Success is Relative

         The 1920’s were a time when success was directly proportional to material goods. A man with a “hydroplane”(64) might be considered more successful than a man whose “house was an eyesore”(5). However, success in America isn’t based on material goods or wealth but rather how content a person is with their current life. Success is personal satisfaction.

         The novel Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell introduced a man named Christopher Langan, who despite having the highest IQ in the world, is a horse rancher in Missouri. He could be making millions yet chooses to remain a horse rancher because it gives him personal satisfaction. In his opinion, he is successful without having vast amounts of wealth.

         Gatsby on the other hand has plenty of wealth and a “colossal..mansion”(5) yet he is emotionally disturbed and is “trembling”(21) at night. Although others might feel that Gatsby is successful because of his wealth, he is not personally satisfied resulting in him staying awake at night. Gatsby does not fit the true definition of success in America yet other people still perceive him as successful because they feel that a person with unlimited wealth has to be happy.

Success in America is based on immaterial goods.

What does it mean to be educated?

A Greek philosopher named Epictetus once said "Only the educated are free". But what does it mean to be truly educated? Does being educated simply mean that a person has acquired a vast amount of textbook knowledge or is it something greater?

We are all born with a veil called innocence that shields us from the true reality that we are surrounded by. This innocence causes us to be in our “natural default setting”(Wallace), a setting in which we are innocent of the pain and misery of the world around us and we simply focus on our desires. The “history teacher”(Collins) thinks that innocence is the true meaning of educated. He doesn’t understand that “protecting..innocence”(Collins) will only result in people never being able to change their “default setting”(Wallace), preventing them from feeling empathy and causing them to “torment the weak and smart”(Collins). The world isn’t full of “flower beds and white picket fences” which is why it is essential for people to “adjust their default setting” and see the weeds in the flowerbeds and the cracks on the white picket fence.

When people are no longer limited by the constraints of “arrogance”(Wallace) and self-centeredness, then they can become truly free.

To be truly educated is when a person no longer posses the innocence that prevents them seeing past the white picket fences and from feeling empathy for the world around them.

Traditional Punctuation: The only way to provide clarity

The traditional use of punctuation is essential because it not only allows authors to convey their voice in ways that cannot be expressed through words but also benefits readers by making text more structurally organized. In an ever-changing world, it is more important than ever to make information easier to communicate to a large audience and the traditional use of punctuation is necessary to allow for this easier communication

Traditional punctuation makes literature much easier to read because it provides structure to the text that would be lost if there was no punctuation. It “clarifies meaning”(Hitchings) while also adding to the authors voice. Literature without punctuation creates an ambiguity that prevents the reader from understanding where they are in this ocean of text. Elizabeth Austen writes  “[a semi-colon] with the commas a poser at the bar feigning liberation with one hand tightening the leash with the other”(Austen), yet it is ironic that the lack of punctuation actually hinders the reader from clearly finding their way through the piece more than any colon or semi-colon.  Punctuation is also “highly important”(Thomas) for scientific literature according to Lewis Thomas, a graduate of Harvard Medical School. Clarity in scientific literature is an “essential flavor”(Thomas) because it is important to communicate research findings and other significant information to the world. This clarity can only be provided by traditional punctuation rules

The Desire for Beauty: A Result of Mortality

"A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he wished he could work miracles. Never before had he really wanted the true and holy power-only the powers to make others believe he had it. It seemed so sad, so frivolous, that mere mortality, not judgement, kept him from it."(Morrison 174)

A pedophilic misanthrope feels sympathy towards the “ugliest” person in the community.  At first, this relationship astonished me but I began to realize that the abnormal love resulted because of Soaphead’s distaste for “mortality”.  Morrison denotes mortality in this passage as not only meaning “human”, but also meaning our limited lifespans. Soaphead understands that it is our limited lifespans that cause us to cherish whatever beauty we experience. When he sees Pecola, he is outraged that the desire for beauty that characterizes humans has “infected” the epitome of innocence, a child. Wanting beauty is what adulterates an adult and ruins the innocence of a child. However, Soaphead doesn’t realize that the beauty is never satiated as shown by Pecola’s desire for “the bluest eyes in the entire world”. Morrison shows that the desire for beauty is inevitable just like growing up, yet Soaphead can’t comprehend why God corrupts people by giving them this desire.

The misanthrope also describes Pecola as being in a “pit of her blackness”. This illustration shows why after Pecola goes insane, she imitates a bird in an effort to try to escape from this pit and enter the world of white people. However, as the story progresses, she moves her arms less and less which shows that her dreams of escaping the pit are slowly being crushed.

 

Perceptual Corruption

       In The Bluest Eye, Morrison characterizes men and women differently. On a physical level, the men and women in the novel share the same “ugly” black skin. However, the “ugliness” within the Black community in The Bluest Eye isn’t a result of their skin color but rather the emotional corruption that causes instability within the community. Morrison contrasts the men and women in the novel but shows that perception within both genders is the ultimate cause of “ugliness”.

       Every single male in the bluest eye is portrayed as an alcoholic/rapist/racist/in jail. This moral corruption that exists within the African-American male community is because they fail to perceive the negative effects of their actions.  Cholly Breedlove doesn’t perceive that “fighting”(Morrison 119) Pauline not only affects his wife but also prevents his children from understanding the true definition of love and a home

      Every single female is portrayed as a lonesome mother who has a skewed perception of the world that causes her to believe that being beautiful is greater than being moral, that dreams are greater than reality, and that having a morally corrupt husband is better than having no husband at all. Pauline only wants “clothes and makeup”(Morrison 119) so that other women “cast favorable glances her way”(Morrison 119). She doesn’t understand that favorability is based on morality not “looks”. But because this is the 1930’s, racism skews Pauline’s perception making her believe that because she is “black/ugly” she has to improve her beauty rather than her character. Morrison shows that having eyes that perceive the world properly is more important than having the “bluest eyes”.