Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

            How do you identify yourself? Are you tall or short? Skinny or fat? Beautiful or ugly? Kind or mean? Happy or depressed? Most of the time we identify ourselves by what other people label us. From such a young age, who we are is decided for us and we are told of our own personalities. In the novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, Jude and Sue have both been told their entire lives that they are unfit for marriage simply because both of their parents had been. This leads them to rush into their first marriage and then, getting cold feet and becoming claustrophobic with the fear of commitment, they leave. This is what causes the pair to never marry and eventually leads to the tragic end of their love affair. If the couple had not been convinced of this primal characteristic flaw that they both shared, they would not have been convinced of their inevitable doom. For some reason, we see nothing wrong with letting other people decide who we are- which is truly alarming. Society tries to shape us into these clay figures that cannot act or think for themselves. We are merely being used as puppets by people who are in higher power than us. Without us they are useless, so they need to make us feel as if we need them.

            Throughout most of the book, Jude and Sue debate on whether or not to get married. Sue was unable to see the value in the ceremony and; therefore, refused on several occasions. This poses the question: Is there value in marriage, or is it just something we do to make ourselves feel as if we are not alone? Recently I went to a few Catholic wedding ceremonies. After the first two weddings, I could not understand why every little girl (myself included) has dreamed of their wedding their entire life. I was thoroughly disappointed by the meaninglessness of the ceremony and how anti-climactic it was. But the third wedding that I went to was amazing. The bride was nice, the family requested the chapel to pray in before the wedding, and most of all when the bride and groom were standing on the alter reading their vows you could feel the love they had for each other oozing from their pores. A day or two later once the events had sunken in, I realized that maybe it was not the ceremony that was meaningless, but the people present and participating in it. The bride and groom decide if there is any value in marriage and it is conveyed to everyone at the wedding. There was value in marriage in the world Thomas Hardy created, just not in the matrimony of Jude and Sue.

            Loss and devastation can do one of two things: (1) cause you to give up on your dream, or (2) make you want that dream even more. In the novel, Jude tries to achieve his dream of going to a prestigious university. No matter how much he studies and how smart he is, something always seems to get in the way- a girl, pride, not having money, another girl. There will always be obstacles in your way that distract you from what you want to do in life, but it is up to you to decide to let those obstacles become a permanent pit stop or if you will graciously move around them. Jude cannot get past any of his obstacles to achieve his dream and later in the novel it is clear how much he regrets this.

             As people get older they say that they wish they could do certain parts over again. They made mistakes or wish they had done things differently. This is incredibly sad. You only have one shot at each day of your life. It is okay to make mistakes and wish you had done things differently, but you should not waste more of your time and life by holding on to those feelings. People disregard some of the more important principles of life- happiness, family, and comfort- for money. Thoreau said “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” If having a lot of money and an important corporate job is imperative to your life then it is worth it, but if you are doing it to make someone else happy or you think it is what you are supposed to do then ask yourself if it is truly worth it. Is sitting at a desk doing paper work for the majority of your life, getting up early, coming home later, being stuck inside a concrete box worth everything that you could be missing?

            Thomas Hardy did a wonderful job of conveying the message that no one can give your life meaning except for you. So many people are living a life that they do not want and are miserable because of this. The only person that is responsible for that and can fix it for yourself is you. People find meaning in their lives in different ways, some find purpose through religion, love, family, learning, etc. Everyone needs something that will make them excited to wake up in the morning; life is about discovering what you truly want out of life.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

                Every child dreams of the day they are granted with the same freedom and respect as adults. They yearn to be taken seriously, resulting in them making idiotic choices like getting drunk or smoking, that no respected adult would do. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye is no exception. Everyone has a difficult time transitioning from these two stages in life, but Holden has an exceptionally hard time due to his painful past and the guilt he feels for moving on from it. Holden refers to his childhood as “David Copperfield crap” (pg. 1). While there are many characteristics that classify Holden as an adult- being tall, smoking, having grey hair-, there are just as many that would classify him as a child- smoking so much he cannot run, not being served alcohol at respectable bars, frequently using curse words, hiring a prostitute because he wants someone to talk to, and insulting girls whom he like.

