Slaughter-House Five

Imagine reliving your past over and over and over and over again. This is Pilgrim's unfun task. The creativity in making this book is amazing. Vonnegut really blew the reader's mind with the crazy amount of different things he puts in there. Not only does Billy Pilgrim "time travel" but he also is taken by aliens to Trafalmadore to be in a zoo exhibit. This book takes a lot of effort to muster up the brain power to process everything that's going on. How did Kurt Vonnegut do it? With so many places and times somehow Vonnegut ties it all into one book. It all has one main timeline. This book is quite the mind-blower.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

I am not going to lie. Getting any connection between my big question and the book Beloved has been a struggle. Sethe kills her own daughter. If this doesn't go against the grain I have no idea what going against the grain could possibly be. Although, what Sethe did was wrong she did challenge society but then runs from it and locks herself into her house. Why Sethe kills her daughter is because of fear. She can't face her fears of slavery and kills Beloved with the idea that she can play God. She thinks she knows the truth of what her daughter's life would be like but in reality no one person should try to play God. It is impossible to predict the future. Fear can cause originality because we may act strangely if we  are scared of something. Usually, though, the actions caused by strong fear can be harmful to ourselves or others. Originality is not always a positive thing.

The Stranger

“I had been right I was still right I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing and I had done another. And so?”(The Stanger) Meursault believes nothing matters. This is what makes him different. He doesn't fain emotions. He just does. Do you ever feel the walls of society slowly closing in? Molding you into something you're not? “I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.” Sometimes holding on to simple things can allow your true heart to shine. Meursault simply believes that there is nothing after death. What he does doesn't matter. Eventually everyone is doomed to die. If everyone is going to die what's the point of life? Meursault is a true atheist. Meursault doesn't change even in the face of punishment and death. The popular thing is to beg for mercy and to convert to a God not known and he decides that there is no point to going with the grain.


There is another twist in The Stranger. Meursault won't lie. This virtue eventually leads him to his death. Instead of twisting the truth into something pleasing he stays with what really happened. "It was the sun." he says that made him kill a man. In his mind the sun was hot and the trigger slipped and so he killed a man. Society is full of little white lies and Meursault won't give into any lying. Society immediately sees him as a threat. What makes Meursault great is this amazing capacity for not caring. He doesn't care. He won't lie. This molds his personality. This choice creates a man who fights the idea of pleasing others. Honestly, although Meursault killed a man, Meursault fights the crowd in a way I have never seen. Try not to lie for an entire day. No white lies. You have to offer up the truth. You can't exaggerate anything. I dare you to try this man's lifestyle.

Invisible Man

How do we define who we are? When do we start to decide to create our own path? Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison plays into the concept of humanity's struggle to find oneself. The Invisible Man struggles from place to place trying to prove to the people around him that he is worth something. After he watches society crumble around him because of his associates in the Brotherhood he finally decides to wait away from society until he can decide who he is. He asks, “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?” Part of being yourself is allowing time to find yourself.


This book also plays with the idea that no one person truly has only one personality. At a concert a person may dance and sing but in school they may quietly mind their way through the halls. The circumstances a person puts them-self in can decide the side of them they will reveal. Sometimes accepting yourself is accepting your multiple personalities.

King Lear by William Shakespeare

Sometimes striking out against society is done in the wrong ways. Edmund sends his own father to torture, sends Lear and Cordelia to their deaths, exiles his brother Edgar, and defiles Regan and Goneril. He does all of this to gain power in the name of bastards everywhere. To be honest, Edmund does all of this for himself. I think part of having one's own different place in society is having a reason for it. Cordelia fights against the grain when she does not flatter her father. She is exiled, but when France takes her hand she knows it is truly out of love rather than greed. She also comes back for her father to save him and in the process is killed herself. She did all of this out of love. Part of what makes us who we are is what we feel we need to change in the world. Some chase after love and others after money. Being original is based off of how strongly you stand on your beliefs and on who you are. Some people will give in to society and allow themselves to be left behind. But, there are always people who are ready to fight for what they believe is right. These are the people we remember as legends. Martin Luther King fought for the rights of African Americans and they were given those rights. Sometimes in fighting for them you may lose your life but if you ask yourself if it is worth it the answer better be yes. In Edmund's case his answer was no. He lost his life and left nothing behind but death and treachery. Cordelia died saving her father. She leaves behind a hope for humanity. Society needs more people like Cordelia. King Lear shoots rays of non-conformists.

