Ibsen's Political View and Work

WHO IS HE?

Henrik Ibsen is known as the father of realism and is a playwright, theater director, and a poet. Ibsen is the founder of modernism in theater and is famous for his extreme views that are considered to be scandalous during his time period.

WRITING STYLE

Ibsen's writing style reflects upon matters in society that are seen as scandalous. His work revolves around realism that leads to social criticism and the plot of his plays are often unapologetic and could be seen as offensive.

POLITICAL VIEW

During the 1880's, Ibsen disliked the Parliamentarism group and felt that the state should be abolished. Ibsen expresses his political views through his work. He believed that the people's behavior is compromised with the society. He saw society as the majority that are ignorant and sheeplike. Criticizes views such as conservatism (preserving the past) and liberalism (freedom and equality).

HIS WORK AND ITS RELATION TO 'A DOLL'S HOUSE'

• A Doll's House: Stands on a feminist side where it goes against the social norm of the female role where women are sacrificial and obey the law of men. It can be seen in the play that women are sometimes responsible for men's mistakes. The play revolves around the theme of money, corruption, social roles, gender roles, and love. 
• The title represents Ibsen's perspective of the social construction of a marriage where the setting is based on the house of a family similar to a doll house with Nora, a women, being the
  "doll" that men like Torvald play with. 
• The play was seen as scandalous because of the fact that Nora leaves the family.

• Ghosts: A play that continues the main idea behind the plot of A Doll's House. About a widow who consults a pastor about her fiance's philandering. The pastor advises the wife to marry him and that her love will change him, but instead, this results in her husband passing on syphilis to his son and dying. Ghosts has similar theme to A Doll's House including love, corruption, etc.
• Seen as scandalous and intolerable because it mentions a venereal disease and how it could affect a respectable family.
  
  
  
  
• Enemy of the People: Due to the public outcry on Ghosts, Ibsen wrote this play as a response. The play is about Dr. Stockmann discovering a contamination in the bath of the village, but no one believed him and saw him as a lunatic. He was hated and was called the enemy of the people. The story of this conflict is man vs. society with the theme being that the thoughts of the minority may be more 'right' than the majority where the majority is portrayed as ignorant and sheeplike.

 

GREAT GATSBY WRITTEN TASK

Rationale:

This written task revolves around the novel, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The written task revolves around the scene of the death of Myrtle from the car accident up to the end where Wilson murders Gatsby and commits suicide in chapters 7 and 8 of the novel. This task is based on the accident that killed Myrtle and is written in the perspective of George Wilson through a police investigation.

The task intends to explore the novel in the scope of a minor character. The character of George Wilson is chosen because he is a minor character that plays a crucial role as the novel comes towards an end. In order to do so, I reread the novel and tried to imitate Wilson’s dialect by using a dumb tone and using a small range of vocabulary to suit the character of Wilson as a merely educated man to match the characterization of Fitzgerald. The aim of the task is to view the novel in the point of view of Wilson and attempts to understand the thoughts and emotions that Wilson felt towards Gatsby after discovering that he killed (and had an affair) with his wife, Myrtle. Wilson is enraged at Gatsby for taking away the life of his wife and seeks for revenge.

The text type used in the task is in the format of a police file/report where George Wilson is interviewed about the accident and tells his story of what happens. At first, I considered writing a diary record that Wilson keeps, but it doesn’t seem to suit his character and so I decided to file a report instead. This format serves as a mean to discover the character of Wilson and explores his thoughts before he attempts to murder Gatsby.

WORD COUNT: 295 words  

CASE FILE#0714

VICTIM: GEORGE WILSON

DATE: Aug.24.1922

TIME: PST.21:00 P.M.

LOCATION: AUTOSHOP, VALLEY OF ASHES        

An incident occurred last night around est.8.00 pm in front of George’s Wilson automobile shop where George Wilson’s wife, Myrtle Wilson, was killed by an anonymous car speeding down the road as she attempted to cross the street. According to Michaelis, a bystander who witnessed the event, the car is bright yellow in color and the driver hesitated to stop, but ended up speeding away.

An interview with George Wilson took place on the night of the accident to get a better scope of the tragedy. The interview below was conducted after Mr. Wilson has settled down and has remained in a calm state of mind.

