Change

I think change is something that happens to everyone as they grow older.  For most people, probably many times and very often.  Looking back on what you expect to be like or be doing at certain points in your life, change has a funny way of reminding you of how clueless you really are about the future until you get there.  Just a short few years ago, I was a college student at University of Cincinnati, sort of interested in a guy in the Air Force from my hometown who was stationed in Warner Robins, Georgia.  I was open to the idea of a long distance relationship but very content with my life in Ohio and not so willing to uproot my life.  Today, I have lived in Georgia and been married since 2013.  Why?  Because as time went by, I changed, along with my priorities.  I have a drastically different life than I did at that time and in a lot of ways I am a drastically different person.  However, I don't think it takes a major life event like marriage or moving away to ignite change in a person's life.  Sometimes it happens gradually, like gradually wanting to stay out late less and less as you get older or improving at a sport you practice at multiple times a week.  Change is inevitable in our lives, whether you work at it or not.  This is also because you can't control all of the external factors that play a part in the changes in your life, like the actions of other people.

Ex Machina/Pygmalion

For our blog this week, we are to discuss the connection between Ex Machina and Pygmalion.  As I had never heard of Ex Machina before, after I watched the trailer assigned to us for class, I did a little more research.  It sounds like a similar concept to an American movie that came out last year that my husband and I went to see, called "Her" starring Joaquin Phoenix.  I enjoyed this movie a lot, which was about a man who falls in love the the operating system on his phone (it was a much more advanced/interactive version of something similar to "Siri" on today's iPhones).  In Ex Machina, a man connects and is very controlled by an extremely human-like robot.  In Pygmalion, he falls in love with his statue.  However, I do believe that the differences mostly stop there because although they both fall in love with human-like non-humans, Pygmalion's statue does become human, and to my knowledge, Ava (the AI in Ex Machina), does not turn into a live human.  However, I could be wrong, as I have never actually seen that movie.

Another Perspective IV

After reading through all of the different examples of "Tragedy" from my other classmates, I think it's very obvious that tragedy means something very different to everyone.  For example, in my classmate Matt Johnson's blog, he references the death of his uncle from cancer as a tragedy in his life.  In one of the definitions of tragedy I referenced in my earlier blog post that many people usually use today, tragedy refers to an extremely horrible event in someone's life.  In this case, I believe a death in the family is most certainly a tragedy.  However, it is not a tragedy in the literary sense.  It was not caused by anyone's shortcoming.

I found it interesting that one of my classmate's blog posts very closely reflected my views on modern day tragedy.  Kaley Wilson spoke of a car accident that she witnessed as a child, where the baby of a married couple passed away and the grief caused the couple to divorce shortly after.  Although she acknowledged that the death of their child was a horrible, sad event, she acknowledged that the actual tragedy in the situation was the couple's shortcomings and inability to overcome their grief to pull their marriage together, when she says, "In my opinion, this is a tragedy. I think it is terrible that the child died. I think it's awful that the parents had to deal with such a loss. But the tragedy is in their divorce. The baby had no faults. He did not cause anything. The parent's own selfish grief and unwillingness to move on was the tragedy. Their own personal emotional faults caused the breaking up of a love. Sadness overcome love, and that is why this is a tragedy."  The sadness is not why she qualified this story as a tragedy, it was the shortcoming of the mother and father in light of the unfortunate event.

Tragedy

To me, one of the best examples in everyday life that I can think of that parallels the literary tragedies that we discuss and read in class, is divorce.  Unlike a lot of the horrific, sad, destructive, *insert any other dramatic, negative adjective here", events and people that we brought up in our last class discussion, divorce often does come as a result of a flaw or shortcoming of one or both involved spouses.  Getting hit by a falling airplane part, although awful (and probably gory) is not a tragedy in your life.  It is an awful event that you had absolutely no control over. Unfortunately, you probably have very little control over the success of your recovery either.  However, infidelity, addiction, dishonesty, or any number of other human flaws that can cause a marriage to split, in my eyes, is a tragedy.  Even more so because of the fact that after the awful event is said and done, you have to live with the fact that the event could have been avoided if one or both of your "flaws" didn't exist.  Even if the "flaw" (eg. infidelity) was the fault of your spouse and not you, comparing this to a piece of literature, I still count that as a tragedy.  This is because, personally, I am someone in a happy marriage, and the closest literary parallel I would consider as my husband would definitely be as the "protagonist" in my life.  And so if that tragic event came at his hands, I would consider it a tragedy even if it was not my own personal shortcoming.  In a literary tragedy, usually the unhappy ending is caused by a shortcoming of the main character (eg. a husband and/or wife), and that is why I think a good everyday life parallel would be a divorce(in this case as the unhappy ending.

