Diving Deep

           O Snow, snow, wherefore art thou Snow? Why can't you fall faster? It's been a year since I've last seen you, and I've missed you a little too much. I miss your cold tips and brightening presence. If you're going to fall, you might as well fall faster in greater amounts. Our studying schedules depend on you. If you fall, we don't study. Simple as that.             Also please try to fall more near more residential areas. Because, pretty much, the more you fall near houses, the more effort families will need to take to clean their driveways and sidewalks, then the more time it will take, then Kerry Birmingham will feel more pity and finally give us the long-awaited snow day!             It's easy to understand; the rate of you falling must be much greater than the rate of you melting because of the salt. Now that you know that, it's up to you on how you want to treat yo...

         Christmas time is here and you're sitting here stumped on what to write on your wishlist. You have everything you want so you search up "best gifts for teen girls". Well, unfortunately, that still doesn't help. You then realize your polish collection is running a little low and decide a few new colors won't hurt, even though you're always too lazy to do your nails because there's a nail salon approximately 1/2 mile away.           You get your gift back and "voila" brand new nail polishes! These two colors you receive will make the collection on your dresser the perfect rainbow. Could it get more satisfying than that? All things aside you try to ignore that fact that the colors you got were actually your least favorite. But Hey, hopefully, someone who stops by your dresser will compliment the collection because that's all that matters, right?          Sooner or later you have an important ...

Dive into a situation where money didn't buy happiness in the short run. Where buying luxury brands didn't prove your status. Where our clothes had no correlation with our happiness. Where buying bigger and more extravagant houses had no effect. This situation seems highly impossible, especially in our current generation where many of our actions are altered to fit the desires of others. However, in the "Song of Solomon", a book full of magical realism, Pilate continues to make the impossible possible. Pilate Dead's presence is one that no one would hate on. Even though she isn't physically the perfect, ideal figure, she lives this joyful perfect life that everyone in the novel aspires to have. She has "peace, energy,[and] singing" without spending money on any "articles of comfort"(301). Though surrounded by other characters who are willing to kill friends for gold, Pilate isn't influenced by their actions. Instead, she influences ...

Dive deep into your life. Your motivations, short term and long term goals, relationships, etc all constitute your bigger identity. So summed up, your life is just a journey to find who you truly are. Finding this identify isn't a race to see who find it first but an exploration that never ceases.  In the Song of Solomon, in addition to Milkman's journey of learning about his family, Milkman goes through a journey of stealing a bag of "wealth", having a fling with Hagar, and growing up. The latter is , however, the most significant. It's seen that Milkman not only has physical changes but also mental ones. His left leg becomes to "look just as long as the other", enabling him to have a balance between both legs. This balance symblizes Milkman moving on from his childish perspective to his wiser one. His youth and adulthood "meet each other on a...equal standing"(39) just like the boiled egg.  Through learning the unique stories about h...

Not having belly buttons, believing in ghosts, and having wings, characters in The Song of Solomon are portrayed with a combination of mythical and realistic elements, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy for the readers.  During my first read of "her smooth was as smooth and sturdy as her back, at no place interrupted by a navel"(27), I ignored this detail, thinking it was not important.I just thought maybe Pilate ends up being some unusual person. But after a second read, I wondered how not having a belly button was possible. The biggest physical similarity between all humans is most likely our belly buttons because our belly buttons are what define our birth. Although not having a belly button is possible through medical issues, it is such a rare case that an average person wouldn't know that it's even possible without researching about it.  Also, since Pilate doesn't have a navel, it symbolizes her uniqueness and provides foreshadowing for her ...

Everyone has inevitably felt gloomy or calm on rainy days while feeling happy and hopeful on sunny days. This natural human feeling is portrayed as an aura throughout The Great Gatsby.  "And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer" (Gatbsy 4). In this quote, summer is referred to as an exciting new start. However, after reading the novel, I've come to realize that sunshine really means intense and heated; the day of Tom and Gatsby's dispute was "the warmest, of the summer" (114). However, when the sun begins to set that night, the real problem occurs: Myrtle's death.  Fitzgerald incorporates weather in a way that mimics the atmosphere of the scene.  When Gatsby and Daisy finally have a reunion at Nick's house, the awkwardness and sadness between them are very evident. You can probably gu...

