Patty’s Charcoal Drive-in

This is a poem we read this week. To me, it sounds like a middle aged woman reflecting a summer job she had as a teenager. She worked in a diner drive-in, the way she described it (such as “bouncing pony tail”) shows that she enjoyed that job. However, she had some concerns at the same time.

One of the lines from the poem stood out to me. It says “ A breeze comes up, chasing papers in the far corners of the darkened lot, as if suddenly cold wind had stated to blow straight at me from the future.” It is like the situation most of us in right now. We are all working on our college application, going to school, doing our volunteership and spending time on our jobs. It seems that we all have a lot of things to work on, but the future is still undefined. I was always asked what would I want to do in the future. But I can never give a specific answer. The answer has always been changing as I grow up. Even though I can’t picture what the future will be like, I believe that the future is in our own hands. We should enjoy our time and take all the opportunities we are given. The more we learn, the more we explore, we will have a clearer image of what we want to do with our lives.

I think this is a good poem. And for those who haven’t read it, I hope you’ll take a look at it. It is pretty straight forward and it’s worth reading.

Type of Art That Best Describes Grief

“ It is that union of experience, insight and the simple beauty of language that helps us to give our own grief a name, that gives us a kind of company, that extends a wise hand.”
This quote is written by Ben Brantley. I agree that words and language are very powerful when expressing our thoughts and emotions. I think Literature is the type of art that best describes grief. We feel a strong connection with the authors while reading. It’s like we are having a direct conversation with them. We can picture what is going on and what the characters are like. However, if it is being performed, it limits our thoughts and imaginations. And sometimes the performance doesn’t match our interpretation of the literature.

We finished reading Oedipus and then watched the play. While I was reading it, I was really engaged and was eager to find out how it ends. I pictured that Jocasta looked really young and pretty. But when we were watching the play, I focus on how they performed. I found out the characters are not the way I pictured. It was kind of disturbing to see Oedipus and Jocasta being together. They talked very fast, it was hard to catch every single line; therefore, it was easy to miss the important information. I feel that I focused on the plots instead of the emotions and meanings behind the scenes. I enjoyed the story more when I read it.

Sad Story

We studied tragedies in class this week. This reminds me of Gloomy Salad Days, a Taiwanese TV drama taken from real social cases. The fist two episodes tell the story about Huanghe. Hunghe was born in a very wealthy family. He is a merit scholar as well as the leader of gangsters. He is very popular and respected because he does well in everything. He said that he wanted to be extremely good and extremely bad at the same time to experience life. He had a love relationship with his chemistry teacher. After the teacher gave birth to a baby boy, she told Huanghe that it was his child. She also divorced her husband. Huanghe was afraid that the baby would look like him one day and ruin his future. He told the Death Girl that he wanted the baby to disappear. The next day, he heard from the teacher that the baby was dead and the teacher quit her job. Huanghe committed suicide because he thought he killed his own baby. What makes it a tragedy is that after his death, he received an apology letter from the teacher. She told him that the baby is alive and is not his. She lied because she wanted him to get back with her again. It is really sad because he could have a really bright future. I could picture him being a successful businessman or a politician. His story tells us that the hardest thing to get over with is our own sins.

We also learned how Aristotle defines “tragic hero”. I think Hunghe is a tragic hero. First of all, he was born in a very wealthy family. Secondly, he is very wise and is respected by most of the people. He could have had a bright future. Finally, he made mistakes and the punishment he received exceeded the crime (In this case, he didn’t really commit a crime, he just thought he did).

Law and Order

If you were a voluntary resident of a state, where you don’t agree with the laws, would you break them? This is one of the questions we were given last week. And my answer to that question was no. Reason being if we chose to live in that place, it is our responsibility to respect the law and follow the rules.

After reading Crito, we were then asked whether we would escape if we were in Socrates’ place. I said I would escape for many reasons. First of all, the law held Socrates was unjust. Besides, he should take his family and his friends into consideration. Some pointed out that his kid would be ashamed of Socrates if he ran away. In my opinion, their father’s safety is far more important to them than other people’s judgments. In addition, if Socrates died, he would not be able to search or truth and educate others anymore. For those that against him, his death is a good news. But if he is alive, he can go to elsewhere and make a difference there.

I think it is interesting to see how my answers to those two similar questions are different. I think when the question is really broad; it is more likely to be answered with theories, something that is normally considered to be right to do. But it pushes me to think more and put more emotions into the answer if there is a real situation I can put myself in.