Makin' Some Dough $$$

Laura Brown is the second example of an individual who has achieved the American Dream but is ultimately unhappy. First is Gatsby, who has the companion of his wealth, but not the intimacy of companions. Laura, on the other hand, is not blessed with riches like Gatsby, but she does have a family including a child and a loving husband. One would think that she is the epitome of a comfortable woman of middle class suburbia. However, this is all but true, as she contemplates suicide and ends up running from her family and starting a new life on her own. This makes me question what “success” truly means. Some people say that success is when you’ve reached the top of the economy and can buy anything you can dream of. Other people conclude that all you need is the love and support of family and friends. Laura had one and Gatsby had the other, yet neither of them felt successful. Society gave us two different definitions of success, but I’ve come to realize that neither are true. Every being is programmed with different needs, so who are we to define success for someone else? To be happy is to be successful—whether it is money or love or donuts…it’s really not up to society to generalize.

(dough)Nuts

“The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wallpaper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out on his feet, looking at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees…warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wings of a bird…her sentence bubbled away…like a contented tap left running.” (144)

During the brief moment when Septimus sees only the products of reality, Septimus takes notice of the dancing of the sunlight in the room. Sunlight is usually something that most people take for granted—we see and feel its effects but don’t think twice about it until the room is dark and cold again for the night. After not being able to see the purity of ubiquitous sunlight through the haze of his hallucinations, even the simplest things are able to content his battered soul.

Septimus is a character that brings new light (ha-pun) to the book. Unlike other cliché characters from other novels who have a hard time dealing with reality, Septimus has a hard time finding reality again. His comfort in anything “so real…so substantial”, even something as simple as Mrs. Peters’ hat and the warmth of the sun’s rays is a sense of comfort to him. Because Septimus lives in the limbo between reality and his hallucinations, he constantly feels trapped between the two. Bradshaw proposes to place him in an institution where now he is not only mentally trapped but physically too. At the time, “the air buffets the cheek like the wings of a bird.” The bird parallels Septimus, who is able to fly freely for just a short period of time, similar to how Septimus was lucid for even just a a brief period.

No One Wants a P(l)ain Donut...

“’Beautiful!’ She would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste (Rezia liked ices, chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him.” (87)

This short and simple passage is a complete depiction of Septimus’ perception of his life. Dr. Holmes is only able to understand the transparency of the glass—he can see the things that Rezia finds beautiful, he can eat the “ices, chocolates, sweet things” that Rezia likes, but there will always be something that stops Septimus from perceiving this beauty and from tasting the ices, chocolates, and sweet things. Rezia fell in love with the Septimus of who she thought was gentle and sweet (like ices, chocolates…). However, just like the sweets that graze his taste buds with no effect, Septimus’ marriage with Rezia “had no relish to him”.

 With this passage, I found a parallel between Mrs. Dalloway and “The Death of a Moth”.

“Watching him, it seemed as if a fiber, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.” (The Death of a Moth, 2)

In both of these passages, Woolf uses pane as a pun. Both the pane of glass isolating Septimus and the windowpane trapping the Moth can also be interpreted as the sources of their pain. The transparency taunts them with a life they cannot have. Rezia, Dr. Holmes, and Sir Bradshaw are all ignorant to this barrier between Septimus and his existence. 

I-dough-lize a nutcase???

Sometimes, good people make bad decisions. Victor’s father from “Because my Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock”, however, just seemed to make a lot of them. Some may conclude that he is just a bad person. After all, he “beat the shit out of [a] National Guard private” (Alexie 25), was always out late at night drinking, would leave his family to ride his motorcycle for days on end, and eventually “left [his wife] to finish raising [their son] all by herself” (Alexie 34). So is Daddy Dearest a bad man or just a good man occasionally bad at being good? Victor’s father’s major flaw was that he is selfish, and we all know the selfishness and being a “family man” don’t mix. It is not that he didn’t love his family, but just that he was ignorant to the consequences that others would have to face for his actions. He was also a hero to his son, as he had many admirable traits. Where he lacked consideration, he thrived in passion and adventure. Victor’s father is not a bad man. He may not be the ideal father…well actually not even the ideal member of society, but there is always something you can learn from anybody.

"Yolo is my motto"

It's Okay If You Don't Like Donuts

The medical world defines disability as a physical or mental condition that limits someone's movements, senses, or activity. 

As hard as this may be to believe, a human is not complete with just a working body and brain. In other words, the definition of disability is true…if we were all computer programmed robots. What about our emotional health? Mental and Emotional health are not the same (I even googled it); mental health includes cognitive thinking and deductive reasoning. Emotional health, on the other hand, includes the acceptance or control of one’s own emotions. One could be an Olympic gold medalist and have an IQ of 160, perhaps the Guinness world record holder of the fastest vegetable dicer while simultaneously reciting all the digits of pi known to mankind, but if he is not emotionally invested in his desire to live instead of to just exist, that technically makes him disabled too.

We are all hypocrites. People throw around phrases like “be yourself”, “you are special”, or “be unique” without truly believing in it themselves. If you can think to look past someone’s taste in music, fashion sense, mode of expression, or religion, then looking past a disability is no different. Nancy Mairs suggests “that we insert disability daily into our field of vision” (Mairs “Disability”), but I believe there’s more to acceptance that exposure, as not all disabilities are observable. Perhaps introspection at our own emotional setbacks can lead us to become empathetic and understanding of disabilities, whether they be physical, mental, or emotional.

Travis or a Travesty? (Donut)

Adults are strange. Does it become harder to be happy when you grow up? Even things that I thought would bring a smile to anyone’s face couldn’t even seem to make my family lighten up. Grandmama got sad when she became rich with ten thousand dollars, and Daddy was angry when we found out that we were moving into a house! Only mama reacted normally to the house—I didn’t even get a beating that night! However, mama always seems tired, but tries to hide it. I always hear them yelling in the other room when I’m in the other room. I hope everything will change when we move into the new house that Grandmama bought for us, or maybe I’ll be able to go to a room far enough that I won’t have to hear them yelling. Sometimes daddy gets really drunk, but I still love him. “Sometimes when I tell [mama] that I want to be just like [him]—she says she don’t want me to be like that and sometimes she says she does…” (546) I can tell that mama loves him too, though. I guess that loving is hard as an adult, also. I don’t want to ever grow up if it means that I have to worry and be angry all the time too. 

"But Money = Donuts = Happiness"

“Money can’t buy happiness”, but it can buy a Fitzgerald novel to teach you why this is so. To say that one did not ever once dream of wealth and luxury is something that everyone knows is false. Even from a young age we dove headfirst into stories about princesses rising from rags to riches, unaware that this is “once upon a time”: a time that cannot exist. The direct correlation of happiness and wealth are as real as pink elephants. A common theme among F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary works, both Dexter and Gatsby find that their desire to have the image of a perfect life—a big house, money in the bank, and the prettiest girl in the city on their arm—turns out to be their tragic flaw. Fitzgerald uses rhetoric such as color symbolism with white, gold, and green to symbolize wealth and purity; however, each are concentrated with irony that is commonly found among satires. Although Fitzgerald’s famous satires take place in the 20^th century, the same flaws in human nature and society are still prominent today. Unlike Moses, who may have been able to part the red sea, society is not as able to part its subconscious flaws.