Q.)“Please introduce yourself.”

A.)“Well, my name is George Wilson, and there’s my wife, Myrtle, lying there on the table, dead. Me and Myrtle got married a while back and we’ve been livin’ at this automobile shop since. We make a living off buy’n and sell’n cars, but business here doesn’t seem to run smoothly so we decided to head off to the West to escape from this heat and settle down somewhere else, somewhere nicer; but that never happened… Myrtle’s gone.   

Q.)“What happened before the accident and why did Myrtle run out?”

A.)“To be honest, we were having quite a heavy fight back there. Myrtle’s a cheater. A sneaky little cheater.., but I loved her. Caught her wearing this pearl necklace that I don’t seem to remember getting her; so she must’ve gotten it from someone else, right? Let’s say things got physical, I was mad and confused and was kinda shocked actually. I’ve never expected Myrtle to cheat on me like this, with another man, still could hardly believe it. So yeah, we were shouting and yelling at each other. I tried taking hold of her, but she ran off. She just ran out of the house, but for some reason, as that ridiculous yellow car came by, it almost seems like she was running towards the car, as if she knew the person driving it, and so I thought that the driver was for sure the man who stole Myrtle away from me.”

Q.)“Who are the suspects?”

A.)“I know who’s responsible for this! It’s that bloody fella, Tom Buchanan. You see, Tom was here to refill his gas during the afternoon and he was driving a yellow car, just exactly like the one that hit Myrtle. Oh that bastard, how dare he hurt my Myrtle. And in his car was a man, I believe he’s a Nick, a Nick Carraway, and there was a woman –a famous golfer or something –don’t remember her name. It could be anyone of them. This also gave me a suspicion that Tom is the one secretly cheating with Myrtle! Why in the heavens would Myrtle head to the city every single time Tom stopped by?! After all, he visits us most often… You bastard Tom, you’ll pay for this.”

This gave us the lead we needed. Mr. Wilson was put on hold for him to cope with his lost as the interrogation of eyewitnesses and investigation for evidence in the crime scene took place.

DATE:Aug.25.1922

TIME:PST.8:00 A.M.

LOCATION:AUTOSHOP, VALLEY OF ASHES

Another interview took place at George Wilson’s automobile shop in the next morning for more information.

Q.)“Do you have any new information of who the suspect might be?”

A.)“Well actually, yes, I did receive further information over the night. A couple of minutes after the interview last night, I don’t know, around half past ten? Tom showed up. I tried to strangle him, of course I did! I thought he killed my wife! Apparently, Tom just came back from the city. He explained everything.  He wasn’t driving the yellow car. He said he knew the guy. Gatsby. Jay Gatsby. Tom lent his car to Gatsby during the afternoon. At first, I thought he was lying too, until I saw his blue coupé. Furthermore, Tom said he knew this “Gatsby” really well. He told me that this Gatsby has been sneakin’ around and having affairs with women all over the place, and Myrtle was probably one of them. I’ve never met him before, but if he’s the one having an affair with my wife, things won’t end pretty for that filthy dog. Everything is clear now, you see, Myrtle ran out to the middle of the streets because of HIM. She knew it was HIM, and she thought he was going to help her. Little did she know that he did not give a damn about her. That’s all I have to offer for now. If you would excuse me, I have an important meeting to attend.”

TIME:PST.8:46 A.M.

LOCATION:AUTOSHOP, VALLEY OF ASHES

George Wilson leaves his garage. Jay Gatsby added to notorious list. Further inspection of crime scene and continued interview sessions.

TIME:PST.10:38 A.M.

LOCATION:GATSBY MANSION, EAST EGG –LONG ISLAND

Time of death:Approx. PST.9:29 A.M.

Suspect: George Wilson

Crime scene:The body of Jay Gatsby found floating on the pool in the backyard of the Gatsby mansion. George Wilson’s body found several meters away on the lawn of the backyard.

Evidence:Smith&Wesson M1917 pistol (4/6 rounds loaded)

Suspected cause of death: Wilson shot Gatsby with his pistol and committed suicide afterwards.

Witnesses: No reported eyewitnesses when the murder took place. A few of Gatsby’s workers who belonged to Meyer Wolfsheim that were stationed at the Gatsby’s mansion reported that gunshots were heard, but nobody saw Wilson wander in.

