Othello Test - Tragic Vision

The "tragic vision" of the play, Othello, is also the irony of the play. Iago's motives cause all of the tragedy within this play. Although Iago got exactly what he wanted, his plan came back to bite him; "Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims..." (Frye) For instance, Desdemona's tragedy was that she did nothing wrong, for it was Iago that planted the seed in Othello's head causing Desdemona's death. Desdemona's death then led to Othello's death. Even Iago directly caused Emilia's suffrage, for she was merely an innocent bistandard who also did nothing wrong. These are the tragedies present within Othello ultimately leading to the "tragic vision" of the play as a whole.

#11

What makes love so complex?

I believe one of the things that makes love so complex is that we all feel we have to have it. We all feel like love is imperative in our way of life and that without it, we're missing out. Another reason might be is that no one really knows exactly what it is, yet half the time love kills people. I bet "love" is the most common reason for suicide. Well that, and depression. I'm really not sure what else I can say about love. It's too complex, and I'm merely a teenage girl. I'm not supposed to know about love.

"Love makes you do crazy things. Insane things. Things in a million years
you never thought you'd see yourself do. There you are doin' it. Can't help it."

#10

Write about one or several difficulties in growing-up and about being a teenager in general. What are some of the paradoxes, the pathos of being a teenager, and/or the difficult lessons you may have had to learn--or may still be learning.

Being a teenager, you're in limbo between childhood and adulthood. You feel like you need to act more mature and responsible, yet there is still that urge inside of you to wrap a blanket around your neck and jump off of the roof with your friends. You want to succeed in highschool, you feel like you need to do extremely, over-the-top, excellent with your school work. You want to do well, but you also want to be able to go out with your friends and have a social life, but you also feel like you need to spend time with your family, etc. There are so many things as teenagers we feel we need to do. Also, we, as teenagers, still are unsure of how to think of our parents. Being suspended between childhood and adulthood, we are also suspended between believing that our parents are these supreme beings that could never ever be wrong, and believing that they are human beings just like the rest of the world, and that they can make mistakes. Some of us have already learned that our parents are just regular people, but others of us, much like myself, still have a hard time believing that our parents can and will make mistakes and it's not that big of a deal.

#9

The Ellison Family

My mother, Terrie, and my father, Mike, are in their 18th year of marriage. I am their only child. Though we don't eat dinner as a family regularly, or take family vacations, the three of us have a pretty good relationship with one another. One thing that I find strange about my mother is the fact that she grew up just down the street from where we live now, yet she has one of the most southern accents I've ever heard. For example, she pronounces the word 'wash' as 'worsh', and the word 'one' as 'own'. One quirk about my father is that he is majorly obsessed with Indiana Jones. In our living room there is a life-size statue of Indiana Jones. He has crafted various artifacts fromo the movie series out of things like clay and cardboard. I can't even try to count the number of fedoras (the type of hat "Indy" wears) he owns. My parents relationship with each other, is basically normal. They hug and are affectionate toward each other. They spend time with one another. Of course there is the occasional argument here and there.
Also there is my grandmother, Margie. Margie is what I call her. We have the best relationship of all. She is my mother's stepmother, yet the two of us are more alike than my mother and I. I try to be sure I take her out to dinner at least once a week. Ever since my grandfather, her husband, died, the two of us have gotten closer than ever. I feel like I can tell her anything. But have you ever heard of those old ladies, often referred to as "crazy cat ladies"? Well.. meet Margie. She's less crazy, more just.. cat lady. You can hardly ever see her without one of her many cat-affiliated sweatshirts. She has many cats at home, and she also goes out every morning to help feed feral cats and dogs around her neighborhood. But hey, you do what you like, and you like what you do.

#8

"After all the discussions in class about Oedipus, Harold Crick and the seemingly endless circle of fate and responsibility, what do you walk away with knowing, understanding, doubting, or wondering?"

Well I've always wondered whether or not things happen for a reason. I still can't figure it out. I'm not even going to worry about it though. There doesn't have to be an answer. I think I'm just going to go with my belief, which seems to be a lot of other people's beliefs, that your freewill controls your fate, and your fate controls your freewill. So in all actuality there is neither. There is only you, your person, your mind. Fate is nothing but wanting to have something to rely on or to blame. If you do something you weren't supposed to do or something that was wrong to have done, you can just say that it was your fate. You can just say that what you did happened for a reason. That way, if you do something right, or correctly you can just say that you were using freewill and that what you did had nothing to do with your fate. If that makes any sense. Your life is your responsibility. Therefore, what you do in your life is also your responsibility. So doesn't it only make sense that if there really is fate, then your fate is your responsibility. If your fate is to kill your father and marry your mother, those are things you're doing yourself. Yeah it sucks, but what can you do? Oedipus didn't know what he was doing. But what if you put the situation outside of the fact that he was told his prophecy and outside of the fact that it was his mother and father. Would you not say that it was his responsibility that he killed a man? Would you not say that it was his responsibility that he married a woman and had children? That is just how I look at this whole fate vs freewill thing. That's why I like sudoku.

#7

The Ultimate Question: Do you believe that you have a freewill, or do you believe in fate?

I'm not sure why, but this is a difficult question for me to answer. I've always looked at the situation as being that you are your fate, so in a sense, isn't that freewill? I don't believe that things are decided for me, no, but I do somewhat believe that everything happens for a reason. I guess if I had to choose, I would pick freewill, because you can do something unexplainable, that had a good outcome but that doesn't mean it was predetermined that you were going to do that, but that also doesn't mean there wasn't a reason you did it, even though it wasn't intended.. If that makes any sense. Partially why I've put off answering this question for so long is because my mind keeps contradicting itself. Freewill. I choose freewill. That doesn't mean I'm right. I could be completely wrong. Of course everyone could be completely wrong. No one knows.. No one will ever know, not until they're dead at least. You, yourself go to the grocery store to buy a carton of milk. Skim milk.. because you ran out last night and you want a bowl of cereal. Rice Krispies cereal. You can't have rice krispies without milk.. milk's the whole point!! snap, crackle pop.. okay so you go to the grocery store right, because you need to so you yourself are doing it on your own. That's freewill. But that's not to say that your freewill isn't predestined. Is it? I should probably get some sleep..