            Though Holden is trying to act older than he is, Holden is also simultaneously trying to keep a tight hold on his childhood. This is the result of a few things; for one, change is scary, especially when that change means to start to fend for yourself. “The best thing about the museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. The only thing that would change is you.” (pg. 135). In a museum, if you think of a section of it a person’s life then the museum would still never change. You can only truly document an event when it is over or extinct. Holden doesn’t want to freeze time, he wants to go through the museum of his life and step into a past exhibit that he liked more. Holden wants to go back to when the people he loves were the people he originally knew them as. He felt that it was his job to save his loved ones from themselves. The only problem is that life is not a museum; you cannot walk from one exhibit to the next, living in the one that is most pleasant. It is all your experiences- good and bad- that make you who you are.

            “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything.” You cannot control people. Holden had these incredibly high expectations for everyone that he loved. He was upset with his brother D.B. for moving to Hollywood and becoming a sellout, he was upset with Jane for going out with Stradlater because Holden thought she was too good for him. During this page of the book Holden not only realizes he has to let Phoebe go and not be so afraid of losing her, but he also has to let the child in himself go, so that he can grow up. There is a point in everyone’s life where the child inside you dies to make room for a practical life. In the novel Holden is at this point of his life, though he is resisting it. He feels guilty for growing up when Allie never will and to Holden this feels like moving on. This death, or disappearance, of being a child brings up memories of Allie’s death, which forces Holden to mourn two deaths throughout the novel.

            “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this field of rye and all. Thousands of kids, and nobody’s around- except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do is catch everybody if they start to go off the cliff.” (pg. 191). This is how Holden acquired the name “The Catcher in the Rye.” He took it as his personal responsibility to save others, especially children, because no one was able to save Allie from death and no one could save Holden from his grief. Holden wants to blind children from pain, but you cannot do that forever. Without exposing children to pain they will expect to get everything they want whenever they want it and the world does not work like that. Death is a prominent part of life that you cannot hide yourself or other people from.

            Throughout the novel, Holden, asks repeatedly “where do the duck in central park go in the winter when the lake freezes over.”  Holden really could not care less about the ducks; he is using this question to ask where Allie went. One day the ducks were swimming in the lake, with the sun out, and the next day they are gone with no warning, leaving behind only a desolate frozen lake. The hardest part about death is after seeing someone every day for most of your life and then, with no warning, they are gone and you will never be able to see them again.

            The Catcher in the Rye is an amazing book for the simple fact that J.D. Salinger took these issues that most people have when confronted with adulthood and death. The novel talks about how when children find out about things they do not understand- such as curse words and death- it bothers them. One of the biggest indicators that Holden is not ready to grow up is how afraid of death he is. Holden is a timeless character that every person can relate to at one point or another in their life.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

In Victorian England it was considerded beautiful to be very tall, full waistested, plump and have a pale complection; in 1920 it was beautiful to have a flat chest, bobbed hair, and a boyish figure; from the 1930s to the 50s women aspired to have a curvy hourglass shape; today most women want to have large breasts and bottom, flat stomach, and healthy skin. In each of these time periods the idea  of what is beautiful was a specific body type; not everyone looks like that. Does that mean they are not beautiful? Of course not. In the novel Jane Erye there are two very important aspects of the story that create the plot: beauty standards and money. Jane is classified as plain, but does that mean that she is not also classified as beautiful? Acording to dictionary.com beauty is “a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight”. Nothing in that definition says that if you are considered plain you cannot be beautiful. “If you get simply beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents.”- R. Browning. In the novel, Jane Eyre was taught that there are more important things that beauty. It is better to be simple, smart, have multiple accomplishments, and be able to carry a conversation. Mr. Rochester could have just as easily married Miss. Ingrim as Jane Eyre. Miss. Ingram was considered beautiful, she could sing, play the piano, and draw; most of wich Jane could do. The one thing that she lacked that Jane didn’t was the ability to be intelectualy stimulating and to Mr. Rochester that made her more beautiful.