An interview with Meyer Wolfsheim and his workers took place during the evening. No eyewitnesses were reported. No further information received for continuation of the case.

Closing Remarks and Conclusion of Case

Both suspect and victim are dead; the case is dropped.  In conclusion, the motive for murder of Gatsby committed by Wilson was due to internal conflict between the two caused by the affair between Gatsby and Wilson’s wife, Myrtle. Jay Gatsby accused with murder charges of Myrtle Wilson.

CASE CLOSED.

WORD COUNT: 998 words

Aspiration and Idealism

#3, Aspiration and Idealism (love, money, peace, harmony, success)

Aspirations are hopes and dreams or goals of a person. Aspiration is desire and could come in many different forms. Each person may aspire different things including things in the subjects of wealth, love, success, happiness and so much more. 
Aspiration may change through age and factors such as culture, religion, and ethnicity may affect what a person aspires. For instance, as a child, my aspirations were to travel in space and become the greatest astronaut who ever walked the universe. As I grow more mature, little by little each day, these ambitions become more realistic as my power of imagination slowly gets drained and replaced with knowledge, facts, and all the long nights spent on studying. Growing up a little more, around secondary school, my dreams became more realistic, hoping to work as an architect (because of enjoying art and a little influence from How I Met Your Mother) and to travel around the world before I die. Eventually, those dreams died a few years afterwards because of the idea of "work for money so you get rich and live a happy retired life" was planted into the deep dark holes of my brain. I changed. Instead of planning to work on what I enjoy, my goals are to work on what would make me most successful or a job that I would make the most money out of whether I like it or not. The final answer, engineering. I love science, but sometimes it makes me feel stupid with all the weird constants and variable. Although it is not what I do best, I am trying to cope with it by trying to force myself into liking it -which is working by far- but however, my dream of travelling around the world would always be there.

The reason of this is because of globalization, the world is spinning faster and faster, new technology entering the world, the iphone with fingerprinting password, more people leading to overpopulation and I'm just a teeny tiny part of it. Compare to the billions of people in the world, I'm just a small particle of the world. What makes me different from the other billions of people? Education. And this is why people tend to take the path that would lead them to the most success rather than the path that would make them happy or satisfied. There level of competition that exists in the modern world is higher than ever. People are competing for everything: jobs, wealth, fame, EVERYTHING. If you snooze you lose, if you want to do what makes you happy, nobody cares, but the future is real dark down that road. This forces people to do things that would make them rich rather than things that would make them happy.

This can also be seen clearer in the novel, The Great Gatsby, in many different characters.

Starting off with Nick, Nick aspires to be rich, leading him into the bond business, which in fact, is not serving him well compared to his colleagues, Tom and Gatsby. Nick is a typical character following the American Dreams, which most aspirations during the American Dream is to become successful and wealthy. Nick has a dream of becoming rich, but in reality, we all know that the American Dream is not as easy to achieve as it sounds and  selling bonds would get him nowhere. He might be richer than before, being able to support himself and buy things he never had before, but he would never become as rich as Gatsby, or even Tom.

Gatsby's story is a story that suits the song "Way Back into Love" by Hugh Grant. Gatsby aspires for love, Daisy's love and he would do anything in order to achieve, and by anything includes setting up expensive parties every weekend just hoping that Daisy would come. Gatsby is stuck in the past and can't seem to move on. He is stuck in his delusion that he could make Daisy love him again and he attempts to do so through his huge pile of money. Gatsby's concept of money being able to solve everything shows that Gatsby is tricking himself and is brainwashed by the power of money. Although he knows that it is impossible for things to be exactly the same as it was but he is tricking himself just to get his hopes up and prevent him from becoming heartbroken.

Jordan is also an interesting character. In my opinion, Jordan aspires for wealth and fame. The reason I believe in this is because of the fact that she cheated the her golf tournament, crowning her as the champion. Jordan is willing to cheat in order to win, showing that she either wants to win really bad, she wants the pot from being victorious, she wants fame from being all over media, or she is scared from losing face or reputation.

