of fancy she takes while reading sentimental romantic novels. "The happiness that should have resulted from that love had not come" (30). Emma grows increasingly unhappy with her middle-class existence in a small town and seeks an way out through having affair with a local landowner and a clerk. Emma is suffering from a struggle between city life that represents glamor and luxury and the country life that she feels impotent to run away from. The happiness she feels in this marriage thus become crazier and more desperate.
      - Charles doesn't understand what Emma desires. He always cares too much about her health, which appears ridiculous when the matter is not her health at all. He fails to decipher what she is constantly pursuing after and Emma doesn't seem to understand Charles either. She feels like he is not treating her well and that he is always inclined towards his mother instead of her.
      - Love/Marriage
        Like Gatsby, Charles is also pursuing a relationship with Emma, which turns out into a life-long marriage. He is easily contented with his marriage. It seems that Charles care more about Emma than Emma cares about him in their relationship, which is due to his satisfaction with mundane life. This is rather an unbalanced marriage. Charles is proud to have Emma as his wife. He relates to her and feels he shares something with her, considering her as a desirable possession. He is attracted to her because he sees in her the socially warm and radiant person he wants to be. However, Emma has soon grown tired of him either because his lack of ambition or because of her excessive desire for extremely materialistic life.
      - Different Opinions on Success
        Charles wishes to be a good doctor with no ambition and Emma thinks that he is not successful.
        This is partly because Charles only wants a stable life, with which he is already satisfied. Even though Charles had dreams when he was younger, his inherent laziness makes him give up. Emma, on the contrary, is very ambitious, trying to seek happiness and vanity from her husband. She almost fainted when she knows that Charles failed to cure a disabled man in their town and that his reputation is destroyed.
      - Language serves as an important indicator in Madame Bovary. Characters who talk the least are allowed to appear as good people (e.g. Hippolyte, servant woman in agricultural fair), whereas those who talk the most are the least good. Even the narrator itself sounds like a character within the novel. Sometimes a mocking juxtapotion is put, especially after Emma has troubled herself with the relationship with Rodolphe, a paragraph of Charles's satisfaction with Emma follows. It is as if the narrator is an aloof know-it-all.
    - - Antigone
        Polynices and his brother Eteoclesare both killed by each other in Thebes. Antigone wishes to bury both properly while only one is deemed worthwhile by Creon. After he finds out Antigone is the one who offers a burial for Polynices, he sentenced her to death. However, at the end of the play, Creon changes his heart. Yet, it was too late to save either Antigone or his son Haemon or his wife. He was left alone just like how Antigone died--no one mourns for neither of them.
      - The societal conventions are responsible for categorizing one brother of Antigone as a traitor and the other honorable. From Creon’s point of view, he sees Polyneices as the villain because he attempts to overthrow Eteocles from power and marches into Thebes with a battle intent. Creon believes that "anyone who threatens the state is an enemy."(212-214) It is understandable that Polyneices seems to play the role of the villain as he is reeking havoc on the country he grew up in and is to rule upon. However, this categorization is only due to the human law, regardless of any family bonds.
        
        Who is the villain?
        
        Antigone is linked to both the self-conscious and the society, meaning that two aspects are responsible for either constructing a good life or destroying one.
        
        Who decides what is moral?
        
        Individually, Antigone rejects impingement on the state. In fact, she is almost a self-autonomous woman who has no fear in anything, even when she is working against the state law. At the end of her life, she even chooses to hung herself instead of being forced into death.
        
        This question reminds me of the prison scene in The Dispossessed. Children create a so-called prison-like place in school and suggest that they all go in to experience what a prison is like. They make themselves villains.
        
        Divine Law
        Antigone is a threat to the status quo; she invokes divine law as defense of her actions, but implicit in her position is faith in the discerning power of her individual conscience. She sacrifices her life out of devotion to principles higher than human law.
      - Duties to State vs. Duties to Kinship
        Creon pledges allegiance to to the polis while Antigone believes that family is more important. Both are unyielding in their own opinions. Antigone secretly sets out to hold a proper burial for Polyneices even if it means risking her life and going against the law. Creon's rejection to the burial of Polyneices is a rejection to nepotism. It is hard to say who is correct since both are valid yet both are incomplete.
        
        By giving Polyneices a proper funeral, Antigone is obeying the morals set by the gods the Greeks honor and follow; in this case is that the dead should be given proper burial. Although Polyneices may have caused harm to Thebes, as a relative of a family who cares about him, Antigone’s decision to have a proper funeral for him is the right and respectful thing to do.
- - - - A Small Place
        The first section begins with Kincaid’s narration of the reader’s experiences and thoughts as a hypothetical tourist in Antigua. The second section deals with Kincaid’s memories of the “old” Antigua, the colonial possession of Great Britain. Kincaid recalls the casual racism of the times, and the subservience of Antigua to England and, especially, to English culture. The third section, the longest, deals with Antigua’s present and begins with Kincaid asking herself the disturbing question of whether, considering the state of the island today. Finally, she talks about the "unreal" beauty of the island in the last section and how it parallels with its present.
      - There has always seemed to be a disparity between the acknowledgment of tourists and locals of a certain place. What the tourists deem as a utopia the natives deem as hell. According to Kincaid, a tourist travels to escape the boredom of ordinary life—they want to see new things and people in a lovely setting. Kincaid points out that the loveliness of the places that tend to attract tourists is often a source of difficulty for those who live there. For example, the sunny, clear sky of Antigua, which indicates a lack of rainfall, makes fresh water a scarce and precious commodity. For tourists, however, the beauty is all that matters—the drought is someone else’s problem.
        
        Kincaid notes that tourists also tend to romanticize poverty, just like the female characters in The Raisin In the Sun. The locals’ humble homes and clothing seem picturesque, and even open latrines can seem pleasingly “close to nature,” unlike the modern plumbing at home. Kincaid believes that this attitude is the essence of tourism. The lives of others, no matter how poor and sad, are part of the scenery tourists have come to enjoy, a perspective that negatively affects both tourists and locals. The exotic and often absurd misunderstanding that tourists have of a strange culture ultimately prevents them from really knowing the place they have come to see.
      - Lack of Freedom
        Natives actually do not have any freedom to govern themselves. They even don't have the right to give advice for the officers. Because of slavery and being ruled from afar for so long, the Antiguans have become accustomed to being passive objects of history, rather than active makers of it. The experiences of the colonized are therefore always secondary in some sense; it is the people from the “large places” who determine events, control history, and even control language. The colonized society is responsible for the lack of freedom, for a miserable life of its citizens.