The Underlying Truth

Nothing is perfect in this world. Nobody can be a "perfect" human being and no city can be classified as "perfect." Everyone and everything has an underlying flaw. It can be small or big, but it is always there. Take the students of Troy High as an example: Some may seem like happy go lucky kids on the outside, but in reality, many of them constantly worry about their grades and especially their future.












In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is seen as a rich gentleman who has a marvelous mansion with "a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden" (Fitzgerald 9). From this description of Gatsby's magnificent house, the readers can assume he has an easy life filled with relaxation and parties. However, when Nick Carraway first sees Gatsby, Nick notices that his neighbor "stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way" (25). Nick quietly observes a minute green light far away which leaves the readers to conclude that Gatsby was stretching for this single light at the end of the dock. This illustrates how even though it seems Gatsby has all he could want, he reaches for that light which actually represents Daisy and how he strives to be like her. This perfectly imperfect man shows that no matter how much an individual has, he or she will always want more.

Nick also mentions the area between the West Egg and the East Egg. He meets Tom Buchanan's mistress in this "desolate area of land" (27). West and East Egg are both perceived as beautiful areas for the old and new rich. Even though this valley of ash is in between these two areas, the people who inhabit either Eggs are completely oblivious to this absolute desolation and poverty. This neglected space represents the moral decay hidden by the fanciful facades of the Eggs. It depicts how under all of the ornamentation and mannered charm lies the same ugliness that is in the valley. Just like how "an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight" (27) in the valley, atrocious events are hidden by the glamor in the Eggs.

Sacrificing Innocence

We all see childhood innocence as a beautiful thing. Children cannot grasp certain ideas like death and live in a world where Santa Claus and the tooth fairy exist. Even the word "innocence" itself sounds so pure. Maybe this is why parents try to hold on to their kids' innocence for so long. They attempt to shield them from violence and drugs while never having "the talk" with their children. As a result, overprotecting a child hinders their growth in the world. This leads me to question when does innocence become a bad thing? When is it essential for a child to lose their innocence?

When I finished reading MAUS, The Bluest Eye, and "The History Teacher," I noticed that all of them touch upon the topic of innocence in some way. In MAUS, Vladek's "mother killed herself (she left no note)" (Spiegelman) which devastates him and makes him feel extremely guilty. Even though the Holocaust slowly chips away at his innocence, the death of his mother impacts him the most. It meant that he is no longer has a caring mother at his side to help him get through tough times. Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye literally loses her childhood innocence when Cholly, her own dad, rapes her. She had no idea what sex was or that incest is looked down upon so during the act, her blissful ignorance can be seen through "the rigidness of her shocked body, the silence of her stunned throat" (Morrison 162). Lastly, "The History Teacher" really emphasizes a teacher's effort to protect his kids from the tragedies in the past. He tells them "the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age" and "the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan" (Collins) which are huge understatements. The supposed history teacher makes the most important events in history seem very inconsequential. Even though the classroom became a very innocent place, "the children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart"(Collins) which shows how the children are bullies who became destructive and ignorant because of the teacher's method of teaching.

MAUS and The Bluest Eye are examples that illustrate unnecessary loss of innocence. Vladek and Pecola were both going through extreme hardship but their purity had to become completely destroyed by unfortunate events. However, "The History Teacher" depicts unnecessary preservation of innocence. A history teacher has to teach true, unsugarcoated facts in order for the kids to learn the mistakes of the past. Here, it becomes imperative that the students lose some of their innocence in order to progress the world forward. I am left with one question that I can't seem to answer: Can you regain innocence?

The Media

The Media rarely gives a fair representation of the world. It hides certain things that wouldn't please governments and only presents issues in allied countries. For example, on November 13, 2015, there was a terrorist attack on Paris, France. However, the events of the earthquake in Japan, bombings in Beirut, and the landslide in China aren't being emphasized. All the news outlets bombard its audience with more news on Paris while all the other deaths are being glanced over. The majority of the citizens have no idea any of this ever happened. 

