Beloved

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"
 -Alexander Pope

"This was not a story to pass on"
-Toni Morrison
What is Freedom?

I sure this question has run through the minds of Sethe and Paul D because they were slaves not even considered human. If their previous servitude was erased from their memory would they know and understand freedom?

In the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Kate Winslet and Jim Carey play a couple who erase each other from their memories following a very messy and painful relationship. However they meet again and are drawn together even though they're erased from each other's memories. At the end of Beloved, Toni Morrison writes that this was not a story to pass on, the awful memories of slvery and its terrible implications as in this story should not have been passed on but also not a stroy to die. If what happened to the two lovers in the movie happened to Sethe and Paul D they still might be drawn to the memories of slavery still attaining no freedom. They walk the line of remembering and not remembering if they want to achieve personal freedom. As Paul D tells Sethe at the end of the book, "you your own self."

Constrained by Honesty

What is freedom?

I don’t think any of us knows what its exact definition is. We all have things in our lives that take advantage of our lives. The power of Meursault is truth and honesty. It words come out of him unfiltered and unrestrained like 'word vomit' (Mean Girls). It got him into more trouble after killing the nameless Arab in the climax of Camus’s The Stranger,

Another issue of this novel, to me, is the lack of consideration for the Arab who got killed by both Meursault and the juror’s of his trial. They were rather preoccupied with the fact that Meursault had not cried at his mother’s funeral. The Arab seems like a disposable life not even worthy of a name. He is often referred to as the nameless Arab. This drives me crazy. Maybe Camus was using Meursault and the juror’s attitudes towards the death an Arab man to reflect the current feeling of the general public of France. Whatever the truth is behind the apathetic reactions to this murder they remain true as horrible as they may be.

Raskolnikov

Is humankind inherently good or evil?

Let me begin by saying I have never disliked a character in a book as much as I have disliked Raskolnikov. He decides to play supreme ruler of the universe, thinking of himself as an extraordinary man above Alyona Ivanovna and killed her. Of course no one loved her and no one needed her, so Raskolnikov thinks he’ll do the job himself. His arrogance just drips through the pages of Doestoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Even though in a deep depression, delusion and paranoia brought on by not only the death of Alyona Ivanovna but her sister Lizaveta as well that “extraordinary man arrogance still bleeds through.

As long as Raskolnikov’s brand of arrogance exists in humanity, we can never be good. People thinking they’re better than other people. It never ends well. Still after the torture of guilt day and night, Raskolnikov never confesses that what he did to Alyona was wrong. To me it’s like nothing is really changed in Raskolnikov, if this arrogance over Alyona still exists. It’s like the same song playing in the beginning of a movie is repeated at the end.

There’s more to Falstaff than just Fat

What are the politics and consequences of war, and how do these vary based on an individual or cultural perspective?

“Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what
is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
he that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no.
Doth he hear it? no. ‘Tis insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism.”
Henry IV Part 1, Act V, Scene 1

I came to respect Falstaff tremendously after this quote in the play. Much of war, I believe, is about pride and defending the honor of something we hold dear. But really how far should we humans go for honor? Does it even exist on earth if every one can has done their share of good and bad? When Falstaff took responsibility of Percy’s death, I feel I understood why Hal let it slide. Falstaff is taking the ‘honor load’ off of his friend. Hal wanted to kill Percy to defend his honor and when he killed Percy was it really worth it? I see Falstaff being a good friend.