Mythology of Hinduism 3

Wow. Alan Watts is deep. He had my attention at first and I understood the basic jist of what he was saying and then he just obliterated my head. I'd never thought of dreaming like the way he explained in the podcast. It was sort of interesting, and was also very true. The only problem with what he was saying would be the whole falling into dreams for 75 years. If you think about it, you would go out and chase danger for thrills and change because you would get bored of having everything you want all the time. This can be compared to teenagers. We've been tired of having hat secure place where everything is nice and happy and we explore danger and thrills. This is due to not only lack of judgement, but also want of some change and thrill. It is true what he said about how we use technology for our every need. We use it for pretty much everything which is now coming back to haunt us because of pollution, laziness of people, expenses, and also war has been more prominent with better technology. I don't agree with his statement that all futures are past and that they have already happened because I can do things tomorrow that I have never done before. Maybe it's just me but that statement doesn't seem right. I really liked how Watts linked the gods and the religions to play through music and dance. This really puts things into perspective. He seems to like to use play and music together because I was watching a video on YouTube and he was talking about how we can make work play by treating work as play and becoming fascinated by moving cars, building things, treating peopled, etc. His comment about how the self is both the audience and the actor to Hindus was confusing at first. Actually, now that I think of it, it does make sense because people do tend to hide from themselves. Sometimes we will fool ourselves into thinking that we feel emotions or want to do things when we don't actually want to. In other words we hide ourselves from our true feelings about things all the time because of what society, our peers, or the government want from us. I really liked how Watts talked about music and dance, although I do think that art could be put into that category. Art, dance, and music all are forms of expressing oneself and are not done for a purpose such as getting somewhere or doing something. They are a representation of how a person is reacting/feeling about him or herself, feeling about life, and feeling about the world in general. These arts try to evoke emotion from viewers and listens and/or present the emotions that the artist(s) is feeling. I didn't really care for his way of saying that play has many different meanings. It seemed to sort of take things a little overboard to me. The views that Alan Watts has are very interesting and I don't mind listening to him too much. The audio files are a little rough because a moving picture always makes things more endurable. I might look into what he has to say a little more in the future.

Comments: I commented on Kurtis and Tyler's blogs. I agreed with Tyler in that it was easier to understand when we learned it in class. I also agree that it was really tough to understand, but I found that a second viewing really helped me get a grasp on things. I agreed with what Kurtis was saying but I mentioned to him that he sorta has to look at things from a whole new angle and that will help him understand them. I told him that same thing that I told Tyler which was that a second viewing helps out a lot.

Common Theme

The common theme between all four stories is that you will need to leave the ones around you at some point because it is something that will need ot be done. In each story one of the characters leaves another one in order to go on their own to think, live alone, or even ditch their new wife. In The Life You Save May Be Your Own Mr. Shiftlet leaves his new wife in order to go on his own probably because he thinks it's for the better. Meimei goes off on her own to escape the pressure of her mom in The Rules of the Game. The father leaves in order to think about the sculpture his daughter has made for him in The Book of the Dead. And finally, the son leaves his family in order to pursue whatever his ambitions are without being "controlled" by his family in Teenage Wasteland. This is an important theme because we are going to have to embark on leaving our families to go to college or a job to fulfill our dreams. This will be very hard if we can't even depart from our families. It did seem easy enough for the characters in this book though. Everybody has to leave another at some point.

Teenage Wasteland

By far my favorite story so far has been Teenage Wasteland by a long shot. This was actually a story that I could relate to. The story had to have taken place during the latter part of the 1960s or the early 1970s since they were listening to Baba O' Reily by The Who. The parents were also mad about their child listening to rock music which also hints when the story was taking place. This was a story that I could relate to because it was of a kid who was around our age. The problem with the story is that the parents and the tutor couldn't find the balance between having fun and having trust and cracking down to get school work done. At the beginning I thought that the tutor was doing the kid good by giving him a place to go so that he could have fun and also get his school work done. It really seemed like everything was going great, but then all of a sudden the kid's grades start to slip again. This revealed what the tutor was all about. He said that the parents, particularyly the mother, were being way to controlling. I think that the tutor was on a mission to free teenage kids from their parents who are too controlling. Eventually the tutor actually led to the kid's downfall. The kid failed his classes and pretty much hated the world. Finally, he left after school one day and never came back.

The Book of the Dead

This title only sets the reader up for a huge let down. When I read the title, I thought that the story would include adventure, action, and maybe even a little violence. I also thought that the title may have set it up for a character to make a trip to the underworld. The pictures also suggest that it would have something to do with some sort of action or adventure. As it turns out, the story had absolutely nothing to do with any of these themes. This was a huge disappointment. The story was rather stupid. Not as dumb as The Life You Save May Be Your Own, but it did come pretty close. I thought that the whole story was rather stupid. It all revolved around a perverted sculpture of her father naked on the floor. The biggest question that came to my mind is, why is anyone in the right state of mind making a naked sculpture of his/her naked father in great detail. I don't blame Annie's father for throwing the sculpture in a lake. If one of my children made a sculpture of me naked I would say, "Thank you so much," and then throw the sculpture into the furnace so that no other human would konw of its existance. What really freaked me out was how the famous actress was willing to pay great money for the sculpture because it reminded her of her own father. You can't tell me that they are not completely insane. I also don't blame the dad for running away for a while. Once again if my child made a naked sculpture of me and we were on the road together for an extended amount of time, I too would run away. I liked how Annie and her dad went to the actresses house anyway. They completely just wanted to meet the lady but if I drove for two days to California just to give away a sculpture I would like to meet the actress too. This story is just really really wierd. The dreams that he was having were better than the actual story line. I wish that the author would have expanded upon the dreams. This book just goes to show you how messed up some people can be.