Beirut Bombing

China Landslide

In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pauline gets obsessed with white beauty because of the Media's bias towards white beauty standards. She starts to go to the movies in order to escape her black reality, and it causes her to subconsciously judge a face into "some category in the scale of absolute beauty" (122) that she absorbed from the screen. This is just like how the Media today discriminates Muslims as terrorists and as people who cannot be tolerated. As a result, many individuals automatically assume that Muslims are dangerous and shouldn't be treated with respect. The movies also force Pauline to believe that being white and having a white family is the way to live. She knows that she can't reach this standard but she allows it to consume her thoughts and appearance. She desperately tries to look like "white" by copying Jean Harlow and fixes her "hair up like [she'd] seen hers on a magazine" (123). Nevertheless when her tooth falls out, her only chance of happiness gets utterly crushed. This leaves me to wonder if the movies had illustrated that everyone is beautiful for Pauline, would she have been happy with her life? Or if she had never even gone to the movies, could she have lived a happier life? 

It's All About Perspective

People have many different perspectives on life. Some people are pessimists, while some are optimists. They have a choice to either have a negative outlook on life or a positive one. This choice determines if that individual will be happy or sad, loud or quiet, energetic or reserved, etc. However, some people, such as minorities, are not given this simple choice. They are raised in a world where society oppresses them. Society forces them to believe that they are lower than human-status. It causes these individuals to accept that the way people observe them are more real than what they themselves observe.

Pecola Breedlove in the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, is portrayed as a weak, American American girl who wants blue eyes in order to change what she sees and to change how others see her. She has a very negative outlook on life as she always concludes that how people see her ugliness creates the hurtful behavior that she notices and experiences. For example, when Pecola goes to buy Mary Jane candies, she thinks the cashier's "distaste must be for her, her blackness" (49). She has encountered so many unforgiving glares of white people that she automatically assumes she is the problem. Her daily rejections from society emphasizes that ugliness is inherent and nothing can change even by peering at the world differently. Despite her attitude, I believe she can change her gloomy perspective. When Pecola wonders "why...do people call them weeds" (Morrison 47), she is trying not to conform to society's opinion on dandelions. "She thought they were pretty" (47)
which illustrates how Pecola isn't mature enough yet to realize that beauty can be created by seeing rather than being seen. However, this little moment of freedom and individualism shows how with a little help, she can eventually grow into a strong and confident African American woman. 

Monuments

People travel to see monuments and statues all over the world. For example, 6 million people annually come to the United States to take a look at the Lincoln Memorial. Why do so many tourists come to see it even though "it sits literally on mud dredged from the Potomac River bottom in the late nineteenth century" (Savage)? The Lincoln Memorial "did not even exist in Lincoln's lifetime" (Savage), so why is it such a remarkable piece of art? Even though the memorial contains no actual artifacts of Lincoln, the monument manufactures its own aura and fulfills "the deep need for attachment that can be met only in a real place" (Savage).

Monuments and memorials become so much more meaningful when an individual is standing in front of it rather than looking at a Google image. A great example would be the monument of Christopher Columbus in Riverside Park, Easton, Pennsylvania. If a person were to just look at a photo of the statue, it would look like any other statue. However, if they were to visit the park and experience the statue and the environment around it, they would get the full experience. On a foggy day, a person would be able to feel the solemn atmosphere around the statue which represents how Columbus felt while observing the immense amount of land in North America. Also, the person would notice how the creator put the majestic statue in the middle of a park and not in a graveyard to allow the statue to have daily interactions with the people every day. There are countless numbers of monuments like this from The Maine Lobsterman to Crazy Horse to the Holocaust Museum that illustrate the fact that monuments need to be seen in person. All of these memorials carefully consider the location, size, materials, and purpose in order to pay respect to deep sacrifice or honor remarkable achievements.