Life?!

There are people that like to just enjoy life and to live in the moment...and then there's Virginia Woolf.

Seriously, her piece "The Death of the Moth" was really deep and ponderous. That's not to say that it was bad--I really liked it and the ideas it implied. For most of my life, I thought that life was about living in the present. Of course, as I got older, I was forced to change my view on that--I had to somewhat plan my future out and get a vague idea of what I was going to do eventually, which made it impossible to focus just on the present. Woolf's story about the death of an insignificant little insect emphasizes the frailty of life and the intensity of death--after reading it, I felt simultaneously amazed and afraid by the thin line between the two. However, this theme only stresses the importance of enjoying life to the fullest; if life is so fleeting and frail, then why not enjoy it while it lasts? The fact that "death is stronger" than that tiny moth means that the moth should relish its small lifespan and do the most it can, like the birds that fly around and pretend that life is "a tremendously exciting experience" (Woolf 696, 697). 

To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

Parenting?!

When it comes to issues like family and love, people can behave in a very confusing manner. In “Because my Father Always Said He was the Only Indian who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock," Victor's father neglects his wife and child while also caring deeply for them. To show this contradiction throughout his piece, Sherman Alexie uses humor. This device lets Alexie convey his father's charismatic and kind nature while also showing his selfish side.

Victor's father describes Victor's mother as so beautiful that "tumbleweeds would follow [them] around"; in addition, Victor mentions how "[his dad] needed [him] just as much as he needed every other kind of drink" (Alexie 27). In both cases, Alexie's humor reveals how much Victor's dad cares for his family. It is obvious that he loves his wife and son, and Alexie's use of humor furthers the idea of Victor's dad's charismatic and naturally funny nature. However, Victor's mother mentions how Victor's father "was always half crazy...and the other half was on medication" (Alexie 27). Alexie's use of darker humor here displays Victor's father's inconsiderate and distasteful side: at times, Victor's father can disregard the needs of his family and follow his own desires, and this rhetorical device exposes the irony in this situation by contrasting a serious problem with humor. This carelessness is what causes problems in Victor's parents' marriage, and ultimately leads to their divorce. Unfortunately, Victor's father has certain qualities that make him an inadequate parent, but even so, his love for his family members is also of utmost importance to him.

Basically Victor's dad

Disabilities?!

While physical and/or mental handicaps can create complications in someone's life, people with disabilities should be treated as on the same level as people without disabilities and should be viewed as people too. In class this week, we read "Disability" by Nancy Mairs. In it, she emphasized the importance of "[inserting] disability daily into our field of vision" (Mairs "Disability"), but I partially disagree. Instead of emphasizing and actively noticing handicaps daily, people should instead simply accept handicaps as a part of peoples' lives that has no bearing on their value as a human.

Even though Nancy Mairs believes in emphasizing disabilities, she also gives many reasons why it should just be received without stress. For example, she shows how she is a normal woman, saying that she "[drives] a car, [talks] on the telephone, [gets] run in [her] pantyhose," (Mairs "Disability"). Like Mairs, people with disabilities lead perfectly normal lives; their impairments do not prevent them from being human, nor do they influence a person's character. Unlike accepting disabilities, highlighting their importance only serves to cause problems. By stressing how relevant such complications are, society creates the idea that disabilities are 'special'; instead, by accepting disabilities as a normal part of human life, society fosters the idea that disabilities do not detract from a person's character and are a common part of human life.