#6

Live a long life, but remain known only to a small group of people..

ORRRR

Live large, die in my early twenties, but be insanely famous for the next 1,000 years..

If I had to pick between the two, I would definitely choose to live a longer life. I want a family, I want grandchildren, I want to see what happens to the world as I progress through life. I don't need to be known by everyone. As long as I'm famous to the people I love, that's all that matters. Dying early is not worth fame, especially if I'm not going to be alive while I'm famous.
I didn't have to think about this choice very hard. Sure, we all want to be famous at one point, but having a family is ten times greater than any fame or fortune. In the words of Forrest Gump, "Thats all I have to say about that."

#5

When I was young, my favorite book of all time was Rainbow Fish. I remember having my mom check it out of my kindergarten's library almost every week, until she eventually bought the book for me. Of course what initially drew me to it was it's colorful and shiny cover. The book itself though, I could relate to. It's about a fish with unusually shiny and colorful scales who doesn't want to share his scales with any of the other fish, so they stop talking to him. He asks for advice from the Octopus lady..oracle woman.. and she tells him to share his shiny scales with the other fish. He does and then he's left with one shiny scale but he doesn't mind because after that, everyone had one shiny scale and he had friends. I could relate to it so well because, as an only child, I had a big issue with sharing. I remember slightly agreeing with Rainbow Fish, thinking that he shouldn't share. That was the beesssttt book.

#4

"The world, friend Govinda, is not perfect or on a slow journey toward perfection; no, it is perfect every moment; all sin already bears its forgiveness within itself; every little boy already bears the old man within himself, every infant bears death, every dying man bears eternal life. No one is able to look at someone else and know how far along on his journey he is; in the highwayman and dice player lurks a Buddha, in the Brahman lurks the highwayman."

p. 77 Siddhartha

"No one is able to look at someone else an know how far along on his journey he is.." because he, himself does not know how far along on his journey he is. Westerners, we believe that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. One of our main values is striving for success and attaining that through money, popularity, religion, etc. The main value with the Eastern philosophy is their self and the world surrounding them. They believe in moving forward through self-development. What this passage from Siddhartha is stating is that life doesn't need to get better because life is eternal. "The world...is not perfect or on a slow journey toward perfection; no, it is perfect every moment..." The world is perfect every moment because everything eventually contradicts itself. Death cancels out life, forgiveness cancels out sin, etc. The irony of this all is that Herman Hesse, the author, was German, therefore was raised in the Western mentality.

#3

The conundrum of high school.. this is tough. Maybe it's that we all say how much we don't care what anyone else thinks so we're trying to be independent and original, and we believe it too.. but really, we all care. When we go to the mall, into a shop, pick up something off the rack, we're secretly thinking what people would say or think if we wore it into school the next day. The way we act is based so much off of the media and others around us, yet we constantly state how original we are. Is that a paradox? Maybe it's a paradox for teenagers, I'm not sure it is for high school though. Maybe it's that we're taking all of these classes we know hardly anything about, just because we have to. We try so hard and do so much work for classes just to get a good grade, just to pass the class and move on. We're trying so hard because we all want to get out as soon as possible, but really high school is comfort for most. Because I bet anything that when we finally do get out, out into "the real world" that we'll be begging to come back. College is going to be a very rude awakening for most of us, but in the end, it has to be done. Is that the paradox of high school? IS ITTT?!

#2

IPod Video, iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPhone, iMac, MacBook; no matter where you look, Apple Inc. is always there. On the train, on the bus, walking down the street, you're almost destined to pass someone listening to some form of an iPod. It's in the media, in commercials, billboards, magazines. Everywhere. I bet that over half of the students in this class alone, have their iPod with them. It's a trend. I'm typing this blog on an iMac right now! Apple is not just selling technology, for some people, having an iPod is a way of life. I speak from experience, because around two days before the last day of school, my iPod got stolen right out of my purse. I wasn't just upset that I could no longer listen to music on the go, as cheesy as it sounds it was as if there was a missing puzzle piece to my life. It had become such an accesory for me. Every morning I would wake up, get ready for school, get my cell phone, my wallet, and my iPod. But why? Why is Apple so important to so many people? Is it the sleekness? The convenience? The cool advertising? What is it that made so many people so compelled to go and camp outside of the Mac Store for days on end just so they could say that they were first to get their hands on the brand new iPhone? Maybe it is just that Apple has become such a trend. In the media, all the "cool" celebrities are seen with an iPod, iPhone, etc. People want to be noticed. You're seen as being at least semi-wealthy having an Apple product. I'm not sure. My essay will be better.

#1

"When you see somebody who's got a complaining personality, it usually means that they had some vision of what things could be, and they're constantly disappointed by that. I think that would be the camp that I would fall into - constantly horrified by the things people do." - Daniel Clowes

"The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art." - Chuck Palahniuk


I chose these quotes in particular because they both speak to me, about me and for me. These are basically my thoughts out of someone else's mouth. I've always thought that if you truly want something, you and only you can make it happen. In a way, the two quotes correlate with each other. You visualize what things could be, and you get disappointed because what you thought doesn't meet your expectations, so instead of just thinking about that, you should go out and make it happen yourself.