Jane Erye is described throughout the novel as plain. Most of the time she is describing herself this way because she has been brought up to believe that being plain is more attractive than being obviously beautiful. Jane had been forced her entire life to supresse her emotion and personality. Her plain style symbolizes how she was brought up. She grew up being taught that being practicle and smart was more beautiful. It is more practicle and smart to wear plain clothes than extravagent silks. There are more important things in life and Jane Eyre understood that. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Everyone finds different things, features, and characteristics beautiful. It is ignorant to say that someone is not beautiful because there is someone in the world that will worship them as the most beautiful person ever. The novel does not have the plot that it does because Jane is plain, it has the plot that it does because of who Jane is; which woud not be changed if she was beautiful. There is a misconseption about the book that Jane’s aunt did not like her because she was not beautiful. This however is wrong; Jane’s aunt did not accept her because she felt that her husband spent more time with Jane than his own children. While it is indiffernt to the story wether or not Jane was beautiful, it is important to the story that she did not believe that she was. This was cause for some of Jane’s growth throughout the novel. The book was written through Jane’s perspective so it is difficult to tell what others thought of her appearance. Miss. Ingram hated Jane. It never said this in the book, but I intrepreted that this was because Jane was beautiful and she knew that Mr. Rochester was in love with her.

In today’s time too much ephasis is placed on outward apperances and not enough empashis is placed on inward apperances and who people truly are. The world is too superficial. Before school started I got a pixie cut, maybe not for of the right reasons but because I felt that I had changed so much as a person, that it seemed foolish that my outward appearance did not reflect that. The day that school started (my sophmore year of highschool) I was welcomed back with comments such as “did you decide to be lesbian over the summer?”, “Oh so you’re like a really big femanist.” , “Does the word communism mean anything to you?” I was getting judged on such a simple thing as my hair and not by what type of person I am. After hearing insults like this over and over again it made me regret getting my hair cut…for a while. After a week or two into school I realized that it does not matter what these people thought as long as I liked my hair. Once I realized this it made me like my hair even more just for the fact that it wasn’t what people would call obviously beautiful on a girl. Like Jane portrayed in the novel it is much more important to be smart, kind, and witty than to be beautiful. Someone is always going to be prettier than you, or have better clothes, so if you are always trying to out do them you are never going to be happy. You have to be satisfied with who you are as a person. I think that this message is a little too over used, which makes sense because it is important, but it also makes people disregaurd it. That is why Jane Eyre is such an amazing book. She shares this message in such a nonchaluant way that it gets the message across without actually coming out and stating it.

            The story would be emensly different if Jane was rich instead of poor. In the novel Jane was humble, knew how to work, and wanted to be independent. She would have been brought up completely different if she had had money. Those morals would not have been instilled in her if she had been rich. Although it is hard to say what would happen if one essencial part of a story was changed, but from how I see it there would be no story. The entire story was based on Jane not having money. If she had inhareted a large amount of  money at birth then she would never have gone to work for Mr. Rochester. She would have never fallen in love or had the amazing experiences (good and bad) that she did. One of the major themes of the book is that money will not make you happy if you are not, as a person, already happy. Mr. Rochester, for example, had a great deal of money, but as a person he was misserable. He had made mistakes in the past that he would not forgive himself for and this caused him to hate life. If Jane was born rich and did not have to work for anything in her life she might have ended up being miserable. One of her greatest pleasures was teaching. When she went to visit her cousins before her aunt died you could see how miserable they were. Neither daghter shed a tear for their mother. They could not wait for the affair to be over so they could move on with their lives. Money does not buy happiness. That is a lesson that Jane was shown first hand. She never wanted to be rich, she just wanted to have enough money not to worry. She had the right idea in my opinion.