I do believe that today we overuse the word tragedy.  So much so, that it has taken on an entirely different meaning than when we discuss the tragic heroes in history and mythology.  I do not think that this is altogether a bad thing, or due to ignorance on the part of whoever is using this word, I just think it is important to note the evolution of this word and the changes that it has made overtime so that you can clarify if need be when you say "tragic" if you are actually referencing a situation like a literary tragedy or if you are really just trying to express that something is "really awful".  

Metamorphoses

For our next assignment in ENGL2111, we have to improve upon a wikipedia assignment covering something that we'll be discussing or have discussed over the course of this class.  Finding an article to do was hard because most of the material we're covering is VERY thoroughly covered in their corresponding wikipedia articles.  After doing some digging, I found the article on Metamorphoses, the poem by Ovid.  Although the article looks very researched, there are some places I think I can improve or "beef up" a little bit.  For example, the wikipedia article states that "The different genres and divisions in the narrative allow the Metamorphoses to display a wide range of themes. Scholar Stephen M. Wheeler notes that "Metamorphosis, mutability, love, violence, artistry, and power are just some of the unifying themes that critics have proposed over the years.""  I think that in order to elaborate, the article could go into a little bit more detail about all or at least some of those themes.  Although there are a couple places I felt like the article was a little scarce, it is a very well written and well researched wikipedia article to begin with.

Wikipedia

Like most people my age, Wikipedia has been available (and tempting) for most of my academic career.  I honestly do not use Wikipedia much in my everyday life.  I know that a lot of people use it as an alternate search bar to something like google when they are looking for just a basic amount of background information on something, but I guess I've just never been very drawn to it.  I'm not sure if it's leftover or residual guilt from teachers and professors turning up their noses at it previously in my academic career.

However, although I still don't have much of a desire or interest in using wikipedia, this unit has opened my eyes and given me a newfound respect and admiration for wikipedia.  Particularly the video we watched for our previous workshop.  It showed a wide variety of people from all over the world discussing the contributions they have made to the site.  Not only did I think it was really neat that they all came from so many different places and had a wide array of interests, I also really appreciated what they had to say about their research and contributions to the entries being their way of contributing to generations to come.  I had never thought about that before!  In today's day and age, online content really is similar to print sources of the past, and a whole lot more accessible to a wider variety of people.

Also, although I do feel that wikipedia is a very massive source of a huge variety of information, I do agree with what Professor Hamon said in class.  Wikipedia does not play a part in an academic paper.  Essentially, Wikipedia is a good place to get background information and maybe serve as a launchpad for the rest of your research.  In that way, it can help you determine what you are interested in or want to study before you launch into a full fledged research project.

Another Perspective III

Reading my classmates examples of heroism was very interesting.  The first post I really enjoyed was by classmate Kaley Wilson.  She wrote about Malala Yousafzai, who fought for girls right to education in Pakistan.  I think she is extremely admirable for the same reason that I admire MLK Jr., because she stood up for her convictions even when the odds were against her and knew that what she was fighting for was a cause even more important than her life, because she certainly could have gotten killed for her activism in the Middle East even though she did not.  Meghan Harper also wrote about a group of men and women that she found heroic, Soldiers, firefighters, and police officers.  I definitely agree with their heroism.  There are certainly many career fields that don't require you to be in life threatening situations and these brave men and women chose this line of work anyway.  I find that extremely admirable, especially as I am married to an active duty Airman.  He is someone that I admire every single day of my life and am proud to be married to.

Heros

he·ro

ˈhirō/

noun

1. 1.

   a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.

I thought for a while about who I would nominate as a modern day "hero" after class discussion today.  After the discussion (that got a little heated!) about what does and does not constitute a hero in today's day and age, it was hard to know who to write about.  Although we had some classmates who said, for example, that because he wasn't an exemplary citizen by today's standards, Gilgamesh wouldn't be considered a hero, I was even more stumped.  I decided to write about a man I've always admired, Martin Luther King, Jr.  Even more fitting, as it is Black History Month.  To me, he is a modern day hero by any standards I can think of.  Not only does using nonviolent protest to convey your cause take an extreme amount of restraint, it sent the message to everyone he was fighting for and everyone he was fighting against that they were against their violence and abuse.  Martin Luther King, Jr. sent a message of hope to thousands of african-americans throughout the American South and North that their cause was worth fighting for and their lives were worth fighting for.  He preached hope and then acted on it.  In the end, even more heroically, he was killed the for cause he was fighting for.  I do not necessarily think becoming a martyr for your cause is required to be a hero, but I certainly think that it eliminated any shadow of a doubt the integrity and conviction you held for your cause, and helps show others the value of the cause you were fighting for.  To me, this is the kind of man we should consider a hero.