Dive into our society and see that it takes a quick second to alter the way we depict ourselves to the rest of the world. Through apps that conceal blemishes to "social norms" that restrict one's freedom of appearance, people are more than ever self-consciousness of themselves and how people view them. Our lives start off as innocent infants playing with the variety of toys bought by our parents. We have opinions on absolutely nothing and our only incentive in life is to have fun. Then the teenage years come by where everything changes. Literally everything. From the way one looks to the clothes they wear to how they act, the teenage years are a whole new phase. I remember some of my friends from elementary school would act completely "fake", in a sense,  in middle school to become friends with a group identified as the "popular" kids. Now looking back at it, I wonder how we defined popular. By looks, athletic abilities, intelligence? Who knows.  ...

Chapter title page from Maus Nazi Propaganda. ("Long Live Germany") The comic Maus can be thoroughly analyzed for its symbolism, drawings, and allegorical methods of depicting the survival of the Holocaust. What isn't so obvious is the connection between the comic and Nazi propaganda, more specifically the chapter title pages.  There are many similarities between the propaganda and the chapter title page. Firstly in both, the swastika is depicted on a big flag near the center of the page and is very attracting to the eye in both illustrations. Additionally, the flag is very free as it is hanging loosely, unlike the freedom of the Jews. The jews are restricted to Hitler's rule and have barely any freedom compared to the flag. Secondly, in both depictions, there's a crowd of characters looking toward the flag. While Spiegelman most likely illustrated the page in this manner to depict that the lives of the Jews are confined by the...

Dive into a situation where every day was a good happy day. No stress, worries, or tragic experiences. You would always feel "happy" without ever knowing what it felt to feel the opposite. Gladly, these type of worlds does not exist because, how bad as it sounds, true happiness is not felt unless one experiences sadness. However, there is a limit for how much trauma one can experience. This limit was broken during the Holocaust: a life where every day was more traumatizing than the other. One simply wouldn't be able to imagine the difficulties the Holocaust survivors had to go through, but Art Spiegelman makes it easier to understand through his comic Maus.  Art shows the survivors guilt  the second generation feels because of the trauma their parents went through. He also shows how Art feels guilty publishing an article about the horrific experiences his dad endured, and then soon getting money from publishing it. The audience can truly understand the magnitude of...

In this society, comics are so often seen as novels that are meant for kids only, due to the numerous amount of pictures. However, what is not commonly known is that each picture, graphic, and/or sketch has a significantly deeper meaning that can only be interpreted at older levels. In the comic Maus by Art Spiegelman, pictures are used to depict what happened to the author's Jewish parents during wartime in Poland.  On this page, Art's emotions are explicitly stated when he says "I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest dreams" (16). Art incorporates this quote very well into his conversation with Vladek by indirectly addressing the comic he has written. In other words, the comic he is talking about in this conversation is the comic readers read. Even though Art feels "inadequate" about his comics, he does a wonderful job depicting the tragic lives of humans through animals.  Art expresses the complex i...

Dive into a situation where when someone mentions "freedom", the first idea that occurs in our mind is not about being "free". Where the effect of having pure care for others triumphs the effect of making our own choices. Where we aren't so concerned about sacred articles like the Declaration of Independence but rather about the education for the new generation on how to think in a manner that benefits society.  Google's definition of freedom is "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint." However, after reading and analyzing the commencement speech This Is Water, by David Foster Wallace , I've come to realize that this is only one out of many interpretations of such a vague word: freedom. Foster believes that true freedom is "attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and sacrifice for them" out of one's heart (Wallace...

Dive   into a society where we all were treated equally. It would possess all the qualities that a utopian world would have: no fights, protests, and riots. Sounds perfect right? Now think again. There will always be those people that society identifies as "different". It's truly impossible to capture everyone's mind and control his or her perspect ive on varying issues.  However, small efforts by everyone can certainly make our society fairer and more desirable to live in. If one person promotes something new, the people around him/her will mimic that action, and so on, eventually creating a chain effect.  Despite the fact that everyone isn't treated equal, we all unquestionably are born with "the rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence" (Douglas 1). The moment one is born is the first and last time he or she will be treated equally; after that, whether one is treated more or less equal than others is up to society a...

Dive into a situation where a loved one has died in a tragic event and is soon remembered through a simple memorial. The structure of the memorial, the time it took to make it, and the process of how it was made all affect how we view our loved ones. But why? Why does the way one is commemorated hold tremendous value for his or her loved ones? To begin, war memorials date back to 1438, when they were made in the United Kingdom to pray for those killed in the ongoing war with France. Ever since then, the use of memorials has spread internationally and are now commonplace. Memorials have a variety of structures, forms, and meanings. For example, Edwin Lutyens, a famous French architect, designed the  Thiepval Memorial to remember the 73,501 who went missing after fighting the Battle of the Somme. He incorporated three arches because he believed "absence is rendered in a way that constitutes gigantic presence" (Booth 3 ).  This is merely one of many reasons why me...