            These two asspects are essential to the story. The fact that Jane views herself as plain means that she is humble, modest, and apprecietes things more than if they had just been given to her. Jane is rich, she just does not know it. An uncle on her father’s side, who had a large sum of money,  would have been willing to adopt her but her aunt told him that Jane was dead. When this uncle died Jane receive a large inheritance. She gave a portion of the money to the family that had helped her onto her feet after she left Thornfeild. Without these key aspects of the novel there would be no plot. Charlotte Bronte was icredibly talented and smart for putting this into the story. She took true issues of that time and today and built a story around it. The concept of beauty has been a problematic subject matter since the beginning of time. Throughout the years the idea of beauty changes and will continue to change as long as there are women to contradict each theory.

The Tale of the Digeridoo by Kailey Norusis

1

I am the tale of the didgeridoo; remember me when all hope seems lost.

From your broken and shattered pieces,
I shall create a warrior who was meant to fight.
My tale is not a pleasant one,
Though it ends happily enough.
If you listen to my music- with willing and eager ears-,
My story will seep into your soul, allowing you to fly.

 2

The waning sun of the seventeenth hour halos me in light,
Standing swollen with pride, an extension of my family.
My leaves are ruffled by the blowing breeze; my roots are planted deep.
I see people walking through the day and wonder ‘bout their lives.
An old sun burnt man promises of many a good tale.
He whistles on his merry way stalking off towards sea.
A young native girl dances barefoot round my trunk and tickles me with delicate soft
hands.
A strong and gracious mother working, bearing child on her back,
Her eyes are soft with pain, but the smile never leaves her face.
Every night flames spark and fly; it’s story-telling time.
The great chiefs of the village tell histories afar.
I wish to join the party, but I am planted on the rim.
I yearn to be like them and have my story told.
My time is almost up; soon I will be no more.


3

A great storm has come, which shook me to my core and many of my brothers died.
The first refreshing shower soon turned angry and harsh.
My friends all moved away seeking shelter from the rain.
Once again I am left alone to suffer on my own.
When all is lost and in despair, the great sun reveals itself to wash away my tears.
Summer is here at last with the promise of new life.
The heat is wearing on my health,
My bones are dry and brittle.
I feel the painful gnawing working through my limbs.
The evil bugs work through every layer until I am emptied out, with nothing left.
My once beautiful body has been destroyed; no one wants me now.
All my dreams are crushed,
For I am sure to die of shame, surrounded by infantile and brilliant foliage;
Forsaken to shelter bugs from the pouring sun.

4

A brown boy with painted skin and decorated with dangling jewelry enters in my line of

sight.
He walks around with his chest puffed out, the emblem of who I desire to be.
Carrying an axe in hand he begins to search through trees.
I compare myself to all my fellow neighbors.
He shall never choose me, I cry, for I am old and ugly.
My limbs are hallowed out,
My branches frail and weak.
Oh how I wish to be young and handsome!
The boy takes his time, not offering most a second glance.
He turns his eye towards me and a smile stretches ‘long his face: Why you are exactly
what I need!
He swiftly strolls over to where I stand.
I slump down in embarrassment, my leaves draping toward the ground. 

5

He brings me to his workshop where, he lays me down to rest.

With a brush in dispense he begins the lengthy task at hand.
After hours long of endless labor, he leans back to admire all his work.
Satisfied he leaves so he may go and devour his late supper.
He has made me beautiful again!
Why what kind of magician is he?- I wonder
Maybe someday I shall return the favor.

6

The boy presses his soft and tender lips upon my hallow body.

He breathes a breath of life through me and a cry of war comes out: I am a fighter.
My friends all dance and chant around me.
I feel the flames from the burning inferno in the center.
My youth and beauty have been restored by this kind and careful boy who will forever
Hold my heart.
I am passed down from generation to generation.
My wish was granted and I will be remembered for all eternity, singing for my friends.