Urbanization and Gatsby

WHAT IS URBANIZATION?
Urbanization is the physical growth of urban areas. It is basically when cities expand, resulting in migration of people who live in the rural and suburbs because of believing that the cities hold wonderful things and great opportunities for them to succeed and become wealthy. Urbanization is a rapid growth that occurs through time, causing rural cultures to shift into urban cultures. As more and more people leaves their villages and farms to live the city life, cities expand in order to hold up the capacity of people joining the city.


In 2008, the UN predicted that half of the world's population would live in urbanized areas and by the year 2050, 64.1% of people in developing countries would live in urbanized areas, while 85.9% of people in developed countries would live in urbanized areas.

URBANIZATION IN THE USA

In the United States during the 19th century, the US was becoming a urban country during between 1910 and 1920 due to the rapid transformation from the industrial revolution. This changed American society from an agricultural to a industrial one, increasing the GDP of the country and improving the economy, making rich people richer. Issues that follow include overpopulation and pollution from the factories. The US being one of the first few country to reach the industrial stage also attracted people, both in the US and outside the US to immigrate or migrate into cities to find work in order to live a happy and financially stable life.

As the era of Urban America rises, the population of the US doubled in the 1900 to 80 million since 1870 and by the year 1920, the population to a high 105 million people. The amount of people living in the city also tripled to 40% by the year 1900.

Between the years of 1880 and 1920, there were around 27 millions immigrants in the US, while only around 11 million went back. Most of these immigrants came from South Eastern Europe. By 1910, more than 1/3 of the American population was foreign born, or had one foreign parent, compare to 1890 where there was only 19%. Most of the immigrants went to New York, while others went to major cities such as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, and other port cities.

By 1900, New York ranked second in city with the highest population, following London, with a staggering amount of 3.5 million people. Chicago (go bulls!) and Philly each had a population of 1 million where in  1860, no city in America had a population that reached a million. This shows the effect of urbanization.

During the time, Urbanization also made social class more clairvoyant and distinctive. There is a new class -the super wealthy class (the nouveau riche), the upper class (doctors and lawyers), the middle class (salesman, clerks, teachers, government ), and the lower class, consisting of workers.



RELEVANCE TO GATSBY
In "The Great Gatsby," the concept of the American Dream of everyone being able to become wealthy through different passages and being able to own your own company can be seen through the character of Nick. Nick comes from Chicago, which at that time (1900's) is one of the cities going through urbanization. Nick's goal was to work in the bond business in NYC and to become wealthy. The American Dream correlates with urbanization because it made people from rural areas move into the cities to search for their time to become famous and rich. We can see urbanization in the story in the West Egg and the East Egg where there is construction going on, showing that the city is expanding due to more people entering the city. We can see the criticism of urbanization through the description of the Valley of Ashes, "a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air" This implies that the land has been corrupted by urbanization through the descriptive language of the construction and pollution going it. This implies that the land that it is being built on was probably used for agriculture activities such as farming in the past. The scenes in New York shows urbanization through the setting of people crowding the cities living in cramped apartments showing that the city is crowded and is starting to get filled up. Symbols of wealth is also shown through transportation (mainly cars) and by the shelter of people. Gatsby's gigantic mansion is a symbol of wealth and success. This shows the difference in social classes during the urbanization period.

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States
http://www.angelfire.com/super/berletapush/other/notes/Urbanization_1865_1900.htm

What's Wrong with EDUCATION?

What's wrong with education?

In my opinion, I believe that "education" in the present is simply just a way of sucking money from pockets of hardworking parents who thrive to push their children to a successful future.

Education comes in packages with brand names, and we all know that things that are stamped with a famous brand name comes with a cost...money. But not just any average money; lots and lots and lots of money. Famous ivy league schools like Harvard and Yale could be compared to a bag from Yves Saint Laurent or Louis Vuitton. While  lower rank university could be compared with a bag from Nike or Adidas. Does a Nike or an Adidas bag look good? Yes. But if you see a person wearing a shoe from Prada and another person wearing a shoe from, lets say Puma; who would you think have better style? Many of the people would say Prada. They're both shoes, why are the opinions of people different when they see different brands? Universities are like this. They are a brand and you are their product. Receiving a degree from Cambridge or Harvard would make you look smarter and better than someone who receives a degree from John Hopkins. Why? They're both universities with a standard curriculum, but why would it be stereotypical that someone finishing from Harvard is brighter than someone from John Hopkins. Its all about the brand. The university you finish from is similar to your rank in society. Al though it might be true in some parts that higher ranked universities might have better teachers, facilities and all, but at the end of the day, its about the student. Top universities have become a way for rich people to have a good looking profile. If you were really, really smart, but had very little money, you wouldn't be able to apply to these universities, which is not fair. It simply shows that money COULD buy everything, even education. If you were born a genius, but had no money at all, what could you do? Education is a business, and the main goal or the purpose for a business to exist is to make profit.

