Fin

Literature is about life. Writers are philosophers trying to make sense out of the experiences of life. What does it all mean? What is the proper way one should live? Questions don’t get much bigger than that. These are themes great writers focus on.

I learned that living a simple ordinary life can be worse than death. Ivan Ilych taught a lesson about what is important in life. You can own all the things that make life pleasant but they can’t give you meaning or a sense of self-worth. You also can’t take those things with you as we learned in Everyman. When you face death the things we remember or will be judged by are our Good-Deeds.

One of my favorite themes in class was women’s perseverence and their struggle for identity. It is a topic largely ignored by society. Norah, Elisa, the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and the poet in “Cinderella,” all provided insight to the hardships women must endure in a patriarchic society. It makes you pause and think about the gender roles society imposes on us and how it could be ethical for a culture to expect someone to sacrifice their individuality solely because of their sex.

The thing that sticks with me the most was the poem I choose to write my paper on. “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot shared many common themes with Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s a sin to walk through life and never take a stand for what you believe. Choosing to remain neutral is worse than actually committing the offense. If you can stand by and watch someone do wrong you are just as guilty because you are condoning the behavior. Eliot would argue you are even worse because you have the power to stop it and you choose not to. Indifference is moral death and there will be hell to pay.

“Prufrock” probably had the most profound impact on me (other than “The Hollow Men”). A man so afraid of rejection he is a prisoner of his own insecurities. I am afraid of rejection, but I’m making an effort to take chances and act boldly. I have adopted a new paradigm. It is better to be rejected than to never take a chance and wonder what if. I got a lot out of this class.