So I understand it's sort've early to bring this up, but I just realized that in two weeks it's Valentine's Day, and to be honest...I never really understood it. Though I know there's going to be a thousand girls who are going to be pulling around their obnoxious door-sized teddy bears and dying tulips, I feel like people miss the point in Valentine's Day. Shouldn't people declare their love every day, anyways? Why is the feeling of getting dying weeds and a box of calories the best thing about Valentines Day? But then, as I ranted to myself, I realized it isn't about the people who are getting the gifts, but about the people who don't. I don't think anybody truly wants an object, they just want to be remembered. They love the possibility that a person who they have never noticed may just be awake until three in the morning, debating on whether to get them a valentine's day gift, but chickening out last minute because their love is invisible. It's the ability to love that everybody is in love with it for. It's the reminder that we are important. It's  the idea that despite the fact we never truly know if people like us, that maybe people do.

               I feel like this subject ties into a lot of books we have read this year. I mean, love is always a big theme in novels, but it's the depth and reason for love that makes us read these novels. Did Torvald's flowers really hold significance? Was the feelings that Archer had for Ellen stronger than an object? Was Grendel really unable to love, or was it just that he believed he could not be loved? And, if all of these are true, was it truly worth it in the end? I think in Invisible Man a lot of it is about the inability to see each other. The people in that era were so incapable (mostly for the white people) of attempting to see through a black person's eyes, making it completely impossible to love each other. Even in that story, just a tad of sympathy towards the poor would have changed an entire lifetime. Something that may be, in some ways, the strongest love of all. This also ties into Blake's motives when he write. Of course, I could be totally wrong, but I believe Blake's heaven is really just Hell. I think the world he was in was so incapable of touching him, so incapable of at least responding, that he needed something so obscure and unlovable for him to feel love. He seeked Hell because Heaven wouldn't love him. Though we haven't read much of Hamlet, I believe he'd truly correspond with Valentine's Day because he loves his family (or, at least, his family when his father was alive) more than his kingdom. He'd take the opportunity to appreciate the people he has, and use it to share his love.  I think he understands Valentine's Day (or would have) because he understands the point of love in life.

               It's not about declaring love, its reminding us that we can be loved. And that's why Valentine's Day is so sad to me. Shouldn't we already know that?

               So, I had an amazing compliment (probably the best I've gotten in a long, long time) from my science teacher. Basically, my environmental teacher assigned a paper about the message the movie producers were trying to give out about The Lorax. Knowing that while being in an on-level class is beneficial if you don't exactly do well in science, you witness a lot of incompetent people who refuse to turn in papers and sleep in class so frequently that I doubt they even knew we watched The Lorax, I actually decided to spend some deep thinking on it. Of course, believing that my teacher wouldn't bother reading it because he's not a literature teacher, I sort of wrote more about symbolism embedded into the movie rather than the environmentalism. It only took about ten minutes, and I didn't bother looking it over twice, then I just shoved it into Edmodo without thinking about it a second time. The next morning, at about 7:30 , I got an email saying that it was the best reflexive paper he's ever read and that he had to put it through a plagiarism filter because (and I didn't know if this was a compliment or not) he didn't exactly believe I wrote it.

               I basically started my paper saying that one of the main character's clothing was what foreshadowed the entire plot. In the beginning, the Onceler takes up a good opportunity in using the trees (which are extinct now) to create this weird invention. He comes into the scene wearing a blue and white outfit. The blue - which was on the Onceler's jeans and vest - symbolizes cleanliness and unity. The white, which covers his arms and undershirt, symbolizes purity. Because the legs - a way of transportation - and the vest -which overlays the heart- are covered with blue (cleanliness and unity), it implies that when he enters the forest  he was innocent at heart and was only hoping to create a difference in the world. But later in the story, after he turns greedy and ignorant, he is shown in dark green outfit. Though the common connection between green is money and environment, it can also symbolize fertility, which brought on the climax of Ted (the original main character) having to enable the seed in which the Onceler gave him in order to give life to the trees. Basically, the Onceler let the trees live again. The colors were especially important in this movie because it showed not only foreshadowing, but how the characters can affect the story's plot and meaning so easily.