In my opinion, I believe that the idea of education has changed. In the past, people used to go to school for actual education, meaning that they would want to learn and discover things, but now, as the world grows and as globalization spreads; the purpose of going to school is shifting from going to school to learn into going to school to achieve good grades. I bet if you asked a hundred students what they want out of school, not more than five of them would say education or knowledge. Most of them would say, "A good grade" "A 4.0++ GPA." This is because there are increasing amounts of people every year and competition is increasing. Getting a good grade out of school meant that they would have a shot of having a good job or being rich in the future, despite the fact that if they are smart or not. Your job in school is no longer to learn but to make your transcript look as good as possible through studying tests on long nights and forgetting it the day after or doing activities and sports that you don't even enjoy, just to make you look good and social. Some people even cheat or find loopholes that could help make them "look" like they are intelligent just to be accepted into a high ranking college.

I just wish that we were back in the old days where people actually went to school to explore the new concepts and discover new and amazing things we never knew before. Like in elementary school where everything was so new and cool and god knows what amazing. But it is the children's job to complete or carry the legacy of their parents and become successful as an adult. Welcome to the new world.

R.I.P education, you have served us well.

1950 Political Cartoon -"Fire!"

This political cartoon is called "Fire!" and is written March 29, 1950 by Herblock.

Without any background information at all, my interpretation of this political cartoon was different than after I researched on the topic.

My first look on the political cartoon, I thought that the hand holding the torch represented freedom because it is pretty much similar to the hand of the statue of liberty, but after looking to the figure at the left, it seems that the man on the left, which is probably the United States, is trying to use the pail of water to extinguish the fire. This confused me a little because if the hand and the torch represented freedom, then why would the -let's say the government- want to take it away. With the word HYSTERIA written on him, meaning that he feared the people would have freedom? I don't understand. Or does the hand mean something else? This bothered me so I decided to take it to the next level by doing some research so I could understand what this political cartoon is saying.

After reading a bit on the history of this, I started to get the message of this cartoon. I found out that after World War II, the people of the United States were getting scared of communism and were paranoid that it would slowly sneak into schools and institutes of the US. So this explains the man with HYSTERIA written on him. He does not represent the government, but represents the US citizen and the people living in the US. They are in fear that United States would eventually turn to a communist and instead of fighting it, they are actually hurting their own country by the paranoia and fear. So the man climbing up to extinguish the flame of the Statue of Liberty and as I found "The torch is the strongest symbol that Bartholdi incorporated into the Statue. In fact the Statue's real name reflects its true meaning: "Liberty Enlightening the World"."  Meaning that the message of the cartoon is showing the audience, which is the people of the United States, that they are overreacting and is harming their mother country by doing so.

My American Dream: 10 AWESOME GOALS IN MY LIFE

After I graduate: 

1. Get into an awesome college and an awesome university.

2. Grow taller (170 cm+++) and have an awesome body shape, and by body shape, I mean an awesome six pack.

3. Keep my records clean  (from weed, drugs, cigarettes, etc. etc.). 

4. Try to earn some [$$$CASH$$$] for my family.

5. Have lots of fun in sports, games, socializing and all that sort of jazz.  

Lifelong goals:

6. Live an awesome and long healthy life while loving the awesome people around me, including my family members, friends, and you too, Mr. Marrinson.

7. Travel around the world or as much as possible -To go destinations include, Paris, the city of Love, meeting the Montagues/Capulets at Verona, the city of Perth in Australia, go diving at Maldives and so so so so many more.

8. Be fun, be wild, be free before my marriage ends it all. Most importantly -be rich.

9. Find the love of my life, my soul mate, my wife, my soul maid, blah blah blah.

10. Enjoy the little things.