Rules of the Game

Well, at least this story wasn't as bad as the first one. I sort of found it interesting how a little girl was completely owning 50 year old guys who probably played chess everyday. I had some issues with how Waverly's parents ran the household. They let the boys do all of the work while she studied chess. I think that it should have been made clear that Waverly had to keep all of her responsibilities at home while also studying chess with the occassional pass from chores before a big tourney. The way that her parents pushed her reminded me a lot of how the infamous child star parents pushed their children to be great almost to the point where they didn't really have a childhood. As much as Waverly liked chess I still think that she sort of missed acting like a kid because she was naturally absorbed by chess, but there were also times when her parents (chiefly her mom) would push her to study more and become better. Sometimes I can understand this because her family was very poor and needed a way to put food on the table, but I think that they parents sort of abused Waverly's talents in order to gain money rather than let the child learn to love the game for joy and fun with a little money on the side. It got so bad that Waverly ran away for a while which is completely understandable to me. I think I would do the same no matter if I LOVED the thing they were forcting me to do. Wether you love it or not, there is still extra pressure put on someone in that way because often times it becomes more than just a game. Like I said it was better than the first one, but it still wasn't anything that special.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

This story to me was very very agregious. It was just wierd that a random guy would walk up to a house and start to fix things for no apparent reason. He just shows up and fixes basically the whole entire house without asking for anything in return. My first impression of this guy was that he was going to take advantage of the old woman by stealing/mooching from her, or was just one heck of a nice guy. My instincts told me the first notion would be correct, but my feelings were wrong. It seemed like he was just there to do a good deed (or maybe more like 20). Then all of a sudden the old woman starts offering her daughter to the man. She rambles on about how much the girl means and all this and that, but it sort of seemed to me like she was trying to pay the guy with her daughter. It seemed like that because she said about how devastated she would be if her daughter ever left, but then she keeps insisting that this random guy should marry her daughter who is deaf and can only say "bird". Finally, the guy marries her and they act like they are going to some hotel for a honeymoon. They stop off at a diner and the guy just leaves his "wife" there all alone passed out on the counter. Actually, on second thought he really was mooching off of that old lady. He made her give him money for the honey moon and then the guy just ditches her. He also pretty much just takes the car and even though he fixed it he still should have said, "No, you should keep it to go into town." That seems a little fishy to me. Then the guy picks up some kid walking down the road and they start talking about their mothers and all of a sudden the kid calls the other guy's mom a "polecat" and just jumps out the car. The end. This is a completely random story. Just think about it. Guy just shows up and does chores. Guy marries deaf daughter whom he just met. Guy ditches "wife" for no real reason. Guy picks up boy who later jumps out of the car. The message it tries to convey is unclear and the story just was completely random. This story reminds me a lot of something that Kurt Vonnegut would have written. This story can be summed up by the word agregious.

Chapter 25

Well looks like I was wrong once again. The District Commisioner visits Okonkwo's compound and asks for him but the men standing outside the hut tell him he's not home. The Commisioner gets mad and asks again but he is answered with the same answer again. Then Obierika leads him behind the house where Okonkwo has hanged himself. He hanged himself. That to me is the most womanly thing that someone can do. He brought most of the thigns upon himself and he ends up killing himself as a result. This all came out of his resentment of his father. His whole attitude is what made him beat his wives, kill Ikemefuna, and kill the messenger. If he could have controlled himself and not worried about what otheres thought of him and didn't always have a maks on he may have lived on, but then again he probably would have been hanged by the Comissioner. I still don't agree with Okonkwo's decision to kill himself. He was always so mad at his son for not obeying the tribes rules but here he is killing himself which is a horrible sin in the eyes of the tribe. They can't even touch him or bury him because his body is considered evil. I really disagree with Obierika in this chapter. He blames the Commisioner for Okonkwo's death. It was totally Okonkwo's fault. He brought everything upon himself. I think Obierika was just trying to validate Okonkwo's death instead of accepting the fact that his friend committed a huge horrible sin. Okonkwo's body is buried though by the Christians and strangers from a neighboring village. Although Okonkwo's possessions were great he was a terrible man. He single handedly tore his hand apart. He brought pain to his people. He is not a good man and the sad part was that he could have fixed it all if he wanted to but he had a macho man figure he had to uphold. That's also present in today's society. Men today have to put on a mask for people to accept them but I think that is so wrong. You should be who you are no matter where you are or who you are with. Take Okonkwo for an example if you don't believe me. He had a mask and he killed himself. Personally I thought the book was alright I guess. I really hated Okonkwo from the get go. The most valueable thing I got out of the book was the lesson that you should show emotion to those you love and care about because if you don't you can really hurt them or send them the wrong message. The other message I got from the book was always be yourself no matter what other people think. If you put on that mask you can only be headed for bad things. You only do harm not good. I sorta hated the ending. I was hoping for more bloodshed or something like that. I did enjoy reading about and comparing the African culture that Okonkwo experienced to our own and seeing the similarities and differences that were present.It seemed like it hyped up all this tension between the two tribes and then it just ends when a man hangs himself. I think Achebe definately could have done a better job with that. Overall I would give the book a B-