April- Two Sides to Everyone

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the ultimate example of there being two sides to everyone. Although it obviously isn't always as literal as it is in that case, I definitely believe that there are two sides to everyone. It's impossible for people to be happy and wonderful all the time. Even if someone is generally a good and kind person, it is inevitable that they have a mean, angry side. As overused as the saying is, "don't judge a book by its cover", it is obviously true. It's impossible to know what a person is really like based on their outside. Nobody guessed that Dr Jekyll would have really been Mr Hyde, because based on his kind exterior, no one saw the evil inside of him. This could easily be reversed as well tough, even if someone appears mean and angry most of the time, no one knows what they are really like until they take the time to know them. This can be seen in the real world every day, anywhere. In schools, on teams, or at work it's just human nature to judge someone when you see them. People like to say "oh I don't judge" but really everyone does, it's impossible not to. What matters though is that you don't hold on to those judgements and you allow yourself go find out who they really are. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a pretty literal example of there being two sides to everyone and even though it isn't really like that in real life, it is an easy way to understand that people don't always show all of who they are, and people should never make assumptions based off of what's on the surface.

March- The Beauty of Simplicity

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, author, Oscar Wilde, says "all art is quite useless". By this, I definitely don't think Wilde meant that art is pointless, but technically it is useless. The point of art though is whatever use people find for it. Whether it be self expression, or relaxation, the art itself technically has no use but it does serve a purpose. Unfortunately I think that we live in a world where the innocence of something useless that is meant to be pure and beautiful, has been robbed from a lot of things. The world is so competitive that so many people see the need to give a use to something that doesn't need it. For example, if someone was really great at making jewelry or something, the first thing someone else might suggest is that they sell it. Even though the jewelry making was meant to be simply for enjoyment or relaxation, suddenly a use has been assigned to something that didn't really didn't need it, and all of the joyful innocence is taken from it. Everything today is so fast paced that it isn't often people decide to do something solely because they want to or it makes them happy, people try to give everything some kind of use, if not it's a waste of time. I really like Oscar Wilde's statement about art because it really is useless, which is the beauty of it. Art is expressive and fun and therapeutic and it doesn't need to be anything else. A painting isn't going to go out and cure the common cold or discover oil, but that in no way means that it is pointless. I agree with Oscar Wilde and I think that more people in the world need to accept the uselessness of certain things and appreciate the beauty of simplicity.

February- A Misjudged Country

A Thousand Splendid Suns is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read. Reading it made me realize just how uninformed I am about things outside of my own individual world. It feels like I would have to read it about ten more times to be able to fully take in everything that it was saying. To me, both of these are signs of a really incredible book. In America today I believe that we have a pretty distorted view of what life in Afghanistan is really like. It's not that we have no reason for thinking these things with all of the violence that has occurred between the United States and Afghanistan, but A Thousand Splendid Suns has opened my eyes to the fact that the entire country is not like that. Laila and Mariam show that so many innocent people in that country get grouped in with the generalized idea that everyone is Afghanistan is so violent and terrible. While obviously this book is fiction, I would find it hard to believe that it doesn't hold a lot of truth in it. Throughout the novel I think that Hosseini sort of presents the stereotypes that many people have in their mind about Afghanistan and he presents them in comparison to the innocent, good people that he knows exist there. For example Rasheed in comparison to Tariq. Rasheed shows the abusive, misogynistic male that  people believe are all that exist in a country like Afghanistan while Tariq is the innocent, kind man that really does exist there but no one knows about. Through tjis novel, Khaled Hosseini successfully presents and informs about the different, innocent people who live in Afghanistan and have nothing to do with the violence. After reading this, I know that I definitely feel much more informed about life over there and appreciate that he was able to educate so many uninformed people on the truth about a misrepresented country.

January- A Heroic End

In my opinion, suicide in today's society is becoming way too glorified. People think that suicide is so much more tragic than another death or that it is "heroic" but I completely disagree. As seen in The Awakening, the main character Edna kills herself in order to escape from her unhappy life. Edna's actions are often viewed as revolutionary or as the equivalent of her taking flight and showing society that they cannot control her. To me, that is in no way Edna fighting society. To me that is Edna giving in. By killing herself Edna let her world take her down. Not to say that she would have been better off with the life that she was living, but really it was just a lose lose situation. I personally don't admire her really at all for what she did. I do understand that during that time in that kind of a society it would have been very very hard for her to break away and really be successful or independent on her own. However, I feel like if it was meant to be an inspiring story that should've been what happened. Although the actual ending was obviously more realistic. The Awakening I think justifies suicide in a way that I don't ever think is ok. I find this to be more and more common in media today as well which definitely bothers me. I strongly disagree with the common modern views of suicide and the similar one presented by The Awakening.