               Another large thing that effected what the plot implied about the environment was the variation of animals. The large majority of the animals in this movie were bears. Bears are, in a lot of stories like Native American Mythology and Celtic Mythology, seen as spirit walkers. In other words, the bears are seen as guidance between two worlds. The bears are the first to welcome the Onceler into the world he had never seen, full of trees and beauty, but there are also the ones to suffer when he betrays this new, abstract world. It is not until he sees the bears again at the end of the story, do the audience know that he has successfully redeemed himself because he had met the guidance of two worlds once again. His innocence and wisdom reunited him with the bears so he can rest in his original world in peace, without being haunted by the other world. The other animal which shows the importance between the environment and humanity is the fish. A fish in Christianity is often seen as a symbol of savior and faith. The fish, though they may be tricksters, do try to save the young bear, who in which is stuck in the Onceler's dark path of falling down a water fall, and brings back salvation. Though both of these animals are ordinary, they show the need for animals in the world in order to retain balance and humanity. The animals in Dr. Seuss' stories are saviors and are needed in order to truly be connected toward the earth because, mythological speaking, they are the only beings that can connect the populations to the environment. 

            I thought this would be a good thing just to add into my lit blog just because I'm very, very proud of it. And I guess it must connect to AP Lit somehow?

I'm the grayest and blobbiest!

            I'm really not going to lie, I haven't read more than the first chapter of the Invisible Man, though it does sound pretty awesome and a good topic to write about. I have mixed opinions about the first chapter: firstly, the character seems sort of pretentious. Secondly, Ellison's writing is (in my opinion) hard to understand because it is obviously not direct and I'm guessing just by the beginning that this book has to be analyzed to truly understand the plotline. But the idea is interesting -- what is an Invisible Man? I think the main character is supposed to symbolize the corruptness in society as a whole (i.e. beating a man unfairly just because of a first impression), and trying to show the corruptness in equal, yet different, aspects (because, as we realize now, words can be just as painful as physical wounds). So far, I think it shows an accurate picture of racism/discrimination/etc and how it is considered in a lot of society's. Though I really haven't read enough to really pull exact examples, it really did remind me of this one episode from "Fairly Odd Parents" (or something along those lines. It's basically a show about an unfortunate kid who has two little fairies running around granting him wishes) when Timmy (main character) encounters a few bullies who were discriminating against him. When he gets fed up, he wishes that everybody is a grey blob in order for everybody to be equal and stop being discriminating. Of course, it seems okay in the beginning, but when he confronts the bullies again after his wish, the bullies say to him, "Actually we’re the grayest and the blobiest".  And that's when Timmy, and the viewers, realize that it's really not about race or wealth or generational difference; racism is about people who push others down in defense, because they'd rather die than believe they weren't entitled in society.  Do they really care if they are Black or White or Asian? Does the bully really care about how much money you have? Do kids really care about how ugly or beautiful their peer is? No, of course not, they could care less -- it's more about young kids being taught that shunning/pushing away/bullying kids unlike them will make them more intelligent in the future. Nickelodeon, which rarely makes an impact in the adult world, really asked all of the adults who (many times) encourage (whether it's indirectly or not) discrimination: What would the world be like if we were all just gray blobs? Because now as I look around, it's completely accurate. We're all just awkward organic forms with weird flabs of skin that breathe and speak. If aliens saw us, they'd probably wouldn't see a huge difference between ourselves, except possibly our obnoxious ignorance.

            Though I may have just rambled off into a totally different subject because it's a Friday night and there's five children in my house and I may be feeling a bit reminiscent, but I do hope Ellison goes for this idea. Who are we to say that we are better, when we are really just the same? Whether it's God, or Evolution, or an idea we are yet to fathom, were we really meant to see ourselves so different?