New Beginning: Why creativity and originality in some areas of life and not all?

I have decided to tweak my question. What makes you and I different from everyone else? Why do we decide to be creative and original in certain areas and not all? What drives us to conform to society? Maybe, we fear people. I think that this is the easiest fear of all.  Either everyone has the same exact folds on their spongy brains OR we simply won't fight against the grain. I really want to indulge myself in this deep gooey river of conformity and find out why it even exists.

Everyone has a choice:

The Road not Taken

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference

Word Trace: Fortune in King Lear

I have tracked the word Fortune throughout the book King Lear and have decided that these quotes  best represent fate in King Lear.

Act 1, Scene 1

CORDELIA:This is after Cordelia loses all of her inheritance. Burgundy has

 decided he does not want Cordelia's hand.

 "Peace be with Burgundy!
 Since that respects of fortune are his love,
 I shall not be his wife"

Cordelia uses the word fortune to mean money or riches.She uses this word to show that Burgundy did not truly love her. He only wanted her inheritance and power. Her use of fortune means riches. 

Act 1, Scene 2

EDMUND: In this quote Edmund exclaims his grief of being a bastard. This is after Edmund has set up his brother Edgar.

        "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
 when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit
 of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our
 disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
 if we were villains by necessity; fools by
 heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
 treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
 liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
 planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
 by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
 of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
 disposition to the charge of a star! My
 father compounded with my mother under the
 dragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursa
 major; so that it follows, I am rough and
 lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,
 had the maidenliest star in the firmament
 twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar--

 [Enter EDGAR]

 And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old
 comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a
 sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. O, these eclipses do
 portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi." 

Edmund uses the word fortune to express how his circumstances should be changed. Edmund talks about how his naturalness matches or even surpasses his brothers and that he should not be condemned for this but brought up as an equal son if not 

favorite son. His use of fortune is simply a circumstance of life.

Act 2, Scene 4
Fool: The fool currently talks to Lear and Kent and this is before Lear's 
confrontation with his daughters over his guards. This also lies before Lear's 
exit into the storm.



 "Winter's not gone yet, if the wild-geese fly that way.
 Fathers that wear rags
 Do make their children blind;
 But fathers that bear bags
 Shall see their children kind.
 Fortune, that arrant whore,
 Ne'er turns the key to the poor.
 But, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours
 for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year.]"



The Fool describes how fathers may pay off their daughters and all they will see is kindness from their children. Fortune could mean literal money in which the 
Fool speaks of how the poor never will become rich. Or, fortune could mean 
circumstances which would mean that fortune is cruel to the impoverished. The 
fool describes fortune as a cruel being.


Act 4, Scene 1
EDGAR: This scene is after Gloucester has had his eyes gouged out and this is the first time Edgar lays his own eyes upon Gloucester his father.



 "Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd,
 Than still contemn'd and flatter'd. To be worst,
 The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
 Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear:
 The lamentable change is from the best;
 The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
 Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
 The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
 Owes nothing to thy blasts. But who comes here?

 [Enter GLOUCESTER, led by an Old Man]

 My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!
 But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
 Lie would not yield to age."



Edgar complains about his circumstances. He one ups fortune and claims to owe 
nothing to fortune and does not deserve the cards he is given but will not lament on his circumstances and will move forward. Edgar speaks as if fortune lives and breaths and he uses apostrophe in his anger towards his circumstances.